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Civil War and Democracy in West Africa by David Harris Pdf
In the aftermath of explosive civil wars in Africa during the 1990s and 2000s, the establishment of multi-party elections has often been heralded by the West as signaling the culmination of the conflict and the beginning of a period of democratic rule. However, the outcomes of these elections are very rarely uniform, with just as many countries returning to conflict as not. Here, David Harris uses the examples of Sierra Leone and Liberia to examine the nexus of international and domestic politics in these post-conflict elections. In doing so, he comes to the conclusion that it is political, rather than legal, solutions that are more likely to enhance any positive political change that has emerged from the violence. This book is thus of significance to Western and African policy makers, and also to students and scholars who wish to engage with the critical issues of conflict resolution and reconciliation both in Sierra Leone and Liberia in particular and in the wider region in general.
Between Democracy and Terror by Ibrahim Abdullah Pdf
This is the most authoritative study of the Sierra Leone civil war to emanate from Africa, or indeed any publications' programme on Africa. It explores the genesis of the crisis, the contradictory roles of different internal and external actors, civil society and the media; the regional intervention force and the demise of the second republic. It analyses the numerous peace initiatives designed to end a war, which continued nonetheless to defy and outlast them; and asks why the war became so prolonged. The study articulates how internal actors trod the multiple and conflicting pathways to power. It considers how non-conventional actors were able to inaugurate and sustain an insurgency that called forth the largest concentration of UN peacekeepers the world has ever seen.
Civil Wars in Africa by Kelechi A. Kalu,George Klay Kieh Jr. Pdf
Civil Wars in Africa, edited by Kelechi A. Kalu and George Klay Kieh, Jr., examines civil conflicts throughout various African countries. They argue that civil wars in Africa are by-products of the contradictions and crises engendered by the post-colonial state-building and nation-building projects in Africa. With few exceptions, the post-colonial states in Africa have failed to build societies that invest in the material well-being of their citizens; protect their political, civil, and other rights; promote accountability, transparency, the rule of law, judicial independence, and the holding of free and fair elections; and promote ethnic pluralism, tolerance, mutual respect, and peaceful co-existence, among others. In addition, the contributors show that the post-colonial states in Africa have been ruled by corrupt and autocratic leaders, who are obsessed with the maintenance of state power as the pathway to ensuring the private accumulation of wealth through sundry illegal means, including bribery, extortion, and theft of public funds. In sum, this volume addresses how the failure of the post-colonial African state to shepherd the process of building democratic societies based on the centrality of human security has led to the erosion of the legitimacy of the state and its custodians. Thus, once the contradictions and crises reached their crescendo, these post-colonial societies than implode into civil wars, even at the micro-level.
Civil Wars and Coups D'etat in West Africa by Issaka K. Souare Pdf
Working from a thematic, empirical-analytical approach, this work surveys the root causes of civil wars and military coups d' tat in West Africa, analyzes the implications for the region as a whole, and identifies possible solutions to these armed conflicts.
International Statebuilding in West Africa by Abu Bakarr Bah,Nikolas Emmanuel Pdf
At the turn of the twenty-first century, manipulation of the democratic process coupled with preexisting political and economic grievances led to years-long civil wars in Sierra Leone, Liberia, and Côte d'Ivoire. During and after these conflicts, international peacekeeping efforts and humanitarian intervention became the dominant paths for restoring stability by rebuilding the state. Using these three countries as case studies, this manuscript sheds light on internationally driven state building in war-torn West African nations, the problematic nature of the postcolonial state, and the difficulties of securing its people's wellbeing. Connecting peace and conflict, democracy, and international development studies, Bah and Emmanuel argue that there is a clear nexus between the concepts and practices of peace building and statebuilding; that peace building and statebuilding are not domestic matters alone but also matters of global intervention; and that civil wars can be viewed as opportunities for state building through creative postwar partnerships and organization. This study goes beyond the familiar concepts of failed states, R2P, peacekeeping, and peace mediation and introduces and enhances the concepts of state decay, new humanitarianism, people-centered liberalism, and institutional design. In doing so, it provides critical lessons that local and international actors can draw on as they try to figure out practical solutions to the political, economic, and social problems that impede the development of peaceful and democratic multiethnic postcolonial states in Africa and beyond. Applying comparative-historical methods and theory to archival materials and expert interviews, International Statebuilding in West Africa seeks to shift the discourse on civil wars from their causes and implications to the opportunities they provide to rework failed states—and to shift the discourse on African states from their colonial and neocolonial legacies to their shared moral and security interests with the rest of the world.
Sierra Leone came to world attention in the 1990s when a catastrophic civil war linked to the diamond trade was reported globally. This fleeting and particular interest, however, obscured two crucial processes in this small West African state. On the one hand, while the civil war was momentous, brutal and affected all Sierra Leoneans, it was also just one element in the long and faltering attempt to build a nation and state given the country's immensely problematic pre-colonial and British colonial legacies. On the other, the aftermath of the war precipitated a huge international effort to construct a 'liberal peace', with mixed results, and thus made Sierra Leone a laboratory for post-Cold War interventions. Sierra Leone examines 225 years of its history and fifty years of independence, placing state- society relations at the centre of an original and revealing investigation of those who have tried to rule or change Sierra Leone and its inhabitants and the responses engendered. It interweaves the historical narrative with sketches of politicians, anecdotes, the landscape and environment and key turning-points, alongside theoretical and other comparisons with the rest of Africa. It is a new contribution to the debate for those who already know Sierra Leone and a solid point of entry for those who wish to know.
Kingdom, State and Civil Society in Africa: Conceptual and Political Collisions by Nelson Kasfir Pdf
Civil society is one of several Western political and social concepts that have not traveled successfully to Africa. Revived in response to the search for democracy in Eastern Europe during the late Soviet era, Western donors promoted and funded new civil society organizations in sub-Saharan Africa, regarding them as an essential grounding for African democratization. Most of these new civil society organizations had little in common with African associational activity. Focusing on the characteristics and behavior of longstand-ing African organizations would appear a better starting point for developing a useful concept of an African civil society. One candidate worth serious investigation is the Buganda Kingdom Government. This organization violates most distinctions central to Western notions of civil society. Yet it continues to behave like a civil society organization. Its political and conceptual collisions offer guidance toward a useful notion of African civil society and understanding Ugandan politics.
Liberia was the scene of two devastating civil wars since late 1989 and became widely considered a failed state. By contrast, the country is frequently described as a success story since the international professional Ellen Johnson Sirleaf assumed the presidency following democratic elections in 2005. The book investigates the political economy of civil war and democratic peace and puts the developments into historical perspective. The author argues that the civil wars did not represent the breakdown of the state but exhibited dynamics characteristic of state formation. His analysis of continuity and change in Liberia's political evolution details both political progress and persistent structural deficits of the polity. Book jacket.
On December 24, 1989, a group of Libyan-trained armed dissidents, which styled itself the National Patriotic Front of Liberia (NPFL), attacked Liberian territory from neighboring Ivory Coast. The band of outlaws was led by Charles Taylor, an ex-Liberia government official who escaped from prison in the United States while facing extradition to Liberia for allegedly embezzling nearly one million dollars of public funds. After he fled the U.S. Taylor returned to West Africa, from where he connected with Libya. Sustained by Libyan support, Taylor went to Liberia to spearhead his murderous brand of civil war. Liberia's dictatorial leader Samuel Doe responded to the NPFL invasion by deploying troops in the conflict area, whose senior ranks were dominated by the military strongman's own ethnic group. The government forces carried out collective punishment against local villagers, killing, looting, and raping, while singling out people from certain ethnic groups whom they regarded as supporters of the invasion by reason of their ethnic identity. The NPFL also targeted members of Doe's ethnic group and other ethnic groups that were seen to be supportive of the government, as well as its officials and sympathizers. As the war spread from the interior toward the Liberian capital of Monrovia amid widespread death and destruction, the United States responded to the deteriorating situation by dispatching four warships with 2,300 marines to evacuate Americans and other foreigners who were in the country. The U.S. decided not to intervene to contain the unfolding catastrophe. Officials of the George Bush administration maintained that Liberia, which was then America's closest traditional ally in Africa, was no longer of strategic importance to the U.S. Coincidentally, the Liberian civil war started at the time the Cold War was ending. Located on the West Coast of Africa, Liberia was founded in 1822 by freed black American slaves who were returned to the continent. Their passage was paid by the American Colonization Society, a philanthropic organization, whose members included Thomas Jefferson and James Monroe. The Liberian capital Monrovia is named after Monroe, who was president of the United States at the time Liberia was founded. The country's national flag of red, white and blue stripes with a star, bears close resemblance to the American flag. The systems of government and education, architecture and other aspects of Liberian life reflect American taste. Names of places in the country include Virginia, Maryland, Georgia, Louisiana and Buchanan. More than anywhere in Africa, spoken English in Liberia echoes the rhythms of Black American speech. Liberia served as the regional headquarters of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), and hosted a Voice of America relay station that beamed American propaganda, as well as other major U.S. security installations during the Cold War. The Americans also operated the Omega Navigation Tower, which was intended to track the movement of ships and planes in the region and beyond. Once one of Africa's most stable and prosperous countries, Liberia was regarded as a haven for international trade and commerce because of the use of the American dollar as a legal tender. Major U.S. investments in the country included the Firestone Rubber Plantation, the world's largest plantation, which produce rubber for Firestone tires, Chase Manhattan Bank, and Citibank. Pan American Airlines (PAN AM) once operated Liberia's Roberts International Airport, where U.S. fighter jets have landing rights. During part of the 1970s, Liberia's per capita income was equivalent to that of Japan. Independent since 1847 as Africa's first republic, Liberia's plunge into anarchy began after a bloody military coup that ended the rule of descendants of the freed slaves, who monopolized political and economic power for over a century. During the 1980 coup, President William Tolbert, who tried to institute some meaningful po
African, American, British and French correspondents, scholars, students and leaders discuss the first ten years of the independence of West Africa. Their articles deal with the political and economic problems of the region; with its foreign relations; and with the civil war in Nigeria.
Civil War and Democracy in West Africa by David Harris Pdf
In the aftermath of explosive civil wars in Africa during the 1990s and 2000s, the establishment of multi-party elections has often been heralded by the West as signaling the culmination of the conflict and the beginning of a period of democratic rule. However, the outcomes of these elections are very rarely uniform, with just as many countries returning to conflict as not. Here, David Harris uses the examples of Sierra Leone and Liberia to examine the nexus of international and domestic politics in these post-conflict elections. In doing so, he comes to the conclusion that it is political, rather than legal, solutions that are more likely to enhance any positive political change that has emerged from the violence. This book is thus of significance to Western and African policy makers, and also to students and scholars who wish to engage with the critical issues of conflict resolution and reconciliation both in Sierra Leone and Liberia in particular and in the wider region in general.
Civil Wars in Africa by Taisier Mohamed Ahmed Ali,Robert O. Matthews Pdf
A collection of case studies of nine African countries, Civil Wars in Africa provides a comparative perspective on the causes of civil war and the processes by which internal conflict may be resolved or averted. The book focuses on the wars in Ethiopia, Liberia, Mozambique, Rwanda, Somalia, Sudan, and Uganda as well as the experiences of Tanzania and Zimbabwe, where civil war was averted, to underline conditions under which conflict can most successfully be managed. John Kiyaga-Nsubuga focuses on Yoweri Museveni and his National Resistance Movement regime's attempt to bring peace to Uganda. John Prendergast and Mark Duffield look at Ethiopia's long civil war and the role of liberation politics and external engagement. Bruce Jones studies the ethnic roots of the civil war in Rwanda. Elwood Dunn explores political manipulation and ethnic differences as causes of civil strife in Liberia. John Saul examines the role of Western powers in establishing peace in Mozambique. Hussein Adam describes the collapse of the authoritarian regime in Somalia and the subsequent rise of inter-clan and sub-clan rivalry. Taisier Ali and Robert Matthews argue that the forty-year conflict in Sudan is much more complex than the usual view that it results from the pitting of the Arab, Islamic North against the African, Christian South. Shifting the focus to how internal unrest may be managed, Hevina Dashwood examines government initiatives undertaken to maintain stability in Zimbabwe and Cranford Pratt describes the policies and institutions developed by Nyerere that enabled Tanzania to avoid ethnic, regional, and religious factionalism and intra-elite rivalries. James Busumtwi-Sam explores multilateral third-party intervention, highlighting the changing role of the OAU and the United Nations and their effectiveness in averting war. The concluding chapter draws together findings from the individual case studies and incorporates them into the larger corpus of the literature. Taisier M. Ali, formerly professor of political economy at the University of Khartoum, is presently a visiting scholar in the Department of Political Science, University of Toronto. Robert O. Matthews is professor of political science, University of Toronto.
Based on first-hand experience, the author charts the decade-long civil war that brought Sierra Leone to its knees from 1991-2001. The group spearheading the violence claimed to be freeing the country from corruption but their insurgency killed more than 75,000 people and displaced half the population.
Author : W. E. B. Du Bois Publisher : Oxford University Press Page : 382 pages File Size : 41,8 Mb Release : 2014-02-01 Category : History ISBN : 9780199386765
The World and Africa and Color and Democracy (The Oxford W. E. B. Du Bois) by W. E. B. Du Bois Pdf
W. E. B. Du Bois was a public intellectual, sociologist, and activist on behalf of the African American community. He profoundly shaped black political culture in the United States through his founding role in the NAACP, as well as internationally through the Pan-African movement. Du Bois's sociological and historical research on African-American communities and culture broke ground in many areas, including the history of the post-Civil War Reconstruction period. Du Bois was also a prolific author of novels, autobiographical accounts, innumerable editorials and journalistic pieces, and several works of history. Collected in one volume for the first time, The World and Africa and Color and Democracy are two of W E. B. Du Bois's most powerful essays on race. He explores how to tell the story of those left out of recorded history, the evils of colonialism worldwide, and Africa's and African's contributions to, and neglect from, world history. More than six decades after W. E. B. Du Bois wrote The World and Africa and Color and Democracy, they remain worthy guides for the twenty-first century. With a series introduction by editor Henry Louis Gates, Jr., and two introductions by top African scholars, this edition is essential for anyone interested in world history.