"States and Conflict in the Horn of Africa: The Dysfunctionality of States." Dr. Taisier M. Ali speaks

As a professor at the University of Khartoum, he was invited to lecture at the universities of Addis Ababa, Cairo, Makerere, Dar al Salaam, Asmara, York and Toronto.   For over two decades, he has been involved in attempts to end civil wars in Sudan. In 1985, he was assigned by the Sudanese Trade Union Alliance  (TUA) to administer peace talks with the Sudan Peoples’ Liberation Movement/Army (SPLM/A). From 1986 until the military coup of 1989 he was seconded from the University of Khartoum to the Sudanese Cabinet as coordinator for the Ministerial Peace Committee.  Following the 1989 military coup in Sudan, his refusal to join the Cabinet led to periods of detention and eventual dismissal from the University by a decree of the Sudanese Army “Revolution Command Council”.

 

In 1994 he was invited to testify before the Africa Subcommittee of the U.S. Congress in a hearing on Sudan’s Civil War. For several years following 1996, he headed the political department of the democratic resistance movement, Sudan Alliance Forces (SAF), which in 2004 merged with the SPLM/A. In 2000, he represented the Sudanese opposition umbrella organization, National Democratic Alliance (NDA) in the peace talks in Kenya.   Since 2005, Taisier Ali has been full-time Director of an independent non- governmental institution, the Peacebuilding Centre for the Horn of Africa (PCHA), based in Asmara, Eritrea that engages in capacity building training for grassroots organization from Eastern Sudan, Darfur and Somalia.   He has published on the political economy of underdevelopment in Sudan and the processes of domination, resistance, conflict resolution, peacebuilding and crisis of the state in Africa.