Savage contest over colonial crumbs

The big powers, America in particular, is not paying it much attention in terms of combined efforts or unilateral global initiative. This is unconscionable compared to the attention they are paying to the embattled nations of the Middle East and Asia. Precisely, America cannot be faulted for failing to attend its colonial legacy, because it has never been a colonial power. Judging by history, Britain, France, Belgium, and Portugal have a responsibility to attend in the turmoil-ridden states of Africa. They cannot ignore it by attributing it to the primordial ethnic streak in the African past because the states of Africa are the results of their colonial accommodation. America also cannot distance itself from this savage contest over colonial crumbs on the grounds that it was never a colonial power, because by their words they cannot allow the world to fall into evil hands. One however understands that in comparison to the gladiatorial contest of the Middle East, the gangland of Africa is like being caught in an inglorious by-lane shootout reminiscent of Somalian humiliation.

With the exception of northern Africa and Abyssinia, the rest of Africa has sketchy record of viable kingdoms or of empires defined by marked geographical boundaries inhabited by divergent ethnic groups and tribes. Tribal groups were and still are the major form of bonding among the populace of Africa. It is much unlike Asia and Europe. As for the Americas, statehood was gunned into being by decimating a race of several million native populations into minorities and special reserves. The history of colonisation of Africa is much unlike the Americas. Abyssinia was the notable kingdom that found place in history. From the fifteenth century, the Europeans started building trading posts around the coastal strip of Africa to meet the growing demand in Europe for its ivory and to secure the slave trade.

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In South Africa the Dutch however had ventured far by 1670 building settlements in Natal, Orange Free State, and Transvaal. The Boer or the Dutch settlers were pushed deep into South Africa by the arrival of the British. Terra Incognito or the Dark Continent covering the interior of Africa did not attract the Europeans till Scottish explorer Mungo Park discovered the source of the river Niger in the eighteenth century. It started a competition among the British, the French, and the Belgians, and on a lesser level also Germany, to colonize Africa. The scramble for Africa continued from 1885 to 1910 and within these 25 years almost 85 percent of Africa was colonized. Congo, apparently the course of the river Congo, was more than a matter of academic interest to the Belgian King Leopold II. He commissioned explorer Henry Morgan Stanley to explore the course and the source of the river Congo. The French took alarm and sent Pierre Savorgnan de Brazzaville to block the territorial expansion of Belgian Congo. It is this intervention that constricted the large territory of Democratic Republic of Congo or Belgian Congo to a corridor of a passage to the sea. It separates DRC from the Republic of Congo (or Brazzaville Congo).

Former Belgian colonial territories spread over a vast expanse from Congo to Rwanda and Burundi. Dissimilar and antagonistic tribes populated this large area. Colonial tailoring of their natural habitats consigned them to sharing common statehoods. The rapacious nature of colonial expansion led the European powers to call a conference in Berlin. It began in November 1884 and concluded on February 26, 1885, with the adoption of a General Act of Berlin Congress to accommodate the conflicting interests of the colonial powers. Northern Africa, the Sahil or the Sub-Sahara region, and parts of west and the southwestern coast of Africa were left to the French. The British were already in control of Eastern Africa by virtue of the discoveries of Dr. David Livingstone and the entrepreneurial skill of Cecil Rhodes. Sudan was left to Anglo-French compact. The seafaring Portuguese were already in command of the southeastern coast, Angola and Mozambique. Togo, Cameroon, and present day Namibia were left to the Germans.

The colonial powers were however not guided by the considerations of viable and stable state in drawing the political boundaries of the states engineered by them. Specifically, the territories of the states were drawn in accordance with the paramount need of peaceful accommodation of colonial possessions. The principal consideration of territorial division was to enjoy the colonial possessions without transgressing each other's possessions. It met the exigencies of the time and did not take into account the ethnic stability and equilibrium of the territory under possession. In most of the cases, the colonial states were named after the major geographical features, like a river, a lake or after the names of the explorers. So in independent Africa we have Niger, Nigeria, the two Congos, Northern and Southern Rhodesia (Zambia and Zimbabwe), Tanganyika (Tanzania), Nyasaland (Malawi), Gambia, etc. Besides, the colonial powers were not burdened with any ideological commitment about the future of their acquisition at the time of their liquidation. They were also not encumbered by any compelling grounds like the fate of a large settler population (with the exception of South Africa and Rhodesia).

The foremost requirements of a viable and stable state, like a definite population and a populace with a sense of national identity did not weigh with them. What they left behind were territories with feuding tribes committed only to tribal ties and given to outbursts of vicious hostility. Since the beginning of the sixties when the colonial powers started hastily abandoning their African colonies, granting them independence or consigning them to their fate of unattended primal hostility, we have seen a succession of tribal orgies mauling the states of colonial Africa. Congo's brutal turmoil is the most painful and unremitting. When the Belgians left Congo in 1960 the country did not have any mentionable institutional framework for representative government or even a nominal sense of national identity for a functional state. In its birth throes, Patrice Lumumba the Prime Minister was killed, its President Joseph Kasavubu cast his fate with the despotic Colonel Mobutu to stave off Moshe Tsombe, the warlord of the mineral rich Katanga province.

The cruelest tragedy to strike the land of Congo and to cripple its statehood was the 32-year kleptocratic rule of the plundering despot Mobutu Sese Seko. During his rule Mobutu considered himself as one who personified the national cohesion of Congo and appropriated the state. It was found at the end of his rule that the national debt of Congo equaled Mobutu's personal assets. Laurent Kabila the warlord to follow did not last long. His son Joseph Kabila is trying to pursue the course of dialogue, which should have been followed much earlier in the sixties during the attempted secession of the province of Katanga. He has little clout in Congo and is holed up in Kinshasa. Congo's neighbours, Rwanda in particular, are also no less responsible for its plight. One can rightly wonder how a small country like Rwanda can bully a large neighbour like Congo.

The eastern part of Congo has a large population of Tutsis in the Kivu and Ituri regions. They are actively pursuing the claims of their brethren in Eastern Congo who have settled there in large number. To make matters worse, the Hutu majority of Rwanda is also pouring into Congo to save themselves from the persecution of the Tutsis. The ongoing conflict in Congo is between the supporters of Kabila and the supporters of the RCD backed by Rwanda and Uganda. Kabila has Angola and Zimbabwe on his side. The Belgian colonial legacy of favouring the Tutsis over the clear majority of the Hutus harmed the ethnic equilibrium of Rwanda. It has impaired the functional capacity of the state and has rendered its prospect of national cohesion ineffectual.

The miscarriage of colonial responsibilities has seen a rank growth of homegrown hostilities all over Africa plunging states into functional breakdown, crippling governance, and subjecting human lives to state of primitive survival. Congo has taken a toll of three million lives; the savage band of Fodey Sanko has maimed thousands in Sierra Leone. Liberia born out of the lofty American ideals of rehabilitating the remnants of slavery in the land of their ancestors has failed in bloodshed. Ghana is limping in the wake of ghastly killings started by Major Rawlings. Nigeria has scandalously squandered its oil earnings. Its national cohesion has little functional value in a nation of ethnically divergent groups of Hausas and Fulanis in the north, the ascending Yorubas in the southwest and the chastised Ibos in the east. Ivory Coast once touted as the France of Africa for its cultural refinement, western enlightenment, and thriving trade and commerce has also fallen prey to turmoil with no end in sight. The French had to take the unilateral action of sending its Foreign Legion to Ivory Coast.

Africa in its present situation, with many of its states crippled by marauding tribal gangs and brutal ethnic conflicts is definitely in trouble. The trouble is not of ordinary nature even when compared to the global flashpoints of Iraq, Palestine, and Afghanistan. However the attention it is receiving is of benign resignation. The Middle East is for America a matter of dominating a resource-rich region of the world. In the troubled states of Africa, America and even the western powers do not have a worthy global sphere to dominate. Going by history, America does not have a colonial obligation to Africa. Such a simplistic rationale will only lend credence to the observation that the foremost consideration for America is to secure its spheres of influence. That, to be sure, takes away the moral mantle from American leadership. As for the former colonial powers of Europe, they have an obligation to the beleaguered states of Africa tailored by them to suit territorial accommodation among the contending powers.

The tailored African states have broken down in sufferings of all kinds. Lost lives, uprooted families, brutally maimed ordinary folks, driven by fear, and hunted down by hunger and disease, because their colonial masters were selfishly callous in carving out states with least regard to ethnic homogeneity and a shared sense of national identity. They are the principal players here and they have the clout and experience of ridding Africa of its ill. Otherwise foreign peacekeepers of UN mission will keep on loosing their lives in regular intervals, like the nine valiant peacekeepers of Bangladesh. Indeed European powers aided by America can rid Africa of this pestilence with vigorous and wholehearted initiative of resolute nature. The point is that do they have the will and the intention to come to the aid of Africa with the required intensity? They have a point to prove here of redeeming their past mistakes and they are surely capable of it.

Syed Maqsud Jamil is General Manager of Summit Group.