In Africa, hope replaces bloodshed

JOHANNESBURG -- Across Africa, most of the guns of war have fallen silent.

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Small conflicts still flare up. Some peace deals are shaky or still in negotiation. Nonetheless, it is a rare moment to savor on a continent that often has been defined by massive fighting, displacement, and death.

"The past years have been a terrible time, a very horrendous time, for human rights across sub-Saharan Africa," said John Shattuck, chief executive of the John F. Kennedy Library Foundation in Boston, who was a top human rights official in the Clinton administration. "I hope this is more than just a lull."

Political observers warn that at least a half-dozen countries -- many of them packed closely together in West Africa -- remain unstable. But they also see a number of factors that have led to this point and may continue to be a positive influence.

One trend is African leaders becoming regional peacemakers. South Africa's president, Thabo Mbeki, has helped move along peace negotiations for Burundi. Kenya's Mwai Kibaki, only in office for 10 months, is pushing initiatives in Somalia and Sudan. Nigeria's Olusegun Obasanjo and Ghana's John Agyekum Kufuor traveled together last week to Ivory Coast to try to defuse a five-week standoff between the government and rebels in the northern part of the country.

Regional alliances have helped. One example is the Economic Community of West African States, or ECOWAS, which sent troops to Liberia in August to enforce a cease-fire that halted 14 years of civil war.

The United States has played a major role in advancing peace talks in Kenya to end Sudan's deadly civil war, the continent's longest-running conflict. Secretary of State Colin L. Powell said recently he hoped the deal would be complete by the end of the year.

And several non-government players have entered the fray, from the Catholic Church's role in Angola and Liberia to trade unionists now challenging one-man rule in Zimbabwe and Swaziland.

"A lot of the reason that things are going well is the result of the involvement of civil society," said Hussein Solomon, a South African political analyst who travels widely around the continent.

No one is so bold as to predict this absence of war will last. "A peace agreement is one thing, but do any of the deals fundamentally go to the root of what is causing the problems? No," said Jennifer Cooke, an analyst at the Center for International and Strategic Studies, a Washington think tank.

And many are calling for greater US involvement in some of the volatile situations. Shattuck, for one, wants Washington to reinstate an arms embargo on Rwanda, one of the instigators in the just-ended civil war in the Democratic Republic of Congo.

J. Stephen Morrison, a Washington-based analyst who has worked on conflicts in Africa for the past 15 years, said a telling moment may come with a peace deal in Sudan; the question, as in Iraq and Afghanistan, is whether the US government will commit to long-term assistance there.

Many feel that degree of commitment will be the deciding factor. "There have been some positive turns in Africa in the last year," Morrison said. "Sudan is going to be a big deal. But . . . It's not clear the West is going to have the stamina to make it work." John Donnelly can be reached at donnelly@globe.com