17 - 23 January 2002
Issue No.569
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Al-Ahram Weekly Online 17 - 23 January 2002 Issue No.569 |
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Talking shop takes stock
East Africa's leaders may have disagreed on some issues at last week's IGAD summit in Khartoum, but they were unanimous in agreeing to mollify an increasingly intransigent United States, writes Gamal Nkrumah
Nothing is so detrimental to regional groupings, their standing and overall credibility, as the international community's ridicule. Despite regular meetings among leaders of the seven- nation Inter-Governmental Authority on Development (IGAD), this has proven no substantial obstacle to their espousing destabilising policies against each other. Providing safe havens to foreign opposition groups, plotting to undermine each other's interests, aiming to topple their neighbours' governments or even the waging of full-scale war against another IGAD member are all practices that have been used in the recent past. A clear example of this was the bitter ground war fought between Eritrea and Ethiopia in the spring of 1999. It came hot on the heels of the bombing of the United States embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in 1998. This illustrated IGAD's increased ineffectiveness at bolstering regional security. Despite these events, however, the organisation seems to have survived the test of time.
The dominant theme at last week's IGAD summit, which took place in Khartoum, was the settling of feuds within and between member states. The IGAD members Djibouti, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Kenya, Somalia, Sudan and Uganda are among the world's poorest and most conflict-ridden countries. It is ironic that although most of their disputes are taking place within the region, it is most likely that the weight of public and international derision will eventually force the pace of change. This seems increasingly likely, given the amount of criticism furnished by non-member state observers and donor agencies at the summit, alongside their praise.
Kenyan President Daiel Arap Moi and his Ugandan and Eritrean counterparts, Yoweri Museveni and Isaias Afeworki, flew to Khartoum for the IGAD summit, along with Ethiopian Prime Minister Meles Zenawi. They stressed that the summit, including its fringe meetings, was a golden opportunity for ironing out their differences.
In an unprecedented development, Arab League Secretary-General Amr Moussa and Egyptian Foreign Minister Ahmed Maher flew to Khartoum to attend. In addition, representatives from Libya and the Organisation of the Islamic Conference were also in attendance for the first time, in a move that reflects the Horn of Africa's strategic importance in addition to recent regional concerns about possible US military intervention in Somalia and Sudan.
The summit was also attended by officials from the United Nations, including Secretary-General Kofi Annan's special envoy for children and conflicts, Olara Otunnu, and the Organisation of African Unity's (OAU) Secretary-General, Amara Essy.
British International Development Secretary Clare Short, the first British minister to visit Sudan in more than a decade, attended the IGAD summit as an observer. She was reported to have told senior Sudanese government officials of her country's willingness to cooperate in restoring peace to Sudan. Also in attendance were representatives of major donor institutions -- including the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) -- regional development organisations and United Nations-affiliated agencies, such as the World Food Organisation, the UN High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR) and the UN Development Programme (UNDP).
Pressure by donor agencies pushed IGAD leaders towards debating conflict-resolution issues for Sudan and Somalia, the possibility of an early- warning system to help contain conflicts arising in the region and the prospect of economic cooperation among the IGAD member states.
Topping the agenda at the Khartoum summit was the US-led fight against terrorism and the faltering peace initiatives in Sudan and Somalia. The two countries have been mooted as possible targets in the second phase of the US-led war on terrorism. Sudan, itself a state that has been branded by Washington a sponsor of terrorism, tabled a motion for an IGAD framework for confronting militant groups in the region. Khartoum also signalled its willingness to host a conference on combating terrorism and has gone as far as handing over hundreds of intelligence files to the US authorities in an apparently vain attempt to ingratiate itself with Washington. Both Sudan and Somalia have been subjected to severe criticism and relentless pressure by the US, and the pressure has got ever more relentless in the wake of the 11 September attacks on New York and Washington.
Following the IGAD summit in Khartoum, US envoy for Sudan John Danforth, left, met with Sudanese President Omar Hassan Al-Bashir on Tuesday. Danforth also headed the US delegation in talks mediated by the US and Switzerland between the Sudanese government and the SPLA to try and end the two decade long Sudanese civil war (photo: AP)
But Somalia and Sudan are not the only two suspects on Washington's terrorist blacklist. Eritrea, Ethiopia, Kenya and Uganda -- the first two with Muslim majorities and the others two with large Muslim minorities -- all have their own militant Islamist organisations, and both Washington and the countries concerned are closely monitoring these groups.
While the Sudanese opposition was barred from taking part in the Khartoum meeting, leaders of the Somali Restoration and Reconciliation Council (SRRC), including Hussein Aidid and some of the less prominent of the other 17 allied warlords, attended the IGAD summit, thus indicating their willingness to meet with the Somali Transitional National Government (TNG). The SRRC, a loose alliance of warlords backed by Ethiopia, insists that the TNG is illegitimate and unrepresentative of the Somali people. Despite clandestine meetings having taken place between the TNG and opposition forces, most notably in the Kenyan capital Nairobi, no clear resolutions were taken. The TNG's explanation for this is that the Ethiopian government does not want to grant the nascent Somali government the legitimacy to consolidate its tentative hold on government.
The tension between the two entities continued at the Khartoum summit, with the Somali transitional government accusing Ethiopia of using the 11 September attacks as a pretext for meddling in Somali affairs and obstructing the Somali reconciliation process. Ethiopian military personnel and troops are reported to be stationed inside Somali territory. But Addis Ababa officially denies that Ethiopian troops are currently deployed in the self-declared autonomous region of Puntland, in northwestern Somalia, and that Garowe, the regional capital of Puntland, has become a virtual Ethiopian garrison town. Interim Somali President Abdul-Qassim Salat Hassan bitterly complained at the IGAD and appealed to regional leaders to convince Ethiopia to back down.
Ominously, Washington accused Somalia's Islamist Al-Itihad Al-Islami (Islamic Unity) group of links with Osama Bin Laden's Al-Qa'eda network, the chief suspect in the September 11 attacks on New York and Washington. Last Friday, General Tommy Franks, speaking at the headquarters of the US Central Command in Tampa, Florida, disclosed that US forces would be keeping close tabs on Somalia. Officials of the Somali transitional government have assured the US on several occasions that no terrorist groups are currently sheltered in Somalia, though Ethiopia charges that the Somali transitional government, which has only a tenuous hold on certain districts of the Somali capital, is secretly in league with Al-Itihad Al-Islami.
Ethiopia's sabre-rattling in Somalia's direction is further evidence that the US-led "war against terrorism" is fast degenerating into a "war of settling old regional scores." There are those in the region who wish to stoke anti-Muslim sentiment which, in the Horn of Africa especially, is a highly controversial and potentially inflammatory subject.
Kenya, which has hosted several rounds of IGAD-sponsored peace talks aimed at ending Sudan's 19-year-old civil war, has emerged as an active mediator in both the Somali and Sudanese conflicts. But its efforts have caused controversy at home. Kenya's Energy Minister, Raila Odinga, signed a deal in Khartoum last week whereby Kenya will import Sudanese oil. There are also plans for Kenya to import Sudanese sugar. This caused Kenya's opposition to protest that it was hypocritical for the Kenyan government to play the role of mediator while having vested interests in the Sudan. The Kenyan opposition claims that this renders the prospect of a just mediation practically impossible.
Relations between Sudan and its neighbours have progressively deteriorated as successive Islamist governments, all embracing varying degrees of militancy, espoused an aggressive policy of sponsoring like- minded groups in neighbouring countries. Sudan's neighbours have accused it of fomenting trouble and destabilising the entire region.
The thaw in relations between Khartoum and Kampala began with Sudanese President Omar Al-Bashir's two visits to Uganda last year. His Ugandan counterpart, however, failed to reciprocate until the IGAD summit brought him to Khartoum.
Diplomatic relations between Sudan and Uganda were severed in April 1995 amid allegations that Uganda supported the rebel Sudan People's Liberation Army and Sudan backed the Lord's Resistance Army, a Ugandan paramilitary sect. In December 1999, the two countries signed an accord in Nairobi under which they pledged to work towards a full restoration of diplomatic ties. The resumption of diplomatic relations ensued the following year, with the two neighbours appointing charges d'affaires in each other's capitals. However, both countries have continued to trade accusations of a lack of commitment to the peace deal they are trying to implement.
The most disappointing aspect of the IGAD meeting was the organisation's continuing failure to tackle the challenges of development, focusing, rather, on the multitude of conflicts and disputes that wrack the region. For an organisation created with the express purpose of quickening the pace of regional development, its ongoing inability to deliver on such a central pledge speaks volumes about the difficulties of achieving greater efficiency and gaining more credibility.
The pronouncements of the participants in the conference's aftermath have appeared level-headed, leading to a consensus emerging that IGAD member states must collaborate more closely with each other, and with regional organisations such as the Arab League and the OAU. Sudan, which in the past has threatened to pull out of IGAD, has made much political capital out of hosting the IGAD summit. "Sudan has succeeded during the last year in restoring its normal international status and is now no longer an isolated nation as was the case in the past," Sudan's foreign minister, Mustafa Ismail, said last week. He cited the lifting of UN Security Council sanctions against Sudan in September, in addition to the country's chairmanship of regional summits, as evidence of its diplomatic recovery. Sudan also wants closer cooperation between IGAD, Egypt and Libya for yet greater leverage in resolving the region's problems.
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