From Insurgency to Governance and Peacebuilding: Africa's Future

In cognizance to some of the pertinent literature, after the 1960s the political trends in contemporary Africa have been very precarious. For instance, the end of colonial rule only brought an end to one form of conflict (i.e. imperialist wars), but others remain. Through what he referred to as the "new paradigm of war," Smith (2006) correctly concludes that armed conflicts, irrespective of the typology, are no longer a single massive event of military decision that delivers a conclusive political result, rather ... conflicts tend to be timeless, since we are seeking a condition, which then must be maintained until an agreement on a definitive outcome, which may take years or decades [to materialise]. (Smith 2006: 17) For Berdal and Malone (2000: 2), what makes the contemporary conflicts in Africa hard to resolve-amid what makes most of them also "senseless conflicts"-is the inability of combatants to prioritize the defeat of the enemy over the competing individual interests of some participants in the conflict (and the irrational attempts to institutionalize violence as a means of achieving their aims).