This week’s African Union summit failed to make substantive progress on resolving two of the continent’s most urgent crises — in Darfur and Somalia.
In November, Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir’s tentative agreement on the deployment of a hybrid AU-United Nations operation in the area in November sparked hope that he was softening his stance on the deployment of UN troops to the region. But alBashir’s equivocating stance since then has meant there is likely to be little tangible change on the ground.
The deployment of the force would take place in three phases and involve a gradual build-up of UN personnel, culminating in phase three, which would see the deployment of 17 000 troops and 3 000 police officers. Jan Eliasson, the UN’s special envoy to Sudan, said: ”It is a substantial increase on the 7 000 AU troops who have been in Darfur for years”.
Maizoub al-Khalifa, a Sudanese presidential adviser, told Reuters there was consensus on the first two stages of UN support, but that there was no agreement to deploy a hybrid force.
Analysts said al-Bashir was not even keen on phase two. ”The negotiations are at best tenuous. Al-Bashir has shown he is unpredictable. It is difficult to be optimistic,” an observer who asked to remain anonymous said.
Fiona Lortan, senior political officer in the AU’s defence and security division, said the situation in Sudan would not improve unless the government accepted the entire peace-keeping package.
”The AU does not have the capacity to end the conflict. If the situation is not resolved soon, the suffering and death toll in Darfur will increase.”
Al-Bashir’s apparent unwillingness to bring an end to the bloodshed in Darfur, which has claimed the lives of more than 200 000 people, cost him the AU presidency for the second year in a row. After intense negotiations behind the scenes involving President Thabo Mbeki and other heads of state, al-Bashir did not object when Ghanaian President John Kufuor was proposed.
”It was not difficult to convince President al-Bashir,” Mbeki told journalists at the summit. ”He agreed it was a good idea because Ghana will be celebrating its 50th independence anniversary this year. It is considered to be the first country to gain independence from colonialism. It was a historic moment in the evolution of Africa.”
Jendayi Frazer, US Under-Secretary of State for Africa, said: ”The AU’s choice clearly shows that African leaders want the conflict in Darfur to end. I hope al-Bashir heard the message loudly.”
Quick action is also required in Somalia. The president of the Somali Transitional National Government (TNG), Abdullahi Yusuf, announced this week that the government will be holding a national reconciliation conference that will bring together all Somali ”clan elders, notables, respected personalities, religious leaders, previous political leaders as well as intellectuals and Somalis in the diaspora”.
Louis Michel, the European Union’s commissioner for development and humanitarian affairs, told journalists in Addis Ababa that the European Union would help finance the conference.
The TNG entered the capital Mogadishu after Ethiopian and Somali government troops routed the Union of Islamic Courts (UIC) which had been in control of large parts of the country for the previous six months. The TNG is marginally in control of the capital, but it is feared that it will again lose control once Ethiopian troops, who started leaving last week, have returned home.
Lortan said the UIC had to be involved in the search for a political solution because ”they have a genuine constituency and cannot be ignored”. Yusuf has so far refused to negotiate with the UIC.
Yusuf also called for the speedy deployment of the proposed African Union stabilisation force of nearly 8 000 troops in Somalia, arguing ”it was the ambivalence of the international community in helping Somalia that had encouraged the rise of Islamic revivalists in Somalia”.
But this week, only 4 000 out of the 8 000 troops needed had been pledged. Uganda has pledged 1 500 troops, Malawi 1 000, Nigeria 1 000 and Ghana has pledged an unspecified number of troops.
South Africa will not send troops to Somalia because of capacity constraints, but it may help Somalia with training.