Brothers at War? Reflections on an Internecine Conflict between Ethiopia and Eritrea

The phenomenon of an Afro-fatique as engendered by the tragic events in Liberia (1990), Somalia (1992) and Rwanda (1994) was salutary in so far as it intensifeid debates on the pivotal role assigned to the United Nations (UN) and the international community at large in African conflict resolution. Subsequently, there emerged clarion calls for African solutions to African conflicts, with foreign intervention only playing a complementary role. This new thinking put sub-regional organisations like ECOWAS in West Africa and SADC in Southern Africa in a good stead to take this initiative. So far, however, such initiatives in these and other sub-regions have been frautht with problems - most of them insurmountable. Using the Ethio-Eritrean conflict as a point of reference, this paper argues that such innovations are hobbled by the inherent weaknesses and moribundity of key organisations as is too obviously the case throughout Africa