[TORONTO STAR] TROUBLED NATION's MANY CHALLENGES
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TORONTO STAR
Jun. 26, 01:03 EDT
Troubled nation's many challenges
Mohamud Hussein Khalif
Somalia, as a nation-state, is in the throes of withering away painfully and
quietly from the international map. Like an endangered species, it is at the
brink of annihilation; and the world, ostensibly, could not care less.
Since the botched United Nations intervention in the early 1990s, Somalia has
been forgotten.
Regional and global groupings of which Somalia had been a member — such as
the Organization of African Unity, the Organization of Islamic Conference and
the Arab League — have deferred to the Inter-Governmental Authority on
Development, or IGAD, in Somali reconciliation issues.
Unfortunately, however, IGAD has not only failed to resolve the Somali
conflict, it has, in fact, aggravated it further. Its chief blunder was to put
Somalia's reconciliation efforts under the supervision of Ethiopia, given the
two countries' antagonistic history.
In the latest episode, the ninth IGAD summit in Khartoum on Jan. 11 decided to
hold a conference on Somalia in Nairobi to build on the progress made in Arta,
Djibouti, in 2000, where a transitional government was forged.
President Daniel arap Moi of Kenya was charged with implementing the plan and a
technical committee made up of countries neighbouring Somalia was created.
Unfortunately, the committee has so far proved to be a fiasco. Two proposed
fact-finding tours of Somalia by the members of the technical committee have
failed to materialize, owing to disagreements on where they should visit, and
when. These disagreements led to the referral of the issue to the Common Market
for East and Southern Africa summit at the end of May in Addis Ababa — which
merely commended IGAD for its efforts and urged it to carry on.
Meanwhile, there emerged two camps within IGAD, making prospects for the plan
for Somalia dimmer. One camp, comprising of Djibouti and Eritrea, stands by
IGAD's original suggestion to work out a framework to incorporate the Somali
Reconciliation and Restoration Council and other groups outside the Arta
process into the transitional government.
In the other camp, there is Ethiopia, which wants IGAD to renege on its
recognition of the transitional government as the legitimate government for
Somalia and to force it to come to the negotiating table as just another
faction.
Ethiopia is also keen on including in the agenda of the proposed conference
disarmament and the type of government Somalia should have in the future.
Besides these items being inappropriate for discussion at this stage of the
process, they are outside the mandate of the technical committee. As a result,
the respective positions of the Somali groups have further widened.
IGAD is a sub-regional organization that brings together seven eastern African
nations; Ethiopia, Kenya, Uganda, Eritrea, Somalia, Sudan and Uganda. It was
formed in 1986 to tackle drought and development issues. Having failed to
address cyclical bouts of drought in the region, it dropped the drought part of
its name in the early 1990s to confine itself to development matters.
The broader IGAD region, and the Horn sub-region in particular, has been
plagued for a long time by conflict, the most intractable of which is the
12-year Somali civil war. But a prerequisite for development is peace and
political stability. To this end, in its 1996 revitalization initiative, IGAD
introduced conflict prevention, management and resolution into its mandate.
Nevertheless, its dabbling with peacemaking in Somalia has, up to this point,
done more harm than good.
The exacerbation of the situation by IGAD is not surprising given its abysmal
record in the Sudanese peace process. Primarily due to arap Moi's personal
commitment, IGAD initially enjoyed some promising successes. But progress later
got bogged down in the intricacies of IGAD and internal Sudanese politics.
Based on its past performance, then, it is difficult to be optimistic about an
IGAD-engineered solution for Somalia.
It is indeed already evident that the Somali initiative is dead before it is
even born, with the member states of the technical committee bickering with one
another over basic modalities and the desired outcome of the proposed Nairobi
conference.
IGAD's utter failure in the Sudanese process and the predictable fizzling out
of the current Somali reconciliation efforts can be explained by a number of
factors.
First and foremost, the role of IGAD as a peacemaker came into being as an
afterthought to its original raison d'etre (development and sub-regional
economic integration). As a result, the organization, with a secretariat based
in Djibouti, is ill equipped for conflict management as it lacks the
institutional capacity to deal with complex civil conflicts such as that in
Somalia.
Second, diplomatic posturing between some member states (Ethiopia and Eritrea),
regional rivalries, diverging interests (Ethiopia, Djibouti and Kenya) and the
hegemonic ambitions of certain states (notably Ethiopia) in the region have so
far blunted IGAD's efforts at ending the Somali conflict. For instance,
Ethiopia, Eritrea and Uganda were once firmly united in their quest to topple
the Islamic regime in Sudan. Ethiopia and Eritrea also slugged it out from 1998
to 2000 in a deadly war over territorial claims.
Moreover, the frontline countries have a history of taking turns hosting
interminable peace conferences for the feuding Somali groups in their
respective capitals. Each of them seems determined to outdo the others in the
number of gatherings it sponsors. Some also overtly work to ensure that
friendly factions are installed as the next government of Somalia, failing
which they are prepared to serve as perfect spoilers.
No wonder then that the Nairobi conference has taken the shape of just another
statistic in the number game of Somali reconciliation conferences.
Mohamud Hussein Khalif is a member of The Star's community editorial board.
Copyright 2002. Toronto Star Newspapers Limited. All rights reserved.