OBAMA, AFRICA, AND PEACE

A Focus on peacemaking in Africa

Sudan, Somalia, Congo, Chad, and northern Uganda are part of a region of east and central Africa that is battered by chronic conflict, with millions dead and even more displaced over the last couple decades. It is the deadliest zone of conflict in the world since World War II. Congo and Sudan alone account for nearly 8 million deaths due to the legacy of war in the past two decades.

As part of its fundamental rethink of Africa policy, the Obama administration will need to shift U.S. policy from simply managing the symptoms of Africa’s biggest wars—in the form of billions of dollars in humanitarian aid and peace observation missions that are often unable to effectively protect civilians—to ending these conflicts. The existing model of conflict resolution in Africa has focused on one conflict at a time, treating Africa’s wars as if they occur in isolation. Extreme examples of this include dealing with Sudan’s north-south war while setting the issue of Darfur and eastern Sudan to the side; focusing on the situation in Somalia without effectively addressing the standoff between Ethiopia and Eritrea that fuels the conflict; and negotiating in northern Uganda without involving or sanctioning Sudan’s ruling party, which has long supported the Lord’s Resistance Army as a proxy force. Most of Africa’s wars are complex and regional in nature, and they cannot be addressed by a bureaucratic process that encourages stove-piping rather than coordination and synthesis.

The new administration needs to make an investment in competent, sustained conflict resolution, backed by focused leverage that transforms the logic of regional combatants from war to peace.

Source: Enough! http://www.enoughproject.org/publications/obama-africa-and-peace

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