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ABSTRACT
Conflicts on the African continent present a paradox: the number of conflicts and casualties are increasing while at the same time becoming more peripheral and less threatening to governments. This article argues that the rise of a new kind of conflict helps explain this trend: violent political orders in which warfare is used by governments as a means of doling out patronage and managing dissent rather than defeating opponents on the battlefield. This logic of governance emerges as regimes weaken their own military as a form of coup-proofing; and due to the rampant fragmentation and marginalisation of insurgent groups, which lack the ability to topple governments. After detailed broad conflict trends on the continent, the article uses conflicts in Nigeria and the Democratic Republic of the Congo as examples of this logic, with Mali offered as a partial, theory-building exception. Grappling with this reality will require peacemakers to shift focus from the short-term imperatives of reaching peace deals to the broader challenge of reforming the logic of governance at the heart of the state.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.
Notes
1 Figures for ‘battles’ and ‘violence against civilians’ between February 3, 2013 and February 2, 2023. Armed Conflict Location & Event Data Project. www.acleddata.com accessed February 3, 2023.
2 Data from the Internal Displacement Monitoring Center (IDMC) for January 2012-December 2022. https://www.internal-displacement.org/database/displacement-data, accessed October 8, 2023.
3 Kreutz, ‘How and When Armed Conflicts End: Introducing the UCDP Conflict Termination Dataset’, Journal of Peace Research, 47, 2 (2010).
4 Mary Kaldor, New and Old Wars: Organised Violence in a Global Era (John Wiley & Sons, 2013); Rachel Kleinfeld, A Savage Order: How the World’s Deadliest Countries Can Forge a Path to Security (Vintage, 2019).
5 Guillermo Trejo and Sandra Ley, Votes, Drugs, and Violence: The Political Logic of Criminal Wars in Mexico (Cambridge University Press, 2020); Eric J. Hobsbawm, Primitive Rebels: Studies in Archaic Forms of Social Movement in the 19th and 20th Centuries (Manchester University Press, 1971).
6 Sebastian Von Einsiedel, Louise Bosetti, James Cockayne, Cale Salih, and Wilfred Wan, ‘Civil War Trends and the Changing Nature of Armed Conflict’, United Nations University Centre for Policy Research Occasional Paper 10 (2017): 1–10; Kate Carter and Scott Straus, ‘Changing patterns of political violence in sub-Saharan Africa’, in Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Politics (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2019); Paul Will
7 Philip Roessler, Ethnic politics and state power in Africa: The logic of the coup-civil war trap (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2016); Paul Williams, War and conflict in Africa (London: John Wiley & Sons, 2016). See also Andrew W. Bausch, ‘Coup-Proofing and Military Inefficiencies: An Experiment’, International Interactions 44, no. 1 (2018): 1–32; James T. Quinlivan, ‘Coup-Proofing: Its Practice and Consequences in the Middle East’, International Security 24, no. 2 (1999): 131–65; Ulrich Pilster and Tobias Böhmelt, ‘Coup-Proofing and Military Effectiveness in Interstate Wars, 1967–99’, Conflict Management and Peace Science 28, no. 4 (2011): 331–50.
8 The fatality figures come from ACLED between February 3, 2013 and February 2, 2023 at www.acleddata.com. The displacement figures are for 2011–2021 and come from the Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre (IDMC) at https://www.internal-displacement.org/.
9 Carl Von Clausewitz, On War, vol. 1 (Princeton University Press, 1984), p. 75.
10 Trygve Haavelmo, A Study in the Theory of Economic Evolution / by Trygve Haavelmo, Contributions to Economic Analysis ; 3., Accessed from https://nla.gov.au/nla.cat-vn1214671 (Amsterdam: North-Holland, 1954); Jack Hirshleifer, ‘Theorizing about Conflict’, Handbook of Defense Economics 1 (1995): 165–89.
11 Paul Collier and Anke Hoeffler, ‘Greed and Grievance in Civil War’, Oxford Economic Papers 56, no. 4 (2004): 563–95; Robert H. Bates, When Things Fell Apart (Cambridge University Press, 2015); Christopher Blattman and Edward Miguel, ‘Civil War’, Journal of Economic Literature 48, no. 1 (2010): 3–57.
12 David E. Cunningham, Kristian Skrede Gleditsch, and Idean Salehyan, ‘Non-State Actors in Civil Wars: A New Dataset’, Conflict Management and Peace Science 30, no. 5 (2013): 516–31.
13 Christopher S. Clapham, African Guerrillas (Oxford: James Currey, 1998).
14 William Reno, Warfare in Independent Africa, vol. 5 (Cambridge University Press, 2011).
15 Alex De Waal, The Real Politics of the Horn of Africa: Money, War and the Business of Power (John Wiley & Sons, 2015); Tobias Hagmann and Didier Péclard, ‘Negotiating Statehood: Dynamics of Power and Domination in Africa’, Development and Change 41, no. 4 (2010): 539–62.
16 The resurgence of various Nigerian separatist groups, as well as the Cameroonian separatist insurgency, are some of these exceptions.
17 Kishi, Roudabeh, ‘SPECIAL REPORT: South Sudan – July 2016 Update’ (ACLED, 2016); Wolfram Lacher, Libya’s Fragmentation: Structure and Process in Violent Conflict (Bloomsbury Publishing, 2020); Kivu Security Tracker, ‘The Landscape of Armed Groups in Eastern Congo’ (Congo Research Group, 2021); James Barnett and Murtala Rufai, ‘The Other Insurgency: Northwest Nigeria’s Worsening Bandit Crisis’, War on the Rock, 2021.
18 David Cunningham, ‘Veto Players and Civil War Duration’, American Journal of Political Science 50, no. 4 (2006): 875–92.
19 Carter and Straus, ‘Changing patterns of political violence in sub-Saharan Africa.’
20 OECD/SWAC, Urbanisation and Conflicts in North and West Africa, (Paris: OECD Publishing, 2023).
21 Oluwole Ojewale, ‘Rising insecurity in northwest Nigeria: Terrorism thinly disguised as banditry’, Brookings Institute, February 21, 2021.
22 Data from Kivu Security Tracker for the provinces of North Kivu and South Kivu (2017–2023), and Ituri (2021–2023), excluding the population centres of Bukavu, Bunia, Goma, and Butembo.
23 Carter and Straus, ‘Changing patterns of political violence in sub-Saharan Africa.’
24 Sean Fox, ‘The political economy of slums: Theory and evidence from Sub-Saharan Africa’, World development 54 (2014): 191–203.
25 This argument was perhaps most famously made in James Fearon and David D. Laitin. ‘Ethnicity, insurgency, and civil war’. American political science review 97.1 (2003): 75–90. It can also be seen in successive U.S. National Security Strategies, as well in the World Bank and United Nations’ World Development Report 2011: Conflict, Security and Development (New York: United Nations and World Bank, 2011)
26 Carter and Straus, op. cit.
27 Williams, War and Conflict in Africa, p. 12. Williams draws on Patrick Chabal and Jean-Pascal Daloz, Africa works: Disorder as Political Instrument (Bloomington: Indiana University Press,1999) and Alex De Waal, The Real Politics of the Horn of Africa: Money, War and the Business of Power (London: John Wiley & Sons, 2015).
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29 Arias, Criminal Enterprises and Governance in Latin America and the Caribbean.
30 Johannes Harnischfeger, ‘The Bakassi Boys: Fighting Crime in Nigeria’, The Journal of Modern African Studies 41, no. 1 (2003): 23–49.
31 Judith Verweijen and Esther Marijnen, ‘The counterinsurgency/conservation nexus: guerrilla livelihoods and the dynamics of conflict and violence in the Virunga National Park, Democratic Republic of the Congo’. The Journal of Peasant Studies 45, no. 2 (2018): 300–320.
32 Interview with FARDC officer in Goma, February 2014.
33 Marielle Debos, ‘Living by the Gun in Chad: Armed Violence as a Practical Occupation’, The Journal of Modern African Studies, 2011, p. 411. She expands this argument in her book Living by the gun in Chad: Combatants, impunity and state formation (London: Bloomsbury Publishing, 2016).
34 Henrik Vigh, ‘Conflictual motion and political inertia: On rebellions and revolutions in Bissau and beyond’. African Studies Review 52, no. 2 (2009): 143–164.
35 Achille Mbembe, ‘Provisional notes on the postcolony’, Africa, 62 (1992): 28.
36 Bausch, ‘Coup-Proofing and Military Inefficiencies’; Quinlivan, ‘Coup-Proofing’; Vipin Narang and Caitlin Talmadge, ‘Civil-Military Pathologies and Defeat in War: Tests Using New Data’, Journal of Conflict Resolution 62, no. 7 (2018): 1379–1405; Stephen Biddle and Robert Zirkle, ‘Technology, Civil-Military Relations, and Warfare in the Developing World’, The Journal of Strategic Studies 19, no. 2 (1996): 171–212.
37 Jonathan Powell and Clayton L. Thyne, ‘Global instances of coups from 1950 to 2010: A new dataset’, Journal of Peace Research 48, no. 2 (2011): 249–259. Updated on the website https://arresteddictatorship.com/coups/, accessed May 6, 2023.
38 Megan Duzor and Brian Williamson, ‘Coups in Africa’, VOA Special Report, October 3, 2023, https://projects.voanews.com/, accessed on January 17, 2024.
39 This dilemma is similar to the one described by Philip Roessler. He argues that leaders in weak states have to balance competing imperatives: to have an incentive to stitch together coalitions with other ethnic groups to stabilise their rule, but by doing so they expose themselves to the risk of their rivals seizing power through a coup. However, Roessler assumes that the organising blocks of African politics are ethnic groups, and that neutralising a coup threat involves excluding groups from ruling coalitions. What the examples below suggest is that in many countries ethnicity is not necessarily the basis of power, and that fragmentation can be just as useful as exclusion as a means of dealing with potential dissent.
40 This is a variation of Barbara Geddes’ ‘politician’s dilemma’ in the context of Latin American history. Barbara Geddes, Politician's dilemma: building state capacity in Latin America. (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2023).
41 Yuhua Wang, The Rise and Fall of Imperial China: The Social Origins of State Development, vol. 13 (Princeton University Press, 2022),
42 Shola Omotola, ‘From political mercenarism to militias: The political origin of the Niger Delta militias’, in Fresh Dimensions on the Niger Delta Crisis of Nigeria, ed. Victor Ojakorotu (Melbourne: Monash University Press, 2009): 91; Judith Asuni Burdin.,Understanding the armed groups of the Niger Delta (New York: Council on Foreign Relations, 2009).
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50 Jason Stearns, The War That Doesn’t Say Its Name: The Unending Conflict in the Congo (Princeton University Press, 2022).
51 Filip Reyntjens, The Great African War: Congo and Regional Geopolitics, 1996–2006 (Cambridge University Press, 2009); Crawford Young, ‘The Heart of the African Conflict Zone: Democratization, Ethnicity, Civil Conflict, and the Great Lakes Crisis’, Annual Review of Political Science 9 (2006): 301–28.
52 Jason K. Stearns, From CNDP to M23: The Evolution of an Armed Movement in Eastern Congo (Rift Valley Institute, 2012).
53 Stearns, The War That Doesn’t Say Its Name.
54 Séverine Autesserre, ‘Dangerous Tales: Dominant Narratives on the Congo and Their Unintended Consequences’, African Affairs 111, no. 443 (2012): 202–22.
55 Stein Eriksen, ‘The Liberal Peace Is Neither: Peacebuilding, State Building and the Reproduction of Conflict in the Democratic Republic of Congo’, International Peacekeeping 16, no. 5 (2009): 652–66.
56 Stearns, The War That Doesn’t Say Its Name.
57 Interview with presidential advisor in Kinshasa, February 2014.
58 Interview with presidential advisor in Kinshasa, December 2013.
59 Interview with United Nations official in Kinshasa, January 2014.
60 Anneke Van Woudenberg, ‘ We Will Crush You’: The Restriction of Political Space in the Democratic Republic of Congo (Human Rights Watch, 2008).
61 Interview with FARDC officer in Kinshasa, January 2014.
62 Interview with FARDC officer in Kinshasa, February 2014.
63 ACLED Dashboard, https://acleddata.com/dashboard/#/dashboard, accessed May 8, 2023; UNCHR Data Portal, https://data.unhcr.org/en/situations/nigeriasituation, accessed May 8, 2023.
64 Kenneth Omeje, ‘The Egbesu and Bakassi Boys: African Spiritism and the Mystical Re-Traditionalisation of Security’, in Civil Militia (Routledge, 2017), 71–88.
65 J. Shola Omotola, ‘From Political Mercenarism to Militias: The Political Origin of the Niger Delta Militias’, Fresh Dimensions on the Niger Delta Crisis of Nigeria, 2009, 91.
66 Omotola; James Barnett, ‘The Oil Thieves Of Nigeria’, NewLines Magazine, 2023.
67 Omotola, ‘From Political Mercenarism to Militias’, 115.
68 Omotola, ‘From Political Mercenarism to Militias’, 109.
69 Barnett, ‘The Oil Thieves Of Nigeria’.
70 Barnett.
71 James Barnett and Murtala Rufai, ‘The Other Insurgency: Northwest Nigeria’s Worsening Bandit Crisis’, War on the Rock, 2021.
72 Reuters, ‘Nigeria's vice president says $15 bln stolen in arms procurement fraud’, May 2, 2016.
73 Ogechi Ekeanyanwu, ‘EFCC arrests former Minister, others over alleged $2billion arms deal’, Premium Times, November 30, 2015.
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75 E. C. Ejiogu, ‘Colonial Army Recruitment Patterns and Post-Colonial Military Coups d’etat in Africa: The Case of Nigeria, 1966–1993’, Scientia Militaria: South African Journal of Military Studies 35, no. 1 (2007); Eghosa E. Osaghae, The Crippled Giant: Nigeria since Independence (Indiana University Press, 1998).
76 Monty G. Marshall, ‘COUP D’ÉTAT EVENTS, 1946–2018 CODEBOOK Monty G. Marshall and Donna Ramsey Marshall’, Center for Systemic Peace, 2019.
77 Central Intelligence Agency National Intelligence Estimate 64.2–70: Prospects for Postwar Nigeria (Washington, DC: CIA, 1970)
78 John Lucas, ‘The tension between despotic and infrastructural power: The military and the political class in Nigeria, 1985–1993’. Studies in Comparative International Development 33 (1998): 90–113.
79 International Crisis Group, ‘Nigeria: The Challenge of Military Reform’, Crisis Group Africa Report N°237, 6 June 2016.
80 Ibid, p. 3.
81 Habibu Yaya Bappah, ‘Nigeria’s Military Failure against the Boko Haram Insurgency’, African Security Review 25, no. 2 (2016): 146–58.
82 Bappah, ‘Nigeria’s Military Failure’.
83 Crisis Group, ‘Nigeria: The Challenge of Military Reform’, 5.
84 Christiana Okojie, ‘Decentralization and Public Service Delivery in Nigeria’, 2009.
85 Friedrich Ebert Stiftung, ‘Defence Budget& Spending: Implications for Post-Covid Nigeria’, (Lagos: FES, August 2020).
86 Transparency International, ‘Weaponising Transparency Defence Procurement Reform As A Counterterrorism Strategy In Nigeria’, (Berlin: Transparency International, 2017).
87 Will Ross, ‘Nigeria Boko Haram: Governor says battle against militants being sabotaged’, BBC, August 2, 2020.
88 Kingsley Nwezek’, 5 Emirs, 33 District Heads, Top Military Officers Complicit in Zamfara Bandit, ‘ This Day, October 13, 2019.
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90 Baz Lecocq and Georg Klute, ‘Tuareg Separatism in Mali’, International Journal 68, no. 3 (2013): 424–34.
91 Idrissa Abdoulaye, ‘The Sahel’.
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93 International Crisis Group, ‘Mali: Enabling Dialogue with the Jihadist Coalition JNIM’, 2021.
94 Baz Lecocq, Disputed Desert: Decolonization, Competing Nationalisms and Tuareg Rebellions in Mali (Brill, 2010).
95 International Crisis Group, ‘Mali: Enabling Dialogue with the Jihadist Coalition JNIM’.
96 Jean-Pierre Olivier de Sardan, Les Sociétés Songhay-Zarma (Niger-Mali): Chefs, Guerriers, Esclaves, Paysans (KARTHALA Editions, 1984)., 159.
97 Niagale Bagayoko, Eboe Hutchful, and Robin Luckham, ‘Hybrid Security Governance in Africa: Rethinking the Foundations of Security, Justice and Legitimate Public Authority’, Conflict, Security & Development 16, no. 1 (January 2, 2016): 1–32, https://doi.org/10.1080/14678802.2016.1136137.
98 Ousmane Sidibe, ‘La Crisis de Malí: Entrevista’, New Left Review, no. 84 (2014): 75–91.
99 Sidibe, ‘La Crisis de Mali’.
100 Niagalé Bagayoko et al., ‘Gestion Des Ressources Naturelles et Configuration Des Relations de Pouvoir Dans Le Centre Du Mali: Entre Ruptures et Continuité’, Accra, ASSN, Http://Africansecuritynetwork. Org/Assn/Gestion-Des-Ressources-Naturelles-Dans-Le-Centre-Du-Mali (Consulté En Mai 2018), 2017; Grégory Chauzal and Thibault Van Damme, ‘The Roots of Mali’s Conflict’, Moving beyond The, 2015.
101 Lecocq, Disputed Desert.
102 Chauzal and Van Damme, ‘The Roots of Mali’s Conflict’.
103 Idrissa Abdoulaye, ‘The Sahel’.
104 Gregory Mann, From Empires to NGOs in the West African Sahel, vol. 129 (Cambridge University Press, 2015).
105 Yvan Guichaoua, ‘The Bitter Harvest of French Interventionism in the Sahel’, International Affairs 96, no. 4 (2020): 895–911; Morten Boas and Liv Torheim, ‘The Trouble in Mali--Corruption, Collusion, Resistance’, Third World Quarterly 34, no. 7 (2013): 1279–92, https://doi.org/10.1090/01436597.2013.824647.
106 Boubacar Ba and Morten Bøås, ‘The Mali Presidential Elections: Outcomes and Challenges’, NOREF, October 65 (2013); Boas and Torheim, ‘The Trouble in Mali--Corruption, Collusion, Resistance’.
107 Philip Andrew Churm, ‘Mali's government agrees to sign 26,000 ex-northern rebels into its army’, Agence France Presse, August 6, 2022.
108 Tarak Barkawi, ‘Decolonising War’, European Journal of International Security 1, no. 2 (2016): 199–214.
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111 Debos, Living by the Gun in Chad.
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Additional information
Notes on contributors
Jason K. Stearns
Jason K. Stearns has been an assistant professor in the School of International Studies at Simon Fraser University since 2019. He has a PhD in Political Science from Yale University (2016) and has published widely in academic and policy journals on the conflict in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, as well as on peacekeeping and conflict studies. He is the author of two books, Dancing in the Glory of Monsters: The Collapse of the Congo and the Great War of Africa (Basic Books, 2011) and The War That Doesn’t Say Its Name: The Unending Conflict in the Congo (Princeton University Press, 2022).