| Abstract: | In an attempt to draw lessons from African experience with conflictresolution, this paper examines three disputes: the WesternSahara conflict between Morocco and the Polisario, the thirty-yeararmed strife between North and South Sudan and the emergenceof the breakaway Somaliland following the overthrow of SiadBarre. The Western Sahara dispute, under consideration by theUnited Nations since 1965, would have long been settled hadit not been for late King Hassan's intransigence, US supportof his unjust claim to sovereignty of the former Spanish colonyand the reluctance of African leaders to incur his displeasure.The Southern Sudan was the victim of well-nigh-complete neglectunder the British colonial administration and, thanks to theprejudice and shortsightedness of Northern politicians, it hasfaired even worse after independence. Memories of past slaveryhave been rankled by present injustice and marginalisation.Moreover, any hope for reconciliation has been shattered bythe determination of the ruling Islamic fundamentalist regimeof Khartoum to transform the Sudan into an out-and-out Islamicstate. The former British protectorate of Somaliland, drivenby the irredentism then prevailing among the Somali-speakingpeople scattered in different parts of East Africa, precipitated,a week after independence, into union with the former Italian-administeredtrust territory to form the Republic of Somalia on 26 June 1965.Ten years after independence, however, Siad Barre seized powerby coup d'ét ushering two decades of misrule characterisedby a sinister mix of clanism, nepotism and an ignorant understandingof scientific socialism. Resentment which at first took theform of peaceful, political opposition in the north graduallydeveloped into a full-fledged countrywide civil war. When SiadBarre was overthrown, anarchy ensued in Mogadiscio. By contrast,the Somalilanders succeeded, through a series of traditionallystyled conferences, in resolving tribal conflicts, disbandingtribal militias and establishing a primordial but working systemof government. But the OAU, the Arab League and the rest ofthe international community rewarded them by refusing to recogniseSomaliland's claim to separate statehood. |
