Contenu du sommaire : Libéria, Sierra Leone, Guinée : la régionalisation de la guerre

African Wars of the Mano River Type. The Case for Social Analysis
Durkheim's theory on solidarity and division of labor offers an alternative to the utilitarian conceptual framework in order to analyze the wars of the Mano River type. Utilitarian explanations, limiting understanding of social processes to the world of routine calculation, fail to grasp the special intensity of war. Instead, violence – as Durkheim views it – belongs to those moments of human interaction he terms « effervescence », in which social orders are made or destroyed. This requires a sociological understanding of solidarity.

Irregular Combatants and International Human Rights Discourse in African civil wars : The case of Sierra Leone 's « Hunters »This article challenges the notion held in scholarly and policy communities that irregular combatants are more likely to perpetrate atrocities that contravene international human rights conventions than national armies. To do so, it analyzes the ethical codes of the irregular hunter militias (later Civil Defense Forces, or CDF) that during the 1990s came into existence in Sierra Leone. However, the authors also show how an awareness of international responses triggered by war atrocities such as the well-publicized mutilation campaigns of 1996, 1998, and 1999 produce strategic decisions to engage in such atrocities, especially once irregular combatants become hired mercenaries in neighboring wars.

Post-war Trajectories for Girls associated with the Fighting Forces in Sierra Leone
Though the centrality of the « crisis of youth » theme to the war in this region was established by the mid-1990s, the focus usually was on young men as victims and combatants. This article focuses on post-conflict outcomes for girls associated with the fighting. Though girls were involved in similar numbers and in many of the same war activities as their male counterparts, their specific roles as sexual partners added a moralistic dimension to the discourse about their responsibilities in war. This resulted in their neglect in formal demobilization programs, where only some 5 % of participants were female.

Liberia's nasty little war
After more than three years of fighting the military opposition to Charles Taylor has little to show in terms of results. These failures are even more remarkable given significant logistical and material help from the government of Guinea and contacts with British advisors stationed in neighboring Sierra Leone. This ineffective military and political campaign is indicative of a broad shift in the capabilities and organization of insurgencies that challenge rulers in failed states.

Regional Conflict and the Rhetoric of Counterinsurgency : Guineans and Refugees in September 2000On 9 September, 2000, Lansana Conté gave a speech to the Guinean nation to discuss the recent cross-border attacks and ordered the refugees to be rounded up so that the rebels could be arrested. A frightening exercise in anti-refugee violence followed and allowed also to associate the internal political opposition to those rebels through an intensive use of a coercive rhetoric framed under Sekou Touré, while the military support provided by Conté to groups opposed to Charles Taylor was denied despite claims made by civic leaders.

The SPLM/SPLA and Gouvernance in South Sudan
Sudan's civil war has for so long been part of the political landscape of Africa that it is widely held by both the Sudanese and many in the international community to be intractable. Even more difficult to conceive than the notion of peace is that of a functioning regional or independent government in southern Sudan. There is a need to consider the problem of governance in the South, and in particular the administrative and political capacity of the SPLM/A, its ideology and its relationships with a nascent civil society.

South Africa : The Motor of a New Deal on the Continent ?
With the arrival of Thabo Mbeki to power, South African foreign policy as been given a new dynamic, most notably in the repositioning of this nation-state on the African continent. The role of South Africa in the development of Nepad and the creation of the African Union has made it a vanguard in the promotion of a new African order. Nonetheless, Pretoria's ambitions are constrained by resistance from members of the old guard, by the fear of South African hegemony, and by its limited capacities for action.

Economies of Trafficking and Globalization : the African path to Development ?
Economic trafficking in Africa is not simply the expression of anomie. Through transnational networks, these activities contribute to the continent 's connection with the flows of globalization and illicit international relations. By articulating political power and a criminalized economy, Africa is constructing a singular path ; it reconfigures historical trading practices, indigenous religious affiliations and lineage dynamics.