Youth_Reading Memo

In this memo I would like to focus on one of the recommended articles that I found the most inspiring, namely Alcinda Honwana‘s “Enough is Enough!”: Youth Protests and Political Change in Africa. This article is fairly different from most articles we get to read for lectures, as it is a transcript of a lecture given by the author at the University of Free State. It is also interesting, since the author mentions recent attacks against Mozambicans that occurred in South Africa, while speaking at a conference in South Africa. I believe this to be an important circumstance that gives the entire speech extra gravity and context. Everything is linked with everything.

The analysis is based on interviews with young people in Mozambique, Senegal, South Africa and Tunisia. Honwana shares three major points on the problems of African youth. First, she introduces waithood as a period of life between childhood and adulthood, where a person is simply waiting to become adult in the eyes of society (being adults by age, but not yet a full member of the society in terms of being fiscally responsible, having a steady job, family etc.). Therefore, while a 30-something old with no steady job and without own family is considered to be a part of the African youth, while a 10 year old that becomes a soldier or laborer is considered an adult. Honwana shares an observation, that while the people in waithood are often perceived as people who simply don’t try, it might not be completely true. Honwana states that these people who are “stuck” with their lives at the edge of adulthood are, in fact, trying to move forward, interact with their neighborhood and overcome the constraints of their surroundings and society. It does not help that the young people’s expectations are higher nowadays (they might expect better work opportunities, better pay, but they won’t necessarily be able to reach those, thus making them metaphorically stuck in waithood).

Second observation is that in the last few years young people are getting more involved in political life in their countries. The author blames this on the pressure that the society puts on the youth. Third observation is that while the youth movements can be quite powerful, they don’t have much luck with translating this into political power. Therefore, the author asks, how can young people in Africa get in the politics and change the political situation in their countries. She later points out the efforts of the young generation to change things through unusual channels, such as social media and the virtual world in general. On this topic, I would like to say that not everyone can go change politics in the regular way, but everyone can participate in social media. I believe the social media to be a powerful tool, if handled properly.

In the analysis, Honwana mentions that “men face the pressures of getting a steady job, finding a home, and covering the costs of marriage and family building. Although women are becoming better educated and have always engaged in productive labour alongside household chores, marriage and motherhood are still the most important markers of adulthood. While giving birth may provide girls an entry into adulthood, their ability to attain full adult status often depends on men moving beyond waithood.”[1] I feel like this should be explained further. Does this mean that in the author’s opinion, a woman is stuck in waithood even if she is a mother, has a stable job and is capable to provide for her children, but her husband/partner doesn’t have a steady income? This might be the feminist talking, but I don’t feel like the lack of a partner providing support has to mean that a woman can’t be considered adult in the way mentioned above. In a way I feel like a woman, who is taking care of her family by herself (or with minor help from her partner) is forced to be more adult than most. At the same time I would like to argue that being married shouldn’t be one of the criteria of entering adulthood. In the 21st century, marriage is not considered necessary by the young population all over the world and I don’t think that Africa’s youth is that much different. Provided, the societal restrictions might be tougher than those in other parts of the world, but I am sure that not everyone wants to get married in Africa. Therefore, rather than entering marriage, the criteria could be changed to a responsible relationship towards one’s children - you don’t have to be married to provide for your family.

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[1] p. 7

African Union_Reflection Memo

The topic of this memorandum is the African Union as a security player. The African Union consists of all the African states and as such, it possesses great influence on the African continent. In this memorandum I would like to touch upon some topics that I find interesting, even though they are not very often discussed. First of all, I would like to explore the military interventions of the African Union, especially the 2007 intervention to Somalia. Second, I would like to share some thoughts on another aspect of the African Union: the policy to stop the AIDS pandemic in Africa, as I believe it is an important topic for the future of African Union and all the African countries.

African Union and Somalia
In 2007, the UN Security Council approved a mission of the African Union to Somalia, to help Somalia’s government fight the forces of the jihadist group Al-Shabaab. In the article Managing Donor Perceptions: Contextualizing Uganda’s 2007 Intervention in Somalia (Jonathan Fisher, 2012), it is said that Uganda’s motivation to intervene in Somalia was mainly the “desire to manage donor perceptions”. [1] This might be true and it is supported by a number of facts, including the fact that Uganda was the first AU country to send troops to Somalia in 2007. Most of the foreign soldiers currently present in Somalia are also from Uganda, so it is clear that the AMISOM is of high importance to Uganda.

The African Union Mission in Somalia (AMISOM) had a mandate for 6 months at first, but it has been prolonged since then and it is still an active mission of the AU. After all, terrorists are not really bound by the common rules or borders and could easily relocate to Uganda and become primary Ugandan problem. Being a part of the AMISOM is also quite lucrative as it comes with financial support from the United States and European Union (who obviously want to have a say in the future of Somalia). I also believe that by being highly proactive, Uganda is trying to establish itself as an ally to the Western countries in the anti-terrorist fight. Even though the article emphasizes on the fact that Uganda wants to be perceived as a donor state in this context, I wouldn’t completely dismiss the idea originally proclaimed by the Ugandan government that this military operation has nothing to do with the United States. Having an unstable neighboring state is not very desirable as criminals have their ways of crossing borders, so in my opinion Uganda’s primarily motivation to engage in the AMISOM might have actually been the desire to keep terrorism and crime from spreading onto its own territory. Then again, everything is complex in international relations, so wanting to be perceived as donor state and establishing trust with the United States probably played a role too.

African Union and AIDS
While the first topic I occupied myself with is a very straight-forward security issue, this next one is a much more social-oriented one. African Union doesn’t only engage itself in military missions, it also has other agendas. One of the most important agendas is, in my opinion, the plan to end AIDS and other diseases (mainly TB and malaria) on the African continent. I sincerely believe that stopping the spreading of AIDS is not something that any African country can manage on its own, but I believe that the African Union (as it contains all the African countries) does have the power to tackle and solve this issue once and for all.[2] The African Union has recently adopted a policy that promises the end of AIDS, TB and malaria by 2030. [3] I believe this is a step in the right direction, as Africa as a region does need further development in many aspects, but increasing the life expectancy and quality of affordable health care should definitely be among the top priority issues.

Summary
The issues explored in this memo were Uganda’s motivation to engage in the AU’s intervention to Somalia. I dare to concur with the article provided in the readings and argue that the biggest motivation was Uganda’s desire to prevent criminal spill-over from Somalia onto its own territory. Second issue I mentioned is the African Union’s steps against the AIDS pandemic in Africa. I tend to the idea of a self-sufficient Africa and in this aspect I definitely feel very optimistic about the AU’s plan. All in all, African Union might have its flaws (as we discussed in the lecture), but I do believe it is necessary for brighter future of African continent.


[1] Fisher, Jonathan, „Managing Donor Perceptions: Contextualizing Uganda’s 2007 Intervention in Somalia“, African Security 114 (2012): 422.
[2] I do seem to keep coming back to the idea of development aid and international organisations’ efforts to help Africa, which makes me think maybe I should write my diploma thesis on it. I apologize for pushing these social issues into my memos all the time, I will try to get a handle on it.
[3] „African Heads of State and Government define the future direction for AIDS, TB and malaria responses“, African Union, https://www.au.int/en/pressreleases/31184/african-heads-state-and-government-define-future-direction-aids-tb-and-malaria (downloaded 27. 4. 2017).

Intl Justice Reconciliation_Reading Memo

In the article The International Criminal Court's case against the President of Sudan: A Critical Look by M. Mamdani, the author focuses on the prosecutor’s narrative of the Sudanese history that was presented in order to get the president of Sudan found guilty of a number of charges, including genocide. The author also offers own perspective of the Darfur conflict, including the factors involved in the breakout of the war. The roots of the division of Sudan’s people into Arab and the others (black Africans) is traced to the colonial era, when Sudan was a part of the British colonial empire. The author also claims that the conflict in Sudan is way more complex, pointing out the desertification of the territory and saying that the conflict was rather a fight to survive than a fight to eradicate the other side. Another factor that helped stir up the Darfur conflict was also the spillover of Chad’s civil war fighters into Darfur and last, but not least al-Bashir regime’s military response to an insurgency in the area of Fur, Masalit and Zaghawa.

Throughout the article, the author points out the mistakes of the prosecutor in making his case, such as offering higher victim count estimates than usual or claiming that al-Bashir was personally in charge of everything, which is not very convincing. Main issue of this prosecution was that it seemed like the prosecutor didn’t fully comprehend not only the importance of this case on an international scale, but also not understanding the Sudanese state and society.

A different article, Should President Omar al-Bashir of Sudan Be Charged and Arrested by the International Criminal Court? by Alex de Waal and Gregory H. Stanton argues that trying to convict the Sudanese president is not likely to succeed and very likely to cause further violence in Sudan. De Waal, just like Mamdani, believes that the prosecutor couldn’t handle the application in a way it needed to be handled. He points out several errors and mistakes the prosecutor has made. He also offers a variety of possible outcomes of the case, none of which would help Sudan in the future. Most of all, he argues, this trial can make Africa a “jurisdiction-free zone”, since no African country approves of the ICC’s proceedings in this case, therefore it is highly unlikely that they would ask for the ICC’s help in the near future. At the same time, other heads of state who commit similar acts as al-Bashir’s regime might reconsider, seeing that they can in fact be called out for their actions.

As far as I am concerned, I believe that the ICC exists not only to put on trial (and punish) those, who are guilty of crimes against humanity etc., but also to scare off those heads of states (or other high officials and individuals) who might be tempted to commit such crimes. In the case of al-Bashir the prosecutor failed to prove that al-Bashir was solely responsible, which lead the ICC to not find the president guilty of directing a genocide. However, since most experts agree that al-Bashir did certainly play a part  in the crimes, I do not believe that it is over just yet. Personally, I don’t know what the future holds for al-Bashir and other people responsible for the mass killings and other violent acts in Sudan, but I certainly hope that justice will be served one day and they will be held responsible for their crimes.

Another thing I found quite intriguing is the political aspects mentioned in the articles. While the ICC is strictly apolitical with its judicial mandate, taking on the president of a country quite shortly before the next election (trial started in 2008 and the Sudan’s election took place in 2010), one has to wonder if the decision to pick up such a case was completely stripped of politics. Rumors had it that al-Bashir was about to step aside in the 2010 election to make room for “fresh blood”, he did not do so after the trial, so he remained in power. Since the articles voiced fear of the unstable future of Sudan, I believe a debate on this topic would be highly interesting.

Development Aid_Reflection Memo

As the title suggests, I would like to express my thoughts on the issue of celebrity involvement in development aid. We did briefly mention this in the Monday’s lesson, but I want to explore this phenomenon a tiny bit closer. I would like to explore a bit closer an opinion voiced by Ludmila in the class and share more ideas that I got based on the reading and discussion.
First of all: it is undeniable, that celebrities do often engage in third world countries and raise awareness about the issues of these countries among the people of the developed world. In Chapter 2: A Brief History of Aid (Dead Aid), which was one of the readings for the lesson, the author argues that celebrity engagement in development aid has somehow made it a joke nobody takes seriously anymore, since instead of a sophisticated debate there are concerts and shows. I would like to point out that development aid (according to the said book) did not work before celebrities noticed Africa, so it doesn’t feel completely fair to blame it on Bono and other celebrities, that it is not working now.
I would also like to elaborate further on what Ludmila mentioned. In short, Ludmila argued that we (“we” meaning people just slightly over twenty years old) were born into a highly skeptical world. She mentioned images of naked little African kids from the TV commercials. I would like to pile up on that and remind us what probably all Czech mothers say, when they feel like their child is being ungrateful: “What would the children in Africa give for this!” Leaving aside that the children in Africa probably wouldn’t want to wear an ugly Christmas sweater and that saying such a thing can probably be considered slightly racist, somehow there is this thing inside us, telling us that somewhere in Africa there are people who are less fortunate than us and it is important to help them somehow. I am very positive that I have gained this way of thinking mostly by seeing the poor African babies everywhere since I was a little girl, my mother’s constant “African children would love to eat the mushroom soup” and other things like that. I do however wonder: when did this start? Development aid is no new phenomenon, but somehow I feel like the general public’s need to help those less unfortunate in the Third World region is quite new. I do wonder if maybe the TV commercials, the posters, billboards and yes, the celebrity involvement has something to do with that.
After the lesson I did some additional research into the topic of celebrities and aid. I must admit, I was surprised by how much has been written (even on academic level) about it. I would like to share my main conclusions. Celebrities often use their name to create a brand, having a brand is useful, because whatever they put their brand on, people will buy. Some celebrities like to put their brand on a perfume or jewelry, others like to put it on a charity project to help to raise HIV/AIDS awareness in Third World countries. It is in a way very sad, that the general public doesn’t really care about issues such as clear water, until a celebrity comes along and funds a charity focusing on clear water access for everyone. The thing is, once a celebrity draws attention to a certain issue, for this example let’s say hunger in an African country, people want to help. There are campaigns where people can buy an item and a part of their payment will then go to charity. I never completely understood why should I buy a random product made in Italy, China, Taiwan, etc., in order to help Africa. Why not help Africa by buying an African product?

If the question is whether or not celebrity involvement into development (or any other kind of) aid is good or bad, I do not see a simple yes or no answer. It is clear that celebrity activity attracts attention. I also believe that this can pressure the authorities to come up with more effective ways to help developing countries. Personally, I would see one of the main upsides of celebrities in the field of development aid as the people who help raise awareness about issues such as HIV/AIDS, poverty, and so on. I also believe that without celebrities and their involvement in these things, most people sadly wouldn’t know about the Third World reality. Of course that the image the celebrities offer is most likely not complete and it is in a way designed to mostly make the celebrity look good, but as long as they keep trying to actually help, I would not dare to condemn them.

Terrorism_Reading Memo

The most intriguing question that struck me this week came while I was reading Caitriona Dowd and Adam Drury’s article that compares Boko Haram and the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA). That question is: what drives an insurgency group to adopt suicide bombing tactics? Why does Boko Haram employ this tactic, but the LRA does not? Unfortunately, Dowd and Drury do not delve into this. However, they do mention that, in general, the tactical evolution of both groups has been driven by “the groups’ perceived, short-term necessity to punish enemies and project power.” This explanation is far too vague and imprecise, especially considering that the adoption of suicide attacks represents such a dramatic shift in tactics.

            In the minds of most people, the tactic of suicide bombing is linked with religious extremism. Since 2001, most terror attacks that make headlines in the Western world are committed by Muslims who profess a religious motivation for their actions. Thus, it is apparent that religion is what motivates the adoption of suicide bombing. Boko Haram is an Islamic fundamentalist group, therefore they must have begun employing suicide bombers because of the religious nature of the organization. I am not convinced by this argument. Like Boko Haram, Dowd and Drury describe the LRA as having articulated a religious/ideological narrative in order to garner early support. Since both insurgencies are intertwined with religion it is difficult to ascribe the adoption of suicide attacks by Boko Haram strictly to a religious motivation.

            Yet, unlike Boko Haram, the LRA is not an Islamic fundamentalist group. Perhaps it is Islamic fundamentalism in particular that drives insurgency groups to adopt suicide bombing. In fact, Islamic terrorist groups have been responsible for most of the suicide attacks since 9/11.[1] Certainly this demonstrates correlation, but it does not prove causality. Suicide attacks are not limited to Islamic fundamentalist groups. The Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), the Kurdistan Worker’s Party, and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine are all examples of secular terrorist organizations that have employed suicide attacks. The LTTE has been particularly prolific. It carried out the most suicide attacks of any terrorist organization between 1980 and 2003.[2]

With this in mind, I do not think it is specifically religion that motivates the adoption of suicide attacks. Religion is an ideology and it is ideology that motivates suicide attacks. The stronger an ideology is, the more likely it is that followers of that ideology will be willing to die for it. Islamic fundamentalism is a particularly powerful ideology that allows no compromise. Hence, it follows that this ideology played a part in Boko Haram’s adoption of suicide attacks and that, comparatively, the LRA must not possess as strong of an ideological underpinning as Boko Haram does.

An alternative hypothesis is that Boko Haram’s adoption of suicide attacks was more motivated by the advantages they offer rather than the strength of their ideology. Compared to more conventional terror tactics, suicide attacks are inexpensive, are easier to execute, are more likely to succeed, and are extremely lethal.[3] They also generate a huge amount of press coverage. These are all reasons that could have played into Boko Haram’s adoption of suicide attacks. Then again, if suicide attacks offer so many advantages, why have the LRA not begun utilizing them? This is clearly an area for further research, and Dowd and Drury do mention that work is being done on the issue of suicide bombing.

The next question I would like to discuss was raised by Marc-Antoine Pérouse de Montclos at the very end of his article: is the “challenge of jihad in Africa…an opportunity to improve governance”? Undoubtedly, the answer is yes. But that answer is contingent on some caveats, specifically, it depends on how the state chooses to combat terrorism. For instance, if the state chooses to “kill a mosquito with a hammer” as the Kenyan government has chosen to do, the result will not be a modernized and more democratic government. The Kenyan government is acting in a totalitarian manner when it conducts programs like the Usalama Watch, when it ignores human rights, and when it allows corruption and abuse of power to continue unchecked. Totally ignoring the rights of their Somalian population is not conducive to further modernizing or democratizing the Kenyan government. By choosing to react in a totalitarian manner to the threat of Al-Shabaab, the Kenyan government has actually weakened itself by undermining the security of and alienating its Somali and Muslim population, which has pushed them into the arms of Al-Shabaab. Al-Shabaab is now stronger and more of a threat to destabilize the Kenyan state.

Conversely, modernizing and democratizing states are solid counter-terrorism policies. To defeat an insurgency, the state must seek the moral high-ground and become a paragon of justice. It cannot abuse human rights or allow corruption to have free reign. It must enact policies and programs that seek to care for and protect its citizens. It must become more inclusive, allowing minority groups to have a say in the future of the state. These actions are important because if the terrorist organization cannot convince the population that the government is their enemy, the organization loses much of its power. I think many insurgencies originate from the failure of the state to provide for their citizens. Therefore, through modernization and democratization states can combat terrorism.

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[1] Bruce Hoffman, Inside Terrorism: Revised and Expanded Edition (New York: Columbia University Press, 2006), 131.

[2] Robert A. Pape, Dying to Win: The Strategic Logic of Suicide Terrorism (New York: Random House, 2005), 16.

[3] Hoffman, Inside Terrorism, 132.

Resources_Reflection Memo

            In our last class we discussed the greed versus grievance theory of conflict and after listening to the viewpoints of my peers I have to agree that the theory is flawed. First, labeling economic activity that causes conflict as ‘greed’ is misleading. As one of my classmates said, individuals and groups involved in a conflict may be motivated by the desire to provide basic human needs for their families. It is not greed to want to reach a level of sufficiency. Furthermore, describing the economic activity behind a conflict as greed delegitimizes the conflict. Doing so excludes all other economic motives behind a given conflict when, in fact, there may be very legitimate ones behind the conflict, such as the desire to be paid a living wage.

Labeling a conflict as driven by greed has consequences. It brands all groups that are involved as degenerates. This makes it more difficult to get other states involved in stopping the conflict, as in a democracy it is challenging to drum up support to assist parties that are seen as greedy, fighting merely for economic supremacy. The cause is not worthy enough. The groups are not fighting for their independence or increased minority rights, issues which would much more easily galvanize the public in a democracy. Moreover, by misunderstanding the root causes of the conflict, attempts to end it may be misguided. Indeed, as Laura E. Seay’s article demonstrated, section 1502 of the Dodd-Frank Act is a product of lawmakers not understanding the relationship between violence and mineral resources in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) and the Act has not resulted in any reduction of violence in that region. Thus, greed is a misnomer and should be replaced by ‘economic activity’, but then again, the ‘economic activity vs grievance’ theory just does not sound as catchy as the ‘greed versus grievance’ theory.

            Second, naming the theory ‘greed versus grievance’ simplifies the causes of conflict in the developing world to a degree in which a false dichotomy is created between the economic sources and the social and political sources of conflict. Sources of conflict are not either economic or political, they are economic and political and social.  Rarely, if ever, can the causes of a conflict be traced to a single source. It is the complex interaction of many different political, economic, and social actors that leads to the outbreak of a conflict. The false dichotomy that the greed versus grievance theory creates glosses over these interactions and does more to impair our understanding of the sources of conflict than to deepen it.

            The topic of understanding the sources of conflict leads me to the next topic that I would like to discuss: is it even possible to know the source of a conflict? This question was raised by one of my peers, but it is more accurate to ask whether we can know the sources of a conflict, since, as stated above, there is rarely a singular source. The simple answer to the question is yes. We can definitely uncover the sources of a conflict. It is a human conflict after all, not the behavior of an alien race. On the other hand, the sources of a conflict can be incredibly complex. There are actors at the individual level, the sub-national level, the national level, and the international level to consider. Often, the source of an on-going conflict has been forgotten, since the situation has evolved over the years and now groups are fighting for entirely different reasons. Ultimately, the sources of a conflict can be traced by taking all the different factors into account using the methods of social science.

            Even so, it must be acknowledged that assigning causality in the social sciences is difficult. It is simple to prove correlation. If one factor trends downwards while another trends upwards, logically people will make a connection between the two. Actually proving beyond a doubt that one factor trended up because the other trended down is an entirely different story. The article by Paul Collier and Anke Hoeffler that we read this week provides such an example. Collier and Hoeffler argue that lower per capita income and slower GDP growth increased the risk of civil war in developing countries, and conclude that “the rising trend of African conflict is [due to] the contingent effect of economic circumstances.” Unless I am misunderstanding the article, which is possible because it was quantitative paper, this statement is a stretch. Their paper only demonstrated that there was a correlation between higher levels of conflict and those two economic indicators, not a decisive economic causality of African conflicts. Therefore, it is possible to argue that economic circumstances contribute to African conflicts, but certainly not that they are the sole cause of them, which demonstrates the difficulty of assigning causality.

            Lastly, the greed versus grievance theory, or more so the new wars thesis, has a tinge of Eurocentricity about it. To explain, it seems like proponents of the new wars thesis are interpreting African conflicts through the spy-glass of colonialism. Why did Europeans fight for territory and colonize Africa? To obtain natural resources. To this day many western states and companies are interested in Africa solely to exploit its wealth of natural resources. Thus, from their perspective, natural resources must be the reason that conflicts have broken out in resource rich parts of Africa, as they are the only things worth fighting over. It would be interesting to know how many people in the DRC would agree with the stance that natural resources are truly the source of the conflict there.

            And finally, I want to comment on China’s relationship with African states. Last summer I read Howard French’s book China's Second Continent: How a Million Migrants are Building a New Empire in Africa and I gathered from it that China’s economic investment in African states can be a great boon to nations with small economies and limited ability to fund necessary infrastructure projects. On the individual level though, it is a different story, as French paints a picture of Chinese owned operations that are exploitive, that abuse worker’s rights, and that generally operate outside the law. It seems that China can certainly help African nations at a state level, but can do severe harm on an individual one. China’s investment is, therefore, a double-edged sword that African states must recognize and take measures to protect their citizens.

            P.S.: I think a seminar on Africa’s relationship with the international community, and especially China, would be an excellent addition to the course.

Ethnicity_Reading Memo

Conflicts in Africa are often characterized in the western media as ethnic conflicts. In my experience, whenever I heard in the news that violence had broken out between two ethnic groups in Africa, my immediate reaction was usually along the lines of “Yeah, that sounds familiar.” I took for granted that ethnicity was the basis of the conflict without a second thought. But after doing the readings for this week, it is apparent that, as Eghosa E. Osaghae and Rotimi T. Suberu state, ethnic diversity is not a sufficient condition for conflict. Thus, the question that this raised for me was: are conflicts that are characterized as ethnic conflicts truly ethnic conflicts?

            The answer to this seems to be yes and no. The answer to whether genocide is a true ethnic conflict seems to be a clear yes, such as the cases of the 1972 genocide in Burundi and the 1994 genocide in Rwanda. It is hard to characterize a genocide as any thing other than an ethnic conflict considering that the definition of genocide is the deliberate elimination of another group of people based solely on their ethnicity. Yet the answer is more complex: the readings convincingly demonstrate that ethnicity has been manipulated for political purposes across the whole of the continent, first by European colonial powers as part of a divide and conquer strategy of domination and later by post-colonial faction leaders in order to secure their own military and political power in a given territory.

            In cases where ethnicity has been politicized, such as in South Sudan, branding the conflict as an ethnic one is problematic in that it misrepresents what the conflict is truly about. It distracts from the real causes of the conflict and, if mediators are trying to treat a symptom rather than a cause of the conflict, it can harm efforts to find an end to the violence.

            While Osaghae and Suberu assert that ethnic diversity is not a sufficient condition for conflict, they do say that it is a necessary condition for conflict. I do not agree with this statement. It is an oversimplification to claim that conflict cannot occur without ethnic diversity. There are a multitude of different types of conflict that have nothing to do with ethnicity, such as gender-, religious-, and class-based conflicts. Or what about conflicts within an ethnic group? Presumably a conflict of this nature would be non-ethnic. It is probably better to say that ethnic diversity often plays a role in African conflicts, but it is hardly necessary.

            In the other article by Osaghae that was assigned this week, he argues for state reconstitution based on positive ethnicity. I appreciate the idea that ethnicity does not have to be a negative thing and that too often it is stigmatized as such. Yet using ethnic development units that possess a great degree of autonomy as building blocks of the state could be a doubled-edged sword. Since these units are based on ethnicity, they could reinforce an individual’s or a group’s ethnic identity instead of developing a national identity. Reinforcing ethnic identity is possibly problematic, especially given the autonomy these units would have, because it could lead to a culture of exclusivism and at its most extreme to demands of separatism. Without something binding these ethnic units to the state they would have less and less reason to be submissive to the state as they develop since they would be carrying out the traditional tasks of the state on their own. Moreover, if these ethnic units did reinforce ethnic identity over a national identity, someone could abuse it for their own political power, ending up in a situation where the state is being challenged once again based on politicized ethnicity.

            The last topic I would like to touch on is reconciliation between the Hutu and the Tutsi in the Great Lakes region. René Lemarchand suggests that there can be no peace in this region until the tasks of “shedding light on the circumstances, the scale, and the consequences of the” genocides in 1972, 1994, and 1996-1997 are taken seriously. Yet it is not just truth that is essential to this process, Lemarchand suggests that justice must accompany it hand in hand for peace and stability to be achieved. In an ideal world I would agree with Lemarchand’s sentiment. But in the case of the Hutu and the Tutsi both sides seem to view the situation as zero-sum. This explains why justice has been pursued without reconciliation in Rwanda, as those in power can certainly seek justice, but they have no incentive to seek reconciliation. In fact, neither side wishes to reconcile, each side wants to win out over the other. Lemarchand demonstrates this when he discusses the reaction to the Detmold Confession, how it sparked debate over whether the Hutu or the Tutsi “should bear the onus of guilt,” which was not at all the intention of the document.

            In light of this, I am not sure there can be reconciliation between the Hutu and the Tutsi until their respective mentalities change. But how does one engineer this change in a such an ingrained mentality? Perhaps fostering a national identity over an ethnic identity could help. Or increasing the integration of the two ethnic groups, as I think a person is less likely to hate a certain group of people if they grow up around them. A power-sharing government between Hutu and Tutsi could also set an example for the rest of the country. General amnesty for the “little fish” of the genocides could also help the two communities to move on from the events of 1972, 1994, and 1996-1997. Of course, all of these suggestions would be challenging to implement given the complexity and historical burden of the conflict, and they would require buy in from the communities. In fact, a power-sharing government in Rwanda has already been tried in and has failed. The only certainty is that there is no simple fix in attempting to reconcile two ethnic groups following a genocide.