African Union must recuse itself from Darfur crisis

By Wasil Ali*

A few years ago I read an interesting article by the renowned Egyptian columnist and author Anis Mansour. He said that he came across an African head of state who criticized him for writing a column about cannibals in Africa. Mansour defended his article by saying that he was only stating facts. The African president told him “I know its true, but you shouldn’t portray us [Africans] to the world as savages”. In my eyes this is the mentality of the African Union (AU) who are supposedly in charge of the Darfur crisis for the most part.

I had this article in the works for several weeks now. I decided to publish it after reading that the AU wanted to keep the command and control of the UN-AU hybrid force. I could not believe that the AU had the nerves to block the deployment of the hybrid force because it wanted to lead the operation. After four years of failing to resolve the humanitarian crisis in Darfur I thought it was imperative that the AU step down and let the UN lead the efforts to resolve the crisis.

The AU has a long-standing philosophy of resolving crisis in the African continent “from within” without foreign intervention. However the AU has failed for the most part in making this mechanism a reality. I believe the main reason for that is that the AU neither had the will or the ability to do that.

The Senegalese president Abdoulaye Wade told the London based Asharq Al-Awsat in April that the AU told the UN Security Council “to let us [Africans] solve this in-house; the African solution has to come from within”. Yet Wade acknowledged that African nations have done little to help. In relation to the Darfur crisis Wade said securing Darfur “requires 25,000 troops and African countries have only supplied 7,000”.

The mandate of the AU forces in Darfur is too weak to make any difference in the lives of the Darfurian people. They are not allowed to conduct preemptive strikes against Jinjaweed militias or any side attempting to violate the Ndjamena cease fire agreement signed in 2004.

The African Union Mission in Sudan (AMIS) states that the mandate of its forces is to “protect civilians whom it encounters under imminent threat and in the immediate vicinity, within resources and capability, it being understood that the protection of the civilian population is the responsibility of the GOS [Government of Sudan]”. So at the end of the day we have nothing but African troops monitoring ceasefire violations and submitting reports to the AU leadership accordingly.

On the military front the AU forces on the ground in Darfur have proved to be plainly incompetent. To be fair it is not the troops who are to blame, but it is the fact that it lacks basic supplies to do its job. There were times when the AU troops had to “borrow soap and food from private charities and U.N. humanitarian agencies” (Washington Post May 13, Colum Lynch). It is of no surprise that the AU forces have been demoralized and barely capable of defending themselves let alone the Darfur refugees.

The biggest contributors to the AU forces in Darfur Senegal and Rwanda have threatened to withdraw their troops if they do not receive financial support and supplies from Western donors. Senegal had every reason to make such a threat after losing five of its troops following gun battle with Sudanese Liberation Army faction headed by rebel leader Minni Minawi. Ironically the latter is the only signatory to the Darfur Peace Agreement (DPA). There have also been numerous incidents of AU forces being subject to kidnapping and beating by various groups in Darfur.

That being said I can’t help but wonder to myself when I hear international figures praise the “great” work of the AU forces in Darfur. The British ‘Channel 4’ aired a report by Neema al Bagir the last year from Gerida camp in southern Darfur. The report highlighted the sexual exploitation by the AU forces sent to protect the people of Darfur. An eleven years old girl spoke of how an AU soldier offered her money for sex then proceeded to rape her leaving her soaked in blood crawling to her camp. Another woman revealed that she prostituted herself to an AU soldier in return for money saying she was “tired of living off the aid handouts and wanted to buy something of her own”. The report goes on to explain how the sexual exploitation of Darfur women is almost a daily routine.

On the political front African nations have decided to take matters into their own hands away from the AU as a regional body. The Libyans have broken the record on the number of conferences they held on the matter with Sudan, Chad and different rebel groups. Yet the outcome of all these so called “peace talks” was virtually nothing. The Egyptians in May called for a conference on Darfur that would have included the rebel groups before cancelling it. Then you have the Eritreans who are trying in their own to unite the rebels. All these countries have one thing in common; they all blindly support the Sudanese government and thus cannot be efficient mediators in the crisis. With the exception of Egypt, with few of its troops in Darfur, none of these countries have contributed to the AMIS.

The Libyan leader Muammer Gadhafi lashed out at Saudi Arabia for arranging a Sudanese-Chadian agreement on cessation of hostilities. Gadhafi called the agreement laughable since he hosted a similar one last February. The Libyan leader, who is a proponent of the United States of Africa, was apparently upset that the Saudi stepped into his backyard. One could only question how genuine is Gadhafi in bringing peace to Darfur as opposed to achieving a political victory. The common denominator in this flurry of diplomatic initiatives is that the AU has been minimally involved. It is clear that the AU has failed on the political front, not least because the non-signatory rebel groups have little trust in them given their track record of taking sides with Khartoum.

When the idea of referring the situation in Darfur to the International Criminal Court (ICC) surfaced in 2005 the African Union sought to avoid this by creating their own African court to prosecute war criminals. The former Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo made the proposal but found little support even from within Africa itself. Most of the African nations are members of the ICC who saw no need for an African Court. Eventually the Darfur war crimes were referred to the ICC with the consent of the African bloc in the UN Security Council which included Tanzania and Benin. It is of no surprise that the AU has been dragging its feet in signing a cooperation agreement with the ICC since 2005.

The Sudanese government has been overall pleased with the AMIS. The government sponsored Al- Watan newspaper praised the AMIS in its editorial for “conducting itself within the limits of its mandate since it arrived in Sudan”. Al-Watan was contrasting AMIS to the United Nation Mission in Sudan (UNMIS) which issued reports about the situation on the ground in Darfur that Khartoum was not willing to accept. The editorial issued a subtle threat to the UNMIS spokeswomen Radhia Achouri, simply because she spoke of the difficulties faced by the humanitarian staff as a result of Khartoum’s harassment.

The AU has to reflect back upon its four years in Darfur before it realizes that “failure” is the only word to describe its tenure. Their impact on the ground has been negligible. There are still millions of people in the camps calling for UN peacekeeping forces every single day after giving up on AU forces to provide them with much needed security. The African continent is divided in itself on how to handle the Darfur crisis. The financial commitment of the world to the AU forces is not open ended or unconditional. The world is not willing to pour money into an impotent force nor are countries willing to commit troops to the hybrid force that will be under an inefficient AU command.

If the AU insists on blocking the deployment of hybrid force through its insistence of being in command then it risks being looked upon as an enemy by the ordinary people of Darfur. The humanitarian catastrophe in Darfur is getting worst by the minute and the refugees have been waiting for way too long. The technical committees agreed that the UN command and control is the most efficient way to run the hybrid the force and the AU must respect these findings.

I will end this article with a story told by the Chief Prosecutor of the ICC Luis Moreno Ocampo that may give the reader a better picture of the dire situation in Darfur. Ocampo said “In one of the camps [Darfur refugee camps in Chad], a mother approached one of my staff [ICC investigators] and threw her baby at him through his car window, pleading: ‘Save my child. Take him to Europe.”

* The author is a Sudan Tribune journalist. He can be reached at [email protected]