African Union Now Can Bite

The Nation (Nairobi)
NEWS
January 3, 2004
Posted to the web January 4, 2004
Nairobi
The African Union reached a milestone this week, with the ratification of a
pact that empowers the Pan-African body to make military interventions in
trouble spots across the continent.
Twenty seven of the 53 members endorsed the establishment of the AU Peace and
Security Council, which will form an African Standby Force drawn from member
states.
This is, indeed, a great stride and it comes at a crucial time in Africa's
history: with the Cold War effectively over, Africa has been left to the
elements. From the Democratic Republic of Congo to Somalia, Sudan to Liberia,
Rwanda to Burundi, there has been no moment of peace.
Ironically, these conflicts, while partly sparked by ancient ethnic
animosities, are fanned by external factors. They are the last embers of
ideological wars waged on Africa but staged by Western powers.
The Burundi Peace Process, brokered by African statesman Nelson Mandela and
enforced by South African army, is a successful experiment that proves
solutions to African problems lie with Africans themselves.
While we do not seek to downplay the contribution of the international
community in resolving African conflicts, it is undeniable that the continent
has received lukewarm support from the West in the past decade.
Rwanda will remain an indictment of that human failure, when the world failed
to heed the cry of the dead and the dying. In the end, one million people were
senselessly butchered.
One of the popular theories in international relations today, and what inspires
intervention by many Western capitals, is simply a mathematical concept of cost
and benefit.
What's to be gained if you spend so much to stop this or that conflict? The
total sum of this is cheapening of human life.
The oil wells have been licked dry, the diamonds dug out; Africa has no appeal
to the West now. And it has no strategic value, save for the on-going vague
"war on terrorism."
Now help is finally at hand, and it shall have an African base. We seem to have
finally taken heed of the words of Grenadan poet, Peggy Antrobus: "We should
have learnt by now to lean on no one but ourselves."

   

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