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Gayle Smith, Senior Fellow at the Center for American Progress provides an analysis of the African Union’s summit in Khartoum, the decision to skip over Sudan’s president Omar al Bashir as President of the African Union, and the prospects for transitioning to a United Nations peacekeeping force.
TRANSCRIPT:
NARRATOR: Welcome to Voices on Genocide Prevention, a podcasting service of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. Your host is Jerry Fowler, Director of the Museum’s Committee on Conscience.
JERRY FOWLER: Our guest today is Gayle Smith. She is Senior Fellow at the Center for American Progress and served as Special Assistant to the President and Senior Director for African Affairs at the National Security Council from 1998-2001. She was based in Africa for almost twenty years as a journalist covering military, economic and political affairs. Gayle, welcome to the program.
GAYLE SMITH: Thanks for having me.
JERRY FOWLER: We wanted to focus today on the African Union, including the outcome of its recent summit and its involvement in the crisis in Darfur, but I thought we would start by just recapping what the African Union is. It is a relatively young organization, isn’t it?
GAYLE SMITH: It is, and I think the best way to think about the African Union is as though it is Africa’s United Nations. There was an organization before, founded in 1963, called the Organization of African Unity. That was formed just as African countries were coming to Independence. The African Union came out of that, and was a push—I think—by some of Africa’s more far-sighted leaders to have a new, more modern organization, and I would like to make one distinction that I think is very illuminating. In the Organization of African Unity, in the old days just ten years ago, when they had their summit meetings—an annual meeting where all the heads of state attended—everyone came, whether they were democratically elected, dictators or thugs. Nowadays in the African Union, when they have their annual summit, a head of state who has come to power through a coup or otherwise displacing a democratically elected government, is not welcome. That may seem a small thing, but I think it is a very significant reminder of what the African Union has become and where the world is coming today. I think it is in part a reflection of a more democratic continent than existed ten or fifteen years ago.
JERRY FOWLER: One question people will have in light of that is how it came about that the recent African Union summit was held in Khartoum, run by a government that was not democratically elected?
GAYLE SMITH: There is a tragic irony to that if you will. The original thought of having a summit meeting in Khartoum was conceived at the time when Sudan was signing a major peace agreement in the South, and it was a little bit of a combination of a reward or recognition of that because this ended what was then the longest war on the continent; to some extent a celebration of the possibility of a new Sudan; and I think also a little bit of a nudge, as if to say, “We will have the summit there, but Sudan is going to have to live up to the moment.”
Obviously, in the two-and-a-half, three years since that time, the crisis in Darfur has erupted. The African Union was left with quite a quandary. Like the United Nations, like diplomacy around the world, there is a fair degree of formality that characterizes some of the high-level things that the African Union does. They could not just unilaterally say, “Oops, it is not going to be in Khartoum.” Sudan is a member. What they had to do was proceed with the meeting and then try to find a way to avoid the government of Sudan taking over the chairmanship of the African Union. That obviously would have been a contradiction to what they are aiming for as a new organization for Africa.
JERRY FOWLER: One question that I had is, is having this standard that governments that came to power through a military coup will not be able to participate is fundamentally contradicted by ever deciding to have the summit in Khartoum? Do they have a grandfather provision or something that allows previous governments to become part of the African Union even though they did not come to—
GAYLE SMITH: I believe there may be, in fact, a grandfather provision, and as well, I am sure that President Bashir would tell you he is elected, although that is a mythical comment on his part, but they have invoked it in cases where there have been coups since the African Union was formed, just a few years ago, so I suspect—though I am not certain—that it is a grandfather clause.
JERRY FOWLER: Let us turn to the situation with regard to Sudan and the African Union’s involvement in Darfur. How is it that the African Union came to be involved in Darfur?
GAYLE SMITH: It is an interesting story. Not long after the crisis in Darfur started to get the attention of the outside world—it was in full swing by then—there were some negotiations between the Government and the rebel forces in Darfur and there was an agreement on a ceasefire. The African Union was very prominent in helping to negotiate that ceasefire; they had called both sides together. Upon agreement of that ceasefire, it was understood that the African Union would send in a ceasefire observer mission, which is how this original mission came about. What has proven challenging since that time is that a mission that goes in to observe a ceasefire has one function; it is very clearly an observation function. Obviously the ceasefire has not held, but the African Union is in place. They made a very conscious decision that they were going to stay in place even though the ceasefire has been broken multiple times because they were the only force in there and because Khartoum had allowed them in. It would have been much harder to get a United Nations or other force in at that point. They came in—if you will—under conditions that are much different than the conditions that have characterized the duration of their operation.
JERRY FOWLER: You mention that they went in with the agreement of the Government of Sudan, of Khartoum. Why was that necessary? Why would they not just go in or expand their presence, in spite of what Khartoum might agree to?
GAYLE SMITH: One of the things that is very peculiar about intervention, and particularly challenging now, and it has come up in the debates about responsibility to protect and how the international community can act on that responsibility, is that most interventions, most peacekeeping forces go in with the permission of the host government. The United Nations mission in the Congo is there with the permission of the Government of the Democratic Republic of the Congo. The mission that went into Sierra Leone—part of which remains—was there with permission. It is very rare that there is an intervention force that overlooks the issue of permission of the host government. That is contradictory, if you think about, particularly in the case of a government committing genocide. Obviously, I think now that is under review with what has happened around the world. I think it absolutely should be. In this case, the African Union had the government in place, had the rebels in place, they agreed to a ceasefire, the African Union said that in order to monitor that ceasefire and provide a safeguard, that we would like to send in an observer mission. I suspect that at the time, the African Union knew it was absolutely in their interest, in Africa’s interest, and in the interest of the people of Darfur to get some sort of mission in there, so they were very quick to move, and then as I say, just stayed there. Where the permission has become more complicated is when there has been discussion of expanding the force or supplementing the African Union with United Nations or other forces.
JERRY FOWLER: Let us talk about that. There is increasing discussion that this African Union force that is on the ground will be transitioning to a United Nations force. Where do things stand on that?
GAYLE SMITH: It is still under discussion. The biggest obstacle, not surprisingly, has been Khartoum, which has expressed a strong unwillingness if you will to accept a United Nations mission. I think that it will probably move forward nonetheless. The African Union is coordinating also with NATO on some technical assistance. My sense is that the African Union is very welcoming of outside assistance. If you look at their first mission, once they constituted the African Union, it was in Burundi, and they went into Burundi very quickly when a peace agreement was signed there, helped to stabilize the situation, send a signal that the international community was there, and they moved very quickly—more quickly than the United Nations is capable of moving, and then they handed over to a United Nations force. I do not think they perceive their role as exclusive, nor do I think they view themselves as the only force that can intervene anywhere in Africa. One of the driving factors behind the creation of the African Union mission in Sudan and their plans for regional stand-by missions is that there have been so many crises in Africa that took so, so long before the United Nations could get there. It would take weeks, if not months, to negotiate in the Security Council, and then as many as six to eight months to deploy, so part of their rationale is to have a fast moving capacity on the continent to move into these situations. In principle, again, I do not think there is any problem with the United Nations. I think there is a strong desire that it be in partnership, and that the African Union still be part of the equation, and that the African Union be able to retain a prominent role in the negotiations that are still going on in parallel. I do not see a scenario where the African Union steps back and says, “Thank you very much; you take it over.” I see this as one that is likely to be a cooperation between the two.
JERRY FOWLER: The scenario that you outline, the idea of the African Union being able to go in relatively quickly, and then be replaced or augmented by a United Nations force, because the United Nations cannot act as quickly, a lot of people would say that that does not really describe what has happened in Darfur, where to the contrary, the African Union went in and the presence of the African Union force seemed to be a reason for the United Nations not to act.
GAYLE SMITH: I think that that is a really good question, and it is one of the biggest challenges here. There is a concept that floats around of, “Let Africa solve its own problems,” or “African solutions to African problems.” On the face of it, that sounds very good, and I think there is great legitimacy in Africans, whether at the level of civil society or governments taking a lead in the future of their own continent, that does not obviate the responsibility of the rest of the world, and I think there has been a great tendency on the part of the international community, and I think they are still acting this way to say, “Well the African Union is there; let’s give them a little bit of money, and let them handle this, and isn’t that great because Africans are standing up and taking care of themselves.” It is a bit patronizing, and I think it is also a bit of a set up to the African Union. This is a new organization, made up of governments who are not extremely wealthy. There are some African governments that have very well trained, well equipped militaries, but many others that do not. It is not as though there is a massive surplus of good peacekeeping troops on the continent. To expend them to single handedly bare the cost in all regards—financial, human, and otherwise—of all these operations is to neglect our role—for example—as members of the international community. I think there concept was something different. It was that in an initial phase, ten or fifteen years perhaps, they can get there quickly and move in. There may come a time where they have a sufficiently effective standby force, and enough progress on the political front where you may not need a United Nations mission to follow on, but I do not think it was ever their concept that, “Okay, from now on we will handle all of the peacekeeping, peace intervention, crisis intervention demands on the continent.”
JERRY FOWLER: You mention the political front, and not so long ago there was a vote in the United Nations on a resolution that would have criticized the government of Sudan’s actions in Darfur and it was basically opposed by African countries. My understanding also is that in United Nations bodies such as the Human Rights Commission, the African countries have taken the position that they will not support resolutions criticizing other African nations. Talk to me a little bit about the politics of criticizing undemocratic governments that are killing large numbers of their citizens. Why is that so hard?
GAYLE SMITH: I think in the Human Rights Council in the United Nations, it has less to do with the issues of human rights and more to do with horse trading. The Human Rights Commission of the United Nations is not terribly effective and basically, deals are cut in terms of who is going to support whose resolutions and whether countries are going to act as a block or not. I think some of the proposals that are floating around to reorganize the Human Rights Council are very important because they would preclude something like a country of Sudan being a member of the Commission. I think that at another level, there are two dynamics going on here. One is that I think there are still enough holdovers from Africa’s recent past—by which I mean governments that were not elected or might have been elected, but still have very strong arms—to hang onto that past and try to hold a united front, kind of in the way the Organization of African Unity did as I described it at the beginning. There was an understanding in the Organization of African Unity that members would not intervene in the internal affairs of other states. That is starting to change, but there is still hangover in that regard and a tendency of some in the region to say, “Any criticism of any country in Africa is a criticism of us all.” I think overtime that will shift. I think it is exacerbated by the fact that we are at a very polarized political time within the United Nations.
The other tricky thing that shapes it—and this is my view—in the case of Sudan is that one of the ways this works is that the government of Sudan in my experience has never done anything unless it was under pressure. The few bits of movement we have seen—whether on the North-South agreement or the occasional spurts you get out of Khartoum on Darfur, followed by two steps backwards—come when they are under pressure. When that pressure is strong from the international community, I think the African Union is in a better position to move, because if they can say to Khartoum, “You better deal with us and let us increase our troop strength by 5,000, or do X, Y, or Z, or the United Nations Security Council is going to come get you, or the United States is going to come get you,” I think that can be an effective “good cop, bad cop.” There may have been some of that going on in this case—I am not sure—it may have been a case where there was not as much coordination as there would have been. Most of the people that I talked to in Africa—certainly amongst NGOs, but even in governments—feel that there needs to be much more pressure on Khartoum, but that it needs to be coordinated so that when the pressure is coming, they can kind of step in and say, “Well, you are under pressure that way; listen to us,” and kind of get in between a rock and a hard place.
JERRY FOWLER: One of the ways in which the Darfur conflict is often characterized—I think probably a little simplistically—is that it is an Arab government and Arab allies against African civilians. This basic dichotomy of Arab and African is also reproduced in the African Union itself where it has members from North Africa that would identify themselves as Arab, and then members from sub-Saharan Africa who would identify themselves as African. To what extent has that characterization of the conflict had implications in the ability of the African Union to engage on the problem?
GAYLE SMITH: I do not think it has had that big of an impact actually. Ten or fifteen years ago, it would have had a much greater impact the Arab League was quite frankly, much stronger. I understand the Middle East is far from settled, but there have been developments—particularly between the Israelis and the Palestinians—that have allowed some of the rhetoric constraint, the feeling to wind down a bit, and Arab nationalism is not quite frankly what it was fifteen or twenty years ago. As well, one of the very interesting things that has happened in the short life of the African Union is that President Bouteflika of Algeria made a very conscious policy decision, as did Muammer Gaddafi's of Libya, to recalibrate the extent to which they identified as Arab countries and African countries, and they have become much more involved in African politics—both of them—frequently for the good, sometimes in the case of Gaddafi, a bit to the peculiar at best and detrimental at worst. I think there is a stronger African identity emerging that kind of transcends the Arab vs. African. I think in some quarters, Sudan is able to play that card, and they are also trying consistently to play an Islamic card. It does not work very effectively; it served them in some cases like the war in the South, but in the case of Darfur it is not serving them very effectively because in actual fact, the crisis in Darfur pits Arab-Africans and African-Arabs against one another. That is really a region of the country where it would be very difficult to describe anyone there as exclusively one or the other. I think you are absolutely right. It is a distinction that is made on the outside, but I think, is very overstated.
JERRY FOWLER: Let’s step back for just a minute as we are running near the end of our time. We interviewed Ambassador Princeton Lyman a couple of weeks ago about the task force on Africa Policy that he co-directed and that you were a member of, that outlined a strategic view of Africa. I know that you, in your work, have constantly focused on the problem of sometimes seeing Africa as being separate from foreign policy in general for the United States. I was wondering if you could talk a little bit about that. Going forward, how should the United States be approaching Africa in general; not just on the problem of massive human rights abuses, but really all of the issues that are presented by the continent?
GAYLE SMITH: You captured my words and thinking very well. It has always been a frustration for me that there are foreign policy discussions and there are separate discussions about Africa as though it is not a part of our foreign policy. For example, I do not think most Americans know that we get between twelve and fifteen percent of our oil from Africa, and that is expected to go up to some twenty-five percent. I think there is a danger that that tendency to disaggregate Africa from the rest of the world could be made even worse though if the only reason we bring Africa into the global community—our global frame of reference—is because of terrorism, or something like that. There are terrorist threats in Africa; we saw our embassies blow up there. I think we need to think about it in terms of how we view globalization. If globalization is going to work, then a majority of countries have to be able to participate, otherwise you have a very divided world and we are already seeing a lot of evidence of that. Africa represents close to now 800 million producers and consumers in a world economy, and there is an absolute need that they be part of that global economy environment, and not as beggars, but as functioning participants. I think we have to completely rethink how we think about the world economy of which we are a part. I think there is also a moral imperative. I think it has less to do with “we have to save starving people from aids,” and more that there is a moral imperative to invest in societies so that they can live in capable, functional democratic states, just like we do, that everybody deserves that right. I think if we focus on those two things—globalization and a moral imperative that is about having a functioning world, for all the people of the world, if we truly believe that all people are equal then they are equal to—we can make some progress.
JERRY FOWLER: On that thought, we are going to unfortunately have to end today, but I just want to thank you for taking the time to be with us.
GAYLE SMITH: My pleasure; anytime.
NARRATOR: You have been listening to Voices on Genocide Prevention, a podcasting service of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. To learn more about the Museum’s Committee on Conscience, visit our website at www.committeeonconscience.org.
