Posted on 21-8-2002
Africa
Giving Peace A Chance
Four sets of peace negotiations are going on or about to start
in Africa,
raising cautious hopes that there could be breakthroughs in
some of the
continent's longest and most intractable conflicts.
The climate of negotiations is markedly different than it was
just four
years ago. Then the conflicts in Sudan, Burundi, Congo and Somalia
— now
all at or heading for the negotiating table — were in full swing.
Additional wars were raging in Angola and Sierra Leone and between
Ethiopia
and Eritrea, all of which have recently been settled. Talks
are going on in
Machakos, Kenya, aiming to end Sudan's civil war, modern Africa's
longest.
Negotiations in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, are trying to resolve
Burundi's
civil strife. There also have been positive signs for the Congo
conflict at
the negotiating table, and next month factional leaders in Somalia,
a
country in outright anarchy, will talk to, instead of shoot
at, their
rivals. "We seem to be in the midst of one of the ebbs of conflicts
and one
of the flows of peacemaking," said John Prendergast, director
of the Africa
program at the International Crisis Group, a Brussels-based
research
organization.
One hopeful sign is the leading role that African leaders are
playing in
resolving the wars. The flurry of peace talks has coincided
with the
formation last month of the African Union, which made clear
that it plans
to police the transgressions of member countries. South Africa
has led the
negotiations in Congo and Burundi, and Kenya has played a leading
role in
the Sudan and Somalia talks.
African governments clearly see an economic motive for peace.
The New
Partnership for Africa's Development, the economic blueprint
endorsed by
the African Union, calls on governments to cease their wars
and human
rights violations with the prospect of gaining a multibillion-dollar
infusion of assistance from the West.
Still, the complexities at play are evident in Burundi, still
enduring a
civil war. Earlier this month, cease-fire negotiations quickly
began and
ended. Three separate rebel groups are fighting the forces of
President
Pierre Buyoya. Representatives of the main rebel movement, the
Forces for
the Defense of Democracy, led by Pierre Nkurunzizasat, sat across
from
government negotiators in the peace talks in Tanzania. "We were
at war for
almost 10 years and created a great deal of hostility, so it
is not easy to
reverse all that in only four days," said Salvator Ntacobamaze,
a
representative of the rebels.
Burundi's current civil war began in 1993, when power shifted
briefly from
the Tutsi ethnic minority to the Hutu majority. Tutsi paratroopers
assassinated the first Hutu president, setting off widespread
killings of
Tutsi. With Nelson Mandela acting as the broker, a peace accord
was finally
reached in 2000. It created a power-sharing government to be
led first by
Mr. Buyoya, a Tutsi, and later by a Hutu. But rebels have continue
to wage
war in the countryside, turning the capital, Bujumbura, into
a bunker of
sorts. Last Thursday, after four days of talks, the South African
deputy
president, Jacob Zuma, called a temporary halt to the negotiations
to
"resolve a few outstanding technical issues," which he declined
to state.
Even if the talks revive, Burundi's government must contend
with other
rebel movements. Separate talks are scheduled in the coming
weeks with one
of them, a faction of the Forces for the Defense of Democracy
led by Jean
Bosco Ndayikengurukiye. Then there is the smaller National Liberation
Forces, which is set to enter into its own negotiations with
the
government. That group has its own rival factions. Unless a
cease-fire is
signed with all of the parties, "the war will continue, if not
escalate,"
predicted Jan van Eck of the Center for Conflict Resolution
in South
Africa, who has worked with Burundi's factions since 1995.
The conflicts in Congo and Sudan are just as complex. In Congo,
the
government of President Joseph Kabila struck an agreement with
Rwanda last
month that could prompt the disarming of the main rebel faction
in eastern
Congo. Then, last week, Congo and Uganda agreed to resolve their
differences. But fighting continues to rage in Congo among combatants
who
have stayed away from peace talks. In recent weeks, rebels representing
the
Congolese Rally for Democracy - Liberation Movement have clashed
in the
town of Bunia in northeastern Congo with Hema tribal fighters
and Ugandan
soldiers. More than 100 civilians have been killed in that fighting.
The war in Sudan, which began in the early 1980's, involves
two main
parties, the government and the Sudan People's Liberation Army.
But a
tentative agreement last month has done little to quell hostilities
on the
battlefield, and the International Crisis Group has called the
talks "a
shaky chance for peace." The rebel group has been seeking to
topple the
government since 1983, in a conflict that has killed two million
people and
displaced millions more. The most recent round of fighting has
taken place
in the Western Upper Nile region of southern Sudan, where the
government
has carried out attacks aimed at moving the local people, and
the rebels
who live among them, away from oil installations.
Next month, still another round of peace negotiations are to
begin, to try
to end the decade of anarchy in Somalia. That may be the conflict
with the
dimmest chances of a quick resolution. The talks, scheduled
for Eldoret in
western Kenya, represent the latest of more than 15 attempts
to bring peace
to Somalia since its dictator, Mohammed Siad Barre, was overthrown
in
January 1991. "If you were handicapping them at the racetrack
you'd give
Somalia 30 to 1 odds," said one Western diplomat who is involved
in pushing
the parties together.
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