July 2001 Africa News Headlines

Monday, July 9, 2001 - Web posted at 4:25:37 PM GMT

Major African troublespots

The Organisation of African Unity on Monday opened its 37th and final annual summit in Lusaka against a continuing backdrop of strife which plagues the continent.

Of the 53 countries in the OAU, at least 20 are currently beset by armed conflicts of one form or another. Here is a digest of the main troublespots:

ALGERIA - Muslim fundamentalists have waged a campaign of terror since elections were cancelled in 1992. More than 100,000 people, mainly civilians, have died since the troubles began, many of them in massacres blamed by security services on Islamic extremists. Ethnic Berber resentment of the Arabic-language government has this year separately escalated into bloody unrest.

ANGOLA - Civil war between the Angolan government and rebels of the National Union for the Total Independence of Angola has raged almost non-stop since 1975. The death toll is estimated at well over a million, while hundreds of thousands are displaced or starving.

BURUNDI - Burundi is in the grip of a bitter civil war which has left more than 200,000 dead since 1993 as the Tutsi-run government and army crack down on Hutu rebels.

CAMEROON - NIGERIA - Border conflict over the Bakassi peninsula.

CHAD - Rebel forces have battled government troops in the northern Tibesti region since October 1998.

DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC OF CONGO - The biggest and most complex African war began with a rebel insurgency against the Kinshasa regime in August 1998. The conflict involves the armies of Angola, Zimbabwe and Namibia backing government forces, while rebel factions are supported by Rwanda and Uganda. The assassination of president Laurent Kabila and the investiture of his son, Joseph, as his successor in January this year has revived prospects for peace. The issue will be high on the Lusaka agenda.

ERITREA - ETHIOPIA - A peace agreement between the two countries was signed in December, bringing an end to a two-year war between them, which began over a border dispute and has left tens of thousands dead and more than a million homeless. Some 4,000 UN peace-keeping troops patrol the border.

GUINEA - Regular rebel insurgency across borders with Sierra Leone and Liberia since la]xst September, with hundreds dead and a mass migration of people.

IVORY COAST - In the grip of an unprecedented political and economic crisis since the coup d'etat in December 1999, the first in the country's history, followed by riots and bloody confrontations in October and December last year.

LIBERIA - President Charles Taylor's regime faces what it calls armed "dissidents" in the north and is at odds with its neighbours in Guinea and Sierra Leone, which accuse it of destabilisation. The UN Security Council this year slapped stringent sanctions on Liberia, blaming Taylor for arms for diamonds deals with Sierra Leone's rebels.

NIGERIA - The introduction of the Islamic sharia code in some states in north of the country from 1999 has proved a flashpoint for violence, leaving more than 2,000 people dead. Africa's most populous nation is prey to bloody clashes of a religious, communal or ethnic nature.

RWANDA - UGANDA -Both back rebel movements in the DRC, while Rwanda is still recovering from the genocide of a civil war between Hutu and Tutsi factions which left between 500,000 and 800,000 dead in 1994. Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni, meanwhile, is fighting rebel factions in the north and west of the country. Troops of the two east African countries clashed last year at Kisangani, inside the DRC.

SENEGAL -Separatists in the southern region of Casamance have been conducting an open rebellion for 18 years. Two peace pacts were signed with Dakar in May, but splits in rebel ranks and ambushes on civilians have claimed dozens of lives this year.

SIERRA LEONE -The country was devastated by civil war from 1991, with massacres and other atrocities blamed mainly on the Revolutionary United Front (RUF). Sierra Leone now hosts the biggest UN peacekeeping operation in the world, but the RUF has yet to be dislodged from diamond-rich land it holds in the east.

SOMALIA -Rival militias have been in conflict since 1991, carved up among rival clan warlords. Last year, interim institutions were set up by Somali politicians and civic leaders, but their transitional government formed in August is not recognised by most warlords, who consider it yet another faction and are trying up a rival administration.

SUDAN - The country has been in the grip of a civil war since 1983 pitting the Sudan People's Liberation Army (SPLA) in the south, mostly Christian and animist, against the Arab Muslim north. War and famine have claimed more than a million lives.

WESTERN SAHARA - Morocco and the Polisario Front dispute sovereignty of the former Spanish colony and have been at war since 1975, though a ceasefire has been in force since 1991. The UN has this year abandoned a plan for a self-determination referendum in the Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic created by Polisario (and a member of the OAU, if unrecognised by the United Nations).

Nampa-Sapa-AFP

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