In 1993 the Tutsis staged a coup in Burundi and slaughtered 100,000 of their rival
Hutus. The following year the Hutus achieved a monster of a revenge when they too
staged a coup, this time in neighbouring Rwanda, an event they celebrated in the
traditional manner by attempting genocide against the Tutsis. Estimates vary wildly, but
it is claimed confidently by those who have studied the grisly matter that between
600,000 and 1,000,000 Tutsis were killed. The higher figure is probably closer to
the truth. When one bears in mind the geopolitics of Central Africa, it becomes obvious
that severe strife in the tiny statelets of Burundi and Rwanda is bound to have ripple
effects in neighbouring countries (Uganda, Tanzania and Sudan). And it must have an
influence in the north-east of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), a polity that for
several decades, and increasingly, has been virtually synonymous with the idea of an
‘ungoverned space’, as the contemporary official American euphemism has it.
For thirty-two years, Mobutu Sese Seko ruled the DRC as a personal kleptocracy. He
was deposed at last in 1998 by Laurent Kabila, but the new leader committed the serious
error of turning on his erstwhile allies, seeking to disarm them. This fatal and hopeless
mission triggered warfare between pro- and anti-Kabila parties among neighbouring
states (Burundi, Rwanda and Uganda were ‘anti’, while Zimbabwe, Angola, Chad and
Namibia were ‘pro’), and between every group that saw advantage in organized violence
in the vast DRC itself. Everyone accepts the estimate that at least 4 million people have
died since 1998 for war-related reasons. Where they disagree is on just how great is the
‘at least’. Kabila was assassinated in 2001, but that did not magically produce peace in
the DRC. Warfare there continues.
In the 1990s, Sierra Leone and Liberia both descended into local rule by heavily armed
and well-drugged gangs. These gangs, sometimes on the scale of small armies, were
organized and led by ambitious petty warlords of the type that most societies throw up
when the opportunities provided by anarchy beckon. Thanks to the reporting of people
like Robert Kaplan, the world at large noticed that a significant segment of West Africa
was in a state of chaos. Casual, as well as calculated, atrocities were commonplace, and
gang leaders played the game of revolving presidents. However, given the contemporary
warfare in the Balkans, in Ireland (for the British) and, as always, in the Middle East,
especially between Arabs and Israelis, as well as in the Gulf between what remained of
the grand coalition of 1990–1 and Iraq, West Africa was not exactly a matter of high
international priority.
Conclusion
Discussion of Russia’s two disastrous wars with its would-be breakaway region of
Chechnya has been largely omitted from this narrative, as has comment on the continuing
violent disorder in Somalia and Sudan. In fact, so many and so varied have been the
‘wars’, or at least the warfare, since the end of the Cold War that merely to list them
would place a heavy burden upon this chapter. To illustrate the point that peace was a
rare condition in many parts of the world in the 1990s, it is helpful to offer a listing that
is by no means comprehensive of cases of warfare for just two years in the decade.
The years have been selected more or less at random from an appalling accounting
provided by Colin McInnes (2002: 162). The general story is the same, regardless of the
years chosen.
232 War, peace and international relations