Africa has been hit by a spate of coups that threaten to take it back to the 1980s and the era of military rule. In fact, most dictators adopt common appellations such as "President" or "Prime Minister", so they must be identified via their actions and policies rather than their title. Kenya and the Ivory Coast, both with gross domestic product (GDP) per capita of around $2,000, are significantly richer than Malawi and the breakaway territory of Somaliland (rated separately from Somalia by Freedom House), each with income per person at around $400. But some critics remain unconvinced. Cairo has reached out to both sides in Sudan to press for a cease-fire but is unlikely to stand by if the military faces defeat. Last November, 49 military police officers and four civilians were killed in the northern outpost of Inata. There is this notion that bad elections are worse than no elections at all, said Ms. Moderan. when approximately half of the The Economic Community of Central African States (ECCAS) is stocked with autocrats, while the East African Community (EAC) has been but a weak presence to the point of risking irrelevance. Thats more than 114 million people now ruled by soldiers who have illegally seized power. Whether or not Putin is a dictator is a matter of some debate. However, within this category, increasingly populist governments are suppressing opposition groups, postponing elections, eliminating term limits, and abusing human rights to maintain power. But the longer (the fighting) drags on the more likely it is we see major external intervention.. Unless it is swiftly ended, the conflict will become a multi-level game with regional and some international actors pursuing their interests, using money, arms supplies and possibly their own troops or proxies, he wrote. African On a similar note, a dictatorship's regular citizens have no voice in most matters. Given the degree of censorship and control China's government leverages over its citizens, most political experts would call it a dictatorship. Resilient institutions offer the best tonic to unscrupulous elitespresent everywhere, but a particular scourge in sub-Saharan Africa, where institutions have been deliberately weakened during the colonial period and subsequently by big men and their associated militaries. Arab Gulf countries have looked to the Horn of Africa in recent years as they have sought to project power across the region. Dictators Again, the Hybrid dictatorships blend elements of the other four types. All the attention goes to organizing periodic elections, which in most cases are rigged, he said. Dictatorships have shallow levels of freedom. Its a recipe for the kind of prolonged conflict that has devastated other countries in the Middle East and Africa, from Lebanon and Syria to Libya and Ethiopia. Sudan: violence between army and militia is a symptom of an old Chadian soldiers walk by the coffin of the late Chadian president Idriss Deby during the state funeral in Ndjamena last April. A long-running civil war or partition of the Arab and African country into rival fiefdoms are also possible. What happens in Sudan will not stay in Sudan, said Alan Boswell of the International Crisis Group. Burkina Faso, Chad, Guinea, Sudan and Mali have all seen the government overthrown and replaced with a military junta. The United Nations [PDF] and advanced democracies including France, Japan, and the United Kingdom have similarly linked foreign aid to good-governance reforms. Article Mali actually had two coups in a nine-month span. The persistence of religious and ethnic rivalries has been underestimated by African democrats and their friends abroad. Alex De Waal, a Sudan expert at Tufts University, wrote in a memo to colleagues this week that the conflict should be seen as the first round of a civil war.. These five nations that have recently experienced military coups form a broken line that stretches across the wide bulge of Africa, from Guinea on the west coast to Sudan in the east. The BBC is not responsible for the content of external sites.
