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African Union misses the bus again on Libya...

Sunday September 25 2011
muthoni-wanyeki

The African Union has, finally, recognised the Transitional National Council as the government of Libya. Their doing so was almost a non-event. It was heralded by only a little note in the international media, followed by the almost kindly reminder that the AU had being trying, unsuccessfully, to broker a diplomatic solution in Libya.

But this non-event symbolises so much more than an isolated failure of diplomacy. It symbolises a significant question for us all — is the AU’s transitional moment over? Is the window of opportunity that we wanted so much to believe in when the AU took over from the Organisation of African Unity now closed?

There appears to be no clear trajectory for Nato and the TNC. There’s just a bunch of ill-considered decisions based on a mixed bag of motives leading to ill considered actions which have consequences not even anticipated. Sparking off yet another spiral. We all try, with hindsight, to give meaning and purpose to the process but, if we were honest, we’d admit there’s little meaning and purpose at all. Beyond highlighting the limitations of all of those making those decisions, carrying out those actions and then running madly after all the consequences.

What our commentators should now help us focus on is our own responsibility in all of this. If the AU seemed to be constantly running behind the crowd on Libya, that is solely its own fault. It dithered, worrying about Libyan contributions to the AU Commission when financial freezes were first being discussed. And thus missed the boat in terms of helping define the shape of two UN SC resolutions on Libya — the first referring the situation to the International Criminal Court and the second authorising the use of force to protect civilians in Libya. With the Arab League ending up being the legitimising bloc rather than the AU.

It then spent valuable time complaining yet again about the ICC’s disproportionate attention to Africa (the International Criminal Court has been trying desperately to publicly dissociate the first resolution from the second one). It got all self-righteous about the dangers of the second resolution being used — as it ultimately has been — for regime change rather than civilian protection. It wasted yet more time.

And again missed the boat, getting its mediation team to Libya just in time to be told, oops, too late, you can’t go to Benghazi because we’re about to bomb there.

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It would be funny if it were not so embarrassing. And if it hadn’t actually been the only way for Africa to channel an alternative response to Libya — and a response that moved from all the furious critique of UN and Nato action in Libya to something actually useful for Libyans — in terms of moving all the concerns of the demonstrators-quickly-turned-armed rebels to the fore.

Back to the point. I don’t think the hypocrisy and self-interest on the part of all those who did act in Libya is anything near as deliberately strategic as portrayed. I think they set off a chain of events that messily and necessarily lurched from one thing to the next. Regardless, I wanted the AU to seem at least nominally to be more deliberately strategic than it was. Its horizon was too low, its own hypocrisy and self-interest too myopic.

It now recognises the TNC. If I were the TNC, I’d be asking myself: “So what?”

L. Muthoni Wanyeki is doing her graduate studies at Sciences Po in Paris

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