These Are the Wars That Will Rage in Africa
in 2016
With the
exception of Syria, African countries currently get the worst rep when it comes
to violence and conflict. Virtually every story coming out of the continent
seems to showcase one atrocity or another. This narrative is both true and
false.
In 2014, Africa experienced more than half of worldwide conflict incidents, despite having only about 16 percent
of the world population. This is a slightly larger share of the world’s
conflicts than even during the chaotic years of the post-Cold War 1990s.
But there are
two important caveats. One, the absolute number of conflicts worldwide
has greatly decreased over the last two decades. So
despite shouldering a larger share of the conflict burden, in absolute terms,
Africa has become more peaceful as well. And secondly, the
remaining conflicts seem to cluster in specific regions and involve only a few
of Africa’s 54 nation-states.
According to the Uppsala Conflict
Data Program, 12 African
countries experienced armed conflict in 2014. Three additional
countries — Burundi, Niger and Chad — will likely be added to the list for the
2015 data.
Geographically
Africa’s conflicts are tightly clustered along an arc stretching from northern
Mali through southern Algeria and Libya into Egypt, extending into the Sinai Peninsula.
The Boko Haram
conflict in northeastern Nigeria is another epicenter and situated in relative
proximity to an area of conflict hot spots in the Central African Republic,
eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo, Burundi, South Sudan and Darfur. On
Africa’s eastern coast, the Somali civil war is still going strong in its third
decade.
Modern
conflicts in Africa are thus highly localized,
and they defy simplistic explanations based on stereotypes. That being said,
these are our predictions for Africa’s conflicts in 2016.
War Is Boring
reported frequently on the conflict between Boko Haram and the Nigerian
government throughout 2015 and with good reason. The insurgency is the
deadliest conflict that Africa is currently experiencing and has now spread
firmly into neighboring countries as well.
Still, there
is some hope. Monthly deaths in Nigeria are at their lowest levels in years. Like we expected (or rather hoped)
in our 2015 forecast, Nigeria’s new president Muhammadu
Buhari made some serious changes to how the conflict is managed,
and these now seem to be paying off. But Nigeria, like neighboring countries,
still lacks a long-term strategy on how to deal with the insurgency. Current
military successes in combating the diverse groups labeled as Boko Haram are
dependent on spending billions on
modern military gear that none of the countries involved can actually afford,
riding all of them into serious debt.
France and the
United States are providing critical assistance, both in terms of intelligence
and combating other terrorist groups farther north, so that Niger’s army can
focus on the Boko Haram threat. It goes without saying that this is not
terribly sustainable.
In 2016, we
are looking for the Boko Haram insurgency continue to be a substantial source of
violence in Nigeria, Niger, Chad and Cameroon, although not on the extreme
level experienced in 2014 and early 2015.
The other
international terrorist hot spot in Africa is the Mali-Algeria-Libya triangle.
With many groups — including Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb — being active
across some of the most arbitrary borders in the world, these conflicts are
interrelated. But their resolution will still require primarily national
approaches.
Libya
officially has a new peace deal, but with the country in open civil
war, it will take more than a signed piece of paper to end the violence. The
Islamic State also seems to have put its eye on Libya as a potential refuge, should its position in Syria and
Iraq come under threat.
Mali is only
held together by the presence of international troops and donor money, while
still becoming more insecure even in the country’s south. The corrupt and inept
political elite obviously has learned nothing from the near collapse
experienced in 2012, and there is little hope that it will do so miraculously
in the coming year.
The
international community is too invested to let Mali collapse, but the
population will nonetheless experience widespread insecurity and fighting in
the north, while the south will see further terrorist attacks on government
institutions and targets associated with the West.
Algeria is a
really interesting case. It’s politics are so elite-driven and tightly
interwoven with the security establishment that they are virtually impenetrable
from the outside. President Abdelaziz Bouteflika consolidated power over the last year, but he is
a very old man with a confirmed history of serious
illnesses.
Algeria’s
internal power balance is heavily predicated on using funds generated by the
country’s rich endowment with hydrocarbons to buy new toys for its bloated
military apparatus, thus keeping officers and enlisted men happy and able to
suppress public discontent. With oil prices in a slump and internal conflicts
over Bouteflika’s succession, the worst case scenario would see anger over low
living standards and lack of opportunity boil over and mix with elite
factionalism. In that case,
with Algeria directly across the Mediterranean, expect an even greater wave of immigration into the European Union.
Central African Republic, South Sudan and the DRC
Dating back to
2012 and 2013 respectively, but being grounded in a much longer history of
internal conflict reaching back decades, the conflict in the CAR and South
Sudan will hopefully continue to taper off over the span of 2016. Both
countries have reached a frail post-conflict compromises in the form of a
presidential election in the CAR and a government of national unity in South
Sudan.
Of course,
central governments had very limited authority in both nations even before
civil wars degraded their capacities to basically nothing. So expect to hear
some really bad stories about atrocities committed by independent militias and
localized violence out of both places.
The DRC’s
conflict in the east is a much more long-term affair with dozens of militia
groups hanging around after the official 2003 end to the Second Congo War.
Low-level violence will persist here as well, with flare ups likely in case the
U.N. peacekeeping operation MONUSCO decides to bring the hammer down on some of
these groups.
With several
scandals involving United Nations and other peacekeepers sexually abusing children in 2015, 2016 will see the blue helmets be
put under increased scrutiny in all three countries. With elections coming up
in the DRC and the government pushing for a smaller role of the United Nations
in the Congo’s internal affairs, these stories could well reach strong prominence.
The
elections — or rather possibly the refusal of the government to hold any — are
a driver for widespread violence in the DRC, with the country still waiting for
its first democratic transition of power.
Remaining conflicts - No list of conflicts in Africa would be complete without the
catastrophes that Darfur in Sudan and Somalia continue to be. Darfur has
experienced an uptick in fighting recently and there is no reason, certainly
not the non-existing international attention, why this wouldn’t continue in 2016.
2015 has seen
the Al Qaeda-aligned Al Shabab on the offensive in Somalia, pushing back some of the territorial gains
made by government and African Union troops over recent years. 2016 is unlikely
to bring any truly decisive developments in this conflict, but expect Al Shabab
to go on the offensive whenever possible to prove its continued relevance. This
includes terror attacks in neighboring Kenya, which has intervened against Al
Shabab and has proven to be vulnerable to such attacks due to a corrupt
and incapable security sector.
Egypt will see continued internal unrest,
especially on the Sinai Peninsula, and also will have to grapple with continued
terrorist activities against government and tourism.
In Burundi,
all bets are off if an all-out civil war can be avoided. Much will depend on
the decisions of the African Union in the coming months, with virtually every
possible form of intervention fraught with uncertainties. A truly noteworthy
development would be the deployment of a military force against the will of the government
under section 4(h) of the union’s constitutive act.
One country to
watch is South Africa. While the second largest economy south of the Sahara
will definitely not devolve into large-scale internal conflict, there are some
worrying developments. The economy is going down the drain, President Jacob
Zuma is appearing more inept by the day and racial tensions continue to run
high — more than two decades after the end of Apartheid.
We wouldn’t be
surprised to see some episodes of social unrest with considerable loss of life
in 2016, along the lines of the Marikana
killings in 2016, although widespread xenophobia and racism
could also see South Africa’s population turn against each other, instead of
against the state.
Comments
Over half
of the population in the 54 countries in Africa are Muslim. An increase in refugees will keep the Muslim
invasion going. African countries have
had lots of refugees forever because of civil wars and they don’t like to take
refugees from neighboring warring countries. Africa is home to over 1 billion
people and most of them are “surplus”. The
African continent land mass is 11.73 million square miles. The US has a land
mass of 3.7 million square miles.
Norb
Leahy, Dunwoody GA Tea Party Leader
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