The Signs of the End of the World:
"And then shall the end come" . . . Jesus Christ
Part 1, "Wars and Rumors of Wars"
Page 2. Africa at war:
The continent of Africa contains 47 nations. There are also 6 island nations associated with the continent. The total population of these 53 nations is approximately 829,859,825 (est. July 2002).
Primarily from the early 1500s to the late 1800's, the nations of France, Belgium, Netherlands, Germany, the United Kingdom, Italy, Portugal and Spain, individually colonized, seized, or otherwise gained control over all of the nations of Africa.
[Notes: The area now known as Liberia was colonized in 1847 by former African slaves from the United States (Americo-Liberians) and the Caribbean (Congo People). Their descendants account for 5% of the current population.
Ethiopia has been an independent monarchy since the 14th century, but was occupied by Italy for five years during WWII.]
African wars:
The following list shows the number of African nations involved in wars since 1950. (Nearly all African nations achieved independence between 1950 and 1990.) The following statistics do not include civil wars to gain independence from colonial powers.
There is no African nation that does not fall into at least one of the following categories. Many are in six or more categories. The average is five of the following categories for every nation in Africa.
10 - are currently involved in an internal or external military conflict.
13 - are currently involved in an internal or external confrontation with the threat of war.
9 - are currently in a "cease fire" situation due to the presence of an international peacekeeping force.
11 - have engaged in international war since 1950.
15 - have experienced civil wars since 1950.
21 - have had thousands, to hundreds of thousands or more, killed or displaced due to violence.
6 - have suffered more than 1,000,000 killed directly or indirectly by violence.7 - have experienced more years of war than peace since their independence.
10 - are divided into areas held by opposing groups.
8 - have experienced attempts by regions at secession, have attempted to secede from others or have fought annexation by others.
14 - have been involved in wars, coups, terrorism, invasions or civil unrest in neighboring or other African nations.
19 - have experienced coups, civil unrest, attempted coups, or interference by neighboring or other African nations.
7 - have suffered terrorist activities including bombings, or have sponsored or aided terrorist activities in other nations.
18 - have experienced mutinies by soldiers.
26 - have been under dictatorships, authoritarian or military rule.
17 - have suffered genocide, "ethnic cleansing", or internal ethnic conflicts.
7 - have experienced internal religious conflicts.
6 - are now, or have been subjects of UN sanctions, or subject of allegations of sanction violations.
7 - have suffered large scale human rights violations resulting in thousands or more, becoming refugees or killed.
The African nation with most coups or attempted coups:
The Cormoros islands have experienced more than 20 coups or attempted coups since their independence in 1975, for an average of one every 16 months (as of 2002).The African nations with most killed after gaining independence (as of 2003):
Burundi - 200,000 (since 1993)
Uganda - 500,000 (from 1971-1985 alone).
Rwanda - 1,000,000 (since 1994 alone).
Mozambique - 1,000,000 (since 1975).
Angola - 1,500,000 (since 1975).
Sudan - 2,000,000 (since 1983).
Democratic Republic of Congo 2,500,000 (just since 1998, directly and indirectly due to war).The African nations with greatest number of displaced refugees:
Burundi - 800,000 (since 1993)
Rwanda - 2,000,000 fled the country in 1994.
Sierra Leone - over 2,000,000 since 1991.
Sudan - 4,000,000 since 1983.
Total for all Africa - over 8,000,000 externally displaced, with "millions" more internally displaced (as of 1999).
The African nations with greatest number of years of war since 1950:
Mozambique - civil war for 16 out of 28 years since independence in 1975.
Namibia - civil war for nearly 25 years during 1966-1990.
Angola - civil war for 27 out of 28 years since independence in 1975.
Eritrea - wars for over 34 years between 1962-2000.
Sudan - civil war for 36 out of the past 47 years.
It is estimated that from 50% to 70% of all people killed in African wars are civilians.
One newspaper reported in 2001, that more than 250,000 children had been killed just in the previous ten years alone. Also, during the same period, more than 100,000 other children had witnessed the killing of their parents. Tens of thousands of children have been drafted or forced to become soldiers. African nations condemn the practice of "child soldiers" (those under age 15), but because of self-interests, they will not take the necessary actions to stop it.
Why are there so many wars in Africa?
Cheap Weapons Available
"In some countries an AK-47 automatic rifle can be bought for as little as $6."
"A report by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute also reports that Africa has more major armed conflicts than any other continent. The report identified 11 major armed conflicts in Africa in 1998 - making the continent the world's worst conflict zone for the first time since 1989.
A "major armed conflict" is defined as one with at least 1,000 battle-related deaths."
"Africa has proved an attractive market for nations and manufacturers eager to get rid of arms stocks made superfluous by the end of the Cold War, or by technological developments."
"The report argues that while the availability of weapons did not cause Africa's wars, it has prolonged them and made them more lethal."
BBC World: Africa, Light weapons trade 'fuels African wars', July 15, 1999
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/394786.stm
Financing for Weapons Available
"'IMF, World Bank financing African wars' - says report"
"London - The World Bank and the International Monetary Fund Fund are inadvertently financing wars in Africa, the International Institute for Strategic Studies has said in its current report, titled 'The Military Balance 1999-2000.' "Many governments in the region have access to structural adjustment funding from the IMF and development assistance, including for demobilisation programmes, from the World Bank," the report said. "This is raising questions about the multilateral banks' inadvertent role as financiers to Africa's wars. "Their equivocal position has been all the more noticeable in a period when the UN itself has been increasingly unable or unwilling to commit to peacekeeping operations."
(c) 1999 The Namibian, Desmond Davies, October 26, 1999
http://www.namibian.com.na/Netstories/Econ10-99/financing.html
Major Weapons and Training Available
"African Wars Fueled by Russian Arms and US Training"
"United Nations, Jan 26, 2000 (IPS) - The ongoing civil war in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), which US Secretary of State Madeleine Albright described as "Africa's first world war," is being fueled mostly by weapons from the former Soviet bloc countries and military training from the United States. At least seven countries, whose heads of state are currently in New York for a mini-African summit, are being provided with military instruction and training by the United States. The weapons, including fighter aircraft, combat helicopters, battle tanks and heavy artillery, have come mostly from Russia, Belarus, Bulgaria, Poland, Kazakhstan and Ukraine."
"Throughout the Cold War (1950-1989), the US delivered over 1.5 billion dollars worth of arms to Africa. Many of the top US arms clients, including Liberia, Somalia, Sudan and Zaire, "have turned out to be the top basket cases of the 1990s in terms of violence, instability, and economic collapse," the report said.""Meanwhile, according to a report in the London-based military magazine Jane's Defence Weekly last November, the DRC has finalised an arms deal with Georgia for the purchase of 10 sophisticated Russian-made Sukhoi Su-25 fighter planes at a cost of about five million dollars. In the latest UN annual Arms Register for 1999, Russia has declared the sale of six fighter aircraft and 65 armored personnel carriers to Angola, and two combat helicopters to Chad. At the same time, Russia has also supplied six fighter aircraft to Eritrea and eight to Ethiopia, two countries involved in a brutal border war in the Horn of Africa. All of the equipment was delivered in 1998.
According to the Arms Register, Poland has supplied 18 120 mm mortars to Congo, along with 1,000 rounds of mortar ammunition, while Bulgaria has supplied 90 T-55 battle tanks to Uganda and 50 to Ethiopia.
Belarus has transferred 40 T-55 battle tanks to Ethiopia, most of them described as secondhand Russian-supplied vehicles which had been in service with the Belarus armed forces. In a similar sale, Kazakhstan has re-exported eight 122 mm secondhand, Russian-made long calibre artillery systems to Angola.
Ukraine's 1998 arms sales to Africa included one combat helicopter and four armored personnel carriers to Guinea.
Ukraine also exported 14 attack helicopters to the north African country of Algeria, along with 32 armored personnel carriers and 27 battle tanks.
Since 1996, the US has been providing, on a cost-free basis, large quantities of secondhand surplus weapons from its army, navy and air force inventories. But most of the give-aways have to be refurbished, serviced and maintained by the cash-strapped countries, costing millions of dollars in hard currency.
During 1995-1996, for example, the US provided four Lockheed C-130 military transports to Ethiopia and 10 Bell helicopters to Ghana. The US also gifted two C-130 transports to Zimbabwe, along with seven torpedo launch control panels and 88,000 rounds of 40 mm ammunition.
The largest number of giveaways was to Botswana, one of the few African nations whose economy is on the upswing. The US equipment included three C-1 30 transport planes, 261 towed howitzers, and 100,000 rounds of 20 mm ammunition.
Additionally, Botswana also purchased 18 secondhand US-made F-5 fighter planes (some of the them transferred from Canada with US permission) at a total cost of some 28 million dollars."
Copyright (c) IPS-Inter Press Service. All rights reserved. Thalif Deen
http://www.oneworld.net/ips2/jan00/20_53_079.html
Oil and Diamonds Finance African Wars
"Most people would be horrified to learn that their diamond jewelry had financed the purchase of land mines or guns in one of Africa's brutal conflicts," Alex Yearsley of the British-based group Global Witness said in reference to the long-running civil war in Angola."
Angola's rebel organization is called UNITA (National Union for the Total Independence of Angola). "French banking expert Olivier Vallée, estimated that during a good year, UNITA earns some $200 million from diamond sales. South African banks have been used to launder the money, he said."
"According to Fatal Transactions, between 1992 and 1997, some 500,000 people have died in the civil war while tens of thousands more have been injured, often losing limbs to land mines. Additional thousands have become refugees. During the same period the group estimates that UNITA earned some $3.7 billion from diamond sales. Many observers have suggested that the rebels could not have continued the war without the flow of hard currency from diamond earnings."
"Last spring Angola announced that it had exhausted its foreign exchange reserves, and proceeded to mortgage future oil sales for $1.5 billion in order to buy armaments."
"According to the Media Institute of Southern Africa, in the most recent civil war, President Laurent Kabila allowed Zimbabwe, which committed thousands of troops to fight on his behalf, to stake out a sizeable diamond concession in the central part of the country. The Media Institute and other observers claim that Zimbabwe now also controls Gecamines, the Congo's largest mining corporation, and that the DRC and Zimbabwe militaries have created a company through which they can jointly exploit Congolese resources.
Like Zimbabwe, countries on the other side of the Congolese civil war, Uganda and Rwanda, each of which supports a rival rebel group, have also apparently profited from diamonds. The Diamond Office of the Belgian customs department announced in July that all three nations have reported diamond exports, yet none is a diamond producer. The agency stated that Zimbabwe has exported 19,000 carats worth of diamonds, Uganda, 11,000 carats and Rwanda, 1,500 carats."
Diamonds Fuel Africa's Ongoing Wars, by David Johnson, February 08, 2003
http://www.africana.com/DailyArticles/index_19991028.htm
"In some African wars, para and military groups have bought hundreds of millions of dollars’ worth of small arms and light weapons, not with money, but with diamonds seized from diamond-mining areas. The New York Times commented: “Where governments are corrupt, rebels are pitiless and borders are porous. The glittering stones have become agents of slave labor, murder, dismemberment, mass homeless-ness and wholesale economic collapse.” Having read the above, let us not forget that behind every illegal diamond that is seized we must have willing buyers, where do these unscrupulous buyers come from? How ironic that a gemstone traded for assault rifles may later be sold in an elegant jewelry boutique as an expensive symbol of eternal love!"
Armed Conflict and War in Africa
Rebirth Africa Copyright 2000 - 2002 all rights reserved
http://www.rebirth.co.za/armed_conflict_and_war_in_africa.htm
External and Internal Factors
"Cycles of war and famine have ravaged Africa for hundreds of years. In colonial times, civil wars were often aggravated by the manipulation of colonial powers. In the days of the Cold War, such manipulation was often carrried out by the world's superpowers. But the Cold war is over, and colonial times are long past. Yet civil wars continue in Africa."
"Neither the end of Colonialism nor the end of the Cold War enabled Africa to shake off its cycles of war and famine. Greg Mills is National Director of the South African Institute for International Affairs in Johannesburg. He beleives the Cold War actually masked the roots of many of Africa's problems."Certainly, during the Cold War, African wars were supplied and fueled by outside forces, notably the United States and the Soviet Union, but I think these conditions largely don't apply today."
"And I think there tends to be much more of a feeling now than there was 10 years ago that the West is simply in Africa for what it can get out of Africa, in terms of natural resources, trading opportunities, and investment opportunities.""Mr. Mills . . . says ethnic strife has often determined political life on the continent."
Voice of America, 1/29/99, The Roots of Africa's Agony, Judith Latham
http://www.fas.org/man/dod-101/ops/war/1999/01/990129-africa.htm
Other internal factors:
- many governments in Africa are corrupt and incompetent. "In some instances, such as in Ethiopia, countries are buying fighter aircraft or attack helicopters when their own people are near starvation."
- while African nations spend billions on weapons, most Africans cannot be assured of safety for their goods, land or even their own children. Corrupt governments and rebel groups compete in seizing whatever resources are available, including manpower for forced military service, including small children. Child slavery is common, particularly in West Africa. Children are exported to the Middle East to work as unpaid laborers. Many are sold into bondage at home. An estimated 80 million African children between the ages of 5 and 14 work as slaves.
- In some African nations, it is safer to join a military, or rebel group, than it is to try to engage in a normal civilian life. In come nations, that choice is not even possible. In Sierra Leone's civil war (1990-2000), the RUF kidnapped children and brainwashed them into a religous cult mentality in which their leader was considered their "grandfather".
- "African countries are beginning to fight across international borders, as is the case in Congo and Ethiopia-Eritrea. In many cases, this stems from a collapse of the cold-war security balance that was maintained by the US and the Soviet Union. Simply put, today's African leaders perceive that they have the ability to take matters into their own hands.
- Some countries, and their leaders, are becoming more internally stable and developing lasting institutions - a positive trend, but it leaves nations increasingly free to project military power against their neighbors."
Source of quotes:
Why Africa's wars confound the US, by Justin Brown
c) Copyright 2000 The Christian Science Publishing Society. All rights reserved.
http://csmweb2.emcweb.com/durable/2000/05/17/p3s1.htm
The Primary Factor
"From whence come wars and fightings among you? come they not hence, even of your lusts that war in your members?
You lust, and have not: you kill, and desire to have, and cannot obtain: you fight and war, yet you have not, because you ask not.
You ask, and receive not, because you ask amiss, that you may consume it upon your lusts." (James 4:1-3) KJV."Where do wars and fights come from among you? Do they not come from your desires for pleasure that war in your members? " (Jas. 4:1) NKJV.
Additional Sources:
BBC Country Profiles 2002
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/country_profiles/U.S. Government Publications, 2002
http://www.cia.gov/cia/publications/factbook/geos
Tunisia
http://www.library.cornell.edu/colldev/mideast/bourgnyt.htm
Zambia
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/1077680.stm
http://www.namibian.com.na/Netstories/2000/August/Africa/009F475761.htmlBotswana
http://www.gov.bw/business/April 4 , 2001: The laws of war and child soldiers, By Fran Hulette
http://www.princeton.edu/~paw/web_exclusives/features/features_23.htmlWars Kill 250,000 African Children in Decade
http://202.84.17.11/english/htm/20010226/378264.htmEthiopian History 500 BC -1857
http://home.wanadoo.nl/spaansen/history1.htm
Copyright 2003 M.H. and G.H. All rights reserved.