Foreign Intervention in Africa after the Cold War. Elizabeth SchmidtЧитать онлайн книгу.
by rivalries—political, economic, religious, and personal. Member states’ divergent interests often resulted in paralysis in the face of regional conflicts. Like the OAU, the Arab League has generally represented the interests of powerful autocratic regimes rather than those of its members’ citizens.9
By 1958, the League included four newly independent North African nations: Libya, Sudan, Morocco, and Tunisia. In 2017 it comprised twenty-two member states, ten of which were African.10 Although it remained on the sidelines in many African conflicts, the Arab League or its members played significant roles in some. Acting unilaterally or through the League, Egypt, Iran, Libya, Saudi Arabia, Syria, the United Arab Emirates, and Yemen intervened in Somalia’s affairs after the Cold War. The Council of the Arab League endorsed the UN-imposed no-fly zone in Libya in 2011, and member states Qatar and the United Arab Emirates participated in the NATO-led military operation that paved the way for regime change in that country. During the Arab Spring and its aftermath, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates supported opposing sides in Libya’s civil war and in Egypt, where an elected Islamist-led government was ousted in a military coup.
Subregional Organizations
A number of African subregional organizations were established in the 1970s and 1980s to deal with common economic, environmental, and political problems. Several of these organizations assumed important roles in conflict mediation, peace negotiations, and peacekeeping processes after the Cold War. Especially significant for their diplomatic and military efforts were the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), the Economic Community of Central African States (ECCAS), the International Conference on the Great Lakes Region (ICGLR), and the Intergovernmental Authority on Development (IGAD). The Southern African Development Community (SADC), which had been central to struggles against white minority rule during the periods of decolonization and the Cold War, was a less significant political and economic actor in later decades. Like the global and regional organizations described earlier, the subregional organizations also suffered from internal conflicts that reduced their effectiveness.
Economic Community of West African States
ECOWAS was established in 1975 by sixteen West African states whose leaders hoped to promote subregional economic cooperation and development.11 Some members imagined ECOWAS as an instrument for undermining French influence in a subregion where the former imperial power maintained close political, economic, and military ties to its onetime colonies and intervened frequently in their affairs. Nigeria, the anglophone subregional powerhouse, hoped to use the organization as a launching pad for its own political and economic ambitions, which included weakening the francophone powers and establishing a common market with Nigeria as the linchpin.
Although ECOWAS was not conceived as a security organization, it increasingly assumed that role, especially after the Cold War, when external interest in Africa diminished. A 1981 protocol provided for mutual assistance against external aggression and for the establishment of an ECOWAS military force to protect member states from such aggression. The ECOWAS force was permitted to intervene in an internal conflict in a member state at the request of that state’s government if the conflict was promoted by external forces and if it jeopardized subregional peace and stability. The 1999 “Protocol Relating to the Mechanism for Conflict Prevention, Management, Resolution, Peacekeeping and Security” elaborated on the force’s function. It could assist in conflict prevention, humanitarian intervention to thwart subregional instability, sanctions enforcement, peacekeeping, disarmament, demobilization, and peace building, and in the policing of gun running, drug smuggling, and other transterritorial crimes. The protocol was to be applied in cases of threatened or actual external aggression or conflict in a member state, conflict between two or more member states, internal conflict that could provoke humanitarian disaster or threaten subregional peace and security, serious and massive violations of human rights and the rule of law, the overthrow or attempted overthrow of a democratically elected government, and other situations as determined by the ECOWAS Mediation and Security Council.
Although ECOWAS members agreed to cooperate on subregional security issues, francophone and anglophone states often maintained uneasy relationships. Even when the organization was charged with the purportedly neutral task of peacekeeping, its constituent members sometimes supported opposing sides of a conflict—as was the case in Liberia, Sierra Leone, and Côte d’Ivoire. Moreover, larger, wealthier states often wielded undue influence over the organization’s actions. As the largest financial contributor to ECOWAS, for instance, Nigeria ensured that its own interests were protected and promoted. Because the AU funds many ECOWAS operations, powerful AU members states have had disproportionate influence over West African affairs.
Economic Community of Central African States
ECCAS was established in October 1983 by member states of the Central African Customs and Economic Union and of the Economic Community of the Great Lakes States. In 2017, ECCAS included eleven member states.12 The organization’s goal was to establish a wider economic community and to promote peaceful resolution of political disputes. Notably, in July 2015, the UN Security Council asked ECCAS to work with ECOWAS and the AU to develop a comprehensive strategy to combat the Boko Haram insurgency in Nigeria, Niger, and Cameroon—the latter an ECCAS member state. Like other multinational bodies, ECCAS was sometimes weakened by internal disagreements. Conflicts in the DRC, the geographic linchpin of the subregion, split the organization, with Angola and Chad supporting the DRC government and Burundi opposing it.
International Conference on the Great Lakes Region
ICGLR was established in 2000 by eleven African states to promote subregional cooperation for international peace and security, political stability, and sustainable development in the Great Lakes subregion.13 The organization aspired to address the structural causes of enduring conflicts and underdevelopment. Like other subregional bodies, ICGLR was sometimes compromised by internal rivalries. Conflicts in the DRC pitted ICGLR member states Burundi, Rwanda, and Uganda against the DRC government, which was supported by Angola as well as by several non-ICGLR states. ICGLR mediation efforts were occasionally led by interested parties. Some questioned the organization’s ability to engage impartially in the South Sudan conflict, noting Uganda’s military support for the government, which along with rebel forces had been accused of massive human rights violations.
Intergovernmental Authority on Development
The Intergovernmental Authority on Drought and Development was established in 1986 by six East African countries to cooperate on problems resulting from the severe drought, environmental degradation, and economic crises of the 1970s and 1980s. In 1996 the organization was superseded by the Intergovernmental Authority on Development (IGAD), which expanded the areas of subregional cooperation to include the promotion of subregional peace and stability and the creation of mechanisms to prevent, manage, and resolve intra- and interstate conflicts through dialogue.14 As was the case for other subregional organizations, IGAD was weakened by internal rivalries, and member states sometimes pursued parochial interests rather than promoting broader regional benefits. Ethiopia and Kenya struggled to assert subregional dominance, while Sudan and Uganda also jockeyed for influence. Operating within these constraints, IGAD helped broker an accord that established a transitional federal government in Somalia; it also provided a military force to protect that government and train its security forces. However, the foreign-backed regime, beholden to powerful warlords and their external patrons, had scant support inside Somalia. IGAD also played a key role in mediating an end to Sudan’s civil war in 2005 and in attempting to resolve subsequent conflicts in South Sudan in 2014–17. However, the competing interests of IGAD member states and the continued support of some states for rival factions seriously undermined the resulting agreements.
Southern African Development Community
The Southern African Development Coordination Conference (SADCC) was established in 1980 by nine Southern African states to build new networks of trade, transportation, communications, and energy and to promote agricultural and industrial alternatives that would break apartheid South Africa’s economic stranglehold on the subregion. In 1992, SADCC was reformulated as the Southern African Development Community, or SADC, which aimed to promote subregional integration, economic growth, development, peace, and security