A tale of impotent Pan-Africanism

Two civil wars, Ivorian and Libyan, have gotten hearts racing all over the world, especially here in Africa. A few weeks back I actually wrote about the UN Security Council resolution which established a no-fly zone over Libyan airspace, wondering what it meant for international law. Never before had such a resolution passed which, more or less, called for regime change (while those words weren’t used in the wording of the resolution, it’s a fait accompli fact that that is the end game). While I was never a Gaddafi supporter, I believed that the UN, through the passing of the resolution, were on a slippery slope; the end result being the death of sovereignty and the birth of a UN Security Council, led by the Big Powers, using their Chapter Seven power to bully all and sundry. Before that I’d written another piece of Cote d’Ivoire, beseeching the two protagonists to find a way to share power in a government of national unity. For the life of me, I couldn’t figure out how these two men could watch a country they professed to love slide towards anarchy while they argued about who would be president of the smoldering ruin. Well, since then a lot has changed. The airstrikes begun, pounding Gaddafi’s heavy armour to smithereens and they emboldened the rebels to launch counterattacks. French, American and British fighter planes, under the NATO banner, certainly did their jobs enforcing the no-fly zone. Nothing went in, nothing went out. Even if it were the African Union High Level Ad-hoc Committee on Libya (AHCL). On March 20, the AU wrote to the Security Council asking whether it would be possible to allow a plane filled with African dignitaries (AU Commission chairperson Jean Ping, Presidents Mohamed Ould Abdel Aziz, Dennis Sessou Ngueso , Amadou Toumani Toure , Jacob Zuma and Yoweri Museveni ) to land in Tripoli to begin talks to end the civil war. Well, the Security Council said no; not until Col. Gaddafi’s air defences were razed to the ground. As an African I was embarrassed. Not only by the refusal to land but by the manner in which the African Union acted. When the AU replaced the defunct Organization of African Unity I, and a lot of other people, thought that the years of inaction, as Africa burned, were behind us. We were sold a dream of a AU that could act decisively in times of crisis. We were sold a dream of an AU that could stand up to the bullying of the rest of the world, East or West. But from all evidence we were sold a pipe dream. The AU is simply old wine in a new bottle. All you have to do is look at what happened in Ivory Coast on Monday. Alassane Ouattara’s rebels finally captured Laurent Gbagbo hiding in his basement bunker with the aid of UN and, as evidence shows, French troops. I have no sympathy for the captured ex-president. He lost an election, refused to go and then launched a war on terror in his own nation; by any measurement, he was an embarrassment to Africa. But as the combat-shy Blue Helmets of the UN cocked their guns and acted tough, the AU could barely muster a response that Gbabgo could take seriously. Well, other people could…and they did. And now the conversation all over Africa is about foreign influence in the motherland. I honestly have very little time for all that moping and moaning. We impotently wrung our hands in horror and what not. We made declarations and passed resolutions. We even tried quiet diplomacy but were they effective at all? No. And do you know why? Because none of the protagonists actually took their fellow Africans seriously and why would they? Even in Somalia, where the AU had sent Burundian and Ugandan troops, African nations, which promised to send contingents, have refused to do so. The AU is simply a dog that doesn’t bite or bark that effectively either. Until the AU’s bark and bite are a bit more fearsome, we cannot talk about African solutions for African problems for if we do, we will be found out. sunnyntayombya@hotmail.com