The West Africa Regional War
For observers of the West Africa regional war, the recent calm in the war-torn Mano River Union (MRU) states Liberia, Sierra Leone, and Guinea has given rise to optimism. Guarded, as this optimism might be, the decrease in violence in West Africa during the second half of 2001 is an important development given the scope and intensity of fighting that gripped these states earlier in the year. While observers agree that the current absence of widespread violent conflict in the MRU is a much-welcomed development, it must not mask the profound cleavages within these societies, the tenuous nature of the UN-imposed peace in Sierra Leone, and the continued serious threat of renewed warfare in the region. A brief overview of the horrendous and persistent conflicts that have engulfed the MRU over the past decade underscores the need for vigilance by the international community in its pursuit of lasting peace in West Africa.
The past dozen years of violent conflict in West Africa have led to the death, injury, and mutilation of hundreds of thousands of people and the displacement of millions more. Conservative estimates place the total number of war-related deaths during the seven-year civil war in Liberia (1989 1996) at 150,000, more than 5 percent of Liberia's estimated population (SIPRI Yearbook, 1996). But this number only begins to tell the story of the horror that civil war brought to this small nation of 2.8 million [United Nations Development Program (UNDP), Human Development Report, 1995]. Hundreds of thousands more Liberians were injured, displaced, and terrorized by the conflict, and today the tiny state remains the hostage of its corrupt and brutal dictator, Charles Taylor.
After the war spread into Sierra Leone in 1991, it had a similarly devastating effect. As in Liberia, armed insurgents preyed on the rural populations, raping, pillaging, and forcefully inducting children into their ranks. During the eight years of warfare that followed, it is estimated (conservatively) that over 60,000 of Sierra Leone's estimated 4.2 million inhabitants were killed and hundreds of thousands more injured, mutilated, and displaced (SIPRI Yearbook, 2001; UNDP, Human Development Report, 1995). The 2001 UNDP Human Development Report ranks Sierra Leone last out of the 162 nations rated on the human development index (HDI), a composite ...
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...ll play in the future of the region.
6. Develop a mid- and long-term regional plan for West Africa that accounts for big-picture economic and human development trends.
7. Implement the Africa Growth and Opportunity Act as soon as possible and draft and then implement AGOA II, thus extending the number of products covered by the legislation.
8. Buttress socio-economic development in Nigeria, the most populous and perhaps most important U.S. ally in sub-Saharan Africa.
9. Cut off financial resources to warlords who gain sustenance from non-state profiteers like diamond and timber buyers as well as from state actors intent on creating instability to further their own political and economic goals.
10. Continue military assistance to the key regional armies to professionalize them and build linkages with the United States.
11. Speed up debt forgiveness, especially for those countries that play by the rules and are in the process of socio-economic liberalization.
12. Increase aid to the region as an investment in stability, socio-economic development, and the creation of new markets for the United States and to help prevent state collapse.
During the author’s life in New York and Oberlin College, he understood that people who have not experienced being in a war do not understand what the chaos of a war does to a human being. And once the western media started sensationalizing the violence in Sierra Leone without any human context, people started relating Sierra Leone to civil war, madness and amputations only as that was all that was spoken about. So he wrote this book out o...
There was a war in Sierra Leone, Africa, from 1991 to 2002 where a rebel army stormed through African villages amputating and raping citizens left and right (“Sierra Leone Profile”). Adebunmi Savage, a former citizen of Sierra Leone, describes the reality of this civil war:
In the Darfur region, part of Sudan, a civil war (often referred to as genocide) has been occurring for approximately 8 years. The current conflict began in 2003 when rebel groups, the Sudan Liberation Movement/Army and the Justice and Equality Movement, made up of the Fur, Zaghawa and Masalit tribes took up arms against the government of Sudan because the non-Arab Sudanese felt oppressed and that the government was in favor of Sudanese Arabs. A previous period of conflict in Sudan-Darfur during 1985-1988 saw only 9,000 killed, while during the first 3 years of this most recent conflict, 2003-2006, over 200,000 Darfurians are believed to have been...
In the early 1990s, the Revolutionary United Front (RUF) of Sierra Leone, led by former military agents invaded Sierra Leone from Liberia. The RUF initially said they were leading a political movement. Their main goals were to promote liberation, democracy, and freedom. They said they wanted justice and equality for all civilians living in Sierra Leone. In spite of what the RUF said they were doing, they were forceful and left trails of murder in their path. When civilians lacked support for the “political revolution”, the RUF started a decade long war that ravaged the country as a whole. The RUF developed a sense of structured, militarized violence. It created a climate of opportunities for average civilians to obtain cheap weapons. With the greater access to weapons for civilians and the RUF, the politics became more militarized also. As the war waged on, poverty rose and people began to resort to looting of national resources. Laws diminished and seemed to lack any strength against the brute force of the RUF and their civilian followers (Denov, 2010).
During the 1900’s two deadly wars were raging on, the civil war in Sierra Leone and the genocide in Rwanda. The civil war in Sierra Leone began in March 1991, while the genocide began in 1994. Combined these two wars killed upward of 1,050,000 people, and affected the lives of all the people that lived there. The conflicts in Sierra Leone and Rwanda occurred for different major reasons, but many little aspects were similar. Politics and Ethnicity were the two main conflicts, but despite the different moments rebellions and the murder of innocent people occurred in both places.
In this section, I will provide a brief history of U.S. military involvement on the African continent, starting with the Barbary Wars and working up through the current date. This historical documentation will highlight the change in the role the United States has played in Africa [post 9-11???]. Prior to 9-11, the United States’ interactions were mainly [capture summary here]. Since [?], however, the continent has faced a marked increase in violent extremism and terrorism leading the United States to partner with many African nations in counterterrorism initiatives. These, and other initiatives, mean an increasing number U.S. service members are deploying to Africa to take part in training, humanitarian issues and military operations. These military activities are run by United States African Command, a recently created combatant command.
At the close of World War Two (WWII), the United States (US) and the Soviet Union (USSR) emerged as the dominant superpowers. Despite their coaction during the combat against the Axis powers, serious ideological problems emerged once the powder had settled. Both competing do war geographically expanded their political phantom across the mankind. While Western Europe remain democratic governments, Eastern Europe fell under the iron veil. Other areas, similar northwardly Africa, did not have politic excellence until the provincial infrastructure evolved into full-blown stock quality by 1958. Simultaneously, the freshly found interest in African nations attend to promote the civil rights figure at tenement. The US message to promote democracy internationally provided an equal to ecosystem for activists to raise man match and change. Notions of promoting the free mankind became questionable when coupled with the truth that segregation was still legal. Therefore, the renewed interest in Africa during the late 1950’s acted as a catalyst for shifting domestic race related policies as well because of the incidental clock and distribution of the civil rights movement.
The purpose of this essay is to adequately depict the current conflict in Darfur and discuss the effects that the Darfur Conflict has had on the neighboring countries, the Horn of Africa region and U.S. interest. In addition, this essay will explore how Darfur Conflict affects global concerns.
The Sierra Leone Civil War lasted eleven years and left Sierra Leone scared and unconstructed. The Revolutionary United Front (RUF) bombarded the country but faced constant resistance from the Sierra Leone Military. Both sides relied heavily on child soldiers throughout the war and a projected 5,000 to 10,000 child soldiers were collectively used by both the Sierra Leone government and the RUF. These children forcibly entered into a life of violence and oppression, and they have since struggled to reintegrate back into society. Child soldiers have returned home with no family or future and many still face severe complications.
The war was worsened by the wealthy minerals in the ground and the influence of the mineral was strengthened by the fear and displacement the war caused. The intertwining of these two destructive forces is seen in the story Salima is told by a man who bought her. In this he tells of a man who stuffed”...the coltan into his mouth to keep the soldiers from stealing his hard work, and they split his belly open with a machete”(31). Not only does this story show the harsh conditions the men are exposed to in war, but also it further demonstrates the hold coltan has on the minds of those who live in the Congo. The want for coltan leads to the destruction of the community and individual identities of those involved as it perpetuates a cycle of war that damages men, induces violence against women, and ultimately creates a cycle of lost identity.
Structural violence knows no geopolitical borders. The complex interweaving of law, policy and stigma that buttress imposed social structures and the harm it does to individuals can be forced on a population from within or abroad. The former colonies of the developing world were a playground for imperial powers during the age of exploration. Sub-Saharan African nations are complex communities characterized by Western media as corrupt and war-torn. They are the victims of this interweaving, defined by anthropologists as structural violence. Many of these battles were physical and within their own borders, as seen in the trials and tribulations of Agu — the child soldier in Netflix’s Beasts of No Nations. But war is not the only playing field
Angucia, M. (2009, September 1). Children and war in Africa: the crisis continues in northern Uganda.(Report). International Journal on World Peace , 26, 95.
These conflicts all affect civilians, they may even target civilians. In recent conflicts, civilian casualties have been as high as 84 percent of the total number of casualties. Angola is one of many African countries that have suffered years of civil war. Millions of people have been displaced from their homes by the conflict. On page 14, Rodrina Faustina tells how the war affected her and her family. “I am 42, married with six children. My son Faustino lost his leg when he stepped on a mine when he was twelve. We lived in Katabola village, but we had to leave last September because UNITA attacked the village…We walked here, it’s about 31 miles (50 kilometers), and it took us three days. At first we were put in schools in Kuito, then we came to this camp. This wasn’t the first time UNITA had attacked. In October 1990 they came to the village to the village, stealing things. I tried to escape but they shot me in the leg…”
Prospective outlooks of a country can be altered by war, a proposal that will be demonstrated in this analysis, as war can ostensibly transform a nation, and change a continent. A substantiated concept evidenced by the Second Sudanese Civil War, as the prior is essentially responsible for the recent succession of South Sudan, dissociating two ethnical groups, forcibly put together by former colonialist ties. It was a Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA) that ended their two decade long war, and put forth a framework that would ultimately revise the economical, and social, design of Sudan, and subsequently most of Africa. Fundamentally, the CPA would not bring an end to the animosity between the North and the South, as border tensions, and fair oil distribution, have continued to disjoint the neighboring nations to this day.
Death, destruction, and human rights being violated are happening in the country Sierra Leone even before the civil war started. Social structure and life in Sierra Leone is at a crisis state with its youth and women being treated unfairly without immunity by chiefs and leaders. The youth of the country always said ‘chiefs antagonize the youths’ (Archibald and Richards 7). The youth had then disrespected their youth leaders because the leaders would connive with chiefs to humiliate the youth (Archibald and Richards 6). Leaders should be righteous and kind not mocking their people, destroying their confidence and future hopes in order to make life more enjoyable for just themselves. “The elders were not really helping us… Even if you have only [a] minor problem, they exaggerate it… you, as a young man, cannot handle the case anymore and have to run away… as case [was] brought to the chief and I was accused. So I ran away and hid… Then I he...