ceasefire bid
Howard Barrell
South African diplomacy lay behind the potential breakthrough achieved this week in attempts to end the war in the Democratic Republic of Congo when five neighbouring countries involved in the fighting committed themselves to signing a ceasefire agreement.
Ironically, however, South Africa was sidelined from the summit in the Namibian capital, Windhoek, on January 18 at which the advance was achieved. Only the leaders of Angola, Namibia and Zimbabwe, which are backing President Laurent Kabila’s Congo regime with troops on the ground, and Rwanda and Uganda, which are supporting the Congolese rebels, were invited.
A ceasefire agreement is due to be signed in the Zambian capital, Lusaka, soon.
Kabila and rebel leaders were also not at the Windhoek meeting and have responded cautiously to the agreement in principle to a ceasefire reached by those attending. But regional security experts believe there is a realistic prospect that the five foreign belligerents in the conflict may have sufficient clout to herd Kabila and his enemies into agreeing to a ceasefire.
Deputy President Thabo Mbeki secured the basis for the understanding shortly before Christmas when he set up a secret meeting between Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe and Paul Kagame, the vice-president of Rwanda and the real power in that country.
Zimbabwe and Rwanda are the two main foreign belligerents in Congo. Zimbabwe has an estimated 5 000 troops there, while regional security analysts say Rwanda has committed its own troops to the war and is the main backer of the Congolese Rally for Democracy, the main rebel group.
A South African government representative said it would “not be right to say we were excluded from the Windhoek meeting”. But, privately, South African officials say they were “surprised” by the summit in Namibia and would have expected to be there.
Following a meeting of foreign and defence ministers of the Southern African Development Community and others in Lusaka about a ceasefire late last week, about 16 heads of state or government had been expected to gather in the Zambian capital on January 16 or January 18 to take matters forward. But plans for that wider summit were scuttled during what officials say was a “difficult” ministerial meeting.
And the five foreign belligerents then surprised others with a plan for their own, exclusive meeting in Windhoek.
It is understood that Mbeki’s diplomatic initiative started with the inaugural journey of South Africa’s new Blue Train to Zimbabwe in mid-December, on which he was accompanied by various Southern African leaders and on which he was eventually joined by Mugabe.
On the train, Mugabe, under serious economic and domestic political pressures to extricate his country from its heavy commitment to the war in Congo, indicated a willingness to meet Kagame, widely seen as the key player on the rebels’ side.
Mbeki then moved with a speed that surprised the Zimbabweans. Within days he was back in Zimbabwe on a secret trip, this time accompanied by Kagame.
Mugabe and Kagame met, so establishing the direct channels of communication and the basis for this week’s Windhoek summit.
Mbeki’s representative, Ronnie Momoepa, would not comment this week on the details of Mbeki’s role in the Congo peace process apart from saying that he was “involved in a number of peace initiatives”.
Mbeki is understood to have immediately followed up the Kagame/ Mugabe meeting with a set of proposals that were circulated to the two African leaders and others. These proposals cover the terms of a ceasefire and troop standstill in Congo, a peacekeeping force made up of units from the various warring armies but under neutral foreign command, the terms of a final end to all hostilities and the creation of a forum of heads of state to oversee and guarantee the democratisation and reconstruction of Congo.
These proposals elaborate on an earlier Congo peace plan drawn up by Mbeki and presented by President Nelson Mandela to other African leaders in September last year.
South African officials refuse to be drawn publicly on the reasons for the sidelining of South Africa in Windhoek. But regional political and security analysts suggest a number of explanations. They say that the heads of state of a number of the belligerents feel uncomfortable about South Africa’s keen awareness of their own and their families’ business interests in Congo, and of how this might be affecting their decision- making on the war. They also suggest some heads of state resent Mbeki’s ability to exercise intellectual and political leadership.
An additional factor in the belligerents wanting to meet alone in Windhoek, rather than in broader company in Lusaka, is that the Angolan government is deeply distrustful of President Frederick Chiluba and Zambia, whom they accuse of continuing to support Unita rebels.
TheUnited Nations peacekeeping mission in Angola is over, writes Chris Gordon
The United Nations Security Council decision this week to cut back its peace- keeping operation in Angola to the barest minimum is the final acknowledgement that the country has returned to full-scale war. The question must now be asked: why did the international community again fail the people of Angola?
The UN dates the de facto collapse of its peacekeeping role in Angola to June 1998 when Unita leader Jonas Savimbi finally refused to surrender his headquarters, Bailondo and Andulo. The death of UN special representative Alouine Blondin Beye in a plane crash in the same month stalled the failing peace process. The UN’s final peacekeeping attempt was a further set of sanctions on Unita’s economic lifeline – diamonds – and the freezing of bank accounts.
By December the real battles, for Kuito and Huambo, had begun and it was clear that Unita had re-armed. It had done this, again, while a UN peacekeeping force was in the country. The response in Angola was fury.
Angolan President Jos Eduardo dos Santos asked the UN to leave, and last week, it agreed. The peacekeeping mission will pull out of Angola by March 20, but humanitarian aid will remain in place. The UN will form a new team to restart the peace process, if it is called on to do so.
The UN’s operations in Angola from 1994 to 1999 probably constituted the wrong type of peacekeeping operation from the start. A mandate to disarm Unita was needed, but not forthcoming. Unita had flouted the UN once by resuming war after it lost the elections in 1992. It had remained armed throughout the election period.
Why did the UN believe that a post-war attempt at peaceful settlement would succeed without disarming Unita? The answer must be that the strong influence of the United States’s Cold War agenda was still operational and it defined the UN’s response to events in Angola. The US supplied and supported Savimbi for more than a decade as a proxy belligerent against the Soviet- and Cuban-backed government in Luanda.
This partisan approach was supposedly over by the time Angolans went to the polls in 1992, with the international community supposedly the guarantor of democracy and freedom. But Angolans’ hopes were soon dashed with the UN’s slow response to events during the post-election war from 1992 to 1994.
The ban on weapons to Angola – the Triple Zero Option – was not lifted until 1993, even though Unita had ignored it. Sanctions against Unita were delayed until they were useless. Angola was still the communist enemy, it seemed, until US President Bill Clinton’s government gave diplomatic recognition to the country in 1994.
Even so, the US intervened to prevent a decisive military defeat of Unita in late 1994 when the government, with the support of Executive Outcomes, had Savimbi in its sights. Once or twice a US diplomat has been heard to suggest that, in hindsight, this was a mistake. Had the US not intervened, Angola would not be facing another war.
The position of the US has always been a crucial element in security council decision-making. And these days the US has a complex African agenda. This became clear during Clinton’s African trip in March last year, when he visited both Rwanda and Uganda.
Rwandan Vice-President Paul Kagame and Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni are seen by the US as part of the “New Africa”; modernising free marketeer strongmen who have brought stability and represent a southern bulwark against the encroachment of Islamic fundamentalism in sub-Saharan Africa.
Clinton, however, did not visit Angola. This is surprising as Angola, by 2002, will produce at least 10% of the US’s oil supply.
And US military assistance in the shape of a contract with US Military and Professional Resources Incorporated, which was to replace Executive Outcomes under the deal by which Executive Outcomes was asked to leave Angola, has never quite materialised.
The US State Department has blamed Savimbi for restarting the war, but US African foreign policy has left Angola out in the cold, a position difficult to reverse. Angola is now at war with two of the US’s strongest African allies, Kagame and Museveni.
The US State Department condemned Uganda and Rwanda’s invasion of the Democratic Republic of Congo last August, but it also accused Congolese President Laurent Kabila of undermining regional security by failing to deal with rebel incursions from Congo into Uganda and Rwanda.
In other words, Angola is now on the wrong side, at least while the Congo war continues. The international community and particularly the US, which bears some responsibility for events in Angola and for Savimbi’s ambitions, are backing away, despite UN Secretary General Kofi Annan’s efforts. All the Angolan government can expect is condemnation of Savimbi, coupled with criticism of its own positions, and international demands to return to the Lusaka Peace Protocols.
At best, the UN has been misguided in thinking that a peaceful settlement is possible in Angola. There is little evidence to suggest Savimbi has ever been willing to accept any terms but his own, and even less to suggest that Unita ever had any serious idea of demilitarising.
At worst, the peacekeeping agenda has been compromised from its inception by Cold War thinking. It would be difficult for the UN to disarm Unita at this time, but there seems little willingness to try and little chance of gaining backing.