Notes

Introduction

1 Frontline States is being used as a general shorthand for those African countries engaged in the loose alliance that formed during liberation struggles at any point during those struggles, including Zambia, Tanzania, Angola, Mozambique, and Botswana; however, it is understood that the formal term for the Frontline States did not emerge until later. See Gilbert M. Khadiagala, Allies in Adversity: The Frontline States in Southern African Security, 1975–1993 (Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 2007), 10.

2 Cuito Cuanavale was a battle fought from mid-1987 to early 1988 in the so-called South African Border War between the South African Defence Force, with their UNITA Allies, and the Cuban/Angolan armed forces. It was the largest conventional battle on African soil since the Second World War, and although a tactical draw, it was strategically a crushing blow for the South Africans and likely led directly to the end of the war. See Timothy J. Stapleton, A Military History of South Africa: From the Dutch-Khoi Wars to the End of Apartheid (Santa Barbara, CA: Praeger, 2010), 181–86.

3 The typology that follows is largely taken from Christopher Clapham’s introduction in his excellent work African Guerrillas. See Clapham, “Introduction: Analysing African Insurgencies,” in African Guerrillas, ed. Christopher S. Clapham (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1998), 6–7.

4 Of course, it is inappropriate to view these particular struggles in a vacuum. While the individual struggles of liberation fronts occurred, they did so within the context of much larger struggles, which led these individual struggles to flow into one another. At a base level, these fronts aided and helped one another across their guerrilla struggles, with groups such as the Movimento Popular de Libertação de Angola (MPLA) aiding the South West Africa People’s Organization (SWAPO) with their fight in what would eventually be Namibia. In addition, the larger conflicts of the Frontline States against the white settler regimes cannot be disentangled from these guerrilla liberation fronts. Not only did Frontline States such as Tanzania offer material aid and support to these liberation movements, but the larger conventional struggles such as the Border War and the Rhodesian incursions into Mozambique were undertaken specifically to try and neutralize those governments that were supporting the continued guerrilla liberation struggles.

5 Much as with the liberation struggles listed above, while the combatants within RENAMO and UNITA might have viewed their struggles as independent reform insurgencies, these did not exist independently from the other continental conflicts. Both RENAMO and UNITA were armed and supported by the South African government as part of their larger conventional and irregular conflicts against the Frontline States and were an attempt to undermine the new governments of Angola and Mozambique, both of which were strategically threatening to the South Africans. In fact, UNITA forces fought side by side with conventional South African forces throughout the Border War, and the offensive that culminated in the aforementioned Battle of Cuito Cuanavale was largely intended to help preserve UNITA as a fighting force against the advancing Cuban and Angolan forces. The sustained conflicts that both the Angolan and Mozambican governments undertook against these insurgencies can thus be viewed both as a struggle against a reform insurgency and as part and parcel of a larger conventional war for African liberation.

6 Clapham also identifies a category called “Warlord Insurgencies” in his introduction to African Guerrillas, a category this volume will not delve into due to its more recent and specialized existence.

7 This will be covered more extensively in chapter 5.

8 Donald Horowitz, “Patterns of Ethnic Separatism,” Comparative Studies in Society and History 23, no. 2 (1981): 170.

9 Henry Hale, “The Parade of Sovereignties: Testing Theories of Secession in the Soviet Setting,” British Journal of Political Science 30, no. 1 (2000): 33–36.

10 Pierre Englebert and Rebecca Hummel, “Let’s Stick Together: Understanding Africa’s Secessionist Deficit,” African Affairs 104, no. 416 (2005):400.

11 For more on the “Weak State” thesis, see Joel Migdal, Strong Societies and Weak States: State-Society Relations and State Capabilities in the Third World (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1988).

12 See OAU Charter, article III.

Part I

1 The lone country left was Poland, which was at the meetings drafting the agreement but was absent at the signing of the charter.

2 This was the second purpose enunciated in chapter I, article 1 of the UN charter.

3 UN charter, chapter 12, article 76, section (b).

4 Henry S. Wilson, African Decolonization (London: Hodder Education, 1994), 82–83. This extremely relevant section refers to the manoeuvring of the British during the creation of the UN and the initial struggle of the USSR and China to treat trustee territories and those other “non self-governing territories” as the same in the postwar world.

5 UN charter, chapter XI, article 73, section (b).

6 Which of course were led toward independence since they fell under the jurisdiction of chapter XII as opposed to chapter XI due to their status as former Axis colonies, although Italian Somaliland was given back to Italian administration in 1950 until its joining with British Somaliland in independence in 1960. The story of Eritrea will be covered in its case study in chapter 3 of this volume.

7 Despite the fact that the Sudan was technically a sub-Saharan African nation, its independence was not greeted with any continental cheer for a variety of reasons. The first was the limited greater nationalism the Sudan had displayed—it had no Nkrumah to make its independence a fully African matter. The second was the fact that it was not entirely a British colony in international law, being instead under the joint control of Britain and Egypt, which led to revolutionary Egypt being instead the greater partner in securing the Sudan’s independence.

8 Nkrumah served as prime minister for the Gold Coast Colony from 1952 to 1957, helping press forward the independence claims of the colony while also helping form an effective plan for a centralized nation under his political party’s control.

9 Prior to this the French had been working within a relationship with their colonies called the French Union, which had been enshrined in the Constitution of the Fourth Republic in 1946. However, following the war in Algeria and the attempted coups in France, the Fifth Republic tried to form a looser but still French-led community called the Communauté française or French Community. This construct would have offered France’s African colonies a degree of self-rule while keeping them within the French military and economic orbit. Guinea, under its nationalist leader Sékou Touré, refused to accept the 1958 constitution and French Community and thus transitioned to independence.

10 The Salazar government and its successor under Marcelo Caetano firmly believed that the Estado Novo had managed to bring forth the compelling idea of lusotropicalism, the idea that thanks to colonial assimilation there was one indivisible nation that stretched between Europe and Africa. This argument, coupled with their strategic island holdings, which were critical for NATO, would hold Portugal’s empire in Africa in place until the Carnation Revolution in 1974.

11 These borders would finally become complete and legitimate following the creation and agreement of the states within the Organization of African Unity.

12 David A. Ijalaye, “Was ‘Biafra’ at Any Time a State in International Law?” American Journal of International Law 65, no. 3 (1971): 551.

13 Ijalaye makes this exact argument in terms of Biafra: Ijalaye, “Was ‘Biafra’ at Any Time a State in International Law?” 559.

14 Ricardo René Laremont, “Borders, States, and Nationalism,” in Borders, Nationalism, and the African State, ed. Ricardo René Laremont (Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner, 2005), 5.

15 Katanga in terms of the Comité spéciale du Katanga and Biafra in terms of its previous status as the state of Eastern Nigeria.

16 For more on the waning and waxing legitimacy of ethnic states, the reader is directed to Philip L. White, “Globalization and the Mythology of the ‘Nation State,’” in Global History: Interactions Between the Universal and the Local, ed. A. G. Hopkins (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006), 257–84. White maintains that following the destructive forces unleashed by nationalism in the Second World War, the idea of the ethnic state fell into disrepute and therefore lost what legitimacy it had gained since the burst of nationalist revolutions in 1848. Ethnic states would not be acceptable in the world community until the fall of the Soviet Union, when the United States began encouraging the ethnic nationalisms of the former Soviet peoples.

17 The South Sudan’s complex situation does not fit easily into any category of separatism or secession or even reform insurgency, but it still serves as a useful example in this sense in that its separate administrative boundaries have indeed been used as the basis for its legitimacy as its own autonomous state.

18 A. B. Assensoh, African Political Leadership: Jomo Kenyatta, Kwame Nkrumah, and Julius K. Nyerere (Malabar, FL: Krieger, 1998), 79.

19 Assensoh, African Political Leadership, 80.

20 This was the party he formed after splitting from the older and more established United Gold Coast Convention (UGCC) in 1949.

21 Interestingly enough, Nkrumah would win this election to lead the first indigenous government of the Gold Coast while in jail.

22 Assensoh, African Political Leadership, 46.

23 Initially Kenyatta organized for the Kenyan African Union (KAU) and helped spread its influence across Kenya after his ascension to its presidency in 1947. Assensoh, African Political Leadership, 56.

24 Assensoh, African Political Leadership, 58.

25 The Kenyan African National Union (KANU) was one of two parties formed during Kenyatta’s imprisonment, the other being the Kenyan African Democratic Union (KADU).

26 Assensoh, African Political Leadership, 126. Nyerere used this degree to earn a teaching position at St. Francis’ School at Pugu, where he earned his nickname of Mwalimu (Kiswahili for teacher).

27 For example, Moise Tshombe was an elected member of the CONAKAT party in the Congo and Ojukwu was the military governor of the Eastern region before its secession from Nigeria.

28 Such figures as Moïse Tshombe and Godefroid Munongo are synonymous with the Katanga Crisis, and it is impossible to separate the figure of Ojukwu from Biafra.

29 For an excellent discussion of the colonial military and police in East and West Africa up to the transition to independence, Anthony Clayton and David Killingray, Khaki and Blue: Military and Police in British Africa (Athens: Ohio University Center for International Studies, 1989), offers a still unmatched overview of their structures and usage.

30 For more on the Gold Coast Regiment and the RWAFF, see A. Haywood and F. A. S. Clarke, The History of the Royal West African Frontier Force (Aldershot, UK: Gale & Polden, 1964).

31 The standard survey for the KAR is Lt. Col. H. Moyse-Bartlett, The King’s African Rifles: A Study in the Military History of East and Central Africa, 1890–1945 (Uckfield, UK: Naval & Military Press, 2016). However, this only covers to 1945, and it is best supplemented by the excellent Timothy Parsons, The African Rank and File: Social Implications of Colonial Service in the King’s African Rifles (Oxford: James Currey, 1999).

32 Gerry S. Thomas, Mercenary Troops in Modern Africa (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1985); and Antony Mockler, The Mercenaries (Sugarland, TX: Free Companion Press, 1981).

33 Perhaps the most remarkable aspect of the Biafran War was the almost total mobilization of available adult and adolescent male manpower.

34 Again, see Moyse-Bartlett, The King’s African Rifles, and Clayton and Killingray, Khaki and Blue, for general readings on the tactics, strategy, and construction of the inherited militaries.

35 This of course also tied into the economics of the postcolonial African nations. With little industrial base, it was easier and cheaper to train and equip infantry than it was to import tanks, armoured cars, aircraft, and the expertise to use them. This is not to say that the African armies did not do so, but that the work to make the militaries complete systems did not begin until independence and was generally incomplete at the time of the Civil Secessions.

36 A perfect example is the suppression of the Baluba in Katanga during the period of secession. Jules Gérard-Libois, Katanga Secession, trans. Rebecca Young (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1966), 154.

37 This is not to say that guerrilla operations did not occur, but they were the exception and not the rule in these secessions and were generally only used in the pursuit of secondary objectives.

38 Although, as will be seen, part of this was due to support from its former colonial power and part was due to the historical legacy of the administration of the region.

39 While UN Security Council Resolution 169 declared the secession illegal, it was the final extension of several other resolutions, including 161 and 143, all of which will be covered in chapter 1.

40 Again, see chapter 1 for an expansion of this point.

Chapter 1

1 White defines a “civil nation” as one where the sovereign government is obliged to oversee a heterogeneous population with little to no discrimination based upon ethnicity. This is taken from Philip L. White, “Globalization and the Mythology of the ‘Nation State,’” in Global History: Interactions Between the Universal and the Local, ed. A. G. Hopkins (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006), 260.

2 Catherine Hoskyns, The Congo Since Independence, January 1960–December 1961 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1965).

3 Jules Gérard-Libois, Katanga Secession, trans. Rebecca Young (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1966), 9.

4 Conor Cruise O’Brien, To Katanga and Back: A UN Case History (New York: Faber & Faber, 2015), 84; and Gérard-Libois, Katanga Secession, 11–17.

5 Gérard-Libois, Katanga Secession, 296.

6 Patrice Lumumba, Lumumba Speaks (Boston: Little, Brown, 1972), 222.

7 Gérard-Libois, Katanga Secession, 85.

8 Hoskyns, The Congo Since Independence, 87; and Ernest Lefever and Wynfred Joshua, United Nations Peacekeeping in the Congo, 1960–1964, vol. 2: Full Text (Washington, DC: Brookings Institution, 1966), 14.

9 When confronted following Independence, Janssens had written “Before Independence=After Independence” on a blackboard while making a speech to the soldiers of the Force Publique. It is often assumed that Janssens was attempting to be deliberately provocative in an attempt to undermine Congolese independence, but there is little direct evidence of this hypothesis.

10 Hoskyns, The Congo Since Independence, 98.

11 Hoskyns, The Congo Since Independence, 329.

12 Stephen R. Weissman, American Foreign Policy in the Congo 1960–1964 (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1974), 59.

13 Georges Abi-Saab, The United Nations Operation in the Congo, 1960–1964 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1978), 14.

14 Abi-Saab, The United Nations Operation in the Congo, 36.

15 For a revealing description of Mobutu’s actions and its results, see Larry Devlin, Chief of Station, Congo: Fighting the Cold War in a Hot Zone (New York: PublicAffairs, 2008).

16 In particular, the Eisenhower administration had been viewing him as a Communist agent or proxy since his inauguration and were already working on numerous ways to remove him from power, preferably permanently. See Madeleine G. Kalb, The Congo Cables: The Cold War in Africa from Eisenhower to Kennedy (New York: Macmillan, 1982), 128.

17 Hoskyns offers an excellent discussion about this self-declared government in The Congo Since Independence, 289–92.

18 This was United Nations Security Council Resolution 161, which urged the UN to immediately take measures to prevent the occurrence of civil war in the Congo, allowing even the use of force. The council also demanded the withdrawal of all Belgian and other foreign military personnel not serving with the UN and that all member states refrain from aiding such personages to enter the Congo. The UN also decided that it would launch an investigation into the death of Patrice Lumumba and his colleagues, promising punishment to the perpetrators.

19 Gérard-Libois, Katanga Secession, 148–51.

20 The experiences of the Indian contingent during this period are discussed within B. Chakravorty, The Congo Operation, 1960–63, ed. S. N. Prasad (New Delhi: Historical Section, Ministry of Defence, Government of India, 1976), starting at p. 50.

21 O’Brien, To Katanga and Back, 132.

22 O’Brien, To Katanga and Back, 216–18.

23 Excellent discussions of Operation Morthor can be read in both O’Brien, To Katanga and Back, 252–88, and Chakravorty, The Congo Operation, 1960–1963, 70–88.

24 This episode is recounted thoroughly in Rose Doyle and Leo Quinlan, Heroes of Jadotville: The Soldiers’ Story (Dublin: New Island, 2016).

25 There are numerous theories on how this crash actually occurred, from instrument failure to the pilot losing his way in a region that had little air traffic infrastructure. However, there is also evidence that points to foul play, with members of the intelligence services of the United States, Great Britain, South Africa, and France all implicated to various degrees in what is generally held to be an aerial attack that downed Hjammarskjöld’s plane. For one of the more popular theories pointing to foul play, see Susan Williams, Who Killed Hjammarskjöld?: The UN, the Cold War, and White Supremacy in Africa (New York: Oxford University Press, 2014).

26 UN Security Council Resolution 169, which empowered the UN forces to use even greater force to bring the foreign personnel of Katanga to heel and formally declared the secession illegal.

27 Trevor Findlay, The Blue Helmets’ First War? Use of Force by the UN in the Congo, 1960–64 (Cornwallis Park, NS: Canadian Peacekeeping Press, 1999), 117.

28 Walter Dorn, “The UN’s First ‘Air Force’: Peacekeepers in Combat, Congo 1960–64,” Journal of Military History 77, no. 4 (2013): 1406–7.

29 Provisions included the adoption of a federal constitution, the splitting of mining royalties between Katanga and the Congolese central government, unification of currency, absorption of the gendarmerie into the ANC, restructuring of the Katangan government to allow representative government, and an amnesty for political prisoners. This information is from Findlay, The Blue Helmets’ First War? 127.

30 These were largely sourced from South Africa, whose government was sympathetic to the Katangan secession. See Dorn, “The UN’s First ‘Air Force,’” 1409–10.

31 Gérard-Libois, Katanga Secession, 296.

32 Gérard-Libois, Katanga Secession, 316

33 For a more complete portrait of Tshombe, see Ian Colvin, The Rise and Fall of Moïse Tshombe: A Biography (London: Leslie Frewin, 1968).

34 Gérard-Libois, Katanga Secession, 293.

35 Gérard-Libois, Katanga Secession., 294.

36 Gérard-Libois, Katanga Secession, 296.

37 Gérard-Libois, Katanga Secession, 310.

38 Christopher Othen, Katanga 1960–63: Mercenaries, Spies and the African Nation that Waged War on the World (Stroud, UK: The History Press, 2018), 105.

39 Kennes and Larmer estimate about 13,000 gendarmes. See Erik Kennes and Miles Larmer, The Katangese Gendarmes and War in Central Africa: Fighting Their Way Home (Bloomington: University of Indiana Press, 2016): 56.

40 Lefever and Joshua, United Nations Peacekeeping in the Congo, 104.

41 Lefever and Joshua, United Nations Peacekeeping in the Congo, 104.

42 Lefever and Joshua, United Nations Peacekeeping in the Congo, 194.

43 Doyle and Quinlan, Heroes of Jadotville, 21.

44 Chakravorty, The Congo Operation, 1960–63, 141–42.

45 Lefever and Joshua, United Nations Peacekeeping in the Congo, 212.

46 Lefever and Joshua, United Nations Peacekeeping in the Congo, 220.

47 Lefever and Joshua, United Nations Peacekeeping in the Congo, 229.

48 Ludo de Witte, The Assassination of Lumumba (London: Verso, 2002), 27 and 46.

49 Abi-Saab, The United Nations Operation in the Congo, 100.

50 Findlay, The Blue Helmets’ First War? 8–9.

51 Charter of the United Nations, chapter XV, article 99.

52 Findlay, The Blue Helmets’ First War? 23–24.

53 OAU Charter, article III, sections 2 and 3.

Chapter 2

1 The “Dual Mandate” refers to the two missions that British colonialism saw as its central goals: the development of the economy of a colony and the uplift and education of its people, although both of these tended to take forms that heavily benefited Britain. The initial use of the term as well as a useful explanation of its underpinnings is found in F. J. D. Lugard, The Dual Mandate in British Tropical Africa, 5th ed. (London: F. Cass, 1965). This work also serves as an excellent introduction to the processes that led to Nigeria taking its colonial and later postcolonial form. For another accessible source on the formation of colonial and postcolonial Nigeria, see Sir Rex Niven, The War of Nigerian Unity, 1967–1970 (London: Evans Brothers, 1971), although his narrative of the history has a decidedly pro-Federal slant.

2 Interestingly enough, it was this relationship that led Horowitz to use the Igbo as one of his prime examples of advanced groups in backward regions in his work on ethnic secession. See Donald Horowitz, Ethnic Groups in Conflict, updated ed. (Berkeley : University of California Press, 2000), 243–79. As will be shown, this volume agrees that there was an ethnic motive for secession but not for the creation of an ethnic state.

3 John de St. Jorre, The Nigerian Civil War (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1973), 110.

4 De St. Jorre, The Nigerian Civil War, 31. This is borne out in Major Nzeogwu’s speech of January 15, 1966, handily reprinted in Zdenĕk Červenka, The Nigerian Civil War, 1967–1970 (Frankfurt am Main: Bernard & Graefe, 1971), 255–57.

5 Ironically, what was seen as the failure of an “Igbo” coup attempt installed Ironsi, who was himself an Igbo, at the head of the state.

6 De St. Jorre, The Nigerian Civil War, 60.

7 Niven, The War of Nigerian Unity, 85–86, serves as an excellent example of the more extreme narration of these events in terms of a suspected Igbo coup.

8 This was largely the legacy of the British military construct in Nigeria. Under the Martial Race theories that were prevalent during the colonial era, the Northerners were often largely seen as uneducated but tough and proper material for the rank and file. However, this meant that when transitioning to independence the Northern Muslim populations were often seen as unfit for commissioning and instead Southern populations were heavily recruited for the leadership positions, so that by the mid-1960s Southern populations such as the Igbo were overrepresented in the higher officer ranks while the Northern Muslim groups such as the Hausa were only beginning to catch up.

9 Červenka, The Nigerian Civil War, 25–26.

10 It was also marked by protests at the prominent Northern University at Zaria and the town of Kaduna. Červenka, The Nigerian Civil War, 26.

11 De St. Jorre, The Nigerian Civil War, 69.

12 Červenka, The Nigerian Civil War, 29.

13 Červenka, The Nigerian Civil War, 32.

14 Col. Yakubu Gowon’s speech upon ascension to power, 1 August 1966, reprinted in Červenka, The Nigerian Civil War, 261–64.

15 Making matters worse, several of these incidents involved uniformed soldiers of Northern extraction, adding to the Easterners’ perceptions that the Federal government would not intercede to halt the violence.

16 The numbers claimed vary throughout the conflict. Initially they were assumed to be somewhat low but climbed as the conflict continued, hitting an almost impossible high of 50,000 in Ojukwu’s Ahiara Declaration. See Niven, The War of Nigerian Unity, 93; de St. Jorre, The Nigerian Civil War, 86, and Červenka, The Nigerian Civil War, 37–38, for commentary on the figures.

17 In later years Ojukwu would discuss this direction to Igbos to return north as his greatest regret.

18 De St. Jorre, The Nigerian Civil War, 108.

19 “Declaration of the Republic of Biafra,” May 30, 1967. For reference, see Červenka, The Nigerian Civil War, 291–93.

20 See de St. Jorre, The Nigerian Civil War, 148–52, and Niven, The War of Nigerian Unity, 115.

21 De St. Jorre, The Nigerian Civil War, 153–56.

22 Červenka, The Nigerian Civil War, 57.

23 The entirety of this whirlwind mini-campaign and the short-lived Mid-West separatism is very well told by de St. Jorre in his chapter “Ojukwu’s Mid-West Gamble,” in The Nigerian Civil War, 147–75.

24 Onitsha would prove to be the site of several major engagements that also decided the fate of the small mercenary detachments that were working for Biafra.

25 Červenka, The Nigerian Civil War, 62; de St. Jorre, The Nigerian Civil War, 193.

26 Červenka, The Nigerian Civil War, 63. It has been said by many that after the fall of Port Harcourt the war was unwinnable by the Biafrans. The authors agree with this sentiment and regard its fall as the decisive moment of the military operations against Biafra.

27 See de St. Jorre, The Nigerian Civil War, 206. Other reminiscences of weapon scarcity may be found in Rolf Steiner and Yves-Guy Bergès, The Last Adventurer (Boston: Little, Brown, 1978) and C. E. Arachie, The Bye-Gone: Horrors of a Crude War; Biafra Experience (Lagos, Nigeria: C. E. Arachie, 1991), among others.

28 Červenka, The Nigerian Civil War, 65. The arms that were delivered had come from the French and were flown into Biafra from the former French colonies of Gabon and Cote d’Ivoire. France’s reasons for supporting the Biafran cause will be covered in depth later in this chapter.

29 Červenka, The Nigerian Civil War., 71.

30 De St. Jorre, The Nigerian Civil War, 343–44. This is when future President Olosegun Obasanjo took over the 3rd Marine Commando Division, which is discussed in his work My Command: An Account of the Nigerian Civil War, 1967–1970 (London: Heineman, 1981).

31 A full text of the Ahiara Declaration can be found at http://www.biafraland.com/Ahiara_declaration_1969.htm.

32 This line is often quoted from Gowon’s final speech after the Biafran surrender in January 1970.

33 This is somewhat complicated by the fact that Biafra still took aid wherever it could get it, including from South Africa, France, and Portugal, all three of whom had proven less than sympathetic to African self-determination. However, whereas Katanga actively aligned themselves with Belgium and other Western powers, Biafra at most quietly took what aid was offered and put forth little foreign policy aside from its demands to be recognized.

34 Although this conception was based almost solely on the idea that the region produced roughly 50 percent of the income of the nation yet received a much smaller portion of tax revenues and governmental representation.

35 See Biafra’s Resolution giving Ojukwu a mandate to declare the separatist state of Biafra, which notes, “WHEREAS in consequence of these [the pogroms in the North] and other acts of discrimination and injustice, we have painfully realized that the Federation of Nigeria has failed, and has given us no protection.” See C. O. Ojukwu, Biafra: Selected Speeches with Journals of Events (New York: Harper & Row, 1969), 191–93.

36 Niven, The War of Nigerian Unity, 28, offers a short and concise recollection of these events.

37 This was done by the Ironsi government following his accession to power in 1966.

38 De St. Jorre, The Nigerian Civil War, 132. De St. Jorre pithily notes that both the Somalis and (most importantly in terms of this volume) non-Igbos of the region might dispute that claim.

39 It is estimated that Igbos only made up about 64 percent of the total population of the East. J. N. Saxena, Self-Determination: From Biafra to Bangladesh (Delhi: University of Delhi Press, 1978).

40 This sort of ethnic paranoia is illustrated very effectively in Ntieyong U. Akpan, The Struggle for Secession, 1967–1970: A Personal Account of the Nigerian Civil War (London: Frank Cass, 1971), 92.

41 Again note the specific language mentioned in note 35. This is repeated in Ojukwu’s “Declaration of the Republic of Biafra,” where he lays out the claim “AWARE that you can no longer be protected in your lives or your property by any government based outside Eastern Nigeria.” Ojukwu, Selected Speeches, 193.

42 De St. Jorre, The Nigerian Civil War, 39, and Červenka, The Nigerian Civil War, 24. Of course there is still today the contentious argument as to the exact constitutionality of Ironsi’s investiture of power, with most agreeing it had at best a faint patina of legality. Even a relatively short time later the act was already being criticized by Nigerian intellectuals such as O. Onipede, “Nigeria Crisis,” in Africa Quarterly 9, no. 3 (1969): 233–63.

43 This is of course complicated by the fact that Ironsi also drew acceptance from the East due to his Igbo heritage, whereas Gowon’s Northern heritage meant he faced an uphill struggle to be accepted as legitimate within much of the South.

44 The most commonly available retelling of Ojukwu’s life so far is Frederick Forsyth, Emeka (Ibadan, Nigeria: Spectrum, 1992). While it is an accurate retelling of the bulk of Ojukwu’s life, Forsyth himself was deeply involved in the conflict and can occasionally be a rather biased and inaccurate observer.

45 For example, his interference in the Niamey peace talks of 1969, where his telegram cooled any warm feelings being expressed between the two sides. De St. Jorre, The Nigerian Civil War, 227.

46 Steiner, The Last Adventurer, and Gerry S. Thomas, Mercenary Troops in Modern Africa (Boulder, CO: Westview, 1985), 23.

47 Akpan, The Struggle for Secession, 1967–1970, 166.

48 Ojukwu’s final statement to his PR firm, Markpress. Quoted in de St. Jorre, The Nigerian Civil War, 413.

49 De St. Jorre, The Nigerian Civil War, 280.

50 Arachie, The Bye-Gone, contains an excellent narrative of the ad hoc training the average recruit underwent, including a “graduation” exercise involving a mock deployment.

51 This figure is taken from the controversial but generally accurate Scott Report (named for its author, Col. R. E. Scott), which was regrettably leaked and printed in the July 11, 1970 issue of the Sunday Telegraph.

52 Červenka, The Nigerian Civil War, 141.

53 Steiner brazenly lionizes himself and his unit in his own volume, but Thomas offers a more muted response, writing that the utility of the 4th Commando was notably compromised by the friction it experienced with the more traditional Biafran High Command. Thomas, Mercenary Troops, 89.

54 De St. Jorre, The Nigerian Civil War, 215.

55 This was largely due to French concerns about British influence in the region and to help fragment the powerful anglophone bloc in West Africa, which otherwise could dominate regional affairs beyond the control of the French Community states spread across the region. While there were initially some accusations that this was to gain France access to the Biafran oil resources, both de St. Jorre (210–13) and Červenka (113–15) dismiss this reasoning with strong evidence that France’s actions never were focused on the oil resources of the region, although they were happy to take oil money in return for their arms shipments.

56 De St. Jorre, The Nigerian Civil War, 216. This is backed up in Scott’s report, although he refers only to “30 large aircraft and a correspondingly large tonnage nightly.”

57 Scott Report; also Červenka, The Nigerian Civil War, 148.

58 In Arachie, The Bye-Gone, the author recounts the creation and use of homemade ordinance against the Federal forces.

59 Scott Report; also Červenka, The Nigerian Civil War, 150, and Steiner, The Last Adventurer,

60 While this ambush was not of the magnitude expressed in Frederick Forsyth, The Biafra Story (Baltimore: Penguin, 1969), 126–27, it was still a notable victory and remained a site of interest to the press for the rest of the war.

61 It does bear noting, though, that much of the support for these secessions came from the secessionist governments leveraging natural resources that had great value to the outside world; copper for Katanga and oil for Biafra. The centrality of these resources for material and political support likely helped dictate a need for military tactics that would hold territory, a consideration that would not be present in the contemporary conflicts in Eritrea and the South Sudan.

62 See such volumes as Susan Cronjé, The World and Nigeria: The Diplomatic History of the Biafran War 1967–1970 (London: Sidgwick & Jackson, 1972), and Joseph E. Thompson, American Policy and African Famine, The Nigeria-Biafra War 1966–1970 (New York: Greenwood, 1990).

63 However, Nigeria did let in an international observer team formed by the United Nations to watch for atrocities and assuage international humanitarian concerns. This team’s later report served as the largest single blow to the narrative of Igbo genocide.

64 Some also expected the UN secretary-general to bring the Nigerian conflict before the General Assembly under the provisions of article 99, but the secretary-general made his stance that the war was an OAU matter very clear at the Algiers Assembly of that body. See Saxena, Self-Determination, 44.

65 For a slightly lengthier synopsis see the invaluable Červenka, The Nigerian Civil War, 121–30. Other than this, whole volumes have been written such as the aforementioned Thompson, American Policy and African Famine.

66 Again, Červenka, The Nigerian Civil War, 103–10; Forsyth, The Biafra Story, 141–74; and Saxena, Self-Determination, 42.

67 Červenka, The Nigerian Civil War, 117–21; de St. Jorre, The Nigerian Civil War, 181–84.

68 De St. Jorre, The Nigerian Civil War, 210.

69 The reasons for this limited aid tend to be viewed as an attempt at playing both sides. If the limited aid allowed Biafra to win, then France gained its regional goals of fragmenting the anglophone bloc and having Biafra as a strong ally and potential area of economic development. If the limited aid failed to turn the tide, then France would be able to extricate itself from the situation and not lose what standing it had with the Federal Government of Nigeria. See Christopher Griffin, “French Military Policy in the Nigerian Civil War, 1967–1970,” Small Wars & Insurgencies 26, no. 1 (2015): 114–35.

70 For an excellent overview of this Biafran propaganda campaign, see Roy Doron, “Marketing Genocide: Biafran Propaganda Strategies during the Nigerian Civil War, 1967–70,” Journal of Genocide Research 16, no. 2/3 (2014): 227–46.

71 In fact, the OAU can only serve as a diplomatic instrument in terms of peacemaking, as lamented in Gemuh E. Akuchu, “Peaceful Settlement of Disputes: Unsolved Problem for the OAU (A Case Study of the Nigeria-Biafra Conflict),” Africa Today 24, no. 4 (1977): 39–58.

72 De St. Jorre, The Nigerian Civil War, 191.

73 Onyeonoro S. Kamanu, “Secession and the Right of Self-Determination: An O.A.U. Dilemma,” Journal of Modern African Studies 12, no. 3 (1974): 355–76; David A. Ijalaye, “Was ‘Biafra’ at Any Time a State in International Law?” American Journal of International Law 65, no. 3 (1971): 555–56, and the already-mentioned Akuchu, “Peaceful Settlement of Disputes: Unsolved Problem for the OAU,” 42–43.

74 OAU Resolution 51, adopted at the Kinshasa meeting of the OAU, September 1967, section C.

75 Although Ijalaye argues that these recognitions were unjustifiable and illegal under international law and therefore essentially invalid. Ijalaye, “Was ‘Biafra’ at Any Time a State in International Law?” 556–59.

76 De St. Jorre, The Nigerian Civil War, 196.

77 De St. Jorre, The Nigerian Civil War, 193.

78 As will be seen in Chapter 3, Ethiopia would break this consensus when the EPRDF took control of the country and gave permission for the Eritrean People’s Liberation Front to hold a plebiscite on separation. The plebiscite itself would take place in 1993.

79 See note 55.

80 These would be the foundation of the legend of the Swedish Count von Rosen and his intrepid air force. See de St. Jorre, The Nigerian Civil War, 334–39, and Thomas, Mercenary Troops, 6.

81 De St. Jorre, The Nigerian Civil War, 328

82 Thomas, Mercenary Troops, 22. Interestingly enough, this work cites Faulques’ contract, which supposedly directed him to raise a Katanga-style army manned by Biafrans but encadred by European mercenaries.

83 De St. Jorre, The Nigerian Civil War, 324.

84 One notable exception in this category were mercenary pilots. Modern warplanes required significant technical training to effectively use, and the air war on both sides featured foreign pilots being employed to offer air cover. On the Federal side there were pilots from Egypt and Pakistan flying Nigeria’s newly acquired MiG fighters, whereas on the Biafran side there was Count Gustav von Rosen, who repurposed several small Minicon planes to offer close air support for Biafran forces.

85 David Wood, The Armed Forces of African States (London: Institute for Strategic Studies, 1966).

86 Červenka, The Nigerian Civil War, 138.

87 Scott’s report was scathing in this regard and was not greeted with enthusiasm by the Federal High Command.

88 This from Major General Philip Effiong, quoted in de St. Jorre, The Nigerian Civil War, 223. Similar sentiments were expressed by Raph Uwechue, Biafra’s emissary to Paris (at 224), and N. U. Akpan, the head of the Biafran Civil Service (Akpan, The Struggle for Secession, 1967–1970, 13–14).

89 Ojukwu, “Ahiara Declaration”: see http://www.biafraland.com/Ahiara_declaration_1969.htm.

90 As discussed in the previous chapter.

Part II

1 The Whampoa Academy would prove to be a political hotbed, producing the majority of the military figures for both the Communists and Nationalists over the next decade.

2 For a good narrative of this period, see Suyin Han, The Morning Deluge: Mao Tsetung and the Chinese Revolution, 1893–1954 (St. Albans, UK: Panther, 1976).

3 These conflicts were primarily between the orthodox Bolsheviks who believed that the revolution was an urban proletarian occurrence and the dissenters such as Mao who looked toward a rural peasant uprising. See Mao Tse-Tung, “From the City to the Countryside,” in Mao Tse-Tung on Revolution and War, ed. M. Rejai (Garden City, NY: Anchor Books, 1970), 58–59.

4 Mao Tse-Tung, “On Protracted War,” in Mao Tse-Tung on Revolution and War, 271–79.

5 Although they did receive aid from the Russians in the form of allowing them to capture the Japanese garrisons and equipment in Manchuria, overall the Chinese Communists gained almost no direct military aid.

6 Yenan had been the Communist capital throughout the Sino-Japanese War. It was retaken by the Communists within a year of the Nationalist victory

7 Translated to English, this means “League for the Independence of Vietnam.”

8 Vo Nguyên Giap, People’s War, People’s Army (New York: Bantam, 1962), 48.

9 Interestingly, his statement was made using language borrowed from the American Declaration of Independence. See Ho Chi Minh, “Declaration of Independence of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam (September 2, 1945),” http://www.mtholyoke.edu/acad/intrel/vietdec.htm.

10 Giap, People’s War, People’s Army, 12–15.

11 The United States by this point had become very concerned about the possibility of a Communist government in Vietnam and assumed it would be a puppet of either Russia or China as well as a node for spreading Communism throughout Southeast Asia. Thus, although the US had initially been supportive of an independent Vietnam, the Eisenhower administration changed policy and instead offered significant financial and military aid to the French.

12 Giap, People’s War, People’s Army, 28–30.

13 Henry S. Wilson. African Decolonization (London: Hodder Education, 1994), 127–29.

14 Lusotropicalism was a term used to describe what Portugal saw as its “civilizing mission,” with the eventual goal of assimilation into Portugal proper. Kenneth W. Grundy, Guerrilla Struggle in Africa: An Analysis and Preview (New York: Grossman, 1971), 91–93.

15 As will be discussed briefly, this mandate dates from the end of the First World War.

16 This act was known as the Unilateral Declaration of Independence. See Wilson, African Decolonization, 190.

17 Among others, see George M. Houser, No One Can Stop the Rain: Glimpses of Africa’s Liberation Struggle (New York: Pilgrim, 1989), 199–200.

18 An excellent if brief overview of these struggles may be found in Basil Davidson, The People’s Cause: A History of Guerrillas in Africa (Burnt Mill, UK: Longman, 1983), 119–38, as well as Thomas H. Henrikson, “People’s War in Angola, Mozambique, and Guinea-Bissau,” Journal of Modern African Studies 14, no. 3 (1976): 377–99.

19 Portugal received NATO support as both a member state and in return for letting the United States lease the Azores as a base. Houser, No One Can Stop the Rain, 160.

20 Janet Cherry, Spear of the Nation (Umkhonto WeSizwe): South Africa’s Liberation Army, 1960s–1990s (Athens: Ohio University Press, 2012), 14.

21 Houser, No One Can Stop the Rain, 257.

22 Timothy J. Stapleton, A Military History of South Africa from the Dutch-Khoi Wars to the End of Apartheid (Santa Barbara, CA: Praeger, 2010), 160.

23 Stapleton, A Military History of South Africa, 161. The use of “Alone” as the secret name for the forces was intended to confuse the South African security forces as to the formation and numbers involved in the armed liberation forces.

24 Stapleton, A Military History of South Africa, 162 and 166. Countries that housed and trained these developing forces included Algeria, Egypt, and, most notably, Tanzania, where both inhabited military camps.

25 Stapleton, A Military History of South Africa, 163.

26 Ian van der Waag, A Military History of Modern South Africa (Philadelphia: Casemate, 2018), 266.

27 Stapleton, Military History of South Africa, 166

28 Houser, No One Can Stop the Rain, 248–49.

29 For a full narrative of the ending of the Border War, see Edward George, The Cuban Intervention in Angola, 1965–1991: From Che Guevara to Cuito Cuanavale. (New York: Routledge, 2012).

30 Rhodesia was initially Southern Rhodesia; however, the process of decolonization had eventually led to the territory to shorten its name. Initially in 1953 it had joined with Northern Rhodesia and Nyasaland to form the Central African Federation, but the federation fell apart in late 1963 and Northern Rhodesia and Nyasaland claimed their independence in 1964 as Zambia and Malawi respectively. This led to Southern Rhodesia renaming itself simply Rhodesia, although Britain never recognized it as such.

31 Alois S. Mlambo, A History of Zimbabwe (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2014), 127.

32 In fact, their hopes for a final confrontation involved a conventional invasion of Rhodesia along several axes, overwhelming the Rhodesian security forces. This invasion was still being prepared as the liberation struggle ended. Paul Moorcraft and Peter McLaughlin, The Rhodesian War: A Military History (South Yorkshire, UK: Pen & Sword Military, 2008), 72–77. This focus on conventional warfare is also discussed at length in Jeremy Brackhill, “Daring to Storm the Heavens: the Military Strategy of ZAPU 1976 to 1979,” in Soldiers in Zimbabwe’s Liberation War, ed. Ngwabi Bhebe and Terence Ranger (London: James Currey, 1995), 48–72.

33 Moorcraft and McLaughlin, The Rhodesian War, 72–76. This linkage is also talked about in David Martin and Phyllis Johnson, The Struggle for Zimbabwe: The Chimurenga War (London: Faber & Faber, 1982), 12. It is also notable that ZANU specifically began working with FRELIMO, who had also used Maoist strategic thought in their own struggle, and that the reconstruction of the ZANU guerrilla forces was considerably helped by both FRELIMO and Chinese trainers in Tanzania and Mozambique.

34 Moorcraft and McLaughlin, The Rhodesian War, 74–75, specifically note that the training of their fighters included ideological indoctrination, with the goal of being able to radicalize the populations they worked with, including discussions of historical grievances.

35 South Africa sent limited military support under the auspices of a police mission after ANC guerrillas were found in the Zambezi Valley along with ZAPU cadres. See Stapleton, Military History of South Africa, 163.

36 South Africa never removed all of their support; troops were still deployed in strategic points within Rhodesia until the Lancaster House agreements but were rarely in combat. However, South Africa did choke off much of their economic support beginning in 1976 to try and force a resolution to the question of majority rule. This was done in exchange for the United States once again offering aid to South Africa per the plans of Henry Kissinger. See Moorcraft and McLaughlin, The Rhodesian War, 125.

37 This makes sense, given that the Maoist strain of ideology followed by ZANU was intended to mobilize the masses and get them aligned with the political program of the liberation front. This same process will be seen in successful social revolutionary initiatives put forth by the Eritrean People’s Liberation Front later in this section.

38 Interestingly, this idea had been enunciated 400 years earlier in Niccolò Machiavelli, The Prince, trans. Luigi Ricci (New York: Signet Classics, 1999), 64–65.

39 Mao Tse-Tung, “Problems of Strategy in China’s Revolutionary War,” in Mao Tse-Tung on Revolution and War, 279–80; Giap, People’s War, People’s Army, 87–97.

Chapter 3

1 See Dan Connell, Against All Odds: A Chronicle of the Eritrean Revolution (Trenton, NJ: Red Sea Press, 1993), 58. This is also accepted by the account of Richard Sherman, Eritrea: The Unfinished Revolution (New York: Praeger, 1980), 73. Other studies sometimes choose 1962 as the starting year of the formal beginning of the conflict, as this was the year the federation was officially dissolved. A prime example of this dating of the conflict is Haggai Erlich, The Struggle Over Eritrea, 1962–1978: War and Revolution in the Horn of Africa (Stanford, CA: Hoover Institution Press, 1983). The authors have chosen the 1961 start date, as this book is a study of secessionist conflicts, and thus the beginning of violence marks the beginning of interest.

2 Connell, Against All Odds, 53. There has been relatively little work done on the actual service of Eritrean Askaris in the Italian Invasion of Ethiopia, but this service had lasting effects on the relations of the two regions.

3 Connell, Against All Odds, 55

4 Sherman, Eritrea: The Unfinished Revolution, 21.

5 Sherman, Eritrea: The Unfinished Revolution, 23. For the actual resolution, please reference Resolution 390A (V) passed on 2 December 1950.

6 Sherman, Eritrea: The Unfinished Revolution, 27. For a concrete representation of this linguistic policy, see Connell’s related anecdote in Against All Odds, 58–59.

7 Connell, Against All Odds, 58.

8 Connell, Against All Odds, 57–58.

9 Sherman, Eritrea: The Unfinished Revolution, 29. In terms of the threat of violence against the Eritrean Assembly, Connell claims Ethiopian jet fighters were buzzing the city and police had surrounded the assembly while the proceedings were underway. See Connell, Against All Odds, 57.

10 Osman Saleh Sabbe has a very unique and complex role in the Eritrean Revolution, one that this study cannot fully explore. Let it suffice to say that he served both major liberation fronts in senior positions before being forcibly removed from each in turn. He then formed his own front to lead, although this was never a major force. While a controversial figure due to his extremely conservative Islamist and Pan-Arab agenda, his strong supply and training connections with Saudi Arabia, Syria, and other Pan-Arab states made him valuable enough for all involved to try and work with him for prolonged periods of time. He finished the struggle as a distrusted and largely irrelevant figure.

11 Sherman, Eritrea: The Unfinished Revolution, 74, among others, including Alexander de Waal, Evil Days: 30 Years of War and Famine in Ethiopia. (New York: Human Rights Watch, 1991), 41.

12 The United States had been a major patron since the end of the Second World War, rebuilding the Ethiopian military in return for the establishment of the Kagnew listening station in Ethiopia. Ethiopia in turn was an enthusiastic ally, sending troops to support the US-led efforts in the Korean War.

13 Following Haile Selassie’s return, the United States became Ethiopia’s primary military partner and supplier, with the total amount of aid granted during 1946–1975 equalling approximately US$286.1 million. For a total breakdown of these costs, see Sherman, Eritrea: The Unfinished Revolution, 176–77.

14 Sherman, Eritrea: The Unfinished Revolution, 43, and Connell, Against All Odds, 80. Connell makes the clearest case for the Anseba meeting being the first move of the new radical foreign-trained future leadership in creating a revolutionary front.

15 Connell, Against All Odds, 80–82, and Sherman, Eritrea: The Unfinished Revolution, 43–44. Both emphasize the contradictory accounts and ephemeral nature of the agreements at Adobha.

16 De Waal, Evil Days, does an excellent job discussing the prevalence of these blunt tactics of populace sweeps and random bombing.

17 Villagization is a common counter-insurgency strategy used since the days of the Boer War or even before. It consists of the forced removal of the populace to fortified and controlled villages to both protect them from and limit their contact with the insurgents, thereby cutting off the enemy guerrillas from any popular support. It generally emerged into the popular consciousness during the Vietnam War, but in that conflict as in most others the actual effects of the strategy are debatable.

18 Derg is the Amharic word for “Committee” and was the name taken by the new regime.

19 Sherman, Eritrea: The Unfinished Revolution, 46. This temporarily ended what has been known as the Eritrean Civil War, although the peace was always uneasy and would be shattered again in the wake of the 1978 Ethiopian offensives.

20 As will be briefly discussed, the TPLF’s role in the conflict was pivotal and deserves far greater attention than is given in this chapter. For a more complete overview of their contributions, it would be difficult to do better than John Young, Peasant Revolution in Ethiopia: The Tigray People’s Liberation Front, 1975–1991 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1997).

21 The Ogaden War began in 1977 with Somalia invading the Ogaden region of Ethiopia to support the irredentist claims of the ethnic Somalis living in the region.

22 Sherman, Eritrea: The Unfinished Revolution, 90. This section also deals with the wide array of weaponry involved in the transaction.

23 Sherman, Eritrea: The Unfinished Revolution, 90–91.

24 Connell, Against All Odds, 154. However, this direct ground intervention seems to have been more due to the recent arrival of the weaponry and subsequent Ethiopian unfamiliarity with it. As to the naval bombardment, it remains a pervasive but unsubstantiated rumour.

25 The numbers given for the Cuban troops vary from approximately 11,000 to over 15,000, with a large number of these being frontline combat troops and not simply advisors and trainers. Tareke notes that at several points it was Cuban armoured formations that formed the backbone of the Ethiopian counteroffensives: see Gebru Tareke, The Ethiopian Revolution: War in the Horn of Africa (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2009), 207.

26 Sherman, Eritrea: The Unfinished Revolution, 90.

27 Connell, Against All Odds, 160–61.

28 For more details on this, see Connell, Against All Odds, chapter 10.

29 See De Waal, Evil Days, 114. De Waal pinpoints this second offensive as the one that truly broke the ELF, noting, “By continuing to engage the Ethiopian army rather than retreat, it ensured its military defeat.”

30 De Waal, Evil Days, 115.

31 David Pool, From Guerrillas to Government: The Eritrean People’s Liberation Front (Athens: Ohio University Press, 2001), 146–47.

32 De Waal, Evil Days, 117. The Red Star Campaign remains arguably the largest military campaign waged on African soil by an African nation.

33 De Waal, Evil Days, 184.

34 Connell, Against All Odds, 228.

35 De Waal, Evil Days, 237.

36 For a quick and useful overview of the relations between the two fronts, John Young, “The Tigray and Eritrean Peoples Liberation Fronts: A History of Tensions and Pragmatism,” Journal of Modern African Studies 34, no. 1 (1996): 105–20, is an excellent choice.

37 De Waal, Evil Days, 272–73.

38 G. K. N. Trevaskis, Eritrea: A Colony in Transition: 1941–52 (London: Oxford University Press, 1960), 5.

39 Trevaskis, Eritrea: A Colony in Transition, 5.

40 Sherman, Eritrea: The Unfinished Revolution, 7.

41 For an example, see James Bruce, Travels to Discover the Source of the Nile (Edinburgh: Robinson, 1790).

42 Sherman, Eritrea: The Unfinished Revolution, 12.

43 Sherman, Eritrea: The Unfinished Revolution, 13, and Connell, Against All Odds, 51.

44 Connell, Against All Odds, 52.

45 Sherman, Eritrea: The Unfinished Revolution, 15.

46 Sherman, Eritrea: The Unfinished Revolution, 15.

47 Connell, Against All Odds, 53.

48 Connell, Against All Odds, 54.

49 This has been well established in the previous chapters on Katanga and Biafra.

50 The fact that Ethiopia was the host nation in fact made things more complex, both for external political reasons, as Ethiopia remained a symbol to many Africans, and internal ones, as the multi-ethnic composition of the state would cause problems in the philosophical relations between the Eritrean fronts and those housed in Ethiopia.

51 OAU Charter, article II, section 1, and article III, section 6.

52 Against both the Kuomintang government and the Japanese, 1929–1949.

53 Against both the Japanese and the French, 1941–1954.

54 Connell, Against All Odds, 80 and 144.

55 Mao Tse-Tung, “On Protracted War,” in Mao Tse-Tung on Revolution and War, ed. M. Rejai (Garden City, NY: Anchor, 1970), 275.

56 Strategically this difference would also be shown in the Cuban Revolution, where, lacking distances, the revolutionaries became dependent on the difficult terrain of the Sierra Maestra Mountains.

57 Mao Tse-Tung, “On Protracted War,” 276.

58 Mao Tse-Tung, “On Protracted War,” 278.

59 Mao Tse-Tung, “Problems of Strategy in China’s Revolutionary War,” in Mao Tse-Tung on Revolution and War, 279–80.

60 Mao Tse-Tung, “Problems of Strategy in China’s Revolutionary War,” 280.

61 Mao Tse-Tung, “The Present Situation and Our Tasks,” in Mao Tse-Tung on Revolution and War, 285–86.

62 Mao Tse-Tung, “The Present Situation and Our Tasks,” 286.

63 It was during this period that the future leadership figures of the EPLF encountered the liberation front, joined, and then were sent to China for training. See Connell, Against All Odds, 79–80.

64 Connell, Against All Odds, 163–65.

65 Interestingly, positional warfare is almost always avoided under Maoist doctrine, as it removes the advantages of mobility and stealth from the usually weaker revolutionary forces. However, in the case of the EPLF as in the case of the Cuban Revolutionaries, there was not adequate territory to pursue a mobile strategy, so strong positional warfare in mountainous terrain was used to bolster the military strength of the numerically inferior revolutionaries while guerrilla bands roamed behind the Ethiopian lines.

66 A concrete application of Mao’s strategic principle number nine, as enunciated earlier in this chapter.

67 The losses incurred in repulsing the counterattacks of 1984–1985 serve as an excellent illustration of the principle that the difficulty of applying Maoist strategy is not in understanding the stages of the conflict but of properly timing the transition between them. In this case (and as the TPLF would continue to maintain) the EPLF prematurely transitioned from a combination of positional defence and guerrilla operation to a conventional mobile offence, thus opening themselves up for losses to a still strong enemy.

68 Connell notes that it took the British two weeks to defeat the Italians at Keren while it took the EPLF a mere four days to defeat the Derg forces. See Connell, Against All Odds, 95–96.

69 This comparison was explicitly made by scholar Basil Davidson on the BBC news broadcast of 21 March 1988. It has since been quoted or paraphrased in the majority of the literature on the Eritrean war.

70 Connell provides several excellent anecdotes about the EPLF’s spirit of morale and momentum. The most telling example of the shift of power is the EPLF’s dismissal of the “Sparta” brigades and their gimmickry. See Connell, Against All Odds, 235.

71 These ideas are central to most other revolutionary war theorists of the time, with Vo Nguyên Giap’s People’s War, People’s Army (New York: Bantam, 1962) stressing the necessity of popular peasant and proletariat support. Even Che Guevara’s Guerrilla Warfare (New York: Praeger, 1970), put forth the idea of a people’s war, although the Cuban Revolution at its heart was based in the bourgeoisie.

72 Sherman, Eritrea: The Unfinished Revolution, 98.

73 This split in turn reflects the split within revolutionary theorists, where one camp (represented primarily in the ideas of Mao and Giap) argues that the education and organization of the populace must precede the launching of any armed struggle. This view is opposed by those theorists who feel that the armed struggle is paramount, and that any and all organization and changes are only truly possible after a military victory. Guevara’s idea of foquismo, where the struggle is sparked by military action first and transformation later, falls into this category.

74 A full accounting of these concepts can be found in article 2, section A of the document “Objectives of the National Democratic Programme of the EPLF,” which can be found in a number of publications, including Appendix B of Sherman, Eritrea: The Unfinished Revolution.

75 The example of Zagher is a particularly famous one, as it served as a model village for the EPLF and was reported on in both Connell, Against All Odds, 109–26, and Pool, From Guerrillas to Government, 111–14.

76 See “Objectives of the National Democratic Programme of the EPLF,” article 2, section B.

77 “Objectives of the National Democratic Programme of the EPLF,” article 2, section E.

78 “Objectives of the National Democratic Programme of the EPLF,” article 4, section a, part 8.

79 Pool, From Guerrillas to Government, 123–24.

80 Pool, From Guerrillas to Government, 124.

81 “Objectives of the National Democratic Programme of the EPLF,” article 3, section B, part 1.

82 Connell, Against All Odds, 38–39.

83 Sherman, Eritrea: The Unfinished Revolution, 104.

84 “Objectives of the National Democratic Programme of the EPLF,” article 3, section C.

85 Sherman, Eritrea: The Unfinished Revolution, 102

86 “Objectives of the National Democratic Programme of the EPLF,” article 4, section B.

87 Notably, the role of women in the aftermath of the success of the FLN has been cited as less than satisfactory.

88 Sherman, Eritrea: The Unfinished Revolution, 106.

89 Connell does an excellent job explaining the extraordinary effects that these reforms had on women’s lives in Eritrea. His chapter “Destroying Shyness” is an excellent window into the process. Connell, Against All Odds, 127–37.

90 Connell also offers an interesting look into the interconnectedness of the revolutionary consciousness with the refusal of poor peasants to consent to the stripping of Eritrean women of their rights, rightly seeing the parallels between their own new-found freedoms and those of women. Connell, Against All Odds, 136.

91 Gérard Chaliand, “The Horn of Africa’s Dilemma,” Foreign Policy no. 30 (Spring 1978): 126.

92 Even after the return of Ethiopian troops in the 1978–1985 offensives, the EPLF loyalist areas still resisted the Derg forces and clandestinely aided the EPLF, a decisive factor in the struggle.

93 The current best work on the subject of the TPLF is Young, Peasant Revolution in Ethiopia.

94 During this same time period the ELF established closer ties with other Ethiopian dissident groups such as the Ethiopian Democratic Union and the Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Party. These unfortunately did not prove as successful as the TPLF, and during the second Eritrean Civil War the TPLF helped drive the ELF out of Eritrean and Tigrayan territory.

95 Pool, From Guerrillas to Government, 149, and Young, “The Tigray and Eritrean Peoples Liberation Fronts,” 107.

96 Young, “The Tigray and Eritrean Peoples Liberation Fronts,” 108. As mentioned in note 67, this is part of a larger debate as to the timing of the alterations of mode of warfare in the Maoist framework of conflict.

97 Young, Peasant Revolution in Ethiopia, 152–54.

98 Young, Peasant Revolution in Ethiopia, 154–55.

99 Young, Peasant Revolution in Ethiopia, 156–57. This splinter group, the Democratic Movement for the Liberation of Eritrea (DMLE), eventually fell by the wayside and by 1991 only existed abroad.

100 Despite the Ogaden War’s conclusion in 1978, Ethiopia and Somalia each maintained significant troop levels in the region and tensions remained high. After a small clash in 1988, the two countries agreed to withdraw their troops from the border region.

101 Interestingly, the TPLF itself began as a separatist insurgency and only later became a reform insurgency by Clapham’s definition. The transition left them in an interesting form, as they advocated nationalist separatism but in a federal form under a greater Ethiopian government.

Chapter 4

1 Dunstan M. Wai, The African-Arab Conflict in the Sudan (New York: Africana, 1981), 26; Francis Mading Deng, War of Visions: Conflict of Identities in the Sudan (Washington, DC: Brookings Institution, 1995), 10; Douglas H. Johnson, The Root Causes of Sudan’s Civil Wars (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2003), 4.

2 Johnson, The Root Causes of Sudan’s Civil Wars, 5.

3 Hilde F. Johnson, Waging Peace in Sudan: The inside Story of the Negotiations That Ended Africa’s Longest Civil War (Eastbourne, UK: Sussex Academic Press, 2011), 6–7; Deng, War of Visions, 10–11; Wai, The African-Arab Conflict in the Sudan, 30–32.

4 Wai, The African-Arab Conflict in the Sudan, 35; Johnson, The Root Causes of Sudan’s Civil Wars, 10–11.

5 Scopas Sekwat Poggo, The First Sudanese Civil War: Africans, Arabs, and Israelis in the Southern Sudan, 1955–1972 (Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011), 30.

6 Wai, The African-Arab Conflict in the Sudan, 34.

7 Robert O. Collins, The Southern Sudan in Historical Perspective (New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction, 2007), 51.

8 Johnson, The Root Causes of Sudan’s Civil Wars, 23.

9 Johnson, The Root Causes of Sudan’s Civil Wars, 24.

10 Wai, The African-Arab Conflict in the Sudan, 39.

11 Collins, The Southern Sudan in Historical Perspective, 59–60.

12 Poggo, The First Sudanese Civil War, 37.

13 Poggo, The First Sudanese Civil War, 42.

14 Poggo, The First Sudanese Civil War, 45.

15 Wai, The African-Arab Conflict in the Sudan, 74.

16 Johnson, The Root Causes of Sudan’s Civil Wars, 31.

17 Poggo, The First Sudanese Civil War, 63; Deng, War of Visions, 139.

18 There is some debate as to how connected the 1955 mutineers actually are to the formation of the Anya-nya. For an alternative viewpoint, see Øystein H. Rolandsen, “The Making of the Anya-Nya Insurgency in the Southern Sudan, 1961–64,” Journal of Eastern African Studies 5, no. 2 (2011): 212.

19 Deng, War of Visions, 140.

20 Wai, The African-Arab Conflict in the Sudan, 92.

21 Johnson, The Root Causes of Sudan’s Civil Wars, 31.

22 Poggo, The First Sudanese Civil War, 74–87.

23 Wai, The African-Arab Conflict in the Sudan, 97.

24 Wai, The African-Arab Conflict in the Sudan, 98–99.

25 Mohamed Omer Beshir, The Southern Sudan: From Conflict to Peace (London: C. Hurst, 1975), 5–6.

26 Wai, The African-Arab Conflict in the Sudan, 108.

27 Poggo, The First Sudanese Civil War, 123.

28 Poggo, The First Sudanese Civil War, 171.

29 Poggo, The First Sudanese Civil War, 175.

30 Robert O. Collins, A History of Modern Sudan (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2008), 103.

31 Collins, A History of Modern Sudan, 106.

32 Beshir, The Southern Sudan, 110.

33 Matthew LeRiche and Matthew B. Arnold, South Sudan: From Revolution to Independence (London: Hurst, 2012), 28.

34 Beshir, The Southern Sudan, 32; William H. Dorsey, “Anyanya Leader Joseph Lagu,” Africa Report 17, no. 9 (1972): 18.

35 Johnson, The Root Causes of Sudan’s Civil Wars, 41–42.

36 During this period scattered groups of Anya-nya fighters occasionally continued to attack the Sudanese military forces, but this was not as part of an accepted strategy of the South to continue the conflict.

37 For example, Numeiry put up Abel Alier as the sole candidate for president of the High Executive Council, ensuring his election. Collins, A History of Modern Sudan, 115.

38 Johnson, The Root Causes of Sudan’s Civil Wars, 41; Collins, A History of Modern Sudan, 114. Part of the reason for this was that the underdeveloped educational system of the South often meant Southern fighters lacked the formal education to qualify for officer positions within the Sudanese military.

39 Johnson, The Root Causes of Sudan’s Civil Wars, 61; LeRiche and Arnold, South Sudan, 58.

40 LeRiche and Arnold, South Sudan, 62.

41 Philippa Scott, “The Sudan Peoples’ Liberation Movement (SPLM) and Liberation Army (SPLA),” Review of African Political Economy 12, no. 33 (1985): 70.

42 LeRiche and Arnold, South Sudan, 63.

43 Scott, “The Sudan Peoples’ Liberation Movement (SPLM) and Liberation Army (SPLA),” 71.

44 Douglas H. Johnson, “The Sudan People’s Liberation Army and the Problem of Factionalism,” in African Guerrillas, ed. Christopher Clapham (Oxford: James Currey, 1998), 61.

45 Johnson, “The Sudan People’s Liberation Army and the Problem of Factionalism,” 58.

46 Johnson, “The Sudan People’s Liberation Army and the Problem of Factionalism,” 66–67.

47 John Young, “Sudan: Liberation Movements, Regional Armies, Ethnic Militias & Peace,” Review of African Political Economy 30, no. 97 (2003): 424. Young is skeptical of the structure of the civil administration, but notes its existence and ability to keep the region loyal to the SPLM/A.

48 Peter Woodward, Sudan, 1898–1989: The Unstable State (Boulder, CO: L. Rienner, 1990), 158.

49 Johnson, The Root Causes of Sudan’s Civil Wars, 72.

50 Local militias would offer a potent and, most importantly, inexpensive tool to pursue the continuing counter-insurgency campaign.

51 LeRiche and Arnold, South Sudan, 72; Johnson, The Root Causes of Sudan’s Civil Wars, 81–82.

52 Johnson, The Root Causes of Sudan’s Civil Wars, 85.

53 LeRiche and Arnold, South Sudan, 74.

54 As seen in the previous chapter.

55 Johnson, “The Sudan People’s Liberation Army and the Problem of Factionalism,” 62.

56 Johnson, “The Sudan People’s Liberation Army and the Problem of Factionalism,” 63.

57 Johnson, The Root Causes of Sudan’s Civil Wars, 116. As Johnson notes, there had been the assumption that the initial rupture would be between Dinka and Nuer forces, but instead the strong ties of some SPLA forces, which contained both Dinka and Nuer troops, led to a confrontation between two groups of Nuer combatants.

58 Johnson, The Root Causes of Sudan’s Civil Wars, 99.

59 LeRiche and Arnold, South Sudan, 90.

60 Johnson, The Root Causes of Sudan’s Civil Wars, 102.

61 Johnson, The Root Causes of Sudan’s Civil Wars, 121.

62 LeRiche and Arnold, South Sudan, 99.

63 LeRiche and Arnold, South Sudan, 106. This was accomplished with significant Intergovernmental Authority on Development (IGAD) involvement.

64 Manṣūr Khālid, War and Peace in Sudan: A Tale of Two Countries (London: Kegan Paul, 2003), 75.

65 Woodward, Sudan, 1898–1989, 107.

66 Johnson, The Root Causes of Sudan’s Civil Wars, 31. Johnson notes that initially at least SANU kept their slogan as “self-determination” to avoid the negative optics of secessionist attempts, but the leadership generally assumed self-determination would lead directly into independence.

67 They did, however, reach out to Southern officers in the Sudanese Army to try and get them to defect to form their own forces. See Poggo, The First Sudanese Civil War, 64.

68 The Anya-nya were very lightly armed until 1964, when the Abboud government was in turmoil and more hardware fell to them. The surrender of the Simbas fleeing the Congo also offered a ready store of arms. Johnson, The Root Causes of Sudan’s Civil Wars, 31.

69 Rolandsen disagrees and makes a convincing argument for a closer relationship between the political and military branches of the struggle. Rolandsen, “The Making of the Anya-Nya Insurgency in the Southern Sudan, 1961–64,” 212.

70 Wai, The African-Arab Conflict in the Sudan, 100.

71 Johnson, The Root Causes of Sudan’s Civil Wars, 32–34.

72 Wai, The African-Arab Conflict in the Sudan, 110–11.

73 Collins, A History of Modern Sudan, 103–6.

74 Collins, A History of Modern Sudan, 110–11.

75 Poggo, The First Sudanese Civil War, 143.

76 The Soviets would deploy significant forces in both these regions. While they offered military hardware to the North and there are some accusations of the provision of pilots, the Soviet involvement in the Sudan never reached the levels of these two primary conflicts.

77 Johnson, “The Sudan People’s Liberation Army and the Problem of Factionalism,” 60–62.

78 Collins, A History of Modern Sudan, 143.

79 Johnson, “The Sudan People’s Liberation Army and the Problem of Factionalism,” 64–65.

80 Johnson, “The Sudan People’s Liberation Army and the Problem of Factionalism,” 65.

81 Johnson, “The Sudan People’s Liberation Army and the Problem of Factionalism,” 65.

Part III

1 An excellent account of this period can be found written by the hand of Gorbachev himself. See Mikhail Gorbachev, Perestroika: New Thinking for Our Country and the World (Norwalk, CT: Easton Press, 1996).

2 A series of interviews and recollections of this coup attempt have been archived online for reading and use, called collectively “Voice from and (Attempted) Soviet Coup,” edited by Anya Chernyakhovskaya, John Jirik, and Nikolai Lamm, at https://sites.google.com/site/jiriksoviet/.

3 In stark contrast to the Congo Crisis, where eventually the United Nations intervened to patch the entirety of the Congo back together following the multiple fissures within its territories.

4 See Philip White, “Globalization and the Mythology of the ‘Nation State,’” in Global History: Interactions Between the Universal and the Local, ed. A.G. Hopkins (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006): 257–84.

5 Michael K. Addo, “Political Self Determination Within the Context of the African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights,” Journal of African Law 32, no. 2 (1988): 184–85. Addo notes this left a remarkable narrow and limited definition of what “people” were eligible for self-determination, with members of the OAU essentially being the Namibian people, non-white South Africans, and the Saharaoui people of the western Sahara.

6 See chapter 3 and its ending.

7 As noted in the initial chapter, this idea is largely taken from Pierre Englebert and Rebecca Hummel. “Let’s Stick Together: Understanding Africa’s Secessionist Deficit.” African Affairs 104, no. 416 (2005): 400.

8 For a fuller critique of the role of the state in postcolonial Africa, see Basil Davidson, The Black Man’s Burden: Africa and the Curse of the Nation-State (New York: Times Books, 1992).

9 This isn’t to say that there were not several states that rejected this bipolar construct. Led by Nasser in Egypt and Sukarno in Indonesia, a large bloc of the decolonizing world chose to cast itself as non-aligned in the great global struggle and not hew to any particular allegiance. However, the simple fact of the matter was that the vast majority of these countries were economically underdeveloped, and despite the growth and support offered by the non-aligned faction, they still needed the manufactured goods and global markets that the two poles of the struggle offered. While these states did not necessarily accept the global Cold War, they were obliged to still deal with its effects and shape their diplomatic, economic, and military choices around its dynamics.

10 Alicia C. Decker and Andrea L. Arrington, Africanizing Democracies, 1980–Present (New York: Oxford University Press, 2015), 2.

11 Frederick Cooper, Africa since 1940: The Past of the Present (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2002), 5.

12 Cooper, Africa since 1940, 5–6.

13 Jonathan T. Reynolds, Sovereignty and Struggle: Africa and Africans in the Era of the Cold War (New York: Oxford University Press, 2015), 30–35 and 38–41.

14 Cooper, Africa since 1940, 160.

15 Cooper, Africa since 1940, 53.

16 Uganda appears in both lists thanks to the career of Field Marshal Idi Amin, who rose to power in Uganda in 1971 under the patronage of the West and enjoyed warm relations with Britain and Israel. However, by the mid-1970s these patrons had cooled on Amin and were beginning to refuse his demands for robust military and financial support. This led to Amin seeking and receiving Soviet support for his regime, as well as conspicuously dropping his connections to the capitalist powers.

17 Decker and Arrington, Africanizing Democracies, 2.

18 Mobutu would briefly attempt some show reforms to continue staying in the West’s grace, but these would not last long enough or go far enough to qualify as anything beyond a façade. See Jason K. Stearns, Dancing in the Glory of Monsters: The Collapse of the Congo and the Great War of Africa (New York: PublicAffairs, 2012), 64–65.

19 This had also shown some recent non-secessionist success with the victory of Yoweri Museveni’s National Resistance Army in the Ugandan Bush War, which brought Museveni to power. Some discussion of his reported methods can be found in his speech to the US Army’s Command and General Staff College captured in Yoweri Museveni, “The Strategy of Protracted People’s War: Uganda,” in Military Review 88, no. 6 (2008): 4–13.

Chapter 5

1 Maria Brons, Society, Security, Sovereignty, and the State in Somalia: From Statelessness to Statelessness? (Utrecht: International Books, 2001), 245.

2 I. M. Lewis, Making and Breaking States in Africa: The Somali Experience (Trenton, NJ: Red Sea Press, 2010), 65.

3 As will be discussed at greater length later in this chapter, the Somali population had been divided between regions controlled by the British, French, Italians, and Ethiopians. During decolonization, only Italian Somaliland and British Somaliland were joined to become Somalia. French Somaliland voted against joining Somalia, although this plebiscite is still looked upon with some suspicion. The Ogaden region, despite being a Somali homeland, was retained by the Ethiopian state per their 1897 treaty with Great Britain. More will be discussed on this region shortly. Finally, a significant Somali population lived in the northeast region of Kenya; this population would later fight the lengthy but ultimately unsuccessful Shifta War through the 1960s to try and effect irredentist goals.

4 The Haud was the extensive grassy lowlands within the Ethiopian-held region of Somali territory. It had commonly been a source of contention, with Ethiopia claiming the Haud but with it bordering Somalia, Djibouti, and British Somaliland.

5 Mark Bradbury, Becoming Somaliland (Oxford: James Currey, 2008), 26.

6 Daniel Compagnon, “Somali Armed Movements,” in African Guerrillas, ed. Christopher Clapham (Oxford: James Currey, 1998), 74.

7 Lewis, Making and Breaking States in Africa, 119; Gebru Tareke, The Ethiopian Revolution: War in the Horn of Africa (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2009), 187. Tareke goes to great lengths to discuss the coordination between the WSLF and Siad Barre’s military regime.

8 Bradbury, Becoming Somaliland, 39.

9 Bradbury, Becoming Somaliland, 42.

10 Bradbury, Becoming Somaliland, 61.

11 Daniel Compagnon, “Somali Armed Movements,” in African Guerrillas, ed. Christopher S. Clapham (Oxford: James Currey, 1998), 80; Bradbury, Becoming Somaliland, 44.

12 Bradbury, Becoming Somaliland, 62.

13 Compagnon, “Somali Armed Movements,” 80.

14 Beyond that of the Derg regime in Ethiopia.

15 Bradbury, Becoming Somaliland, 62.

16 Bradbury, Becoming Somaliland, 63; Brons, Society, Security, Sovereignty, and the State in Somalia, 211.

17 Brons, Society, Security, Sovereignty, and the State in Somalia, 212.

18 Brons, Society, Security, Sovereignty, and the State in Somalia, 213.

19 This conflict is most fixed in international eyes through the American-led Operation Restore Hope.

20 Part of the tensions between the north and south had to do with their colonial history. The north had been a British colony and had been administered as British Somaliland; the south had been an Italian colony and administered as Italian Somaliland. These divisions would follow Somalia into its unification and decolonization, where the administrators and soldiers of the former British colony were often marginalized in the new government.

21 Bradbury, Becoming Somaliland, 82.

22 Lewis, Making and Breaking States in Africa, 151–53.

23 Lewis, Making and Breaking States in Africa, 160–61; Bradbury, Becoming Somaliland, 89.

24 Bradbury, Becoming Somaliland, 89.

25 Brons, Society, Security, Sovereignty, and the State in Somalia, 249.

26 Lewis, Making and Breaking States in Africa, 169.

27 Brons, Society, Security, Sovereignty, and the State in Somalia, 249–50.

28 Bradbury, Becoming Somaliland, 98–101; Brons, Society, Security, Sovereignty, and the State in Somalia, 250–51.

29 Bradbury, Becoming Somaliland, 99.

30 Bradbury, Becoming Somaliland, 101.

31 Diya-paying groups are the family groupings that are defined by who would owe the fine for the wrongdoing of a member and thereby form an ad hoc self-contained authority group, as the group has direct responsibility for its members and their behaviour.

32 Lewis, Making and Breaking States in Africa, 176–77.

33 Bradbury, Becoming Somaliland, 116–17.

34 Bradbury, Becoming Somaliland, 121.

35 Bradbury, Becoming Somaliland, 122–23.

36 With the death of Aideed, the strongest faction in the south lost its leader and thus any drive for “federalism” was significantly weakened.

37 Brons, Society, Security, Sovereignty, and the State in Somalia, 252; Bradbury, Becoming Somaliland, 124.

38 Bradbury, Becoming Somaliland, 125.

39 The Transitional National Government was set up in the southern part of Somalia in Mogadishu and purported to represent the entirety of former Somalia as the legitimate government. It had been granted wide international recognition upon its formation but had been unable to effectively project its power and authority to all of its claimed territory. The Transitional National Government has since been superseded by first the Transitional Federal Government and now the Federal Government of Somalia.

40 Puntland was another breakaway territory that attained self-government upon the collapse of the central Somalian state. Encompassing the northeastern portion of Somalia, including the tip of the Horn, Puntland managed to form its own government and has largely governed itself since. However, since the rise of the Federal Government, Puntland has been increasingly aligning itself with the central government and has offered no support or recognition to Somaliland.

41 Bradbury, Becoming Somaliland, 127.

42 Bradbury, Becoming Somaliland, 133.

43 I. M. Lewis, The Modern History of Somaliland: From Nation to State (New York: Praeger, 1965), 61.

44 Helen Chapin Metz et al., Somalia: A Country Study (Washington, DC: Federal Research Division, Library of Congress, 1993), 14–15.

45 Lewis, The Modern History of Somaliland, 130.

46 Lewis, The Modern History of Somaliland, 139–40.

47 Bradbury, Becoming Somaliland, 31.

48 Lewis, The Modern History of Somaliland, 152.

49 Lewis, The Modern History of Somaliland, 163–64.

50 Bradbury, Becoming Somaliland, 33.

51 Bradbury, Becoming Somaliland, 34.

52 Brons, Society, Security, Sovereignty, and the State in Somalia, 255.

53 Bradbury, Becoming Somaliland, 142–43.

54 Bradbury, Becoming Somaliland, 81.

55 Bradbury, Becoming Somaliland, 153. It is estimated that Ethiopian trade makes up 30–50 percent of the total trade passing through Berbera.

56 Bradbury, Becoming Somaliland, 154.

57 Lewis, Making and Breaking States in Africa, 149–50.

58 Said S. Samatar, Somalia: A Nation in Turmoil (London: Minority Rights Group, 1991), 25.

59 Lewis, Making and Breaking States in Africa, 98–99.

60 Bradbury, Becoming Somaliland, 41.

61 Brons, Society, Security, Sovereignty, and the State in Somalia, 257–58.

62 Brons, Society, Security, Sovereignty, and the State in Somalia, 267.

Chapter 6

1 Priscilla Ellen Starratt, “Tuareg Slavery and Slave Trade,” Slavery & Abolition 2, no. 2 (1981): 84.

2 Susan Rasmussen, “Disputed Boundaries: Tuareg Discourse on Class and Ethnicity,” Ethnology 31, no. 4 (1992): 352.

3 Baz Lecocq, Disputed Desert: Decolonisation, Competing Nationalisms and Tuareg Rebellions in Northern Mali (Boston: Brill, 2010), 2.

4 Thomas K. Seligman, “Art of Being Tuareg Sahara Nomads in a Modern World,” African Arts 39, no. 3 (2006): 58.

5 Starratt, “Tuareg Slavery and Slave Trade,” 84.

6 Lecocq, Disputed Desert, 4.

7 Lecocq, Disputed Desert, 4–5.

8 Lecocq, Disputed Desert, 5.

9 Lecocq, Disputed Desert, 5, and Seligman, “Art of Being Tuareg Sahara Nomads in a Modern World,” 59. Seligman proposes descent from Jewish populations that fled to the Sahara, which seems unlikely.

10 Starratt, “Tuareg Slavery and Slave Trade,” 88.

11 Starratt, “Tuareg Slavery and Slave Trade,” 88.

12 Starratt, “Tuareg Slavery and Slave Trade,” 98.

13 Starratt, “Tuareg Slavery and Slave Trade,” 98.

14 Baz Lecocq, “The Bellah Question: Slave Emancipation, Race, and Social Categories in Late Twentieth-Century Northern Mali,” Canadian Journal of African Studies / Revue Canadienne Des Études Africaines 39, no. 1 (2005): 52.

15 Baz Lecocq and Georg Klute, “Tuareg Separatism in Mali,” International Journal: Canada’s Journal of Global Policy Analysis 68, no. 3 (2013): 425.

16 Lecocq, Disputed Desert, 33.

17 The OCRS was floated as a concept in 1956–57 but survived as an idea beyond the independence of the French Colonies. However, given the vague issues around border, sovereignty, and trade involved in its conception, the nationalist governments did not find it as appealing as did its architects. See LeCocq, Disputed Desert, 41.

18 Lecocq, Disputed Desert, 60–61.

19 Lecocq, Disputed Desert, 40.

20 This date is generally recognized due to the theft at gunpoint of a native goumier’s gun and equipment by two Kel Tamasheq insurgents and the insurgents’ subsequent declaration of resistance. See LeCocq, Disputed Desert, 151.

21 Lecocq, Disputed Desert, 161.

22 Lecocq, Disputed Desert, 168.

23 Lecocq, Disputed Desert, 168.

24 Lecocq, Disputed Desert, 168.

25 Lecocq, Disputed Desert, 175.

26 Lecocq, Disputed Desert, 177.

27 Lecocq, Disputed Desert, 180.

28 Lecocq, Disputed Desert, 186.

29 Lecocq, Disputed Desert, 158.

30 Ines Kohl, “Modern Nomads, Vagabonds, or Cosmopolitans? Reflections on Contemporary Tuareg Society,” Journal of Anthropological Research 66, no. 4 (2010): 450.

31 Kohl, “Modern Nomads, Vagabonds, or Cosmopolitans?” 452–53.

32 Lecocq, Disputed Desert, 206.

33 Kohl, “Modern Nomads, Vagabonds, or Cosmopolitans?” 450.

34 Lecocq, Disputed Desert, 207.

35 Lecocq, Disputed Desert, 222.

36 The applicability of the nation-state ideal can be seen through the Tenekra creed of “One Country, One Goal, One People.” See LeCocq, Disputed Desert, 218.

37 Lecocq, Disputed Desert, 230.

38 Lecocq, Disputed Desert, 233.

39 Lecocq, Disputed Desert, 233.

40 At the time the government of Morocco was fighting to retain its control over the region known as the Western Sahara against its indigenous liberation movement, the Frente Popular de Liberación de Saguía el Hamra y Río de Oro, or Polisario. The Western Sahara had been annexed by Morocco as part of a tripartite agreement with Spain, who had ruled the region since 1884. However, its local populace believed they had the right to self-determination and had taken up arms to enforce that right. Algeria had been supporting Polisario’s efforts against Morocco and had been urging the older Kel Tamasheq leaders to channel the armed support of their followers to aid Polisario’s efforts as well.

41 Lecocq Disputed Desert, 239.

42 Lecocq, Disputed Desert, 243.

43 Lecocq, Disputed Desert, 244.

44 Lecocq and Klute, “Tuareg Separatism in Mali,” 426.

45 Technicals were the name given to arms platforms used in the Libyan-Chad wars that were constructed out of all-terrain four-wheel-drive pickup trucks with a crew-served weapon in the bed, usually a heavy machine gun or a rocket launcher. These platforms became iconic within these conflicts, combining powerful weaponry with reliable mobility, and their centrality to the Chadian war efforts eventually led to these military operations being called the Toyota Wars after the ubiquitous Toyota Hilux pickup trucks that made up the bulk of their technicals. Many armed groups noted the effectiveness and simplicity of these weapons systems and they were quickly adopted across the developing world.

46 Lecocq and Klute, “Tuareg Separatism in Mali,” 426; Lecocq, Disputed Desert, 253.

47 Lecocq, Disputed Desert, 257.

48 The signatory was Iyad ag Ghali, who would later emerge as the leader of Ansar al-Din in the later rounds of fighting. See Lawrence E. Cline, “Nomads, Islamists, and Soldiers: The Struggles for Northern Mali,” Studies in Conflict & Terrorism 36, no. 8 (2013): 619–20.

49 Thomas Krings, “Marginalisation and Revolt among the Tuareg in Mali and Niger,” GeoJournal 36, no. 1 (1995): 61.

50 Lecocq and Klute, “Tuareg Separatism in Mali,” 426.

51 Lecocq, Disputed Desert, 264.

52 Lecocq, Disputed Desert, 265.

53 LeCocq notes that ARLA split off as a group of Kel Adagh that felt that significant reform was needed within Kel Tamasheq society, which had caused tension with the more moderate leadership of the MPA. See LeCocq, Disputed Desert, 267.

54 Lecocq, Disputed Desert, 269.

55 Krings, “Marginalisation and Revolt among the Tuareg in Mali and Niger,” 61.

56 Krings, “Marginalisation and Revolt among the Tuareg in Mali and Niger,” 61; Lecocq, Disputed Desert, 272–73.

57 Lecocq and Klute, “Tuareg Separatism in Mali,” 427.

58 Lecocq, Disputed Desert, 281.

59 Krings, “Marginalisation and Revolt among the Tuareg in Mali and Niger,” 61.

60 Lecocq, Disputed Desert, 285.

61 Krings, “Marginalisation and Revolt among the Tuareg in Mali and Niger,” 61.

62 Lecocq and Klute, “Tuareg Separatism in Mali,” 427.

63 Alpha Oumar Konaré was a scholar and political activist in Mali during the administrations of President Keita and General Traoré. Following the arrest of General Traoré by his Presidential Guard in 1991, Konaré participated in the transition to a representative democracy and won election to the presidency in 1992.

64 Scott Straus, Making and Unmaking Nations: War, Leadership, and Genocide in Modern Africa (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2015), 170.

65 Lecocq and Klute, “Tuareg Separatism in Mali,” 428; Lecocq, Disputed Desert, 307.

66 For additional information on the Ganda Koy militias and their role before and after the amnesty, see Marc Andre Boisvert, “Failing at Violence: The Longer-Lasting Impact of Pro-Government Militias in Northern Mali since 2012,” African Security 8, no. 4 (2015): 272–98.

67 Jennifer C. Seely, “A Political Analysis of Decentralisation: Coopting the Tuareg Threat in Mali,” Journal of Modern African Studies 39, no. 03 (2001): 504–5.

68 See again Lecocq, Disputed Desert, 161.

69 Krings, “Marginalisation and Revolt among the Tuareg in Mali and Niger,” 61.

70 With both these organizations being represented by a singular figure in Iyad ag Ghali, as noted earlier.

71 Lecocq, Disputed Desert, 267.

72 Lecocq, Disputed Desert, 281–83.

73 Seely, “A Political Analysis of Decentralisation,” 516.

74 Jibrin Ibrahim, “Political Exclusion, Democratization and Dynamics of Ethnicity in Niger,” Africa Today 41, no. 3 (1994): 21.

75 Ibrahim, “Political Exclusion, Democratization and Dynamics of Ethnicity in Niger,” 24.

76 Ibrahim, “Political Exclusion, Democratization and Dynamics of Ethnicity in Niger,” 25.

77 Lecocq, Disputed Desert, 243.

78 Lecocq, Disputed Desert, 244.

79 Krings, “Marginalisation and Revolt among the Tuareg in Mali and Niger,” 60.

80 Krings, “Marginalisation and Revolt among the Tuareg in Mali and Niger,” 60.

81 Lecocq and Klute, “Tuareg Separatism in Mali,” 426.

82 Krings, “Marginalisation and Revolt among the Tuareg in Mali and Niger,” 62.

83 Krings, “Marginalisation and Revolt among the Tuareg in Mali and Niger,” 62.

84 Krings, “Marginalisation and Revolt among the Tuareg in Mali and Niger,” 62.

85 Lecocq, Disputed Desert, 244.

86 Krings, “Marginalisation and Revolt among the Tuareg in Mali and Niger,” 62.

Conclusion

1 As noted, this form of warfare often took a specifically Maoist cast, hence the use of the term “protracted warfare”; however, these sorts of conflicts were waged across much of the world in very similar ways throughout the 1950s and 1960s, with additional military and political thought being imported from other revolutionary places such as Cuba, Algeria, and even Yugoslavia.

2 In this case, specifically the premises laid out in the United Nations charter, with the most relevant pieces being chapter I, article 1, and chapter XII, article 76.

3 Henry S. Wilson, African Decolonization (London: Hodder Education, 1994), 72–74.

4 Wilson, African Decolonization, 81–83.

5 Wilson, African Decolonization, 92–93.

6 Jules Gérard-Libois, Katanga Secession, trans. Rebecca Young (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1966), 316.

7 Baz Lecocq and Georg Klute, “Tuareg Separatism in Mali,” International Journal: Canada’s Journal of Global Policy Analysis 68, no. 3 (2013): 425.

8 Frederick Cooper, Africa Since 1940: The Past of the Present (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2002), 5.

9 A good overview of these powers and their roles is in Elizabeth Schmidt, Foreign Intervention in Africa: From the Cold War to the War on Terror (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013), 18–29. The remainder of the book also offers several well-researched case studies illustrating the role of these international patrons in African conflicts.

10 In some cases these were issues of humanitarian interest, as noted in Alicia C. Decker and Andrea L. Arrington, Africanizing Democracies, 1980–Present (New York: Oxford University Press, 2015), 2; for others, as noted, the new perceived threat of Islamism was cited as a deep concern, as noted in Schmidt, Foreign Intervention in Africa, 214.

11 Now the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

12 The evolution of the Katangan Gendarmerie is captured in Erik Kennes and Miles Larmer. The Katangan Gendarmes and the War in Central Africa: Fighting Their Way Home (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2016).

13 Shaba was the new name given to Katanga during Mobutu’s period of Zaireanization.

14 Schmidt, Foreign Intervention in Africa, 187–88.

15 Their website is still active and discusses their activities. See MASSOB, http://massob.biafranet.com/.

16 For example, see James Eze, “Biafra: Enugu police arrest 15 MASSOB members,” Premium Times, 22 May 2018, https://www.premiumtimesng.com/regional/ssouth-east/269353-biafra-enugu-police-arrest-15-massob-members.html.

17 See C.L., “The National Service in Eritrea: Miserable and Useless,” The Economist, 10 May 2014, https://www.economist.com/baobab/2014/03/10/miserable-and-useless.

18 “Q&A: The Horn’s Bitter Border War,” BBC.com, 7 December 2005, http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/4041073.stm.

19 Nathaniel Myers, “Africa’s North Korea,” Foreign Policy, 15 June 2010, https://foreignpolicy.com/2010/06/15/africas-north-korea/.

20 “The Death of John Garang,” The Economist, Print Edition, 4 August 2005, https://www.economist.com/middle-east-and-africa/2005/08/04/the-death-of-john-garang.

21 Salva Kiir is Dinka and Machar is Nuer.

22 “South Sudan Democratic Movement, Army,” Sudan Tribune, http://www.sudantribune.com/+-SSDM-A-South-Sudan-Democratic,483-+ .

23 “South Sudan Liberation Movement/Army,” Sudan Tribune, http://www.sudantribune.com/spip.php?mot355.

24 James Copnall, “Sudan: Why Abyei is Crucial to the North and South,” BBC, 23 May 2011, https://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-13502845.

25 Simon Tisdall, “South Sudan President Sacks Cabinet in Power Struggle,” The Guardian, 24 July 2013, https://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/jul/24/south-sudan-salva-kiir-sacks-cabinet.

26 Patrick McGroarty, “South Sudan’s Kiir Says Uganda Helping to Fight Rebels,” Wall Street Journal, 16 January 2014, https://www.wsj.com/articles/south-sudan8217s-kiir-says-uganda-helping-to-fight-rebels-1389876829.

27 The Islamic Courts Union was a reaction to the continued violence of the warlord conflicts. The ICU arose as a stern but pacifying force in the south of Somalia and rapidly gained support and legitimacy. See “Profile: Somalia’s Islamic Courts,” BBC.com, 6 June 2016, http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/5051588.stm.

28 Said S. Samatar, “The Islamic Courts and Ethiopia’s Intervention in Somalia: Redemption or Adventurism,” Chatham House, 25 April 2007, https://www.chathamhouse.org/sites/default/files/public/Research/Africa/250407samatar.pdf.

29 Stig Jarle Hansen, Al-Shabaab in Somalia: The History and Ideology of a Militant Islamist Group (New York: Oxford University Press, 2016).

30 For example, Somaliland continues to get glowing international profiles, such as in Joshua Keating, “When Is a Nation not a Nation? Somaliland’s Dream of Independence,” The Guardian, 20 July 2018, https://www.theguardian.com/news/2018/jul/20/when-is-a-nation-not-a-nation-somalilands-dream-of-independence.

31 Rashid Abdi, “A Dangerous Gulf in the Horn: How the Inter-Arab Crisis is Fueling Regional Tensions,” International Crisis Group, 3 August 2017, https://www.crisisgroup.org/middle-east-north-africa/gulf-and-arabian-peninsula/dangerous-gulf-horn-how-inter-arab-crisis-fuelling-regional-tensions.

32 Bashir Ali, “How an Unrecognized State’s Port Deal Could Shift Dynamics Across the Horn,” African Arguments, 1 May 2018, http://africanarguments.org/2018/05/01/how-an-unrecognised-states-port-deal-could-shift-dynamics-across-the-horn-berbera-port-dpworld-somaliland/.

33 Angel Rabasa et al., “The Tuareg Insurgency in Mali, 2006-2009,” in From Insurgency to Stability, vol. 2: Insights from Selected Case Studies, ed. Angel Rabasa et al. (Santa Monica, CA: RAND, 2011), 124.

34 Rabasa et al., “The Tuareg Insurgency in Mali, 2006-2009,” 128.

35 Adam Nossiter, “Qaddafi’s Weapons, Taken by Old Allies, Reinvigorate an Insurgent Army in Mali,” New York Times, 5 February 2012, https://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/06/world/africa/tuaregs-use-qaddafis-arms-for-rebellion-in-mali.html.

36 “Mali Tuareg Rebels Declare Independence in the North,” BBC, 6 April 2012, https://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-17635437.

37 Peggy Brugiere, “Backed By Popular Support, Mali’s Islamists Drive Tuareg from Gao,” France24, 29 June 2018, http://observers.france24.com/en/20120629-mali-backed-popular-support-islamists-drive-tuareg-separatists-north-city-gao.

38 Michael Shurkin, France’s War in Mali: Lessons for an Expeditionary Army (Santa Monica, CA: RAND, 2014), 13–24.

39 Schmidt, Foreign Intervention in Africa, 213.

40 This is covered in Schmidt, Foreign Intervention in Africa, 216, but a lengthier study of the structure and goals of the TSCTP is Lesley Anne Warner, The Trans Sahara Counter Terrorism Partnership: Building Partner Capacity to Counter Terror and Violent Extremism (Washington DC: Center for Complex Operations, 2014).

41 ECOWAS, for example, sent contingents with increasing ability to stabilize the civil wars in Liberia and Sierra Leone in the late 1990s, while SADC intervened in Lesotho and helped organize the Force Intervention Brigade in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

42 Schmidt, Foreign Intervention in Africa, 213.