Ivory Coast, Libya and the politics of intervention

The African Union’s January Summit takes place this week. Apart from the official theme, the elections to the AU are expected to be a key focus of discussion.

Many kilometres away, across the Atlantic Ocean, South Africa is chairing the United Nations Security Council. It has deliberately placed on the formal agenda of the UN SC the relationship between the AU and the UN.

The reason? A lingering bitterness about, in particular, the Ivory Coast and Libyan interventions.

In the former, the role of the AU — delegated to the relevant sub-regional community of the Economic Community of West African States — was deemed to have been usurped. Not only by South Africa (bad enough). But by the French (very bad).

In the latter, the role of the AU was deemed to have been usurped. In this case, by no less than the UN itself. In the face of the widespread continental opinion that the AU was slow off the mark on Libya (and for self-centred and small reasons) and therefore has nobody but itself to blame for effectively being upstaged by the League of Arab States, the AU has offered a spirited defence.

No less than the former president of South Africa, Thabo Mbeki, was this past week extremely candid about what had happened.

Speaking to a workshop convened by Prof Mahmood Mamdani at Makerere University’s Institute of Social Research, Mbeki said the AU had, in fact, a position on Libya. It involved a ceasefire to the violence and the facilitating of talks between the government and the rebels to determine how Libyans themselves wished to move forward.

Importantly, Gaddafi had consented to these proposals.

Forestalled

What followed, in Mbeki’s telling, was a deliberate stonewalling by the rest of the international community. The UN Security Council, with the AU resolutions in front of it, proceeded to authorise military intervention on the basis of the “responsibility to protect.” With legitimisation from the Arab League and not the AU — as though Libya were not an African state.

The AU mission to Libya was forestalled by the North American Treaty Organisation — which basically said it would bomb the AU’s planes.

The seminar then zeroed in on the tensions between genuine impulses for internal reform and the tendency to use those impulses to justify external interventions.

Kenya provides a potentially useful example of how to handle external interventions. That we were not overrun by the humanitarian intervention in 2008 is down to two things — the leadership provided by the Kenya Red Cross and the quiet decision of all relevant UN agencies on the ground (fortuitously headed by other Africans) to step in line behind it.

That we were not overrun by the diplomatic intervention on the ostensible basis of protection is down to three things — the leadership provided by Kenyan civil society and the Kenyan private sector, the astute leveraging of their positions by the AU’s Panel of Eminent African Personalities and (critically) the decision of the rest of the international community (even, ultimately, the US) not to sabotage but to actively support the AU’s Panel.

The lesson: Let’s ensure regime change, when it happens, is because we’ve demanded it. Better yet, let’s ensure we don’t have to demand it. The rest of the world will do what it has always done. Let’s start to do what we’ve always done differently.