1995-10-01a- CIA Conference Report: THE CHALLENGE OF ETHNIC CONFLICT TO NATIONAL AND INTERNATIONAL ORDER IN THE 1990S GEOGRAPHIC PERSPECTIVES 01-Oct-95

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The Environment as a Factor
It is drought that has been, and continues to be, Although news media have paid comparatively little
Africa's greatest and most consequential environmen- attention to it, searing, decadelong drought, the worst
tal problem. The pulsations of the Sahara are now bet- in living memory, has prevailed over interior southern
ter understood than they were during the 1970s, when Africa, affecting lives and economies from Malawi and
the word "sahel" became synonymous with environ- Zambia to South Africa (Tanzania and southern Zaire
mental disaster. Not only did that desertification phase also were affected). This drought, which came at a time
claim as many as a halfmillion human (and countless when nearly I million refugees from Mozambique
animal) lives but 'it also caused ethnic strife in coun- crossed into Malawi and when Angola was consumed
tries to the south. The geographer Thomas Bassett by a civil war; contributed to food shortages and politi-
documented the results when cattle herders from the cal unrest in Zambia; one is tempted to speculate that,
desiccated savannas took their livestock into farm- without it, Kenneth Kaunda still would be President.
lands in the Cote d'Ivoire, where crops were trampled Perhaps more important, the drought has done much
and fighting broke out. Soon, the northerners were damage in Zimbabwe, where small farmers on the Afri-
blaming the (then) Abidjan-based government for not can-owned lands suffered visibly while white owners of
supporting them effectively during the crisis, and large estates fared better: As economic conditions wors-
North-South relations-always difficult in coastal ened and the Mugabe government's popularity plum-
West African countries-worsened. meted, the dormant land issue was revived-in the form
of the 1992 Land Acquisition Bill. Zimbabwe's commer-
In Ethiopia, several successive years of drought turned cial farmers, who number almost 4,500 (nearly all
out to be a more formidable adversary to the Marxist white) still own 30 percent of all of Zimbabwe. They
regime in Addis Ababa than any insurrection was- have sustained the agricultural economy, producing
when the crops failed and people streamed off the land, about 80 percent of the country's cash crops. The Zim-
the insurgency became unstoppable. Now, with Eritrea babwean Government wants to force the sale of half the
an independent state, Ethiopia is landlocked-its politi- whites' landfor the purpose of resettling black farmer
cal future farfrom certain. In addition, Eritrean ethnic families. Although the program is opposed by Zimba-
unity is a myth; for example, the Afar (who extend into bwe's donors and lenders, including Britain and the
Djibouti and whose domain centers on the port of IMF it is likely to proceed. All this is happening at a
Assab) have a claim to nationhood that may well time when multiparty democracy is being forced on a
reemerge in the future. Environmental conditions also government that controls 147 of the 150 seats in the
contributed to the downfall of the Barre regime in parliament. The droughtforces the land issue; the land
Somalia. Crop failures andfamines in the south led to issue will cause ethnic discord in a country long known
the movement ofpeople and livestock across traditional for its successful transition.
clan-territorial boundaries, and in the ensuing clashes
lay the origins of the weak government's collapse. The In a realm where most of the population continues to
current conflict in Somalia, it should be noted, however live on and depend directly on the land, environmental
is not an "ethnic" conflict in the terms of this discus- swings soon lead to human dislocation, and dislocation
sion; it is not religious, tribal, strategic, or reformist. translates into conflict-often ethnic conflict. As the
The Somali nation's ethnic and religious uniformity growing rifts in the European Union remind us, intercul-
does not extend to territorial unity: six major clans and tural harmony is easiest to generate when economic
hundreds of subclans occupy bounded and inviolable times are good. When livelihoods are threatened, the
spaces not only in Somalia but also in eastern Ethiopia, human reaction is to blame outsiders-that is, noneth-
eastern Kenya, and southern Djibouti. Significantly, the nics, whether they be North African or Turkish immi-
north, which suffered least from drought and resultant grants or local minorities. In Europe, the problem is
dislocation, has been virtually untouched by the prob- recession; in Africa, it is unpredictable, fluctuating envi-
lems of the south. ronments.
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