The essay is structured as follows. Section one will discuss the term civil war and scholars view on greed and grievance, section two will give historical account caused by grievance in West Africa, section three will discuss the deteriorating environment both during and after the war with a falling Gross domestic product in Congo, Angola, and Sierra Leone, and my conclusion based on the importance of grievance.
Definitions.
Why the thematic countries or areas have been chosen is related to my definition of conflicts, and their connections between greed and grievance are the explanation of what civil war is. Civil war is said to occur when an internal conflict break out leading to deaths of one thousand peoples in a particularly given year (Collier and Hoeffler 2004:565). However, five percent of death must be suffered by both the government troops and the rebel groups involved in the war. Civil War is a conflict that will involve fighting between representative of the state and the organized non-state groups in the same country with the aim of changing the government, to control the state, or modify the previous policies by the government. It must also have a percentage of death occurrences (Cramer 2006:62). According to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute 2001, civil war is defined as a disaster and a major problem confronting the developing countries in the world which is the most persistent compared to international conflict, out of the fifteen main conflicts listed in 2001 (SIPRI: 2002 cited in Collier and Hoeffler). Nicholas Sambanis defined civil war as a war that will occur within a geographical location of a country recognized by over 500,000 citizens who are politically or military motivated based on the leaders and with motives known to the populace (Sambanis 2000 cited in Cramer 2000). More so, to the political scientist conflict will prevail in societies as a result of motive which necessitates a form of violence through protest when people are aggrieved.
