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

C00123268
Summary of Discussion weapons and of the electronic media. As such, the
ability of states to get from their people what they
want has never been so high. The biggest difference
Discussant: Rex Honey between the bullies of Europe in earlier times and the
bullies of Africa now is that those in Africa have a lot
I think we need to keep the African experience, as more power in terms of weapons and communication
with the former Soviet Union experience, in historical controls.
context. We need to look at precolonial Africa to
understand the Africa of today. Much of the culture of Another factor that is a legacy of the colonial time is
contemporary Africa predates the colonial time. To the introduction and spread of Christianity. Christian-
take a word from social theory jargon, the cultures of ity mainly came into Sub-Saharan Africa in the 19th
Africa have been deeply sedimented within traditional century and spread north at the same time that Islam
structures that resist change. Nevertheless, existing was spreading south. Colonial regimes impacted the
structures, such as kinship and traditional social ties current religious map because they often controlled
are being battered by the kind of changes that are now where the missionaries were able to work. This was
occurring, certainly the case in Nigeria.
This is not to suggest that, before the colonial period, In Nigeria, about 50 percent of the population is Mus-
there was an Africa that was stagnant. In the 19th cen- lim, about 40 percent is Christian, and 30 percent is
tury, the Islamic Jihad had an impact across the Sahe- animist, and I do mean those numbers-they total
lian region and penetrated south. Sub-Saharan Africa 120 percent. The indigenous cultures of Nigeria are
has traded with other areas, such as the Middle East still important in post-Cold War Africa. Cold War
and Europe, for a long time. Of course slave trade was influences have also been important; Professor de Blij
a terrible aspect of that trade; but only part of it; there touched on some of that. Certainly, many Cold War
was trade before and considerable trade afterward. In battles were fought, and some are still being fought, in
addition, there have always been migrations of Afri- Africa. Angola, certainly, is an example. The impacts
can peoples. of the Cold War have damaged Africa tremendously.
During the colonial period, there occurred the imposi- The African economies have been very much trans-
tion of protostates and, eventually, the European formed by the penetration of international capital,
nation-state model on Africa, I think it would be use- largely with alliances of convenience between the
ful to consider how European states came about, the leaders of the African countries and the transnational
structure of these states, and the kinds of things that companies that have invested in them. It is no accident
led to successful or unsuccessful states in Europe, and that the wealth of Mobutu is purported to be about
then to look at the African states to see how they com- equal to Zaire's national debt.
pare. A very telling description of the evolution of the
European national-state-and I will use that term The politics of many of the Sub-Saharan African
instead of nation-state, because it is broader-is, that countries is ethnic. The major prize within those coun-
over the past millennium, successful states in Europe tries is gaining control of the state, because control of
were those that were able to accumulate capital-that the state is the source of wealth. A client-patron struc-
is to say, economic power-and to amass the power of ture, which is a modification of traditional structures
coersion to defend themselves, conquer others, and adapted to fit the current time, functions in many of
maintain law and order. these states. In many ways, the traditional leaders are
stronger than they have ever been because the kinds of
The sad part of what has happened in Africa is that the power they have access to are now much greater than
imposition of this European national-state has come those they formerly held.
at a time when the technology for coercing is at the
greatest it has ever been in history-both in terms of
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