Abstract
Conflicts in Africa often get prolonged and cause loss of millions of lives, leaving the society in lurch destabilising the normalcy beyond repair. The author Tsega Etafa provides a noble analysis of how community relations in eastern Africa over a period deteriorated and collapsed at the behest of politicians—agents of government institutions. Ethnic tensions among the communities had only reached its crisis point beyond repair stage owing to political manipulations by the successive regimes at the centre who laid the foundation in creating a so-called imagined past where two communities having ethnic differences cannot live together.
Eastern Africa is one such conflict-ridden region of the world. Worst is very often inter-community clashes escalate into huge proportion causing huge loss of lives and displacement of the masses. Tsega Etafa’s work is a genuine endeavour to study why and how these ethnic conflicts have occurred and subsequently prescribe near-convincing recommendations to solve these problems. Three worst affected regions—Darfur (Sudan), Tana (Kenya) and Benishangul-Gumuz (Ethiopia)—have been chosen by the author to analyse the root causes of conflicts.
The book essentially is a comparative study on the three long-standing conflict zones in eastern Africa. One of the striking features of these conflicting zones has had their share of colonial past and thus remained largely under isolation from the centre. The colonial masters had deliberately promoted the policy of exclusion against these zones under study. During the colonial period, these regions largely remained isolated. Even after more than 50 years of end of colonial rule, these regions continued to be isolated and further marginalised. The colonial past had stand as hindrance in the further integration of these regions with the centre.
Ineffective governance whether at the centre or at the local level can be a significant cause of conflicts in these regions. While discussing about the regions, the author indicates the conflicting nature of relationship between communities and between people and the governments. In the conflict regions particularly, people were forced to rally themselves along the ethnic lines for their survivals, and government, on the other hand, feast on those differences along ethnic lines for their regime survivals at any cost, even pitting one community against another rather protecting people or maintaining multi-ethnic character of their nations. One of the important aspects of the book is to broaden our understanding of various factors to ethnic conflicts in eastern Africa, for which the author should be applauded, and contributing to the vast plethora of literature discusses in detail while analysing the role of neighbouring countries such as Chad and Libya. The trans-national approach is adopted to further our understanding of ethnic conflicts in Chapter 4.
Sudan is a nation of multi-ethnic community. However, the central government under Niemeri and Sadiq al Mahdi patronised and promoted Arabisation causing the marginalisation of non-Arabs which damaged the multi-ethnic character of the country. Such policy had devastating effects in Darfur where Arabs were pitted against the Fur under the Bashir regime. The author argues that ever since the beginning of Darfur conflicts, the central government—whether headed by military or parliamentary forces from the 1980s—not only failed to learn from the past, but was also unable to create democratic institutions through which people can redress their grievances (p. 86). Similarly, Ethiopia is also a multi-ethnic nation, and so does Kenya. Some communities in these countries have common grievances against the ruling government for marginalisation and their deliberate ploy to deprive them from their rights.
It is fascinating that the author discusses in detail the magnitude of Darfur conflicts and specifically the emergence of Janjaweed an Arab militia group who are largely responsible for the mass killings and brutality against the non-Arab. The author convinced that inter-community class between the Arabs and Fur primarily occurs owing to the state patronage given to the Baggara tribe by the central government of Sudan and not arising because of competition over the limited natural resources by the two most dominant communities in Darfur. Chapter 5 discusses in detail about the dreaded Arab militias such as Murahaleen and Janjaweed. A similar kind of analogy can be ascertainable in Ethiopia and Kenya. The author firmly believes that the recent Gumuz and Oromo conflicts in Ethiopia and the Oromo-Pokomo fights in the Tana River region of Kenya are conflicts that cannot only be understood from the perspective of inequitable sharing of land and natural resources among the fighting communities. The author points out that the use of natural resources can cause tensions but rarely triggers mass killings by armed militias. It was pointed out that such tensions were common during the past, and the elders have managed to stop them to mere skirmishes. However, in recent times, those mere skirmishes or ethnic tensions very often escalated into mass-scale conflicts owing to the militarisation by the ruling political dispensations. It is well known in Darfur that successive governments in Sudan gave patronage to the Arab tribes who refused to abide by Fur traditions and claimed access to land and natural resources by force (p. 15). Similarly, the Ethiopia government is also responsible for the outspread conflicts between the Gumuz and Oromo by arming the former. In Kenya, the identity-based conflicts caused mass killing because the political elites use ethnicity as means to mobilise supporters in pursuit of power; wealth and resources are among the significant factors, particularly after 1992 elections (p. 178).
Another focus area dealt by the author is the importance of indigenous elders’ council that not only plays the critical and crucial role in maintaining peace and tranquility within their respective communities but also as a troubleshooter in the entire region. The author cites many examples of the past role of such councils across the eastern Africa to solve ethnic conflicts and laments how these crucial indigenous mechanisms have lost their relevance at present times when they are needed the most. The lackadaisical attitudes and highhandedness of the central government are some of the important factors for the decline of such mechanisms (p. 97).
The book under review is a qualitative addition that analyses the main historical factors for the decline of the role of indigenous mechanisms to further broaden our understanding of the Darfur crisis and ethnic conflicts in Ethiopia and Kenya.