In August 2021 the international media and most politicians reacted with much surprise to the dramatic events at Kabul airport. Thousands of Afghans, desperate to flee Taliban rule, were struggling to get on the last planes leaving the country. It did not take long that prominent Western commentators proclaimed that the failure in Afghanistan would be the end of longstanding, Western inspired conflict management strategies to end violent conflict in failing states by deploying peace operations and getting involved in long-term peace- and nation-building processes. Indeed, “peace operations,” conducted by a variety of international actors like the UN, EU, NATO, AU, are a strategic pillar of international peace and security policy since the end of the Cold War. In average, more than 150,000 international military, police, and civilians are annually deployed worldwide.

No doubt, a number of these missions are struggling with difficulties similar to those in Afghanistan. But does the failure in Afghanistan really imply that there is no future for peace operations and peacebuilding and that missions like those in Mali, Somalia, DR Congo etc. will suffer a fate similar to that in Afghanistan? This is what we want to explore in the class by having a thorough, field based look at the history, concepts, development, and unsolved problems of UN-lead peace operations and peacebuilding.

The number of violent conflicts in Sub Saharan Africa has been worryingly high in recent decades. The multitude of people getting killed, wounded, displaced or forced to flee as well as the level of destruction of infrastructure is unacceptable. Explanations for this state of affairs abound, like “state-failure, failure of development and democratization, the inherent antagonistic dynamic of Africa´s ethnic-tribal diversity, the problematic heritage of colonial rule” etc.. However, they have not led to a significant improvement of conflict prevention and solution in Africa. Obviously, these explanations do not sufficiently reflect the complexity and diversity of conditions in Africa.

In the class, therefore, we will take a fresh look at state building governance, democratization as well as ethnic diversity etc. and how they have been managed by African regimes. First, we will analyze and discuss the challenges African leaders faced the day after independence. Which choices did they have to overcome the problematic heritage of colonialism and to ensure stability, unity and peace in the highly fragmented countries? In the 2nd part we will turn to selected case studies and discuss, based on presentations by students, the root causes and dynamics of conflict in countries reflecting the enormous diversity of the continent in terms of regions, colonial past, ethnic-religious composition, regime types, external influence as well as the presence or absence of mineral wealth. This will help us to get a much more sophisticated and realistic insight into the state and development of present African affairs.