by Hari Prasad Shrestha 10 August 2023
With the United Nations, I was privileged to serve some African countries. Out of the assignments, my posting in South Sudan, a newly independent country in East Africa, was memorable, and it enabled me to get first-hand information about this country and some Sub-Saharan countries in Africa.
I also got opportunities to visit some East African countries to observe them closely. And my interactions with African friends and colleagues were also beneficial in acquiring information about those countries more authentically.
Among other issues, I experienced and observed with priority a series of conflicts and how political, military, and ethnic divisions destabilized and weakened some countries. Even after being independent long ago, most African leaders have the remnants of a colonial mindset and desire to be long-term in power by any means, a root of deterrents for stability and democracy in the continent.
After the Egyptian Revolution of 2011, a new presidential election was held in 2012 and Mohamed Morsi was elected as President; he was overthrown on 3 July 2013 by General Abdel Fattah el-Sisi. El-Sisi was then elected head of state in the 2014 presidential election.
In Uganda, Yoweri Museveni is still President since 1986 without elections and since 2006 through elections.
Following a military coup on 30 June 1989 in Sudan, Omar al-Bashir ousted the government of Prime Minister Sadiq al-Mahdi and ruled for 30 years. On April 11, 2019, al-Bashir was ousted by civilian unrest and a military coup—a transitional council formed as a joint military-civilian government body. However, there is currently a struggle between two factions of security forces to control the country.
In 2011, South Sudan split as a new nation from Sudan due to discrimination and protracted conflicts. General Salva Kirr has been in the position of president from the very beginning. Since 2013 this new nation has been scorching in internal strife and war between government and opposition ethnic forces, which killed thousands and displaced millions. Even after forming a transitional government composed of opposition leaders, the election seems uncertain and complex.
How internal conflict makes its people insecure, up to full-fledged war level inside a country after most of the systems and state organs fail to perform independently; among these countries, the South Sudan conflict was a life-threatening example of brutality in modern human history.
Such incidents and conflicts for accumulating power for unlimited periods in African countries pressured me to write a novel on the issue. During my stay in the conflict-prone zone of South Sudan under UNMISS, I wrote a book entitled” The Violent Nile: a Novella on East Africa,” published by Cinnamon Teal, Bangalore, India, and marketed by online stores, including Amazon worldwide. This novel portrays, in a fictional way, that victors became rulers through violent bush revolutions or elections for indefinite periods in African countries and how democracy has been crippling under their shadow.
Based on the numerous countries and how conflicts arise in a country, there could be multiple causes. However, some general causes are fast-paced unproductive economic changes, unsuitable societal modernization, political or economic discrimination patterns, and internal migration. The next cause is “Bad neighborhoods,” when radicalized regional politics lead to contagion, diffusion, and spillover effects. In addition, when governments make decisions to provoke conflicts in weak states and specific locations for political, economic, security, or ideological reasons,
At the same time, power struggles by leaders of different groups, ideological disputes over how a country should be organized, and criminal activity directed against a country’s sovereignty by organized crime leaders.
Moreover, weak or failing states often serve as an impetus for ethnic conflict. The lack of sufficient representation in public and political institutions and economic problems such as slowdowns, stagnation, deterioration, monopoly, and collapse of the economy are sources of state destabilization. They can lead to increased tensions and competition among ethnic groups.
From 1996 to 2006 Nepal experienced the Maoist revolution, a ten years of civil war. Numerous war crimes and crimes against humanity, including summary executions, massacres, purges, kidnappings, and mass rapes, characterized the civil war. It resulted in the deaths of over 17,000 people, including civilians, insurgents, and army and police personnel, and the internal displacement of hundreds of thousands of people throughout rural Nepal.
However, Maoist could not succeed in controlling the nation through the war, and with the agreements with the political parties, it entered into the political mainstream, and Nepal entered into a federal democratic republic country by abolishing the monarchy in 2008. Nepal’s peace process is a model of civil war termination through a political settlement. At the same time, the Sri Lanka government’s destruction of the LTTE left a trail of dead and displaced civilians.
South Asia has also been an epicenter of ethnic, political, religious, and social conflicts. Ethnic conflicts include the Chakma problem in Bangladesh, the widening ethnic issues in many states in India, the Hindu and Muhajir problem in Pakistan, the Tamil problem in Sri Lanka, and the conflict over Kashmir between India and Pakistan—the two most important states in South Asia.
Moreover, there have been many efforts in Nepal to rip the seed of ethnic conflict after the border blockade by India in 2015, supported or instigated by some regional leaders of Madhes. After the promulgation of the Constitution of Nepal on September 20, 2015, due to agitation in its Terai region, this model gained some shape and size in Nepal based on two ethnic clusters – Madhesi (Terai) and Pahade (Hill).
In the name of federalism, the demand for ‘Ek Madhes Ek Pradesh’ and provinces based on ethnicity was an imported agenda, supported by some hardliner regional leaders, which was a successful slogan for them to win the parliamentary election after the promulgation of a new constitution in 2015. However, realizing the I’ll intention toward national unity in the recent election, the voters rejected by not voting for such leaders sufficiently to win the election. And, currently, there is a new wave of nationalism and positiveness in Nepal’s young population, including new regional parties and newly elected leaders in Terai.
Thus, in poor countries, federalism is risky if not properly developed and implemented. It is adept at using the widespread slogans of collectivism and social democracy to gather support from poor and marginalized communities. In many countries of sub-Saharan and South Asia, where certain sects of leaders have enjoyed political power for decades, with the support of specific ethnic or cultural groups in a newfangled recipe of ‘divide and rule.’ Federalism in Nepal witnessed some volcanic shocks in 2015. However, it has not been brust to demarcate ethnic political divisions seriously in Nepal.
After the restoration of democracy in 1990 in Nepal, limited political actors have been in power as musical chairs. Since most organs of the state have been debilitated and only the Nepalese Army has remained an independent organ of the state to date. And some so-called elites and political personalities are trying to bring it into controversy, which is not acceptable from any angle of the state. Moreover, the renowned magazine ‘ The Economist,’ in its recent issue, has placed Nepal as a fragile or failing state as a severe indicator of Nepal. Before any unexpected incident occurs, Nepal must learn lessons in time from the conflicts of African nations and other South Asian countries as well.