AU, The moribund continental organisation
By Peter Lokarlo Marsu*
Mar 11, 2006 — It is frustrating and shudders the conscience of all peace loving people to learn about the unfortunate recommendations made by the African Union in its crucial meeting of the group’s Peace and Security Council in Addis Ababa on Friday 10th 2006. Indeed the African Union has demonstrated an absolute failure and created a huge level of frustration in the Continent and particularly in Sudan, in its management of the unfortunate situation in Darfur. The AU commission Chairman Alpha Oumar, bowed down to Omar Al Bashir’s persistent pressure and finally, to everyone’s consternation endorsed that the AU troops in Darfur stay on for further nine months until the end of the year. I understand that prior to the meeting in Ethiopia there had been coordinated pressure from the Arab League in Cairo on the Commission’s Chairman to dismiss the UN contingent deployment proposal in favour of maintaining the moribund African Union body.
The question in everyone’s mind is – what would be the immediate and long-term implications of this scenario on the daily lives of ordinary Darfuris who are subjected to the wholesale policy of systematic killings, rape and maiming? Alpha Oumar stated that extending the Mission would give the Organisation time to persuade Sudan to accept a U.N. presence in Darfur. This is a flimsy argument. Analysing the statement, the Chairman of the Commission has infect admitted that the AU troops in Darfur are not effective enough in terms of guaranteeing physical security to the ordinary civilians in the region, hence U.N. troops would step in as soon as Khartoum gives the green light.
Do we have to wait and watch with folded arms in eerie and abated breath, while the situation in Darfur gets completely out of control? The allied forces during World War II did not give Adolf Hitler more time to consider his moral and ethical grounds of conducting and relentlessly pursuing the war. If that had occurred, then the world would probably be a different place than we have today. The Jews would obviously have been annihilated and wiped out from the planet, England would have been destroyed and probably America reduced to defending itself against both Germany and Militaristic Imperial Japan.
NATO rushed its troops into the former Yugoslavia, because it deem it fit to do so and also innocent lives in thousands were subjected the risk of genocide. Slobodan Milosevic had no say in the NATO intervention. Why should Sudan be an exception to the precedent, when genocide has already been established beyond reasonable doubt in the country?
Where does the AU get its funds to fund the extension of its dubious mission in Darfur? The cost of maintaining the African Union’s contingents in Darfur until 31 December 2006 stands at $218 according to reliable estimates. Who foots the bill of the impending mayhem and catastrophe that Alpha Oumar is leading us to? Renewing the mandate of the African Union is tantamount to ignoring the plight of the people of Darfur and a clear nod by AU at Khartoum’s policy of mass murder in the region.
It is embarrassing and degrading that Dr. Lam Akol Sudan’s foreign minister has been reduced to blindly defending and re-emphasising statements made by the National Congress Party without analysing the situations involved. Akol stated that the peace negotiations in Nigeria would be adversely affected and it would herald an end to the talks, if AU turns over its mission to the UN. He didn’t elaborate, certainly as a parrot, and self-centred, he has nothing to give but only to repeat, perhaps a requisite condition to keep his seat warm in the government of national unity.
A little while ago he attracted a standing ovation from the N.I.F Party and some papers’ editorials, when he repeated a prescribed standard maxim in the ministry of foreign affairs, that the presence of UN troops in Darfur would send a wrong signal to the rebels. One hardly figures out what prompts a Southerner to relinquish or part with his/her inherent dignity and moulds into Jallaba’s puppet.
Sudan’s proposal of sending 10,000 troops to Darfur, made up of SPLA and its own undisciplined soldiers, disturbs one’s conscience. It is evil, malicious, and myopic and must be out rightly rejected by the government of South Sudan for, a number of reasons.
The government of South Sudan is not a party to the on-going carnage in Darfur. It’s Khartoum’s sole creation. As a junior partner in the so-called Government of National Unity, SPLM does not need to get involved in military confrontation or skirmishes in Darfur, when it was not even consulted on how the problem of the region could be politically addressed. Being partly integrated into the national army does not automatically translate into accepting unreasonable policies of the N.I.F. government.
SPLM and the government of South Sudan would be fully guilty of unpardonable crime if it consents to SPLA soldiers being deployed in Darfur, as suggested by the National Islamic Front-led government in Sudan. The SPLM has just emerged from a two-decade long war imposed upon it by adventurous military regimes in the country. It cannot afford to move back to intermittent war for no apparent cause’ except in self-defence. After all the conflict in Darfur bears identical root cause with what SPLM fought for. The government of the N.I.F has been reluctant to resolve the Darfur crisis amicably, but only militarily. We therefore see no light at the end of the tunnel, in terms of settlement of the imbroglio in the region and the country as a whole, if the same government still exists.
Additionally Khartoum is bent no destabilising the South. There is widespread consensus among Southern Sudanese that the next skirmishes would be between the government’s and its allied militia forces on the one hand and the government of South on the other. It would be hard for any sensible person to contemplate how a common ground of cooperation could be forged between the disciplined SPLA and the murderous and unpopular government forces in Darfur.
* Peter Lokarlo Marsu, is living in Australia. He can be reached at [email protected]