Between Black and White: The dialectics of revolution and war in Africa after independence

  

It is said that a white man fell in love with a black girl and decided to marry her despite her and all family’s rejection of this relationship. not only this; But he also decided not to let her live without him. Either she will be led to him unwillingly, or she will die, and even then, no one would be allowed to inherit her except him.

 

This is not a myth, not a novel, or even one of these works that called art these days in which everything beautiful is distorted. But it is; A true story that we live and that an entire continent lives through. The black continent that was loved by an ugly occupier who wanted to possess it by force even if he had to kill it and inherit it. It's Africa; Our beautiful black continent.

 

Black and white

In the late 19th century, imperial powers combined to occupy most of the African continent, leaving only two independent nations: Liberia, a relatively independent nation settled by African Americans; and Orthodox Christian Ethiopia. Colonial rule by Europeans continued until after the end of World War II, when all occupied countries gradually gained formal independence.

 

Independence movements in Africa gained momentum in the wake of World War II, weakening the major European powers. In 1951, Libya - the former Italian colony - gained its independence. In 1956, Tunisia and Morocco gained their independence from France, and in the same year Sudan gained its independence from the United Kingdom. Ghana followed suit the following year, becoming the first sub-Saharan African colony to gain independence. While most of the rest of the continent gained independence through the next decade, mostly through relatively peaceful means, in some countries, notably Egypt and Algeria, it was achieved only after violent conflict. Although South Africa was one of the first African countries to gain independence, it remained under the rule of white settlers until 1994, in what was known as the Apartheid Agreement. Despite the departure of the colonizers from African lands; They never left her. They remained in control of it and enjoying its bounties.

 

The revolution meaning for the white man

The revolutionary state has its place in the study of international relations, in terms of its effects on external behavior and the fragmentation effects of revolutions on the international system. and then; The international system has always sought to develop its ability to tame revolutionary states after the revolutionary group took power, to eventually push them to act as a state in the international system. Although revolutions are not the most important cause of international conflict; However, the incidence of wars in countries that witnessed regime change through revolution is twice as high as in countries where this change occurs through the political process.

 

Why do wars happen?!

States are mature actors seeking to survive, because there is no international central, sovereign authority to protect them. International policies are based on a system of self-protection that considers security as its highest goal. States seek to increase their relative power without provoking others in a way that makes their position in the balance of power worse, whether this is done by increasing their power or weakening the power of others. War breaks out when countries exploit power imbalances to improve their international positions or because of wrong calculations that the balance of power is in her side. Thus, the revolution causes war in one of two ways: either the revolution produces new opportunities for countries to increase their capabilities, changing the state of the balance of power in a way that tempts them to exploit this opportunity to attack other countries, or if the revolution weakens the country in a way that invites others to attack it.

 

There is another explanation for countries entering war in response to threats. Power is an important component of the threat, but it is not the only component. There are two other factors that countries take into consideration when they look at their security and when they decide whether going to war will support their security or not, and they are: the offensive power of the state: The greater it is, the greater its threat to other countries, and the intentions of other countries: If one country is dominated by aggressive intentions, its potential victims will be more willing to reduce its power or even get rid of it completely.

 

As for revolutions, in addition to completely changing the balance of power and reducing the efficiency of states in accurately calculating these balances, they reduce the mutual capabilities of states to evaluate each other’s intentions with a great deal of confidence. Revolutions encourage states to believe that others are more aggressive and threatening than they actually are, so the option of using force to reduce or eliminate these threats becomes an attractive option. It also creates another type of offensive power based on mutual fear of ideological collapse. Where other countries fear the possibility of a threat to the framework and principles of post-revolution regimes to the legitimacy of other countries and their political systems. According to the theory of balance of threats, revolutions increase the probability of war by increasing their awareness of the ideological threat that each side poses to the other.

 

Spring became fall

In this context, we find that to understand the African Spring - if this word can be used to express the wave of revolutions that swept the continent during the second decade of the twenty-first century -; It must be placed in the appropriate international framework, in which the white man still holds the reins of his black lover, directing her movements with the tools that he has tightened his grip on since he claimed to have left her.

 

The colonial division of the continent came in contradiction with the social-ethnic reality of African societies, as this industrial division produced two situations, which later formed the basis for the ethnic dimension in African civil wars. On the one hand, the colonial map brought together within one state groups that had never lived together and had never interacted before. With each other in one frame. On the other hand, artificial political borders separated the ties of communication between single ethnic groups, which suddenly found themselves affiliated with different political entities. This is a common situation in many countries across the African continent. The occupation then played its malicious role in making problems between heterogeneous racial and ethnic entities. To ensure its control and hegemony, in order to consolidate the principle of “divide and rule,” which left a negative impact on the relations of African groups with each other, which in turn resulted in two other phenomena that the countries of the continent experienced during the stage of independence, namely: coups and civil wars.

 

While the countries of the continent witnessed a decline in the rate of coups in the 1980s and early 1990s, the rates of civil wars increased, reaching their extent during the mid-1990s, when the number of wars and civil conflicts on the continent reached about 15 wars. With the beginning of the new millennium and the twenty-first century, the intensity of civil wars subsided, but the phenomenon of military coups soon re-emerged in conjunction with the wave of revolutions that swept across the continent. Coups were the colonizer's new tool to deal with any attempt at democratic transformation away from it in the countries of the continent.

 

Finally; It can be said that since the black woman tried to break her chains to free herself from the clutches of the white man - the formal independence of African countries in the second half of the twentieth century -, true democracy is still absent and the black woman could not achieve it because the white man did not like those attempts and this liberal tendency that took control of the black woman. So, he tried with all determination to thwart these attempts by spreading poison between the brothers and igniting civil wars at times, and instigating his men to carry out military coups against the rising democracies at other times. Until he achieved what he wanted, and he succeeded in many cases in keeping Africa away from its main goals, and he was able to impose his guardianship. However, in light of the Africa' continuous attempts to escape from this control; we must be liberated one day and move towards our desired future, strong, proud and proud.

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