>
> Daily Mail and Guardian
> Johannesburg, South Africa
> March 31, 1999
>
> THE BIGGER WARS THE WORLD DOESN'T NOTICE
>
> As the world watches the war in Yugoslavia, a number of much bigger wars
> have gone largely unnoticed ... because they're in Africa.
>
> GUMISAI MUTUME reports
>
> As western bombs rained in on Yugoslavia, dozens of wars of a greater
> magnitude have been simmering for decades in Africa with little
> interest being shown in a unipolar world.
>
> Oppressed minorities, millions of refugees, and those enduring
> dictatorships, warlords and striking poverty in Sierra Leone, the
> Democratic Republic of Congo, Angola and other countries would be elated to
> receive some attention from the international community.
>
> Since the dawn of the 1990s, the absence of a second superpower has meant
> bloody conflicts and enormous human tragedies in Africa are being watched
> by global powers from a comfortable distance.
>
> The global media guns have long stopped pointing at Africa and have been
> fully focused on death in Kosovo, the unending shuttles by Western
> diplomats and the plight of Europe's largest refugee crisis in decades.
>
> ''This is a time when the international community appears intent in trying
> to wash its hands of large-scale multilateral involvement in Africa's
> seemingly unending conflicts,'' notes South African Institute of
> International Affairs director, Greg Mills.
>
> ''A policy trend quaintly termed the promotion of African solutions and
> capacity to solve African problems,'' he said.
>
> But the tragedy of Kosovo still looks pale compared to some African
> countries: the present resurgence of fighting in Angola, for example, has
> brought the total number of internally displaced people in the country to
> 1.5 million out of a population of 11.5 million.
>
> In Sierra Leone a 1991 civil war which resumed in 1997 has ravaged the
> infrastructure and living conditions have deteriorated dramatically. As a
> result only 10-15 per cent of Sierra Leone's 4.5 million people have access
> to basic health care.
>
> The war, along with an embargo imposed by Economic Community of West
> African States has brought Sierra Leone's economy to a standstill.
>
> During the May 1997 coup d'etat in Sierra Leone, all commercial banks were
> closed, agriculture, fishing and mining activities had already been
> disrupted since the start of rebel hostilities in 1991 and government
> revenues had fallen by 90 percent. All foreign aid (30 per cent of the
> budget) had been stopped.
>
> Some 30 wars have been fought in Africa since 1970, the majority of them
> intra-state. In 1996 alone 14 of Africa's 53 countries were in a state of
> war -- accounting for more than half of all war-related deaths worldwide
> and creating more than eight million refugees.
>
> The civil war in Mozambique saw the country's GDP decline by an average
> rate of 3.5 percent annually from 1981 to 1986. Some 50 percent of the
> country's roads are only usable by 4x4 vehicles.
>
> While one year of violence in Kosovo cost 2,000 people their lives, in 1994
> alone Angola lost 200,000.
>
> In Africa, as a rule, the infrastructure lost in civil conflicts remain
> there, unrepaired, as a statement of what happened and in some cases,
> entire countries virtually disappear from the map, as is the case of
> Somalia.
>
> Yugoslav president Slobodan Milosevic has been painted in the media as the
> new Hitler, but the developing world has been riddled with dictators such
> as Zaire's Mobutu Sese Seko, who were allies of the west, never held a real
> election, and were never seriously challenged, much less bombed.
>
> African regional analysts say a special attitude has developed towards the
> continent since the end of the cold war.
>
> The lack of strategic Western interests on the continent means Africa is
> expected to provide for itself. But this self-help attitude has occurred at
> a time of immense humanitarian crises in the region.
>
> ''The United States and its NATO allies are trying to present this latest
> action as being inspired by a concern for 'minority rights'. In fact, it
> has nothing to do with minority rights and everything to do with big power
> politics,'' noted the influential South African Communist Party (SACP).
>
> ''It stands in marked contrast to the indifference of NATO to other
> minority rights issues in the region -- the plight of the Kurds, for
> instance, subjected to decades of genocide by a NATO member, Turkey,'' the
> SACP said.
>
> This year, the United Nations pulled out of Angola leaving a vacuum in the
> negotiations between the warring parties -- government and the Union for
> the Total Liberation of Angola (UNITA), reinforcing the idea that the UN is
> becoming irrelevant.
>
> UN peacekeeping operations peaked in 1994 when 17 operations involving
> 85,000 members with a budget of 3.4 billion dollars. That year, 70 percent
> of the deployment was in Africa.
>
> Currently, there are 15 UN operations involving 24,000 personnel on a
> budget of one billion.
>
> ''The attack on Belgrade further undermines the authority of the UN
> Security Council,'' says Jackie Cilliers of the non- governmental Institute
> of Security Studies in Johannesburg.
>
> ''And it furthers the need for the creation of rules-based international
> system where clear-cut criteria are applied on all nations, not simply the
> interpretation of the Security Council,'' he said.
>
> -- IPS/Misa, March 31, 1999.
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