WARS BETWEEN INDEPENDENT AFRICAN STATES

The failure of pan-Africanism has had serious military implications for Africa. The problems of a decentralized state system without an overarching government, of which modern Europe has had so plentiful an experience since the sixteenth century - namely, interstate suspicion, conflict, war, and hence the necessity for military establishments have as a result begun to appear unavoidable in the similar state system of Africa.

It should hardly be surprising, therefore, that Kenya and Somalia should have been involved in a border conflict (1960-7), Uganda and Zaire in a shooting fray towards the end of the Congolese rebellion of 1964-5, Ethiopia and Somalia in a full-scale war in 1977-8, Uganda and Tanzania in the same in 1978-9 or Morocco and Mauritania in a fierce struggle to abort the creation of the Sahrawi Republic in the Western Sahara.

In the absence of overall moderation or of a strong and reliable sense of brotherhood (both of which pan-Africanism had once promised) African states have to fend for themselves individually for their security and defence in the event of disagreement among themselves.

The protracted problem of Somali irredentism raised its head in its most dangerous form to date in the Somali invasion of Ethiopia in 1977. The Ogaden War between Ethiopia and Somalia in 1977 and 1978 was a disaster for pan-Africanism and a serious reflection on the failure of the OAU to reduce the local nationalisms that afflict the relations between Africa's independent states.