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The call for a responsible Pharaoh
By Medhane Tadesse
Last week I raised the issue of a new security arrangement in Africa,
with a special emphasis on the Horn of African sub-region, that
could help reinforce regional stability and regional peace and security
order. Regional peace and security initiatives have underlined Africa’s
determination to come to grips with its conflicts. But none of them
considered the possibility of creating a regional nexus of power,
or coalition of powers as a possible prerequisite for a robust peace
and security order. True, the AU’s Peace and Security Council,
with its planned African Standby Force, is an important development.
NEPAD has similarly recognized the pivotal importance of peace and
security, building upon the CSSDCA with its broad conception of
how peace and security are to be obtained. In principle, much of
the regional and continental security architectures are in place.
Meanwhile, there is a growing appreciation of the linkages between
the AU and sub-regional security architectures. Nothing is however
said or written on the interface between the AU and regional economic
and military powers in Africa. As much as this is lacking, there
is a need for, at last, a policy debate about it.
I believe that it is time the AU and regional organizations like
the inter governmental Authority on Development (IGAD) should face
this particular issue head on without hesitation. In the Horn of
Africa, a robust regional peace and security order has been elusive.
In fact, North-east Africa has rarely known peace, prosperity or
democracy. It is a region in which recurrent war, famine and human
rights abuses have long hampered the emergence of well-governed
states that represent the interests of their citizens and which
cooperate to build a stable inter-state order. In other words, there
is a scarcity of well-governed and stable states. There are few
of them with the projection of power across borders. This capacity
to project power, as a state, across borders should be supported,
consolidated and even democratized.
Conversely, the sub-region is one of the most unstable and conflict-prone
in the world, and lacks both the subjective and objective conditions
for the rapid establishment of a workable peace and security order.
The question would be why all successive initiatives have failed
to deliver. To answer this question, one needs to make a comprehensive
analysis on the current peace and security situation in the region
and come up with a detailed needs assessment in terms of realistic
and flexible peace support operations. This task should be best
initiated by the UN which is entrusted with the responsibility to
protect, and for which it has a lot of resources and expertise.
Such an inventory of the main structures and actors of conflict
in the region as well as modalities and nodal points for peace need
to be anchored in a focused but comprehensive review of the principles,
frameworks and realities to peace and security in the sub-region
since the Ethiopia-Eritrean war, the Sudan peace processes, the
US ‘war on terror’ and the recent developments in Somalia.
Sudan has been at war, on and off, for almost half a century. A
peace settlement in Sudan, in case it holds, promises to transform
not just that country but also the prospects for the entire sub-region.
This will be the first opportunity for participants to reflect upon
what role regional powers should play including what peace in Sudan
may entail for the sub region, rather than solely seeing the peace
process in its internal context.
In light of the recent peace processes, can Sudan expect stability,
democracy and prosperity over the coming years? What is the role
of Sudan’s neighbors in helping to ensure that a peace settlement
is durable and that its provisions are respected? The same is true
with the Ethiopia-Eritrea conflict, where the UN is both heavily
involved and fatally constrained. One thing should be clear though.
Any settlement of the crisis must be based on the regional distribution
of power, and the UN need to take note of that and make itself relevant.
All other attempts will be, to say the least, futile.
A UN led discussion should provide an opportunity for policy makers,
notably the political department of the UN, an opportunity to reflect
on the complex realities of the sub-region and ask why IGAD is unable
to deliver. Is this a function of the power structures in the sub-region,
or its strategic position and the intervention/meddling of external
powers? Or is the challenge related to the internal power structure
of the sub region, lacking an internal hegemony but standing adjacent
to Egypt? If so, what can be done to overcome this structural problem?
This should be central to any global policy process making while
approaching peace and security issues in the Horn of Africa. The
rest follows from this. What principles would they like to see underpinning
a sub regional peace and security order? What kind of institutions
should be established to underpin this? Where does the responsibility
fall for implementing these commitments in the Horn? Does it fall
upon IGAD? Or if IGAD does not succeed, does it matter to more interested,
committed and capable states. Or it ignores them and directly reverts
to the AU? What will be necessary for the countries in question
to be able to fulfill the role vested in them?
Refocusing our framework of analysis to these issues will serve
as an important contribution to thinking and policymaking in the
sub-region. Meanwhile, the UN needs to catch up on this debate.
•
June 15, 2007
Medhane Tadesse of CPRD is a long time specialist on
issues of peace and security in the Horn of Africa. He can be reached
at mt3002et@yahoo.com |
