Africa Books

Book review
War and Conflict in Africa

by Paul D. Williams (Polity Press, Cambridge, UK, 2011; 320 pp; $24.95)

Even as more of Africa’s wars wind down, the question of why so many broke out on the continent still yields few clear answers. Yet a better understanding of what triggered those wars may help preserve fragile peace agreements, resolve the wars that still fester — and even prevent new outbreaks of mass bloodshed. War and Conflict in Africa gives a comprehensive — if somewhat dry and academic — overview of the broad patterns of warfare in Africa, and highlights a few possible lessons for achieving peace.

Paul Williams avoids the pitfall of trying to identify a single, sweeping explanation. In a detailed study of scores of wars and other violent conflicts in more than two dozen countries from 1990 to 2009, he finds that the reasons for war in Africa have been as complex as anywhere else in the world. The most common “big ideas” — that African wars are a heritage of colonialism, are instigated solely by elites, are driven by ethnicity or are caused by greedy criminals — do not hold up on inspection, Williams argues. Those elements may well be present, he admits, but by themselves explain little, since they are also at play in most African countries that have not had wars. Williams does detect a common thread in countries where war broke out: they had weak states that were dominated by personalized networks of political patronage, and when those states responded to new challenges with violence, they were unable to contain the violent counter-reactions that resulted.

International — and increasingly African — peacemakers and peacekeepers have succeeded in patching together a number of tenuous peace accords, Williams acknowledges. But all too often those efforts have paid scant attention to the local causes of conflict and have relied too heavily on cobbling together elite power-sharing arrangements. “The top-down peacemaking of elite bargains will not offer any quick fixes to Africa’s wars,” he warns. Instead, deep-going reforms are needed, especially of Africa’s security forces, and far more resources must be provided both for peace efforts and for post-war development programmes.

— Ernest Harsch

 

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