Africa, Headlines, Human Rights

/UPDATE*/POLITICS: Sudan Loses AU Chair to Ghana

Moyiga Nduru

JOHANNESBURG, Jan 29 2007 (IPS) - African leaders Monday picked Ghana as the new chair of the African Union (AU), turning down Sudan’s bid for its failure to end the conflict in Darfur.

The 53 African heads of state and government chose Ghanaian President John Kufuor over the beleaguered Sudanese President Omar al Bashir at the start of their two-day summit in the Ethiopian capital, Addis Ababa, Jan. 29. Bashir has been accused of genocide in the troubled western Sudanese region of Darfur.

His candidacy has divided Africa. If elected, he would have carried with him the mandate to handle African conflicts such as Darfur and Somalia for a year – the duration of his chairmanship.

Alpha Konae, AU Commission chairperson, told journalists in Addis Ababa that African leaders agreed by “consensus” to elect Kufuor to the presidency of the pan-African body.

Even before Bashir formally lost, opposition to his candidacy was already overwhelming. “Bashir has demonstrated that he’s not a democrat… He has not been willing in the past two or so years to deal with the issue in Darfur,” Korwa Adar, an analyst at the Pretoria-based Africa Institute of South Africa (AISA), told IPS.

More than 200,000 people have been killed and another two million displaced since Darfur rebels, seeking autonomy, took up arms to fight the Khartoum government in 2003, according to a Jan. 28 statement by the New York-based Human Rights Watch urging the AU to deny Bashir the chairmanship.

But Bashir claimed last November at a press conference in Khartoum that “counting all those killed in battles between the armed forces, the rebels and the tribes, the number (of dead in Darfur) does not reach 9,000.” The government of Sudan has consistently denied the mass forced displacement, killings and rape, according to Amnesty International.

So far, Bashir has rejected a United Nations Security Council proposal to deploy 20,000 blue helmets to replace the 7,000 ill-equipped and cash-strapped AU peacekeepers monitoring the peace in Darfur, a territory the size of France.

Bashir insists on keeping the AU troops, preferring only logistical and financial support to come from the West. Analysts say Bashir fears that the U.N. peacekeepers will be used to apprehend and deliver him, along with 51 other suspects, to the International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague for crimes against humanity.

Last year African leaders, meeting in the Sudanese capital of Khartoum, turned down Bashir’s bid for the AU chairmanship and settled for a compromise candidate, Denis Nguesso of the Republic of Congo. They promised Bashir the job this year, if he resolved the Darfur conflict. But, to the chagrin of African academics and human rights activists, Darfur is still burning. Therefore, giving Bashir the job, they fear, will undermine AU’s credibility.

“It could be the first time for a commander-in-chief of an army fighting (Darfur) rebels to become a chair of a continental body. It goes beyond logic. It goes against international law. This may give Bashir a license to do whatever he likes in Darfur,” John Yoh, lecturer of political science at the University of South Africa (UNISA), told IPS by phone before Monday’s vote.

Chad, which is fighting Sudan-backed rebels, had threatened to quit AU if Bashir assumed the body’s chairmanship.

Like Darfur, Somalia is also expected to bog down African leaders in Addis Ababa. A failed state, Somalia has been without a central government for 16 years since the fall of the dictator Siad Barre in 1991. In June 2006, the Union of Islamic Courts (UIC) seized power from a group of U.S.-backed Somali warlords only to be driven out themselves by Ethiopian forces in December 2006. Ethiopia is backing Somalia’s weak Transitional Federal Government (TFG) which was based in Baidoa, 250 northwest of the capital Mogadishu.

Reluctant to stay longer, Ethiopia has begun pulling out its troops from Somalia, raising fears of a power vacuum that could throw Somalia back into the ugly clan-based wars of the past. Ethiopia fought two wars with Somalia in 45 years. As a result, it doesn’t want to get stuck in Somalia and be regarded as a colonial power.

“I think Ethiopia did a good thing by intervening in Somalia. Whether it did it for personal interest or for Somalia’s interest, it’s immaterial. If they can stabilise Somalia, it will restore AU’s credibility. If we don’t stabilise it now, we may lose the opportunity,” Claude Kabemba of the Johannesburg-based Southern Africa Resource Watch, a non-governmental organization (NGO), told IPS.

The African Union has proposed the deployment of 8,000 peacekeepers for Somalia. So far, only Uganda has pledged 1,500 troops. Malawi and Nigeria have also expressed interests to send peacekeepers.

South Africa, the continent’s diplomatic and economic powerhouse, said Jan. 25 it would not contribute troops. Defence minister Mosinoa Lekota made the announcement when he met with President Thabo Mbeki to review South Africa’s peacekeeping role in Africa. He said South Africa’s force was overstretched.

South Africa has deployed a total of over 3,000 peacekeeping forces in Sudan, Burundi, the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) and other small numbers in Cote d’Ivoire, Ethiopia and Eritrea.

“South Africa is getting tired. The enthusiasm with which it deployed peacekeepers to Burundi, the DRC and Cote d’Ivoire is no longer there. It is losing momentum,” Kabemba said.

South Africa said it would study ways of supporting the Somali mission.

Like in Darfur, inadequate funding continues to undermine the role of African peacekeepers. “African countries have always been encumbered with lack of finance. I think money can be raised within the continent, through taxes. This does not mean that we shall ignore donor contributions. Donor money should complement domestic efforts. We have so much resources which we could use to solve Africa’s problems,” Adar said.

He believes that the Darfur and Somali conflicts could easily be resolved by the African Union. The Organisation of African Unity (OAU), the predecessor of the African Union, had faced more serious problems than the AU in the past, Adar said. He cited the British stand on white-ruled Rhodesia, now called Zimbabwe, which almost divided Africa in the 1960s.

“I’m convinced that AU can handle the Darfur and Somalia conflicts,” said Adar, author of the book “Kenyan Foreign Policy Behaviour Towards Somalia, 1963-1983”.

(*Adds results of voting by African Union members. Story first moved earlier on Jan. 29, 2007)