Sudan: Realities of Peacemaking Efforts Going Forward

 The Royal United Services Institute published on 11 September 2024 a commentary titled "Sudan's Nadir? Pressing Needs and New Realities" by Michael Jones.

The conflict in Sudan is contributing to new power dynamics throughout the region that will likely define the scope and durability of any peacemaking effort going forward.  

China, Russia, Africa, and Peacebuilding

 The Stockholm International Peace Research Institute published on 18 April 2024 an analysis titled "China, Russia and the Future of Peacebuilding" by Jiayi Zhou, Jair van der Lijn, and Jingdong Yuan.

China's approach to peacebuilding emphasizes sovereignty and regime security and tends to downplay the protection of civilians in armed conflict.  China stresses that poverty and underdevelopment are root causes of conflict and insecurity; economic development is hence considered a key element in fostering peace.

Russia's approach shares China's emphasis on state sovereignty and host state consent, although several Russian military operations such as Ukraine have violated those precepts.  Russia's position is in several respects starkly different to China's.  It argues that economic difficulties do not automatically lead to insecurity and that stabilizing the security situation leads to improved developmental and societal outcomes in a given country--not the other way around.

The authors conclude that China has no distinctive, clearly defined approach to peacebuilding.  Likewise, gaps and inconsistencies between rhetoric and action suggest that Russia engages in fragile settings opportunistically rather than offering a principled approach or paradigm to fostering peace.

Comment:  The differences in approach to peacebuilding by China and Russia suggest this is not an area where they are likely to cooperate in Africa.  Based on past Chinese experience, it is almost inconceivable that China would agree to collaborate with a Russian Wagner Group or Africa Corps contingent.    

Conflict in the Horn of Africa

The Woodrow Wilson Center in Washington organized a group of people interested in the Horn of Africa and asked Paul D. Williams of George Washington University to prepare an analysis of conflict in the region and offer some recommendations to mitigate this conflict. Although the study is dated October 2011, the Woodrow Wilson Center published it in mid-January 2012. Titled Horn of Africa: Webs of Conflict & Pathways to Peace, a number of us contributed to the final product.

The study notes that the Horn of Africa has experienced more than 200 armed conflicts since 1990. The U.S. government has for too long looked at the Horn through lenses which have emphasized regime security, counterterrorism, religious fanaticism and tribalism. The focus on regime security, counterterrorism and extremism has clearly failed to produce either a stable or peaceful region.

The paper suggests that viewing the Horn through a conflict resolution and peacebuilding lens would focus policymakers' attention on an alternative agenda focused on issues of good governance, the rule of law, human security, and supporting local state-society complexes that work for their people.

The central purpose of the study is to to illuminate the complex political terrain in which policies to build peace and resolve conflict will have to take place and to make tentative suggestions as to what priorities should guide an alternative comprehensive and integrated approach to the Horn.

A companion document titled Pathways to Peace in the Horn of Africa: What Role for the United States? offers a set of recommendations for how the U.S. government might engage more constructively with the states and peoples in the Horn to build peace.

Monograph on security in the Horn of Africa

The Institute for Security Studies published a 400 plus page monograph in April 2011 titled Regional Security in the Post-Cold War Horn of Africa.

Edited by Roba Sharamo and Berouk Mesfin, it contains a wealth of information about the region by mostly African authors.

The chapters include:

• The Horn of Africa security complex.
• The Ethiopian-Eritrean War of 1998-2000.
• The causes and consequences of the Eritrean-Ethiopian border conflict.
• Regional and extra-regional inputs in promoting (in)security in Somalia.
• Unravelling the Islamist insurgency in Somalia.
• The failure of ‘making unity attractive’ in Sudan.
• Southern Sudan.
• Piracy off the coast of Somalia.
• Water conflict resolution and institution building in the Nile Basin.
• Eritrean-Yemeni relations.
• Not born as a de facto state (Somaliland).
• IGAD’s peace and security strategy.
• Keeping an elusive peace: AMISOM and the quest for peace in Somalia.
• Building a regional peacekeeping capacity: the challenges facing the African Union in Darfur.

Somalia under analysis

Conciliation Resources in cooperation with Interpeace published early in 2010 an extensive collection of papers on Somalia and Somaliland. Titled "Whose Peace Is It Anyway? Connecting Somali and International Peacemaking" (PDF), it contains numerous contributions on a wide variety of topics by both Somali and non-Somali authors. Mark Bradbury and Sally Healy edited this special edition of Accord: An International Review of Peace Initiatives. Conciliation Resources is an international NGO registered in the UK as a charity and publishes Accord. Interpeace works with societies divided by violent conflict to create a lasting peace. Anyone interested in Somalia will find something of value in this thoughtful collection of writings.