In terms of motive forces, West Africa’s new wars are led by civilians, mainly elements of the middle classes who have been marginalized by their own class forces in the running of the state and the looting of the national coffers. Quite paradoxically, often, the political interests of these elements coincide with those of the broad masses of the people who are pushed to the margins of society in terms of socio-political economics. In this vein, the middle class elements that break ranks with their colleagues cleverly exploit the grievances of the broad masses in order to advance their own class interests. Thus, the present wars in West Africa cannot be equated with the national liberation revolutions of the past; the truth is that the architects of these wars have two objectives; on the one hand, these warlords strive for the division of the spoils, while on the other hand, they seek to perpetuate the dominance of the backward sections of the West African petty bourgeoisie over the vast majority of the people in a crude way. In fighting their wars, these unscrupulous characters employ the services of the disaffected youth from the rural and urban areas. Consequently, over the past 14 years, there are young people who have grown up knowing nothing other than AK-47s, RPGs and other weapons. Reintegrating these victims of circumstances into the wider society after the end of these conflicts is one of the major challenges facing the region. The region has also produced its own ‘soldiers of fortune’ that fight in any country for the highest bidder.

On the ideological level, these warlords are not different from the regimes they oppose and fight against. These characters are apostles of the ‘free market system’ who lack both capital and entrepreneurial skills. This class of people only lives off the 10% kickbacks or commissions they get from foreign business people. The free market and privatisation systems as they exist today do not benefit the local people; instead, it is the foreign business people and their local allies and lackeys who stand to gain. With the state not playing its traditional role in the improvement of the lives of the vast majority of its citizens, it becomes vulnerable and can be challenged and attacked by any armed gang. The West African middle class uses the state as a means of personal enrichment. This explains why the control of the state has produced wars in the region; the state has become a source of enrichment, not an instrument for the improvement of the socio-economic development of West African states and the people of the sub-region. In West Africa, sovereignty and statehood do not carry with them any sense of obligation and responsibility to the people.

When the wars end, the interests of the masses receive less attention while the middle class elements that resorted to violence as an instrument of politics, and career opportunists in a strategy for power and wealth, struggle over lucrative jobs. In a larger sense, the objective of these new rulers is not ever about providing basic services and making ordinary people secure in their own countries. Worse still, the peace deals that are brokered by the international community of states serve to compensate the architects of carnage, barbarism, savagery and the destruction of lives and property. These peace deal usually do not provide the basis for secure peace and democracy.

When post-conflict elections are held, the old elements of the ruling elites recycle and re-package themselves as saviors of the people and acquire power through dubious promises; they exploit the unfortunate situations of poverty, ignorance and illiteracy to demagogically project themselves as born again democrats and development-oriented politicians. This has certainly been the case in Liberia, Sierra Leone, the Ivory Coast and elsewhere. In the specific Liberian case, all the elements of the status quo ante have repackaged and reinvented themselves as ‘born again’ democrats, conning ordinary people to believe that they have answers to their problems. This is certainly a recipe for disaster and renewed fighting - if not in the short term, certainly in the long term.

Unfortunately, the very factors which have caused or triggered wars in Liberia, Sierra Leone and the Ivory Coast, are far from being fully and comprehensively addressed in the other countries of the region. On the contrary, these factors are exacerbated each and every day. Currently, there is a huge army of unemployed people across the region and a high rate of school dropouts, while health care and education rapidly decline. There are also the negative effects of debt servicing, which continue to take away huge slices of the national incomes.

Undemocratic rule has become the norm and not the exception. While there have been elections across the region contested by many parties, the results of these elections do not provide the enabling environment that will make democratic politics stable and sustainable. Thus, the key question is: of what use is a democracy that does not provide social security for its people? The answer to this question is relevant to the so-called relative peace and security enjoyed by other countries in the region. Relative peace and security do not only reference the absence of war. It is a misleading to view peace and security as the absence of war when throughout West Africa, millions of people are experiencing structural violence because of poverty, misery, unemployment and other related problems.

The fact that the Ivory Coast is still engulfed in a ‘no peace, no war’ situation gives cause for alarm. Even as Liberia and the Ivory Coast have held elections, their next door neighbor, Guinea could easily follow suit. It is common knowledge that for sometime now, Guinea has been the target of armed incursions led by forces opposed to the government of Lassana Conteh. In fact, during the early part of this year, he narrowly escaped an assassination attempt. If Guinea does not escape the trap that befell Liberia, Sierra Leone and the Ivory Coast, then once again the Mano River sub-region could face a serious security problem.

Certainly, any war in Guinea could exacerbate the already bad situation in the sub-region. The experiences of the past decade demand a regional approach to post-conflict reconstruction in countries coming out of war situations. It also signifies that in West Africa, there is a need to take democratic politics more seriously. However, as stated earlier, the current political culture and rules of engagement favour the existing status quo, which is only interested in perpetuating itself in power. This status quo is neither interested in emancipatory politics, nor providing for the broader security needs of the vast majority of the people. Inevitably, the pursuit of such narrow interests only serves to create the enabling environment for war.

Alternative Voices for Emancipatory Politics in West Africa

Given the current situation in West Africa, are there alternative or counter-hegemonic voices for emancipatory politics? Any answer to this will need to be contextualized within the realities of contemporary West African politics; and the answer cannot be a straightforward yes or no. But what is the actual state of affairs? Maybe one should start from the premise that the torchbearers of emancipatory politics in the sub-region have been pushed to the margins of politics; and there are global and local factors that have conspired to undermine the residual prestige of those who believe in emancipatory politics.

Significantly, under the dictates of the IMF and World Bank, the withdrawal of social spending by the state has forced many erstwhile radical intellectuals to the margins of society. Consequently, either they flee abroad and enslave themselves in the suburbs of Europe and America, or they remain in the sub-region running NGOs or something else to both serve the people and earn a living. The universities, which previously served as the engine room for generating alternative perspectives for social development, have now virtually been turned into centres of religious revivalism.

Secondly, as indicated earlier, a large section of those who previously propounded radical views and perspectives on development have now found sanctuary in the NGO sector. What is even worrying in the case of West Africa is that a large section of what is now referred to as ‘civil society’ is corrupt, inept, and can bring about no meaningful social transformation or changes in the region. In this light, one would not be wrong to talk more about ‘uncivil’ society instead ‘civil’ society. Often, it is the NGO sector that is equated with civil society. Without going into debate about the validity of this erroneous conceptualization, one thing that is clear is that the NGO sector has produced many kleptocrats, dictators and authoritarian elements. In the process, many of these people have become apolitical and do not serve any useful purpose for the promotion of radical social changes.

Evidently, the agendas of the NGO sector is highly donor driven and in this case does not reflect the needs and aspirations of the people on the ground. Similar to the armed gangs destroying West Africa, a large section of the NGO sector is spending resources in the name of peace building, human rights and good governance without any tangible results. The NGO culture has therefore successfully robbed civil society of its best elements and turned them into apologists and disciples of the dominant neo-liberal agenda. In fact, some erstwhile radicals have now come to the erroneous position that there is no alternative to the dominant development agenda, and so there is no need to struggle anymore. What utter nonsense! In the first place, many of these individuals were not revolutionaries; these were fifth columns within the ranks of progressive forces. Today, their actions have only helped to undermine the prestige of progressive ideas; and more importantly, the actions of these elements have only helped to demobilise young people who looked up to them as torch-bearers of radical social transformations. These days, idealism and principles can be easily compromised for career opportunism: it is just about jobs in government and no longer the quest for radical social transformation.

Having said the above, the point should quickly be made that not all elements of the NGO sectors that are corrupt and inept, as seems to be suggested above. There are good NGOs, which are advocating for policy changes that can inevitably lead to stability and peace in the region. The problem is that they are few, and most often their pleas fall on deaf ears. The fact that even these ‘good’ ones depend on donor assistance weaken their ability to implement projects that will have a long-term impact on the development of the region.

Finally, the disintegration of the Soviet Union and the collapse of the Berlin Wall have also had adverse effects on radical perspectives on development, and ultimately, on social movements in the sub-region. In a significant way, this has also undermined the residual prestige of radical alternative thinking. The point is that unlike Western Europe and perhaps elsewhere, where radical social movements were significantly independent of the ex-USSR ideologically, a lot of the social movements in the sub-region did not only get inspiration from the ex-USSR and other socialist states in their national struggles, but they were also overly ideologically dependent on these states. Thus, since the events of 1989 in Eastern and Central Europe, a lot of these movements have become virtual ideological orphans. Worse still, they have failed to realise that while these states were inspirational, the struggles of these social movements were dictated by certain national realities, which in today’s terms, have become worse than at the time they were struggling for social changes. For example, most West African states are worse off now than they were at independence. There is economic decline, while poverty, illiteracy, ignorance, and diseases are on the increase. This does not suggest that the past was good for everyone. On the contrary, the gap between the relatively rich people and the poor was wide; and the net result of all of this was bound to be the protracted conflicts we now have in our region.

At this juncture, it is expedient to pose the profound question: how can we mitigate these problems without struggling against the forces that perpetuate them? For many people, the posing of this question is mere idealism; in their view, this question does not reflect contemporary global realities. But whose reality is it anyway? Despite the above scenario and the absence of any visible counter-hegemonic forces in the sub-region, the question of reform agendas has been raised in various national debates through individual efforts, toward substantive changes in individual West African states.

Therefore, to conclude, while the hard realities in our region illustrate that conflict, poverty (or deliberate impoverishment?) and other related problems are the order of the day in West Africa, these problems are not insurmountable. However, in order to successfully address these problems, the torchbearers of emancipatory politics will need to get out of their political closets and champion agendas that will bring about people-centred changes. To achieve this objective requires a thorough realignment of forces that will seek to weed out the fifth column from the ranks of the progressive and democratic forces. There is a need to organise around the belief of ‘better fewer but better’. In the past, we were so overtaken by populism that the ranks of the progressive forces were swelled by elements who did not really share the beliefs we stood for. In the process, we only bred our own grave-diggers. — October 2005