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Guns,
Guns, Everywhere
An International
Conference hosted in Accra, Ghana by the Centre for Constitutionalism
and Demilitarisation (CENCOD) calls for arms control within the
troubled West African sub-region, writes TONY IYARE
Twice, this
diminutive University of Abidjan, Cote d'Ivoire professor almost
attracted the ire of co-conferencee for his not too warm postulations
but he remained undaunted. Lancine Sylla, an Ivorien academic hardly
seem like one whose views would be blurred by the thinking of the
moment. Even when Dr Emmanuel Aning, his Ghanaian co-presenter abandoned
the high table protesting the lack of discipline on timing and the
refusal of the chairman, Odia Ofeimun to wield the big stick, Sylla
kept on and on with his largely unpopular treatise.
Many, including
this writer, who attended the recently concluded International Conference
on Demilitarisation in West Africa in Accra, Ghana did not understand
why the professor saw nothing wrong in Laurent Gbagbo, his country's
president pursuing a similar acidic political line that saw the
collapse of the regime of Henri Konan Bedie and that of military
strongman, Robert Guei. After snatching victory at the height of
a popular election, Gbagbo was generally expected to create conditions
that would ensure the participation of the diverse sections of the
Ivorien people and in particular that of Allasaine Quattara, the
main opposition figure in politics. But Quattara, a former prime
minister was still branded a foreigner because of his Burkinabe
ancestry and prevented from contesting in the local council election.
Aning, a director
of Governance, Peace and Security Unit at the Accra based Institute
of Economic Affairs could not conceal his bewilderment on the views
canvassed by Sylla. He says that "the people of Burkinabe extraction
(who have lived about eight generations in Cote d'Ivoire) at a point
in time are going to demand their rights, they contributed to building
the Ivorian state and I can assure you that the Chinese have put
7 to 10 million AK rifles in the market at virtually no price".
Aning contends that many African leaders like Gbagbo have merely
resorted to the ethnic and national card in order to obfuscate their
inability to respond to the demands and aspirations of their people.
It underscores the thought provoking earlier remarks by Mr Napoleon
Abdullahi that subversion of citizenship rights is at the heart
of some of the crises brewing in the West Africa sub-region. Abdullahi,
a United Nations expert who predicts that "citizenship crises may
lead to the creation of one or two rebel movements", says "it is
important for us to deal with citizenship". His fears are underscored
by the presence of between eight to ten million small arms in West
Africa thereby making the sub-region vulnerable to possible conflagration.
"If 27 guns were used to begin a rebellion against a British trained
army in Uganda, my heart bleeds for Ghana with 40,000 light arms",
he says. Abdullahi was just sounding prophetic.
Not long after,
the Dagbon crisis broke in Kumasi, Ghana leading to the killing
of scores of people in a skirmish in which guns were freely used.
Baba Omojola, a renowned Nigerian political economist and activist
had set the tone for discussion with his paper titled The State
of Demilitarisation in West Africa: An Appraisal. He argues that
an appraisal must "understand the phases of the modification and
the armour, technology, social import and the measure of militarisation
and its corollary demilitarisation". Omojola traces the advent of
militarisation thus: "Merchant adventurers, explorers and slave
traders raided the West African region, five centuries ago. It lost
millions of its youth in their prime to other continents, which
started to retard the region's growth". He posited that the century
of the nascence of the industrial revolution in the West found West
Africa armed to confront more sophisticated weapons, which disarmed
the region for colonialisation.
"Through two
world wars, a feeble armed attempt at liberation, self governing
statehood and its failure has resolved the concept of demilitarisation
as one beyond reduction in armaments", said Omojola who is chairman,
West African Economic Consultants and Social Research, Lagos. Continuing
his narration, he explains that soon after independence, most West
African countries suffered from coup d'etat with the newly strengthened
military taking over governments in Nigeria, Ghana, Dahomey, Togo,
Liberia, Sierra Leone etc. "Under the reign of the armies, the state
was further militarised. The military presence in all sections of
administration was forcefully and visibly asserted. Military academies
had their status raised. As the new ruling clique, the status of
military officers was enhanced. Even after return to civil rule
their leadership positions persisted in state parastatals, private
enterprise, commissions, boards and even in the university and diplomatic
services", he said. Aning who defines 'militarism' as the institutionalisation
of organised force (and military means ) as an instrument of politics
and tendency to resort to force to resolve political problems says
it would be a mistake to reduce militarism to the over political
activities of institutional armed forces or to the presence of regimes
dominated or actually constituted by the military.
His contention
in his paper titled Militarism and State Reconstruction in West
Africa is that "not all officers are of militaristic or authoritarian
bent". Expanding his thesis further, Aning says "even in Africa,
we have many examples of 'democratic' and 'legalistic' officers
(Traore, Bio etc) and of cases where the military decided to throw
in its lot, implicitly or overtly, with the democracy movement (Mali,
Cote d'Ivoire, Benin and South Africa)". On the other hand, he argues
that civilians have been not only deeply implicated in the militarisation
of national politics (instigating and financing coups, and so on)
but have been indispensable to the functioning of military regimes.
While drawing what he perceives as historical, empirical and logical
connection between old and new militarism, Aning explains that the
historical and empirical connection is that new militarism often
emerges in states already fractured by the old militarism. At the
end of the 1980s, the old militarism was redefined both downwards
and upwards. Downwards in terms of democratisation of control over
the instruments of violence and the emergence of armed non-state
actors, irregulars and warlords; and upwards in terms of the willingness
of states to engage each other in hostilities across borders, or
to foster covert armed interventions against neighbouring states.
In Aning's view
it is thus a much more complex and multi-faceted phenomenon that
traditional militarism, no longer occurs within or confined to states
or under the control of state actors. This Ghanaian academic faulted
the various peace agreements with war lords dotting the sub-region.
"Peace agreements are a beginning, but as an approach to state reconstruction
are fundamentally defective" His grouse is that the pact is usually
negotiated by combatants and states and guaranteed by regional and
international community, excluding civil society organisations and
women who are the primary victims of militarism and violence, who
have neither voice nor ability to influence many aspects of the
outcome. The peace agreement is typically followed by demobilisation,
disarmament and reintegration of the combatants, the integration
of rival combat formations into national army, adoption of a constitution,
and competitive elections.
Underlining
the discourses which held at the serene La Palm Hotel, located in
Labadi, Accra is that governments in West Africa needs to control
the flow of small arms largely to non state actors to douse the
raging inferno in the region. This story was first published in
the National Interest of March 18, 2001.
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