STRATFOR.COM's Global Intelligence Update - December 31, 1999 By The Internet's Most Intelligent Source of International News & Analysis http://www.stratfor.com/ _________________________________________ Stratfor.com welcomes any comments or suggestions that you may have regarding our website and services. Look for our reader survey at http://www.stratfor.com/survey.htm _________________________________________ WHAT'S GOING ON IN YOUR WORLD? * All week, see our forecasts on the future of the world. * Also see the Year of the Crackdown, our in-depth analysis of China. FIND OUT AT http://www.stratfor.com/ __________________________________________ STRATFOR.COM Global Intelligence Update December 31, 1999 Africa: More of the Same, and Worse Summary While it seems too depressingly easy to examine Africa's bleak political, economic and social situation and predict more of the same, mustering up optimism for a continent with so much stacked against it is nearly impossible. Africa is plagued by poverty, immature political systems, ethnic and sectarian conflict, and international isolation and neglect. The four decades since most of Africa gained independence has been dominated by aging regimes or alternately, coups and civil wars. Unfortunately, the coming decade promises nothing better for most Africans. The only parties likely to gain are the foreign multi-national corporations involved in natural resource extraction. Analysis Africa's overarching problem is the fundamental immaturity of its political systems. Few African countries have managed to implement a system of popularly elected, representative government. On a simpler but far more important level, they have failed to develop peaceful, reliable systems of political succession. This, like many of Africa's problems, is a legacy of European colonization and sudden and relatively recent independence. Ancient kingdoms and borderless tribal systems were amalgamated almost at random, ruled by outsiders for decades, then cast loose and expected to adopt European political models and to accept their colonial borders. What has emerged are two main political patterns: regimes of long duration, frequently directed by the leaders of the countries' independence movements, protracted civil wars or repeated coups d'etat. Frequently, there has been a bit of both. With neither representative government nor a peaceful mechanism with which to attain it, coups and civil wars have been the source of political transition across Africa. Rarely, however, have they represented a transition to anything but another authoritarian regime. Aging Regimes and Instability The recent coup in Cote d'Ivoire is a poignant example of a continent-wide problem. Prior to the coup, Cote d'Ivoire was considered by many to be a bastion of stability and prosperity in turbulent West Africa. Yet that stability was grounded in nearly 40 years of rigid authoritarian rule by one man, one party and one faction. With the current president - only the second since independence - blocking any honest democratic transition of power, a coup was all but inevitable. Felix Houphouet-Boigny ruled Cote d'Ivoire as a one-party state from independence in 1960 until 1990, when he won yet another five- year term in office in the country's first multi-party elections, taking some 90 percent of the vote. Upon his death in 1993, Houphouet-Boigny was succeeded by his deputy and fellow Democratic Party member, Henri Konan Bedie, who was then re-elected in his own right in 1995. Bedie, a Christian of the Baoule ethnic group, followed in his predecessor's autocratic footsteps, forcing the Muslim prime minister - and leader of the opposition Republican Rally Party - Alassane Dramane Ouattara out of office. Recent demonstrations over Bedie's decision to ban Ouattara from running in next year's presidential elections led to the arrest of several Republican Rally Party officials while Ouattara fled the country. The Dec. 24 coup ended four decades of one-party dominance of Cote d'Ivoire, and coup leader Gen. Robert Guei has promised to soon hold democratic elections. However, the future is far from clear, let alone bright. Unseating one regime does not make a political transition. The struggle for power in Cote d'Ivoire is in fact only beginning, with two political models to guide it - authoritarianism and coup d'etat. And in a pattern that has already manifested itself elsewhere in Africa, the collapse of Cote d'Ivoire's long-standing regime has caused sectarian rifts to open in the post-coup power struggle. In this case, a contest appears to be shaping up between Muslims and Christians. Cote d'Ivoire is paradigmatic of Africa's problems on several counts. First, the country is one of many whose post-colonial politics have been dominated by one man or one party. Second, in the absence of democratic means to break the ruling faction's hold on power, Cote d'Ivoire experienced a coup d'etat. Third, though the post-coup power struggle is only in its early stages, it is already playing on religious divisions inside the country. The list of African countries dominated by a single individual, party, or clique since independence or for many years is overwhelming. Robert Mugabe in Zimbabwe and Jose Eduardo dos Santos in Angola have ruled their respective countries since independence, as have Sam Nujoma in Namibia and Isaias Afwerki in Eritrea, though for a much shorter period. Kenya's Daniel arap Moi is only his country's second president, taking the reins of his party and the country in 1978 following the death of post-independence leader Jomo Kenyatta. From major nations to small ones, the list of nations yet to emerge from the influence of the independence legacy - now decades old - is long. At least 20 African nations have political systems that to a large extent have been shaped by a pattern of coups. Indeed, a powerful relationship between the aging nature of these regimes and instability and warfare is taking shape. The Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), formerly Zaire, is a good example. A military coup brought long-ruling and kleptocratic Mobutu Sese Seko to power in 1965. Mobutu was driven from power in 1997 in an armed insurrection led by Laurent Kabila and backed by other countries in the region in 1997. Several of the factions that backed Kabila turned against him almost immediately after he took power, and he has been locked in a civil war ever since. Africa's Web of War The ongoing civil war in the DRC is the prime example of yet another other factor conspiring against African peace and stability - the unbroken web of the region's conflicts. [ http://www.stratfor.com/services/giu/072799.ASP ] Prior to the still very tenuous peace accord, Kabila received active military support from Zimbabwe, Angola and Namibia, as well as more tacit support from the Republic of Congo, Libya, Chad, Sudan and the Central African Republic. [ http://www.stratfor.com/MEAF/specialreports/special3.htm ] The anti- Kabila faction has been backed by Uganda, Rwanda and Angola's UNITA rebels; evidence suggests it has received the quiet support of South Africa. This multi-national participation involvement in the DRC conflict has tied that war tightly to several of Africa's other conflicts. Angola's involvement in the DRC stems from its attempt to control UNITA, which supports the anti-Kabila forces and uses the DRC as a rear area for its war against Luanda. For the same reason, Angola has also been involved in the Republic of Congo. Namibia, which is facing a growing problem with UNITA along its border with Angola and in the breakaway Caprivi Strip, also contributed forces to the war in the DRC. Caprivi separatists reportedly receive aid not only from UNITA, but also from Botswana and Zambia. Not only are the wars in Angola, Namibia and the DRC deeply linked. The fact that regional powers, South Africa and Zimbabwe, are on different sides in the wars has rendered the South African Development Community (SADC) incapable of addressing either problem. UNITA has reportedly received South African arms, shipped to Mozambique and flown on South African aircraft to Angola by way of Zambia. [ http://www.stratfor.com/MEAF/commentary/m9908010159.htm ]. To the north, Uganda and Sudan have been involved in the DRC conflict in efforts to outflank each other; each supports rebel armies in the other's country. Sudan's separatist rebels have also received support from Eritrea, Ethiopia, Egypt and the United States. Meanwhile, Eritrea and Ethiopia are at war, and Eritrea's attempt to outflank the deadlocked front lines by supporting Ethiopian rebels based in Somalia has spread the conflict to that already war-torn country as well. What emerges is a seamless web of conflict stretching from the Horn of Africa to the Caprivi Strip, with filaments reaching out to Tripoli, Harare, and beyond. Only the relatively uncontested military of Nigeria has served as a bulwark between the central and western African conflicts, and Nigeria is now facing its own growing internal ethnic conflict. With such widespread connections, solving any one conflict becomes extremely difficult, if not impossible. The Ethnic and Religious Spillover Fueling and fueled by the struggle for power in Africa are deep and frequently trans-border ethnic and religious divisions. The colonial powers drew the map of Africa without concern for preexisting divisions, and the international commitment to maintenance of these colonial borders has left a number of pressure cookers on the continent. Prominent among these is Nigeria, home to an estimated 250 to 400 distinct ethnic groups, with the major groups being the Yoruba in the southwest, the Ibo in the southeast, and the Hausa-Fulani in the north. Ibo military officers led the country after a coup in 1966, though other ethnic groups responded by massacring Ibos living in the north. Eastern groups tried to form the secessionist state of Biafra in 1967, a move that sparked a three-year civil war. The Hausa have dominated recent military governments, though new President Olusegun Obasanjo is a Yoruba. Since Obasanjo was backed by a faction of Hausa military officers, he is not trusted by the predominantly Christian Yoruba, yet since he is a Yoruba, he is not trusted by the predominantly Muslim Hausas. The ensuing tension has already resulted in riots, and some of the northern Hausa states have begun implementing Islamic Sharia law, posing a challenge to central government in the country. [ http://www.stratfor.com/MEAF/specialreports/special28.htm ] The legacy of ethnic political machinations on the part of European colonial powers in Rwanda and Burundi has in the 1990s finally expressed itself in genocidal war between the countries' Hutu and Tutsi ethnic groups. Sudan's civil war is being waged between the Muslim government and the predominantly Christian opposition in the south. Additionally, Muslim fundamentalists continue to challenge the governments of Egypt, Libya and Algeria. Ethnic and religious competition is a constant source of instability throughout Africa, but during political transitions, this contest can quickly grow in importance and hostility. The civil war that toppled Somalia's Mohamed Siad Barre in 1991 left a power vacuum that ignited feuds between the country's multiple clans. Since then the country has degenerated into a number of ill defined and perpetually feuding warlord dominated fiefdoms. Two of these, Somaliland and Puntland, have consolidated some semblance of borders and governments and may provide a model not only for the rest of Somalia but for other ethnically divided countries in Africa as well. The international community long held a policy of inviolability of borders in post-colonial Africa, but that is changing. Partly, this is due to waning interest on the part of the developed world for Africa and its politics. Partly, it is a conscious policy decision. No one blinked at Eritrea's secession from Ethiopia. Italy has appeared to promote segmentation as a solution to the Somali conflict [ http://www.stratfor.com/services/giu/121098.asp ], and the United States even appears to be backing secession for southern Sudan [ http://www.stratfor.com/MEAF/commentary/m9912032330.htm ]. Not Worth the Effort: International Neglect of Africa Facilitating the unchecked strife in Africa has been the developed world's abandonment of the continent. While France, for one, continues to dabble in its former colonies, the other colonial powers and, significantly, the United States, have effectively washed their hands of the continent. The United States was burned in Somalia when the Somalis refused to play by Washington's rules. Though it continues to moralize, Washington has not found a good reason to return to the continent. The risks simply outweigh the rewards. Economically, there are richer pickings elsewhere, and with the end of the Cold War, Africa has lost most of its strategic significance. The geopolitical game against a resurgent Russia and increasingly assertive China is being played out in Central Asia and the Caucasus, not in Angola. What has emerged is a situation in which international bodies such as the United Nations, which could conceivably intervene in Africa, have the most powerful member, the United States, deeply disinterested in doing so. Add to this the fact that the UN's European members are more concerned with economically and politically critical regions such as Eastern Europe, the Balkans, the former Soviet Union and Asia. The result is that Africa gets ignored. Would-be regional power brokers such as South Africa, Libya and Nigeria are involved in a number of Africa's conflicts, but their own long-term stability is very much in question. Libya's Moammar Gadhafi, who rose to power in a coup in 1969, has no heir apparent. Nigeria's ethnic and religious rifts are deepening, despite and in part because of the democratic election of Obasanjo. And the short tenure of the African National Congress (ANC) at the helm of South Africa's government has seen a dramatic surge in crime and a deterioration of the country's infrastructure. After decades of apartheid, black South Africans are not soon about to tolerate the election of a white government, while the whites are not going to tolerate much more deterioration under the ANC. Neither is eager to give the Zulu Inkatha Freedom Party a chance. Unless the ANC can revitalize South Africa's economy and enforce domestic peace and stability, a day of reckoning is approaching. Africa's Future: Somebody's Interested There is, however, one set of external actors that may have a substantial impact on the future of Africa - multi-national corporations. Those companies involved in extracting Africa's rich natural resources have a vested interest in maintaining stability around their concessions. Examples abound of their cooperation with various competing factions. Shell Oil has a documented and widely criticized history of backing the military regimes in Nigeria. Jean-Raymond Boulle, chief shareholder of the mining firm American Mineral Fields, Inc., reportedly received a mining concession after he provided a company jet to then rebel leader Laurent Kabila during his battle to overthrow Mobutu Sese Seko in Zaire. And DeBeers recently publicized its official decision to cease purchasing diamonds from UNITA, purchases the rebels had used to finance their war in Angola. The pattern holds true in areas of instability outside Africa as well, for example in Colombia, where British Petroleum has been implicated in a scandal over funding a Colombian Army unit that was charged with human rights violations. Other companies throughout Africa hire what amount to private armies of security forces, and unrevealed instances of direct cooperation with warring parties are undoubtedly far more numerous than the documented examples. As struggles over political succession proliferate, corporations face the choice of sitting passively by as war consumes investment - or quietly backing one of the factions. The natural symbiosis between warring factions eager for financial support and corporations eager to protect their investments will inevitably lead to cooperation between the two - particularly in the context of broad neglect of the region on the part of the corporations' European and American home governments. The future of Africa appears to be more of the same, and worse. International disinterest has left the continent to solve its own problems. Lacking the mechanisms to solve those problems by peaceful means, the continent is destined for further violent political transitions. This competition for power inevitably plays off of pre-existing ethnic and religious rifts in African countries, and as there is no longer an international commitment to the integrity of Africa's borders, the net result will be a widespread redrawing of those borders. Finally, as foreign companies struggle to protect their assets in Africa, the relationships they will build with the warring factions will, when the new borders and regimes ossify, ironically lead to a kind of corporate re-colonization of Africa. Africa will evolve into smaller, more ethnically and religiously homogenous countries, many of which will be symbiotically tied to one or more foreign corporations. The best that can be expected is that the violence and disorder that will continue to dominate Africa over the next decade will rationalize some of the continent's colonial borders and bring new players to the political stage. 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