The academia Response to Conflicts

The agendas and priorities of the academia in their response to conflict can be seen through the development and application of theory, through academic materials such as journals and books, and through history and the teaching of history. In this topic we will see how the handling of conflicts in academia is also Western-centric, and that consequently, the study of African conflicts and security is neglected.

Theory And Thematic Research

The study of the relations between nations around the globe has been traditionally examined through International Relations (IR) theory. IR is presented as a universal theory, but it is based on ‘great^–power’ experiences, and remains Western-centric. Africa has been (and remains) absent from such theorising.

Many key thinkers in IR have rejected outright the contribution of the developing world to IR. Hans Morgenthau, for example, asserted that prior to World War II, Africa was a “politically empty space” (1973: 369). Craig Murphy writes that: “More than one out of ten people are Africa. More than one out of four nations are African. Yet, I would warrant that fewer than one in a hundred university lectures on International Relations (IR) given in Europe or North America even mention the continent.”.

Many African political experiences cannot be adequately explained by traditional IR, yet instead of rethinking the viability of IR theories taking into account this African contribution, the lessons are instead ignored, or rejected as exceptions. African experiences challenge in many ways key concepts in IR, such as the use of the ‘state’ as the prime actor in IR. Conflict in Africa has shown that there are many other key actors that cannot be ignored, such as armed nationalist movements, regional strongmen (warlords) and international business interests. Studies on these issues are highly limited.

The Peace Research Abstracts Journal, which provides indexed abstracts of academic studies, and claims to be the “the definitive source of literature concerning peace studies and international relations”, published only 5 abstracts indexed under the term ‘warlord’ between 2001 and 2003, and 10 on ‘failed states’ and ‘state collapse’. The Penguin Dictionary of International Relations has been updated to include the term ‘ethnic cleansing’, but does not include the terms ‘warlord’ (1998).

Recent theoretical development and thematic research has instead been responsive to issues affecting the security of Western countries. Western countries, for example, justified their attack on Yugoslavia over Kosovo in 1999 through the concept of ‘humanitarian intervention’. This sparked a wave of academic work including books, journal articles and workshops on the subject. Between 2000 and 2003 the Peace Research Abstracts Journal recorded 79 entries under ‘humanitarian intervention’. Similarly, the terrorist attacks on the USA in 2001 sparked a flurry of academic activity. In the same journal in 2002 and 2003, there were 152 entries under ‘terrorism’.

Even academic work in counting the costs of conflict through the death tolls also serves to marginalise conflict. The Human Security Report, for example, while acknowledging that “report-based methodologies under-count battle-related deaths”, chooses to use this method to enable it to provide “timely global and regional death toll data” (2005: 72). Considering that few reports on casualties in African conflicts emerge, and that African conflict is characterised by the destruction of social services, the displacement of large numbers of people into hostile environments, and a lack of humanitarian assistance, report-based methodologies seriously undermine the perception of the scale of conflict in Africa.

Journals And Books

 A review of key journals and books on the subject of conflict and international security also reveal the marginalisation of African conflicts by the academia. Many major journals in the field of international affairs publish more articles about Israel-Palestine alone than they do about the entire continent of Africa. Between 1999 and 2003, for example, the Journal of Peace Research published 6.5 articles on Africa, compared with 13.5 on Israel-Palestine, and 24.5 on Europe. In the same period, Foreign Affairs published 6 articles on Africa, compared to 42 on the Middle East (10 on Israel-Palestine) and 61 on Asia.

Between 2000 and 2003, the Peace Research Abstracts Journal recorded 13 entries under Angola, and 32 under DRC and Zaire, compared to 388 for Israel-Palestine, 175 for Kosovo, and 83 for Iraq. There were even 63 entries over the same period for World War I.

Books can also be revealing in their treatment of African conflict, both in number and in content. A search in May 2003 of a database of books and documents available (published since 1999) on the DRC in all Japanese universities revealed a total of 11 relevant works — in English and French.

An identical search for those relating to Kosovo revealed more than 120 works in over five languages. Samuel Huntington’s The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order mentions Africa only in passing, noting that despite pervasive and intense tribal identities, Africans were developing a sense of African identity, and “could cohere into a distinct civilization, with South Africa possibly being its core state” (1996: 47). Conflicts within Africa were apparently not of serious concern in analysing conflict trends. He also noted that: “The bloody clash of tribes in Rwanda has consequences for Uganda, Zaire, and Burundi but not much further”. The following wars in Zaire and the DRC would soon prove him very wrong.

The New Security Agenda: A Global Survey a book published in Japan edited by Paul Stares, is another example. It discusses new security challenges and how they are perceived in “key countries and regions” (1998). It focuses on Asia, but presents chapters on each other continent, except Africa. The reference book, How Governments Work, the Inside Guide to the Politics of the World, in its section on International Security (New Earth Media, 2006: 24-25), names the “key zones of conflict” as follows: Myanmar (Burma), Chechnya, Colombia, Indonesia, Israel, Iraq, Kosovo, Liberia, Northern Ireland, and Rwanda. Only two of the ten are African, and massive conflicts in the DRC, Sudan and Angola are excluded.

History of the academia Response to Conflicts

Academic marginalisation of Africa and African conflict does not end with the analyses of current issues. This marginalisation is also being seen in what is recorded as history for future generations to understand and learn from. While it may be understandable that the history of Africa prior to colonisation is sketchy, given the lack of written language on the continent, the same excuse cannot apply to the present day. Yet the recording of human history remains highly Western-centric. The marginalisation of Africa is seen both in the quantity and content of historical records.

A review of major bookstores in Sydney in 2003 found a relative deficiency of books covering Africa. The history section of Borders bookstore had three rows of books on Africa – the same number of rows on Antarctica and the Arctic, while the books on the USA covered 21 rows and the Middle East 15 rows. Meanwhile, Dymocks bookstore devoted 1 row of 40 in its history section to Africa, and 16 to Europe.

A check of Times bookstore in Suntec Shopping Centre in Singapore in 2006 found 26 books on the Middle East (11 of which focused on Israel-Palestine), but only 1 on Africa, the Commission for Africa. This does not necessarily mean that the bookstores must bear the brunt of the blame for not bringing in books on Africa (although they most likely perceive that such books will not sell), the number of books that are written in the first place are fewer.

The content of history books is also revealing. In Martin Gilbert’s History of the Twentieth Century, for example, the seventy-page chapter covering 1990 to 1999 contains 27 paragraphs on Israel-Palestine, 15 on Kosovo and 11 on Northern Ireland, but only 1 paragraph each on Zaire and the DRC. Angola is only mentioned because of a reference to the visit by Princess Diana of the UK to support de-mining.

The eight-nation conflict in the DRC does not feature at all in either the Cambridge History of Warfare or the Collins Atlas of Military History. Both focus on the former Yugoslavia, Chechnya, Afghanistan and Iraq in their recording of post-Cold War conflicts. In 1999 (July/August), Keesing’s Record of World Events devoted less than a quarter of a page to the details of a major peace agreement in Sierra Leone, and about one-third of a page to the peace agreement in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. In contrast, in the same year (June) it devoted 12 pages of explicit detail to the peace agreement over Kosovo.

This skewing of history is also manifested in the textbooks of history taught in schools. The syllabus for the study of Modern History in Australia includes World War I, national studies (USSR/Russia, Germany and USA), personalities (all US or European, except for Ho Chi Minh of North Vietnam), and international conflict and peace (Indo-China, the Cold War, Arab-Israel, and Europe from 1935 to 1945). Africa is similarly absent from the UK syllabus on history in secondary schools.