Darfur: Dying for peace
Julie Flint
Hundreds of thousands of people have died in Darfur, one of Sudan's most marginalised areas, since rebellion erupted early in 2003. More than three million are in need of food aid, many of them beyond the reach of aid because of insecurity and government obstacles to humanitarian relief. With a donor shortfall of $389 million, World Food Programme rations cut by half and murderous, government-supported Janjaweed militias still uncontrolled, the conditions of life in the wretched displaced camps of Darfur will soon deteriorate, lethally, as the rainy season sets in.
And yet the people in those very camps are rejecting, in significant numbers, the Darfur Peace Agreement that was signed in Abuja on 5 May between the Government of Sudan and the faction of the Sudan Liberation Army that is by led by Minni Minawi. So, too, is Abdul Wahid Mohamed al Nur, chairman of the SLA and leader of the largest SLA faction (although not perhaps the strongest, in purely military terms). The message is clear: they do not believe this peace will work. On 15 May, Abdul Wahid won from the African Union, which mediated the Abuja process, another two weeks in which to sign the DPA – or be damned and subjected to punitive sanctions under Security Council Resolution 1591. But the AU, under the leadership at Abuja of Salim Ahmed Salim, has thrown in the towel and the international community is falling over backwards to do nothing to alienate the two parties whose signatures are on the bottom of the agreement – parties which are ruled by small, tribally-based elites, which run ruthless security apparatuses and which do not have the confidence of even a fraction of the people in whose name they have divided the spoils of war.
With the AU mediation leaderless, there is no process today even to attempt to bring Abdul Wahid around – a difficult task, certainly, but a vital task when the alternative is, at best, the probable failure of the DPA and, at worst, a descent into chaos in which the man who created the rebel movement, inasmuch as any one person did, will be portrayed as the villain and the genocidal government which made rebellion necessary as a disappointed partner in peace.
Abdul Wahid's support for the DPA is what is needed to change the opinion of the displaced camps and villages of Darfur, if not the intellectuals in Khartoum and the diaspora. For most Darfurians, Abdul Wahid, not Minni, is the symbol of the ‘revolution’. If either of the two factional leaders has a political vision it is Abdul Wahid, no matter how poor his leadership skills and how chaotic and unreliable his negotiating style. Minni's Zaghawa are at most 8% of the population of Darfur and are themselves divided; Abdul Wahid's Fur, historic rulers of the Sultanate which gives Darfur its name, comprise 26-30% and are more cohesive. If either man has support outside his own tribe, it is Abdul Wahid. Not one of Abdul Wahid's key negotiators at the inter-Sudanese peace talks in Abuja was Fur; Minawi's, by contrast, were all Zaghawa.
Senior diplomats on both sides of the Atlantic admit privately that Abdul Wahid's demands are reasonable – an increase in the pathetic $30 million (6% of its annual oil revenue) that the government has put in the Darfur Compensation Fund; better safeguards for Darfurians attempting to return to their villages, many of which have been occupied by settlers from other tribes; and more seats in Darfur's three state legislatures so that those who were excluded from the Abuja talks – most importantly the Arab tribes from which most Janjaweed are recruited – can be brought into the peace with less incentive to disrupt it from outside. But Abdul Wahid has been told, in no uncertain fashion, that the DPA cannot be re-opened. The process, in other words, is more important than the peace.
The SLA chairman is being ordered to make a leap of faith – not because the peace agreement cannot be improved upon, but because it has been decided that the time for talking is up. The DPA has many strong points but it also has several weaknesses – any one of which could prove fatal. There is insufficient detail about the implementation of a number of key issues; a reliance in many areas of implementation on a government which no one trusts; an absence of any accountability mechanism or human rights monitoring. In essence, Abdul Wahid and the people of Darfur are being told to put aside these concerns and to trust in assurances that the international community will ensure implementation.
But why should they trust the international community? Why should they be impressed that the ruling National Congress Party has just committed to disarm the Janjaweed for the seventh time in two years? Why should they believe that we will punish Khartoum for violating a seventh agreement when it has done nothing to punish it for violating the first six? What is different this time around?
Abdul Wahid may perhaps not be forgiven for assurances given and then retracted at Abuja, but we must understand why he doubts our good faith now. We must also remember the lesson of Iraq: without the people, the peace we are seeking to impose on them will not be a peace.
On 16 May, two courageous human rights lawyers – Adam Mohamed Shareif and Mossaad Mohamed Ali, coordinator of the Amel Centre for Treatment and Rehabilitation of Victims of Torture in Nyala, the state capital of South Darfur – were detained by the National Security Agency and were held incommunicado, at risk of torture, for four days even though the authorities are supposed to allow the UN unrestricted access to all detainees in Darfur. Khartoum is already violating the DPA. In the days since the agreement was signed, severe new restrictions have been imposed on journalists seeking to report from Darfur. What is it that Khartoum is attempting to hide from the world now? Presumably not diligent implementation of the DPA.
The silence of the international community to Khartoum's latest abuses is deafening. Is there any wonder that Abdul Wahid, himself a lawyer who worked in the field of human rights before taking up arms, trusts us as little as we, apparently, trust him?
One week remains before the AU's latest deadline expires and Abdul Wahid is either in or out of the peace. If he is out, there should be no doubt that many – perhaps most – Darfurians will be out with him. If he is in, there is still no guarantee that the agreement will bring a lasting peace. The government in Khartoum today is the same government that launched a genocidal holy war in the Nuba Mountains and killed many tens of thousands of people in southern Sudan in order to satisfy its lust for oil dollars with which to arm itself against its own citizens. Western leaders who have decided to let the SLA chairman stew are no doubt hoping that some of those dollars will be used to attempt to buy his support for peace. If they are wrong and he cannot be bought, they, more than he, must be held responsible for the many deaths that will follow.
Julie Flint is co-author, with Alex de Waal, of Darfur – A Short History of a Long War, published by Zed Books. She wrote Human Rights Watch's May 2004 report, ‘Darfur Destroyed’, and is currently a consultant on the inter-Sudanese peace talks in Abuja. This commentary first appeared in Lebanon's Daily Star newspaper, www.dailystar.com.lb
Explaining the Darfur Peace Agreement
Justice Africa
An open letter to those members of the movements who are still reluctant to sign, from the African union moderators
We are writing this open letter to our dear friends and colleagues in the Sudan Liberation Movement/Army and Justice and Equality Movement, who are hesitating to support the Darfur Peace Agreement that was presented by the African Union Mediation to the Parties on 25 April, and which was enhanced with the support of the United States, United Kingdom, Canada and the European Union, and signed by Dr. Magzoub el Khalifa on behalf of the Government of Sudan and Mr. Minni Arkoy Minawi on behalf of the Sudan Liberation Move-ment/Army, on 5 May.
Although we are members of the Mediation Team in Abuja, we are writing this as individuals who are deeply concerned with the situation in Darfur and committed to bringing about peace. We are concentrating on the actual paragraphs of the Darfur Peace Agreement, explaining its provisions, rather than exploring the wider political context and choices facing the leaders of the Movements.
We believe that the Darfur Peace Agreement represents a good deal for the Movements and for the people of Darfur. It is not perfect and it does not meet all the aspirations of the Movements. But it is a very strong deal in each of three main areas: power-sharing, wealth-sharing and security arrangements. And the Darfur Peace Agreement has stronger guarantees for implementation than any other peace agreement in this African continent.
In this open letter, let us explain some of the most important provisions of the Darfur Peace Agreement. We believe that many of the suspicions about this Agreement are based on misunderstanding and the fact that many of you have not had time to study the text in detail, and understand what it provides.
The Darfur Peace Agreement does not demand that anyone gives up on their political demands. The SLM and JEM are still able to pursue their political objectives, by peaceful means, and they still have the opportunity to gain power in Darfur and establish governments at the level of State and Region, through democratic processes. At the moment you have nothing. Everything in the Agreement is a gain, and if you obtain the support of the people, you can gain still more.
Power-sharing
A basic principle of the DPA is compromise. The Movements did not win the war and were not in a position to dictate their terms. The Government is in power and has no intention of handing over that power at the negotiating table. The Movements did not control a single state capital and controlled very few sizeable towns. The Mediation squeezed many concessions out of the Government. But we would never have been able to squeeze the Government so hard that it agreed to hand over a majority of control at any level of government.
If we could not find a means to provide the Movements with majority control of government structures in Darfur, what did we do for them? What the Darfur Peace Agreement does is create new structures especially for Darfur. Our solution to this problem was to set up a new position in the Presidency, a new Regional Authority with six subsidiary bodies, and enable the Movements to have at least equal representation in these. The purpose of all these bodies is to implement the Darfur Peace Agreement. Most of these bodies are directly supported by the international community. Most of them are transitional: they will be dismantled in a few years when their job is done. But in three years time, elections will be held. Whoever wins those elections, governs Darfur. A year after that, a referendum is held for the people of Darfur to decide whether Darfur should be a region or three states. The future will be decided democratically, depending on the decision of the people.
Let us go into some more detail on the DPA proposals for power sharing
The central proposal is the creation of the Transitional Darfur Regional Authority (TDRA). The TDRA is headed by a Chairperson, who is also the Senior Assistant to the President, and the fourth-ranking person in the Presidency. His competencies are equal to those of a Vice President.
The TDRA has eleven members. The Senior Assistant to the President, who is chosen by the Movements, is the Chairperson. The three Governors are members – one from the Movements, two from the Congress Party. But the majority of members are the heads of the new bodies set up:
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The Darfur Rehabilitation and Resettlement Commission;
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The Darfur Reconstruction and Development Fund;
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The Darfur Land Commission;
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The Darfur Security Arrangements Implementation Commission;
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The Darfur Peace and Reconciliation Council; and
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The Darfur Compensation Commission.
Examine for a moment the powers, competencies and resources available to the four Commissions, the Fund and the Council that fall under the TDRA. These are the bodies that will determine the real fate of the people of Darfur, which will decide how the key questions of rehabilitation and resettlement, reconstruction and development, land and compensation are decided.
The Security Arrangements Implementation Commission will oversee the integration of the Movements' combatants, the disarming of the Janjaweed and other militia, and the downsizing of the Popular Defence Forces. The DSAIC is also responsible for a thorough-going reform of the Police. Within it is a Security Advisory Team from a foreign country or an international organisation. And it is to be chaired by a person of integrity who enjoys the confidence of all, who will be a nominee of the Movements, with the Movements and the Government equally represented under the Chairperson.
These bodies will be well-funded. The DRDF in particular will have resources that completely dwarf what is available to states. The GoS has agreed to fund the DRDF to the tune of $300 million this year and $200 million for each of the following two years. How many times greater is this than the budget of a State Government? And that is just the GoS contribution: the international donors are likely to double the amount, at the minimum. Already, contributions are being offered.
The head of the DRDF is nominated by the Movements. He reports to the TDRA which has eight out of ten members nominated by the Movements. And the President of Sudan is required to consult with the Senior Assistant to the President on every decision relating to Darfur.
The Movements demanded a Region for Darfur. The Darfur Peace Agreement does not give a Region today. But it sets up a process whereby the people of Darfur can vote to set up a Region. After four years there is a referendum that allows every Darfurian to vote for or against the creation of a region. Any Darfur Region will have the borders of Darfur as of 1 January 1956, one of the Movements' central demands.
If we turn to the State Governments, here the Movements enjoy significant representation, but it is short of a majority. One of the three Governors is from the Movements, and the deputy Governors of the two other states. In each state, two of the eight ministers are from the Movements. The NCP has about 50% of the seats in the State Legislatures, with the Movements getting about 30% and the balance with the other parties including the SPLM. In six of the localities, the Movements nominate the Commissioner; in another six, they nominate the Executive Director. Clearly the Movements do not get a majority in the Darfur States, either in the executive or the legislature. But one Governor is a Movement nominee too.
But, dear friends in the Movements, reflect on the comparative power and respective roles of the States and the TDRA. They are designed to do different things. The States continue to function with routine activities such as health and education. It is the TDRA that is responsible for the things that the displaced people, the victims of war, and the members of the Movements themselves, care most about.
What happens if the States try to block the programmes of the TDRA? At the specific request of the Movements, we built in a mechanism for breaking the deadlock and overcoming any such obstructionism. The matter is referred to the Presidency. And the President is required to consult the Senior Assistant to the President on all matters relating to Darfur.
This arrangement is in place for three years. Then there are elections and the winner governs. Many in the Movements are fearful that the Congress Party will use its influence to win those elections even though the people of Darfur's true loyalties may be elsewhere. But consider that the elections will be monitored and international donors have promised extensive funds for the SLM to transform itself into a political party and campaign in the elections. Before leaving Power-Sharing, let us briefly examine four other issues. One is the post of Senior Assistant to the President. This is not the Vice Presidential post that the Movements demanded. In fact, it has more competencies. A Vice President functions at the request of the President. This position of Senior Assistant is specifically designed to have powers over Darfur. He will be the fourth-ranking member of the Presidency.
A second point is representation in Khartoum. Paragraph 89 provides that one minister in Khartoum State should be a nominee of the Movements.
An additional question is representation in the civil service. Here, a Panel of Experts under the National Civil Service Commission is to determine the correct representation of Darfurians, using the criteria of population size, affirmative action, and precedents (the Comprehensive Peace Agreement). This has to be done within a year. In the meantime, the Government is required to take action to put Darfurians in senior positions across the civil service.
Related to this is the provision for education in paragraphs 86-88. There is a quota for Darfurians to be represented in universities, both in Darfur and in Khartoum. And education for Darfurians is to be free.
Lastly, we must mention the Darfur-Darfur Dialogue and Consultation. This will be an opportunity for every Darfurian voice to be heard, for all those who have not been at the table in the peace process to come and join in the peace process during its most important phase, which is implementation.
Wealth-sharing
Turning to Wealth-Sharing, there is less to explain. The great majority of the text was agreed by the Movements. There are three key issues to elucidate.
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One of these issues is how muchmoney is to be transferred from central government to the states, through the Fiscal and Financial Allocation Monitoring Commission (FFAMC). The FFAMC has been set up but has not yet completed its formula. Mindful of this delay, the DPA proposes that a panel of experts is appointed to work out a formula to enable the government to make an allocation from the National Revenue Fund to the States.
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The second issue has been the seedmoney for the Darfur Reconstruction and Development Fund (DRDF). On this issue the DPA provides US$300 million for the year 2006 and US$200 million for 2007 and 2008 respectively. These amounts will be adjusted after the Joint Assessment Mission outcome and recommendations. Already donor governments have committed themselves to literally hundreds of millions of additional dollars for this fund and a big donor conference has been scheduled for September in Holland.
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Finally we have the most controver-sial issue of all: compensation for victims. Fourteen paragraphs in the DPA – from 199 to 213 – provide the details for setting up a Compensation Commission. Agreement on this was reached only at the last moment, against strenuous opposition from the Government. The Government has agreed to $30 million as its first payment. Let us repeat: the DPA includes compensation. Let us repeat again: the Movements' demand for a Compensation Commission has been met. This is a victory for the Movements.
Security arrangements
For the Movements, the security arrangements are the strongest part of the document. The first section of the Security Arrangements chapter is a comprehensive ceasefire and transitional security arrangements. The core of this is three phases over five months. In stage one, the Parties disengage their forces, to their respective areas of control. Demilitarized zones are created along humanitarian supply routes and around camps for internally displaced persons, and in buffer zones that separate the forces of the Parties.
In the coming months, the GoS is required to neutralize the Janjaweed armed militia. Given that the GoS has been slow in proposing its plan for how to do this, the DPA has done most of the work of developing this plan. The first step is that all Janjaweed, militia and PDF must be confined to their camps, strictly designated areas or their own communities. Then all heavy weapons must be taken from them. Read Paragraphs 314-317. This is all to be verified by AMIS before the Movements are asked to withdraw their forces. There is also a special provision that they cannot be active in areas where civilians live or where the Movements are asked to redeploy their forces, in paragraphs 366-368.
At long last, there is a clear plan for dealing with the problem of the Janjaweed. This is another victory for the Movements' negotiators in Abuja.
The DPA also includes extensive measures for providing security to IDP camps including the creation of a community police force, which acts as a temporary guarantee of the safety of IDPs until such time as normality is restored.
The second section of the Security Arrangements is the long-term question of the final status of security in Darfur. This includes three main pillars, organised under a new institution which we are calling the Darfur Security Arrangements Implementation Commission, which is to be supported by a Security Advisory Team.
The first pillar is provisions for integrating former combatants from the Movements into the Sudan Armed Forces and other security services. This section is remarkably strong: 4,000 former combatants into the army, 1,000 into other security institutions, and 3,000 for special programmes of assistance and education. Read paragraphs 399-416 for the details.
Equally important is a robust mechanism for disarming the Janjaweed and other armed militia. The obligation on the GoS to disarm the Janjaweed, contained in UN Security Council Resolution 1556, is given concrete form in Paragraph 457. Let us repeat: the Darfur Peace Agreement sticks to the principle that the Janjaweed must be disarmed, and creates a practical process whereby this can be accomplished.
The third pillar is the reform of selected security institutions in Darfur, specifically those that have been expanded during the war as paramilitary branches of the army, such as the PDF and Border Intelligence. The aim is to return these to their normal size and function. (Paragraph 429.) Alongside this, the civilian police is to have its capacity built so that it can become the instrument of law enforcement in Darfur.
Guarantees
Most of the members of the Movements are deeply worried that the Government will not implement this agreement fairly and faithfully. You fear that implementation will lag behind or be blocked. You are looking for guarantees. The DPA in fact has some of the strongest guarantees of any peace agreement of recent times. There are four layers of guarantee.
The first and the most important guarantee is the sequence of the implementation of the agreement itself. The Movements are not required to lay down their arms until the Sudan Armed Forces have withdrawn to its garrisons and the Janjaweed and other militia have been brought under strict control and disarmed. If the Government doesn't stick to its obligations, then the armed forces of the SLM do not have to do their part: they don't have to redeploy, or assemble, or disarm, until they are sure that the Government has done what it promises. Overall, the Agreement also has a Darfur Assessment and Evaluation Commission and the deadlock-breaking mechanisms of referring matters to the Presidency, where the Senior Assistant to the President has to be involved in every decision relating to Darfur.
The second guarantee is the monitoring mechanisms of AMIS and the Ceasefire Commission. The Agreement strengthens all of these. Every stage needs to be verified. And we must not overlook one of the most important facts about this Agreement: now it is place, it is possible for the UN to send a force to Darfur. All of these mechanisms will be much stronger if the UN is involved. The DPA provides a Security Advisory Team from an international partner.
The third layer of guarantee is international mechanisms at the African Union and the UN. This Agreement does not supercede any of the existing UN Security Council Resolutions relating to Darfur. There will be resolutions at the AU Peace and Security Council and the UN Security Council supporting it, and Resolution 1591, which provides for individuals who obstruct the peace process to be subjected to individual sanctions, can also be applied to individuals who obstruct the implementation of the DPA. Darfur will remain on the agenda of the Security Council until this agreement is fully implemented and normality has returned.
Lastly, there are the bilateral guarantees of the international partners. There is no conflict in the world that has obtained more international attention than Darfur, and this will continue. There is no peace agreement that has obtained greater international recognition. The President of the United States, George W. Bush, wrote personal letters to both Abdel Wahid Nour and Minni Minawi, assuring them both that he would do his utmost to ensure the faithful implementation of the Agreement.
What more guarantees could one have? One cannot go higher than the UN Security Council and the President of the United States. These are stronger guarantees than were provided to the CPA, stronger than any other peace process in Africa today.
In summary, we firmly believe that many of the reasons why members of the SLM and JEM have hesitated in accepting the Darfur Peace Agreement, are not based on an accurate reading of the actual text of the Agreement. It is understandable that many people have not had the time to read and analyse this long and complicated document fully. We hope that this open letter enables you to better understand how the DPA does indeed meet the core demands and concerns of the Movements, and can be the basis for a just and lasting peace in Darfur.
Yours very sincerely,
Sam Ibok, Boubou Niang, Noureddine Mezni, Alex de Waal, Abdul Mohammed, Dawit Toga (www.justiceafrica.org).
New Saharawi poetry: A brief anthology
Liman Boicha (Generación de la Amistad)
To have a better understanding of Saharawi contemporary poetry, written in Spanish, it is necessary to start talking about the context in which it emerges and develops. This poetry of ours is very recent; it has just been taken from the oven and can only be eaten as a tender piece of bread. What we, the poets who form the ‘Generación de la Amistad’ (Friendship Generation), have in common is that we write in Spanish. But, why such a name, why the Friendship Generation? Because it is thanks to friendship that we have survived, and that we could also study. We have all lived the same experience: the exodus from our homeland, Western Sahara, caused by the Moroccan occupation; then, the exile. Later, the second exile, more than exile, was an opportunity, a grant to study in Cuba.
To this Caribbean country we arrived very young, only 11 or 12 years, and we stayed there for more than ten years without coming back. In Cuba, we grew and during all this time, and despite the distance, and the cultural differences, we never felt foreigners. If during the first years we missed our families, once with a University degree, our nostalgia was for the Caribbean, the Cuban friends, the girlfriend, the beach, the salsa, and especially the Cuban sense of humour, so lively, sharp and contagious. The return was voluntary, but brusque.
During many years, one after another, one forgets the rigours of the desert, the dramatic situation of a refugee, one forgets the sounds of the war that haunted us and still haunts us, the traditions, the lost of fluency in our mother tongue, Hassania; and as we left at a very early age, one has to start learning again many things left behind in our infancy. Things such as taboos.
One feels a stranger in his own family, the customs are more rigid in contrast to the spontaneous character that we assimilated in the Caribbean.
In this situation, lots of existential questions arise, doubts about the identity of the ‘self’ and the ‘us’ as a collective identity. On our return, many doubts emerge. Confusion. But when one has the opportunity to travel to Tiris, that splendid and calm land in the south of Western Sahara, land of poets or ‘girlfriend of poets’ as a friend of mine would say, land of pastures … Land of our ancestors, ‘Sons of the Clouds’, that inspires to meditate … land that overwhelms with its immortal beauty. There, one reconciles with itself, with his ‘identities’ that, in fact, are just one. And in the middle of such a panorama, the poetry battles to surface. And it emerges … with its mixtures and with its strange hybrid taste of the Caribbean and the desert.
And although for some this sounds like an impossible blend, for us is something normal, a product of the abnormal circumstances that we have lived in and we still suffer from.
Editor's Note: The following poems are part of a collection compiled by Pablo San Martín and translated by Lucy Frankel and Antonio Martínez Arboleda (Mi Mundo, Añoranzas, A la Deriva, Venías, Acuarela and Tiris by Ali Salem Iselmu) and Jill Coperland (Tiris by Luali Leshan and Mitología).
Zahra el Hasnaoui Ahmed
| Voces | Voices |
|---|---|
| A las voces saharauis secuestradas en tumbas y cárceles | To the Saharawi voices abducted in jails and graves |
| Quizá pienses que tu voz no me llega, que el malvado siroco la rapta antes de llenar mis sentidos. | May you think your voice reaches me not. |
| Quizá sueñes que el eco es mudo el espejo ciego y los versos se acobardan. | May you fear the wicked wind hushed it, before it filled up my senses. |
| Se agolpan tus clones, y alborotados pugnan por salir en blanco y negro de mi garganta. | May you dream of muted echoes and mirrors blinded. |
| A veces escupo, casi siempre embucho, ira, sangre, paz, tierra. | Your words choke my throat in their way out in black and white. |
| Quisiera encadenar tus manos a las mías, el techo oscuro abrir a las estrellas. | I sometimes manage to spit but almost always swallow rage, blood, land, peace. |
| Quisiera, los ojos, limpiar de rabia. | I wish to chain your hands to mine, the gloomy ceiling open to the stars. |
| Treinta voces, Treinta veces, repiten la historia, porque nadie pudo, nada puede domar las voces que rozan el alma. | I wish I could lave the wrath in your guiltless eyes. |
| Thirty mouths chanted history, as nobody could nothing can tame the soul-touching voices. |
Liman Boicha
| Mitología | Mythology |
|---|---|
| Los años son un pozo de memorias (Mario Benedetti) | The years are a well of memories (Mario Benedetti) |
| Mi padre me dijo: ‘Yo nací en año de los dientes verdes de los dromedarios’ | My father said to me: ‘I was born in the year of the dromedary's green teeth’. |
| Ahora yo me pregunto: ¿Qué hemos hecho de nuestros años, tan lejanos y estrechos? | Now I ask myself: What have we done with the years, So distant and yet so close? |
| ¿Cayeron malbaratados entre el olvido de la tradición y la sed de las dunas? | Did they fall, squandered, between forgotten traditions and the thirty dunes? |
| ¿Se esfumaron en el aire como haces de leña? | Did they fade in the air like burning firewood? |
| Buscad en la poesía, huesos de la memoria, como nuestros antepasados. | In the poetry we look for the bones of memory, for our ancestors. |
| Nuestros años son versos, como una lluvia de estrella scomo la hermosa yerba o el parto de las abejas. | The years are verses, like a downpour of stars like the magnificent grass of the labour of the bees. |
| Estos son nuestros años abandonados esqueletos trágicos, como grandes tormentas como una lluvia roja o un vendaval de langostas. Y no son estos otros Incipientes y artificiales que ahora colgamos del almanaque de nuestros sueños. | These are our years, abandoned tragic skeletons, like a great storm like the red rain or a plague of locusts. And not those other years, embryonic and artificial, that we now hang from the almanac of our dreams. |
Moroccan autonomy for the Western Sahara: A solution to a decolonisation conflict or a prelude to the dismantling of a kingdom?
Malainin Lakhal, Ahmed Khalil & Pablo San Martin
The Moroccan king, Mohamed VI, recently visited the territories of the Western Sahara under Moroccan occupation to promote a plan of ‘autonomy’ for the territory, as a ‘political solution’ to the last colonial conflict in the African continent still open in the UN agenda.
The autonomy idea is not new at all; it was first proposed in 1974 by Spain, and again by the Moroccan king Hassan II in the eighties and nineties, being rejected both times not only by the Saharawi party in the conflict, the Polisario Front, but also by the international community, which clearly defined the territory of the Western Sahara as a Non-Self-Govern-ing territory that must be subjected to a decolonisation process (which according to the UN Charter must entail a free and fair self-determination referendum with independence as an option).
In 2001, James Baker, then UN Secretary General personal envoy to the Western Sahara, drafted also a preliminary proposal based around the same idea of autonomy, but such a possibility was immediately rejected by the Security Council. The final Baker Plan, endorsed unanimously by the Security Council in 2003 and defined by the Secretary General as the ‘optimum political solution’ to the conflict, despite introducing the possibility of Moroccan settlers to take part in the referendum, established clearly that independence should be an option in the referendum. Thus, the current Moroccan proposal far from introducing some fresh air to a stagnant peace process sounds more like just a desperate repetition of failed old formulas, which, in addition, collide with the UN decolonisation doctrine.
But, the question is not whether or not ‘autonomy’ is a legal and acceptable solution to a decolonisation issue. This is only half of the question. The main issue, if we analyse the proposal (in ‘realpolitik’ terms, if one wants to use such a fashionable term) is perhaps the following: Is autonomy a consistent, feasible and reasonable proposal to be presented by a strongly centralist multi-ethnical State and an unstable system such as the Moroccan?
Many elements, if analysed in detail, reveal that the plan of autonomy, aired by the Moroccan regime, after 30 years of failed attempts to ‘legalise’ an illegal occupation, after a year repressing a real and increasingly influential Saharawi popular uprising and the progressive diplomatic and political reinforcement of the Saharawi Republic (recently recognised by South Africa, Kenya and Uruguay), is no more than a new Moroccan tactical move aimed at diverting once more the attention of an international community, which is increasingly alarmed by the human right situation in the occupied territories of the Western Sahara (as the SG acknowledges in his last report to the Security Council). It is also a Moroccan ‘move’ intended to gain an extra time hoping to succeed in its old attempt to destroy the Polisario Front, the only internationally recognised and legitimate representative of the Saharawi people.
The Moroccan plan is impossible because of many constitutional, legal, economical, historical, ethnic and geographical factors that make of it not only an additional waste of time for the Saharawi people and the international community but, and more dangerously, an adventure that may destroy the Moroccan State if Rabat is really determined to impose it on its colony. It is a road to perdition that will only contribute to destabilise an already unstable regime with a rising republican Islamist movement, an economy that does not grow enough to generate employment for an increasing population, and sharp social tensions. One has the impression that such an adventure can only be the result of bad royal advisors or perhaps advisors with an agenda the inexperienced Moroccan king has not still managed to grasp. In the following paragraphs, we will draft some of the main obstacles to the proposal:
Constitutional & economic obstacles to the idea of autonomy
First of all, what kind of autonomy can a regime, widely considered as a dictatorship, or at least generally acknowledged to have very weak and precarious social and political (democratically elected) institutions, like the Moroccan, offer to the Saharawis?
In current Morocco, despite the modernising façade of the king, there are still several taboos and lines that can not be crossed, such as the (peaceful and public) questioning of the Monarchy, which still entails jail sentences for those who dare to cross it. However, the idea of autonomy does not have sense at all if the regional institutions are not democratic and can guaranty the normal participation in the political life of all kind of political parties and organisations, including those which peacefully advocate for independence or in favour of a Moroccan Republic. The only red line should be the employment of terrorism with political objectives, but apart from that, in a truly democratic autonomy, there should not be any limit to the political debate (including debate about religious issues, such as the role of the king as maximum religious authority). This will obviously require not only a radical constitutional change but also a shift in the current civic culture promoted by the dominant Moroccan elites (which is very far from the promotion of a culture of open, fair and democratic exchange, especially with regard to the ‘Sahara question’). Is Rabat prepared to accept such a challenge? Will the Monarchy survive such an open debate?
The Spanish case has been named in several occasions by some Moroccan politicians as an example of decentralisation and autonomy, mentioning specifically the cases of the Canary Islands, the Basque Country, Andalusia or Catalonia, as possible models. Is Morocco prepared to have, like in Catalonia, an openly separatist and republican party (Ezquerra Republicana de Catalunya) controlling – as part of a wider coalition – the autonomic government?
Is Rabat willing to grant to the hypothetical ‘Saharawi regional government’ the same level of financial independence of Spanish regions such as the Basque Country and Navarre (which, in a few words, consists in these regions having their own taxing agencies and autonomy over these resources and to negotiate periodically with the State an amount – called ‘the quota’ – to ‘pay’ in exchange for the services provided in these regions by the few remaining central institutions)?
Is Rabat prepared to accept a Saharawi nationalist and republican autonomic government (if the electorate decides so, in free and fair elections monitored by the UN), to allow these government to control the natural resources of the territory (fisheries, oil, phosphates, etc.) and then to negotiate with them ‘the quota’ of, for example, the benefits of a hypothetical fishing agreement with the EU, with which the regional government will contribute to the funding of the central state? Obviously, all these issues regarding the nature and functioning of a hypothetical Saharawi autonomy, mentioned as just an illustration, can only be addressed in the context of a profound reformulation of the basic foundations of the Moroccan state as a whole and have implications that exceed the ‘southern provinces’ question. Is it possible to articulate in the same regime a Spanish-style autonomy in the Sahara (possibly with republican and separatist parties controlling a regional assembly, whose free and fair elections should be monitored and safeguarded by the UN) combined with a central Moroccan government in the rest of the state (where the ‘red lines’ will persist, such as for example the prohibition of regionalist parties)? No credible autonomic project for the Western Sahara seems feasible without a radical reformulation of the foundations of the Moroccan state as a whole and such reformulation far from stabilising the region will probably generate a period of openness and uncertainty that will be very difficult to manage for the young monarch and his team.
A second issue, closely related to the previous one, is the economic implications of the plan. Is Rabat prepared to give to a democratically elected Saharawi government real control over the economic resources of the territory? The economic potential of the Western Sahara territory after the resolution of the conflict is very promising, with rich fisheries, phosphates, tourist potential and most probably also oil reserves, similar to the ones recently discovered in Mauritania. If the answer to the previous question is positive, what are the gains Rabat will expect to get from those resources? If a Saharawi government controls such resources, how and who will decide the Saharawi contribution to the general budget of the Moroccan state? What will be the reaction of the real Moroccan regions (of those non contested parts of the kingdom, where nevertheless the regional identities are also very strong), and ethnic groups, when they will see how the ‘rebellious’ southern ‘subjects of the king’ are ‘rewarded’ not only with a wide autonomy but also with the control of a significant amount of the natural resources of the kingdom, while the obedient Moroccans of the Suss, Zayane, Rif, Chraga, Fas – dispossessed from the wealth of the ‘southern provinces’, are still maintained under the grasp of the same regime that governs them from Rabat?
Will Rabat give up its centralist control over the country, rewrite from scratch its Constitution and give all the other regions the same sort of autonomy as the Western Sahara? And if not, why? That solution would mean the recognition in the Constitutional text of two different concepts of citizenship: one for the ‘Saharawi Moroccans’ and another one for the ‘simply Moroccans’, which will entail different rights.
It is relevant to note here that the Spanish autonomic state is articulated upon the recognition of the equality of all the citizens and the possibility of all the regions to have the same level of self-government. Although the level of self-rule in the Basque Country and Catalonia is higher that in other regions, this only depends on the demands of each of the 17 autonomic governments (which obviously are higher in those autonomies where the nationalist parties are stronger). Will the Western Sahara be the only ‘autonomy’ in Morocco or will be Morocco a regional / federal state? Will all the regions, autonomies or federate states have the same level of self-govern-ment? Will there be mechanisms to guaranty the ‘solidarity’ between the autonomies with more and less economic resources? This is a crucial question with deep implications regarding the control of the natural resources of the Western Sahara in practical terms, not just a theoretical reflection about the nature of the state.
On the other hand, if Morocco becomes a regional, autonomic or federal state, another crucial point emerges: are the geographical borders of each region clear? This leads to a second block of obstacles.
Historical, geographical & ethnical obstacles
Going back to the Western Sahara, where is the autonomy to be implemented, geographically speaking? In the internationally defined borders of the Spanish former colony or in a supposed ‘historical Western Sahara’ that includes the southern cities of Morocco (Tan Tan-Gulmim-Assa, part of the Spanish Sahara until the late 1950s)? Will it also include the population of the whole Moroccan south, who were presented by the Moroccan regime as ‘ethnic Saharawis’ during the UN's operation of identification of the Saharawi candidates to vote in the old-promised referendum of self-determination?
The main Moroccan argument against a list of voters for the self-determination referendum based on the Spanish census of 1974 has traditionally been that this census did not include the ‘Saharawi tribes’ of southern Morocco. In fact, the appeals to the final list elaborated by the Identification Commission of the UN come mostly from supposed Saharawis from this so-called ‘Tarfaya strip’. Therefore, any credible autonomy within Morocco should not be limited to the borders of the Spanish Sahara but extended to the Tan Tan-Gulmim-Assa axis, if Rabat does not want to deny its own argumentation and strategy during the whole identification process. If the Tarfaya strip is excluded from the Western Sahara autonomy, if the ‘Saharawi tribal areas’ of this region are not considered ‘Saharawi enough’ by Rabat for joining the Western Sahara region, then the problems regarding the identification process would be immediately resolved since the list based on the Spanish census is already finished.
Rabat's orientalist perception of the south promotes a tribalist vision of Saharawi society and denies the modern Saharawi collective identity that emerged within the colonial borders of the Spanish Sahara. As we have said, if Rabat accepts to implement autonomy only in the territory of the former Spanish Sahara, its entire argumentation to reject the census elaborated by the UN would collapse. But, if on the other hand, Rabat attempts to redrawn the frontiers of the Western Sahara in order to include all the ‘Saharawi tribes’ of the south, this will open an extremely explosive situation. Will the ‘new’ Western Sahara include all the ‘Saharawi tribes’? If the ergueibat ‘territory’ from southern Morocco is to be part of the Western Sahara region, what will be the reason not to demand also the inclusion of the ergueibat ‘territory’ of Algeria and Mauritania? Will all the hassania speaking tribes – from Morocco, the Western Sahara, Mauritania, Algeria and Mali – the people of trab el Bidan, be candidates as well to integrate the new Western Sahara? These are all very sensitive questions that the Moroccan plan will need to address carefully, in a continent that has decided to respect the colonial frontiers to avoid territorial conflicts in the post-colonial era. If Morocco wants to avoid the problems that a ‘tribal’ delimitation of the territory to be autonomous would generate, the autonomic project should be limited to the borders of the former Spanish colony. The paradox is that if it does so, as we have said, the whole argumentation to challenge the current list of voters based on the Spanish census of 1974 will collapse.
For all the above reasons, among many others, the announced autonomic plan is a bomb that will explode as soon as the first details of the ‘autonomy’ were clearly explained by Rabat. It is probable, however, that the Moroccan Government is only manoeuvring to escape the international pressures and that, in fact, there is no plan at all. Up to now, Morocco has done its best to gain time by keeping the details of its ‘plan’ secret, while increasing its attacks and propaganda war against the Saharawi political organisation, Polisario Front, in an attempt to break the Saharawi unity. The meeting of the Security Council last April was a golden opportunity for Morocco to make public its autonomy plan and try to score a goal by introducing a new element in the debate.
But the plan remains secret … Is there a plan after all? Or the plan is just to talk about the plan? And if there is a plan how is it going to address all the issues mentioned before? Morocco will be under pressure in the following months to make public its so vehemently aired definitive solution to the dispute. If Rabat does not manage not only to delineate the contours of the future autonomy but also to explain all the details, all the small print of its autonomic proposal, it will definitely lost its remaining credibility. If the proposal is only for a limited autonomy (far from the so many times mentioned Spanish-model) and the ‘red lines’ (that prevent free press, free speech and free political activism) persist, the plan will not be credible as a democratic option of autonomy to solve the conflict. If the plan is brave enough to address some of the most problematic issues, mentioned before, it will require a radical reformulation of the bases of the Moroccan state and will open a period of unmanageable uncertainty and tension in the region. Is autonomy the road to stability in the region? Will the autonomic route strengthen or weaken the Moroccan regime?
On the other hand, the autonomy proposal can also be seen as a turning point in the colonial tactics of the Moroccan system in the Western Sahara. Rabat has always tried to gain the blessing of the international community, but after 30 years of dispute, and as the UN Secretary General rightly acknowledged in his last report to the Security Council, no country in the world has officially recognised the Moroccan sovereignty over the Western Sahara. The UN and all the big powers, including a France always willing to support Rabat, were unable to do so, because such recognition would blow up the last chances of maintaining the illusion about the existence of some sort of ‘international legality’. The United Nations will never be able to support a plan for the Western Sahara without a referendum in which independence is one of the options, as the Secretary General made clear in his last report to the Security Council. Given the Moroccan rejection to include independence in the ballot papers (even in a referendum in which large numbers of Moroccan settlers would take part!) and the recognition by the Secretary General that the UN will not impose a solution to the parties (that is, that it will not force Morocco to accept the referendum), the position of the UN mission on the ground – MINURSO – seems unsustainable,even absurd. This is the context in which the Secretary General, siding with Rabat, Paris and Madrid, has suggested to the parties – Morocco and the Polisario Front – to negotiate directly and to take into account the ‘realpolitiks’ that mark the situation. In other words, what the Secretary General has suggested in his report is that although the UN will never be able to support a plan such as the autonomic route since it collides with the basic principles of its own Charter, the parties can negotiate the implementation of such a solution at the margins of the UN. The problem is that, as we have explained, the autonomic route will probably mean desestabilisation, uncertainty and new conflicts, and perhaps also a definitive blow to the future of a Monarch that has promised too much and accomplished too little.
The only solution for Morocco seems to be the proposal a very limited and simply symbolic autonomy, completely void in political terms, which will reproduce and even reinforce the ‘red lines’ that have jeopardised the development of a free and democratic Morocco in the last decades. The recent developments seem to point towards this direction. And they seem also not very well advised moves. As president of a recently created Royal Consultative Council for Saharan Affairs (CORCAS) which will promote the idea of autonomy, a Council devised as the nucleus of the future regional government, the King has appointed Khalihenna ould Rachid. Khalihenna, a former Francoist agent, president of the PUNS, a puppet political party created by Spain to counteract the growing social support of the Polisario Front in the early 1970s, who later deserted to Morocco and became one of the strong men of Rabat in the territory and has been Mayor of El Aaiun since the early days of the Moroccan occupation 30 years ago … does not sound like fresh air to resolve the conflict and lacks any credibility as a democrat, while, on the other hand, helps to clarify the real commitment of Rabat with the development of a truly democratic process towards a serious and credible regional autonomy for the Western Sahara. The autonomic plan will never have a serious content, if Rabat does not want to put at risk its own future as a state. But what in the following months Morocco will try to do is to find a Saharawi group (of Polisario dissidents or human right activists, for instance) to support its void autonomic proposal in order to create some confusion and delegitimise the Polisario Front as representative of the Saharawi people.
However, the questions remain the same: Is Morocco really thinking about a real and democratic autonomic system in the Western Sahara? If so, will the Regime survive the conflicts that such an autonomy will triggered? If there is no plan, for how long will be Rabat able to deceive the international community and how will be its credibility affected? If the plan is only for a limited, symbolic and ultimately void decentralisation, who will ‘impose’ it on the Saharawi party?
Autonomy more than an credible alternative for the definitive resolution of the Western Sahara dispute and the regional stability is a dangerous adventure that Rabat can not explore seriously without putting at serious risk the future of the very Kingdom. Perhaps the king is already tired of reigning.
Malainin Lakhal, Saharawi journalists' and Writers' Union; Ahmed Khalil, Saharawi writer and researcher; Pablo San Martin, Lecturer in Spanish, University of Leeds.
Open letter to his Majesty Mohamed VI Palais Royal Rabat, morocco 27 october 2005
Your Majesty,
I feel the duty to address you, with the greatest respect and sincerity, as an old doctor who has spent most of his professional life in relieving the sufferings of others, both in Italy and in Africa, and as an old university professor who, over a forty year period, has taught many young people, also in four African countries. I wanted to address you, the Head of State of a nation for which I feel strong ties for various reasons, to express my viewpoint – I would not dare to call it my advice – concerning the dramatic events that have been happening in the territory of Western Sahara.
It is a sign of strength for a man, let alone a sovereign, not so much to conquer an enemy but to conquer himself. In other words, to recognize one's own mistakes, if they have been made, and to hold out a hand to the one who has suffered from them, even if this was not the intention. You know the history of your country very well and will remember that the Green March was nothing but astute propaganda by your deceased father to invade the former Spanish colony of Rio de Oro, which is rich in phosphates and has abundant fishery resources. You will remember that Morocco's claim over that territory was, to say the least, arguable (as if Italy should claim the territories bordering the Mediterranean, including Morocco, as they had been part of Ancient Rome). You will remember the bombardment of Saharaoui refugees fleeing towards Algeria and the guerrilla warfare that ensued, which was first denied – as always happens in such cases – and then blocked by a wall of over 2,400 kilometres (known as the ‘Wall of Shame’).
You will remember that the referendum to which the people had an unalienable right was first refused and then hindered by all kinds of excuses, then partially accepted and finally again completely refused. You will certainly know, even thought the governmental press has never spoken about it, how many people have been assassinated, how many have been forcibly removed (there are still today more than 500 disappeared Saharaouis) and that only a few days ago a mass burial grave was discovered containing the corpses of 43 Saharaoui civilians, including the parents of the current Saharaoui Minister for Foreign Affairs.
There continue to be farcical trials, sentences to years of imprisonment (Mohamed Daddach, prisoner of conscience – 20 years of prison!). You will remember the existence of the so-called ‘Secret Gardens’, denied for years by your deceased father and then acknowledged when it was already too late because by then everyone knew of those shameful prisons as the news had gone round the world, seriously damaging the good name of Morocco. Kalaa M'gouna, Agdz (Tazmamart was reserved for Moroccans only) are names that conjure up horror, just to hear them.
Need I remind you of how many years (30!) that Saharaoui civilians have been subjected to outrages, offences, inhuman and degrading treatment (which degrade more those who commit it than those who receive it). I know that you made a courageous and generous gesture by setting up the ‘Instance Equité et Réconciliation'. It was however only partially courageous: why could the torturers not be denounced? Torturers who still move around in all tranquillity today, and who can still mock their old victims, or threaten them, or torture them once again.
I should however remind you of the outbreak of the Saharaoui intifada last May and the violent repression by the armed forces of your government that followed. Many Saharaoui human rights militants were arrested, their homes destroyed and 37 of them went on a hunger strike that lasted 51 days! I mention this because perhaps you have not received the news, which is concealed behind all the lies propagated by the governmental news agency MAP and by your Minister of Justice. This hunger strike, after an interruption of twenty days, has now started up again, with a dignity and courage which is truly stupefying.
Imagine what strength and faith these Saharaoui must have to sacrifice the most precious thing for every human being, their own lives, in order to claim the right to independence of their people!
But you, Sire, may perhaps be even stronger than these people. Not by beating, torturing, imprisoning those who protest, not allowing those who are on a hunger strike to die slowly (and who will be for ever glorified by posterity), but by recognizing the errors that have been made by you and your government. Just think how you would be honoured, respected and sincerely venerated (and not, how it happens to you now, often through petty opportunism) and your shining image would remain in the story of the Maghreb if you humbly recognized the crime that started through the work of your deceased father, followed by yourself up until now. If you extended your hand to your Saharaoui brethren, recognizing their legitimate right to independence, letting them out of prison (and what a prison! The photos in which we can see how the Saharaoui detainees are treated are circulating around the world). Or at least start a genuine dialogue with their legitimate representatives (legitimacy acquired through the purity of their commitment) for an authentic peace process. To insist on continuing such a wrong path can only lead to more fighting, disasters and still more suffering for hundreds of thousands of people and create ever more hatred. And history will implacably point to those who are guilty, in spite of the smokescreen of propaganda lies that MAP is producing every day. If Ali Salem Tamek should die, how great would your own responsibility be! His brave and honest regard, which has never wavered in confronting his own responsibilities, and death itself, will persecute you for the rest of your life!
Be victorious over yourself, Sire. Think about it, look courageously at the problem from another point of view. Speak about it with your very beautiful wife. Perhaps a woman can understand these values better than a man.
Extend your august hand to the Saharaouis. By so doing you will obtain nothing but glory, nobility and eternal recognition. And peace will return to your heart and your realm, which will then be a really magnificent country. Believe me. It is the life experience of a doctor of over eighty years of age which leads me to say these things to you. Thank you for kindly reading these lines.
Professor Silvio Pampiglione , M.D., Ph.D., c/o Dipartimento di Sanità Pubblica Veterinaria and Patologia Animale, Università di Bologna, Via Tolara di Sopra 50, Ozzano Emilia (Bologna), Italy
In case this letter is not delivered to you, I am sending copies to the Italian Embassy in Rabat and to the Moroccan Embassy in Rome. If I do not receive your reactions in a reasonable length of time I am going to send copies of my letter to some international newspapers and post it on the internet in the hope that the contents of this letter will reach you, at least through these channels.
The Italian Embassy in Rabat, 2 rue Idriss El Azhar, B.P. 111. Morocco. The Moroccan Embassy in Rome, Via L. Spallanzani 8, Italy.
A stain on medical ethics
Silvio Pampiglione
A serious issue of medical ethics, recently raised in the Lancet,1/2 is being brought up in countries with different degrees of dictatorial rule where governments have adopted the so called ‘strategy of terror’.3 In these countries medical doctors worry about the consequences of denouncing of what they have witnessed, for fear of loosing their jobs or, more scarily, of severe ‘exemplary’ punishments.
A current example comes from the Western Sahara (former Spanish colony illegally occupied by Morocco in 1975 and the last African country to date not yet de-colonised). Since May 2005 a violent repression from Moroccan police forces is taking place against the civilian Sahrawi population, which is peacefully asking for the independence of their region through a self-determination referendum approved by the United Nation as long ago as 1991. Sahrawi people are denouncing the continuing violation of human rights carried on for over 30 years by the occupation forces. Hundreds of protesters have being wounded, often very seriously (two of them died), hundreds have been arrested, torture of detainees is widespread, and the denial by judges to verify and accept as court evidence the injuries reported by the victims is common place.
The detainees are kept in filthy prisons, in appalling conditions of dirt and overcrowding (clandestine photos from the Carcel Negro of El Ayun have travelled around the world on the web). In spite of this, not a single report has been made by local doctors of the injuries they have detected on victims admitted to hospitals nor of the conditions of Sahrawi detainess. Moreover, during detention 37 Sahrawis have in protest carried out a hunger strike carried on for 51 days (they were nearly all about to die). No proper health care has been provided. Why such a deafening silence from the medical profession? The answer is one only: fear. It is the fear imposed by a government which, under the mask of a constitutional and parliamentary monarchy, is in reality a feudal regime by divine law.3 To criticize, verbally on in writing, the King, ‘an inviolable and sacred person’, or express doubt about the ‘morocconism’ of Sahrawi territory brings about the risk, by law, of many years of jail,4 or of disappearing in a ‘royal secret garden’.
In fact, Western Sahara is virtually ‘sealed’ in a media blockade and an almost absolute territorial isolation. All of 9 foreign delegations which arrived to verify allegations circulated in the web have been expelled at the airport. Those few journalists or foreign observers who managed to penetrate the region have been arrested and sent back to their countries. Very few lawyers could attend as observers to a trial against 14 Sahrawi political detainees at El Ayoun. The country is almost in a state of siege from thousands of policemen, ad hoc remunerated hit-men, secret services and, in the latest weeks, soldiers too.
Fear is widespread both because of forced disappearances (mass graves have been recently discovered with the remains of over 40 Sahrawi desaparecidos) and more importantly because of torture. Torture is commonly practised, from street violence to more sophisticated and modern methods of inflicting torments, used not so much to obtain confessions of non existent crimes or extract information more or less true, but rather to create a climate of fear in the whole community and lead to an anguishing condition of social pa-ralysis.5 By generating a climate of terror, fear impacts on all individuals, including those with no genuine political interest, and influence doctors too, who could incur police retaliation should they contravene ‘official versions’ of the facts.
In such a country what can principled doctors do? A letter enquiring about doctors' behaviour, sent to the President of Morocco Medical Council has received no reply. What could my colleague in fact respond without risk to his personal safety?
As this issue is no doubt relevant to many other countries both in Africa and elsewhere, I believe it is worthwhile, in order to help the medical profession to overcome fear, to denounce such situations to the international public opinion as widely as possible. Only in this way will courageous doctors begin to feel some protection and will be encouraged to speak out about what they see, firstly anonymously, via the web, and then more openly, refusing to no longer accept any collusion with a police regime. ‘By speaking out they would take an important step toward reclaiming their role as healers’.6They will no longer feel guilty when, looking in the mirror, they will not see any more ‘the face of whom had cowardly accepted to become an accomplice through his own silence’, 7 but the face of a true doctor. I thank the Lancet for hosting this appeal.
Silvio Pampiglione , MD, PhD, c/o Department of Veterinary Public Health, University of Bologna, 40064 Ozzano Emilia, Italy
Editor's Note: This Letter to the Editor was rejected by the Lancet for the following reasons: ‘There are a number of possible reasons for rejection, including late submission (i.e, more than 2 weeks after publication of the article on which you are commenting, inclusion of original research (the section is not peer reviewed, so we cannot publish such work here), submission of case reports (we have a separate section for these), reiteration of points made by another correspondent and inappropriate length’.
Western Sahara: British government to fish in illegal waters
War on Want, London
The British Government has been condemned by War on Want and campaign groups from across Europe today for supporting a Fisheries Agreement that will allow European ships to fish off the coast of illegally occupied Western Sahara, despite claims that this violates international law. Sweden stood alone in opposing the Agreement though Finland, the Netherlands and Ireland conditioned their support with a statement that the Agreement should benefit the ‘local population’ of Western Sahara. The Agreement, between the EU and Morocco, which has occupied Western Sahara for 30 years, will now go into effect after being ratified by the Moroccan Parliament. A European-wide coalition (www.fishelsewhere.org) has warned the European Commission that they could now face a legal challenge in the European courts. Last week the British Gov-ernment's own MEPs in Parliament, along with the Green group and rebel MEPs, voted against the Agreement. Nick Dearden of the British anti-poverty campaign group War on Want, said:
The British Government has shown exactly what it thinks of international law. A few thousand tons of fish is worth more to our Government than the rights of 165,000 refugees and the self determination of a people who currently live in the last colony in Africa. While the British Government has always claimed there was not enough political support to amend this Agreement, the stance of Sweden, together with many UK MEPs, has shown that it is possible to take a principled position in international politics.
For 30 years 165,000 refugees have lived in camps in the Algerian desert because the international community has failed to act. Today the countries of the European Union have compounded 30 years of inaction, by happily stealing the resources of those refugees from under their noses.
Editor's Note: As Nick Dearden says, ‘European fishing corporations will be the real beneficiaries of this Agreement, together with the Moroccan Generals who control industry in Western Sahara’. We will continue this discussion in the next issue.? ♦
Truth & justice after a brutal civil war: Algeria – the women speak
Wendy Kristianasen
The 200,000 dead and 8,000 disappeared of Algeria's long civil war were almost all men. They left behind a generation of women from different backgrounds and political opinions who have come together in opposition to the president's charter for peace and reconciliation.
There was an unusual event in Algiers on 24 February, when six associations working for the victims of Algeria's long and brutal civil war held a joint press conference to reject the new charter for peace and national reconciliation approved three days earlier by the government. The charter, decreed on 15 August 2005 by President Abdelaziz Bouteflika to ‘close the chapter’, as he put it, on Algeria's violent past, won 98% of the vote in a referendum on 29 September. This was based on a simple proposition: were people for or against peace?
Despite the size of the vote, opposition to the charter is fierce among rights activists and has brought together old enemies. Chérifa Kheddar is the head of Djazaïrouna, an association of victims of terrorism. Nacéra Dutour leads an association that works for those who disappeared at the hands of the state or its agents. She said that Bouteflika, in promising peace to the Algerians, had ‘ended the dreams of truth and justice for thousands of families of the disappeared’.
As international rights groups observed on 1 March 2006, the new law, which will grant amnesty to state-armed militias and members of armed groups who surrender, would ‘consecrate impunity for crimes under international law and other human rights abuses, and even muzzle open debate by criminalising public discussion about the decade-long conflict’.1 A referendum could not ‘be the means by which a government evades its international obligations’.
Although they would scarcely have spoken to each other before last summer, Kheddar and Dutour have come together because they feel that Algeria cannot move on without truth and justice. Alge-ria's society was torn apart in 1992 when those in power cancelled an electoral process that the Islamist Front Islamique de Salut seemed likely to win; this triggered a violent civil war in which 200,000 people died, and provoked the rise of shadowy, extremist militias such as the Groupes Islamistes Armées. A chasm now separates the disappeared (presumed terrorists) from the victims of armed Islamist groups. For most Algerians, including moderate Islamists, the conflict was not a civil war, which is an idea too painful to articulate, but le terrorisme: armed insurgents against the state and those that the state had armed for self-defence.
Kheddar and Dutour's backgrounds are similar. Both worked with women's associations. Dutour said:
In 1986 I left to live in France. I was divorced and couldn't bring my three sons with me. One day, 30 January 1997, I got a phone call: Amin, my middle son, had disappeared. Numb with shock, I went to Algeria to look for him. He had been living with my mother at Baraki. There had been an attack on the visiting prefect of Algiers; the army were called in and there were mass arrests. My son wasn't interested in politics; he didn't have a job and was trying to become a taxi driver. He wasn't an Islamist. He wasn't even observant. The only thing he did was fast during Ramadan. That was what he was doing when they arrested him.
At the local police station they told me: ‘Of course we torture people: they always have something to confess. You're all terrorists. You gave birth to terrorists. So everything that's happening is normal.
After that I got tips about where they had moved him, but they led nowhere: people were too frightened to tell. The last I heard of him was in 2000.' Did she think he was still alive? Her eyes blazed: ‘Of course he is. I feel him. He will come back.’
So I came back to Paris and set up the Collectif des Familles de Disparus en Algérie, working with French and international rights groups. Now that people are less frightened, I've been able to set up committees inside Algeria.
Of the victims’ associations at the February press conference, five are headed by women.2 That is unsurprising since Al-geria's women were crucial to the war of independence against the French, then in the violence of the 1990s. As fathers, husbands and sons were arrested or killed, they became heads of households. They were also raped and tortured. As Akila Ouared, militant feminist and one of the original moudjahidates, said: ‘We women were always there at the helm.’ She was an agent for the Front de Liberation Nationale (FLN) in France, tasked with giving money to the families of militants.
I inhabited secret, separate worlds. By day I was Jacqueline, working for the French (something I did not tell the Algerians). In the evenings or at lunch breaks, I would slip away to meet a fictitious fiancé. In July 1962, after the ceasefire, we created a first women's association. I came back to Algeria and remained an activist with the FLN until 1965. I saw myself as an average Algerian engaged in a just cause. Now I call myself a feminist: not one who hates men but who simply wants equality between the genders.’
The code was amended on 27 February 2005.3 Soon after women's rights activists, including Ouared and Chérifa Kheddar, met in a private house in the pleasant suburb of Al Bia to discuss their position on it. All were educated, mid-dle-class, unveiled women who define themselves as democrats, a reference to the brief democratic opening from 1989 to 1992. All their associations are independent of the state and fought hard for the abrogation of the code, which Ouared called ‘Algiera's dishonour, an insult to women’. Chiefly, they objected to the retention a wali (guardian).
‘It's emblematic of women's absence of freedom,’ said Kheddar. ‘You can be president of the republic but you still need a guardian.’ Women can now choose their guardian - is that an advance? ‘No, it makes the condescension even clearer.’
Nadia Aït-Zaï, 54, a lawyer and professor of law at Algiers University, runs a centre for women and children, Ciddef (Centre d'Information et de Documentation sur les Droits de l'Enfant et de la Femme). She calls herself ‘a militant who defends women's rights. Not a feminist: that word has another history in other countries. We're working on abortion, a taboo subject. At present only therapeutic abortion is permitted. One of the problems is that contraception is available to married women but not to the unmarried, widows or divorcees, who deal with these issues illegally, often abroad. We also want to add a special clause for women to article 39 of the penal code which forbids sexual harassment.’ Aït-Zaï said of the family code:
It could have been abolished; it's part of the Napoleonic civil code, with Islamic references, a hybrid. Parliament was supposed to vote on the amendment. Instead, Bouteflika had it quietly passed as a presidential decree. As a jurist, I find the reform incoherent: it's got one foot in modernity, the other in the past.
Aïcha Dahmane Belhadjar is national secretary for women and family affairs for the Islamist MSP (Mouvement Sociale pour la Paix, formerly Hamas), a junior partner in the ruling coalition; she is just as elitist as the women who met in Al Bia, although there is hardly any contact between her and them. She said:
We've tried to work with secular women but they're hostile, so dialogue is difficult. It's a mistake on their part because society pays the price. After all we are here: we can't be avoided.
It preserves marriage as a social act, that's what's important. And women are not minors, because there's no marriage without their consent: the wali is just a symbol of family relationships. But some of the changes aren't clear. I would like to see a fund for divorced couples; I also think the obligation on women to contribute materially is a retrograde step.
Louisa Aït Hamou, 54, a lecturer at Algiers University, is a member of the Wassila network of women's NGOs and professionals, including psychologists:
It began in 2000.We hold workshops, a weekly clinic for children, arrange professional help. But as well as action, there is reflection – about Algeria, but also beyond – which we publish. We are breaking thesilence on taboo subjects: sexual aggression against women and children, family violence, rape, battered women, economic violence. Take Hassi Messaoud, a new oil-rich city: 30 women went to work there, where working women are unusual. The local imams accused them of being prostitutes and, in 2001, they were raped and knifed. One was buried alive. Wassila, with other NGOs, ended the long silence over this and supported the women in their search for justice, though only three of the 30 dared attend the appeal court on 3 January 2005.
There was just one organisation, the Union Nationale des Femmes Algeriennes, and they only worked on education. So we started the Collectif Autonome des Femmes. It was illegal because you had to be in the FLN or the Union Nationale. Most of the women came with political and ideological baggage. I thought it was a distraction from real action. In the 1980s NGOs were permitted: but 99% of them were appendices of political parties so the distraction escalated and the divisions grew. At that time the struggle was against the family code. In the 1990s the women's groups were empty shells because of the violence. But because rape became so widespread, we began to address the problem. Even if we haven't used this breakthrough to its full to talk about ordinary domestic violence, wom-en's associations, though still highly political, now see the need to do practical work.
In Algiers a centre staffed by lawyers and other professionals advises on personal problems – domestic violence, sexual and family violence, incest and unmarried mothers. The centre also holds seminars to teach awareness of the psychological distress of women after the decade of violence.
It is hard for women's associations to be both effective and independent of the state (something Wassila and SOS Femmes en Detresse have achieved), because of problems of funding and licensing. The movement is divided between those independent of the government and those within its ambit. The defection of a key figure in the movement, Khalida Messaoudi Toumi, to become minister of culture in 2002, is a source of bitterness. She was a member of the commission on the amendment to the family code and defended the reform:
Giving women the right to choose their guardian means women are now the subject, not the object. Women won, secularism lost. I'm for women every time. I am a publicly avowed feminist. And I'm a secularist: I want separation of state and religion. But women come first.
That statement was greeted with outrage. ‘No one from the women's movement was appointed to the commission,’ said Belaala. ‘In 2002 many of us got together to campaign for the code's abrogation.’ She raised a wider issue: ‘Almost all of us who supported abrogation are against the new charter.’
Bouteflika's civil harmony law in July 1999, which offered immunity or reduced sentences to members of armed groups who gave up their arms and disclosed their actions, soon became a blanket amnesty for crimes by all who declared they had repented. With ex-GIA emirs openly flaunting their actions, many who supported the measure felt they had been duped. The law has been extended under the charter. Saida Benhabiles Kettou, an activist in the government camp, is a teacher who went on to promote the conditions of rural women and children in Wagla, and was briefly a minister in 1992. She said: ‘The crisis in Algeria was about poverty and backwardness; Islam was its vector. While the democrats were in the salons, the FIS were on the ground.’ She sees the charter as the only option: ‘Truth and reconciliation on the South African model wouldn't work here: we Algerians aren't made like that.’
No one would dispute Algeria's need for social justice but there is a need for a consensus about its future. Chérifa Bouatta, president of Sarp (Association pour l'Aide Psychologique, la Recherché et la Formation), said of the association's work for women since 1990 in Sidi Moussa:
Our psychologists are worried about what will happen to the children of traumatised mothers. We think all this could repeat itself in another generation. But it's not up to us to pass an opinion on the new charter: it's up to the victims. Those I have seen want peace. They also want to know who was responsible.
Madame Zinou's real name is Keltoum Larbes, and she works as a nurse at Mustapha Bacha hospital in Algiers. She is 39, widow of Aliousalah Zineddine, known as Zinou, a journalist at the daily newspaper Liberté. ‘We lived in Blida. Zinou was one of 24 journalists “condemned“ by the AIS [the FIS armed wing] for what they wrote. At 10 a.m. on 6 January 1995 they gunned him down in front of our house. When I took him in my arms, he was dead. That was when my own struggle began. I joined the Comité National Contre l'Oubli et la Trahison but in 2001 it ceased to be active. So now I work on my own. Once a year I write an open letter to Zinou, which is published in the papers. I'm not an eradicator and I'm not political. I want peace, but not this peace with impunity that the charter is forcing on us. In South Africa it wasn't like this.
I'm a Muslim: the term secular makes people think you're an atheist. But I'm working to promote secularisation, so that religion stops being used for political ends. It's abhorrent to say that ‘Islam is the religion of the state’ [article 2 of the constitution]; we should say it's the religion of the people.
Women have taken up this challenge, and also the need for urgent social reform. The 200,000 dead and the 8,000 disappeared of the past years were almost all men: so women have a crucial role in the social, psychological and economic future.
Wendy Kristianasen , Le Monde Diplomatique.
The African union: Prospects for regional peacekeeping after Burundi & Sudan
Paul D. Williams
Since taking over from its predecessor the Organisation of African Unity (OAU) in July 2002, the African Union (AU) has taken significant steps to develop the structures and capabilities necessary to conduct its own armed peace operations. The two biggest practical tests of this burgeoning security architecture have come in Burundi and Darfur, Sudan. This short briefing reflects upon these developments and the emerging debates about how and when the AU should use military force to manage the continent's political crises.
Institutional developments
In institutional terms, significant developments have taken place since the AU's inauguration. In May 2003 the African Chiefs of Defence Staff took an important step forward when they agreed a policy framework to establish an African Standby Force (ASF) and Military Staff Committee that would be capable of managing complex peacekeeping operations by 2010. The building blocs of the Standby Force were to be brigades developed in Africa's five regions. These brigades were supposed to cope with six potential crisis management scenarios (AU, 2005:A-1):
1) AU/Regional military advice to a political mission. Deployment required within 30 days from an AU mandate resolution.
2) AU/Regional observer mission co-deployed with a UN Mission. Deployment required within 30 days from an AU mandate resolution.
3) Stand-alone AU/Regional observer mission. Deployment required within 30 days from an AU mandate resolution.
4) AU/Regional peacekeeping force for Chapter VI and preventive deployment missions (and peace-building). Deployment required within 30 days from an AU mandate resolution.
5) AU peacekeeping force for complex multidimensional peacekeeping missions, including those involving low-level spoilers. ASF completed deployment required within 90 days from an AU mandate resolution, with the military component being able to deploy in 30 days.
6) AU intervention e.g. in genocide situations where the international community does not act promptly. Here it is envisaged that the AU would have the capability to deploy a robust military force in 14 days.
The plan was for the ASF to be established in two phases. In Phase One (up to 30 June 2005) the AU was to develop ‘a strategic level management capacity for the management of Scenarios 1-2’. By the end of Phase Two (30 June 2010) the aim was for the AU to have fully developed ‘the capacity to manage complex peacekeeping operations’. The generic standby brigade was to consist of approximately 2,200 military personnel, including headquarters, four light infantry battalions, engineers, signals, reconnaissance, helicopters, military police, medical units, military observers and civilian support groups for logistics, administrative and budget components. Effective command and control of the ASF would depend on devising
an appropriate Africa-wide interoperable C3IS [command, control, communication and information system] integrated infrastructure, linking units with mission HQs, as well as with the AU, PLANELMs [planning elements] and Regions/RECs[Regional Economic Communities](AU, 2005:12).
Operational developments
The AU has now deployed two multidimensional, armed peace operations, one in Burundi (AMIB) and one in Sudan (AMIS). These are not totally unprecedented operations: the first pan-African peace-keeping force was deployed to the Shaba province of Zaire in 1978–79 while the OAU undertook peace operations in Chad between 1979 and 1982, the military backbone of which was provided by Nigeria. It is fair to say, however, that AMIB and AMIS represent the first cases of a trend that is likely to continue rather than an ad hoc experiment of the kind seen in Chad in the early 1980s.
AMIB was deployed between April 2003 and June 2004. It involved military forces, observers, various civilian components and operated alongside a UN political operation and other UN agencies, NGOs and donors. AMIB took over from the South African Protection Support Detachment that had been sent to Burundi in 2001 to support the peace process by protecting various Hutu politicians. At its height, AMIB consisted of 3,128 troops from Ethiopia, Mozambique and South Africa, and military observers from Burkina Faso, Gabon, Mali, Togo and Tunisia. The annual cost of the operation was estimated at US $185m, some of which was covered by European Union (EU), North American and other donors (Cilliers et al. 2006). After just over a year of operations AMIB became the core of the UN Operation in Burundi (ONUB) with effect from 1 June 2004 (see Bellamy & Williams, 2005:189-93).
Several conclusions emerge from AMIB's operations. First, the operation could not have got off the ground without South Africa's leadership and its commitment to maintain troops in Burundi for several years. Despite initial pledges of troops for the Protection Detachment from Ghana, Nigeria and Senegal, and for AMIB from Ethiopia and Mozambique the South Africans were forced to operate alone until September 2004 when the Ethiopian contingent finally arrived. This hardly represents a strong and concerted continental response to Burundi's crisis. Second the operation suffered from significant logistical problems. This explains the fact that while the Arusha Agreement envisaged AMIB arriving in December 2002 the South African forces did not fully deploy for another four months. Third, it was clear that African states were unwilling to fund the operation sufficiently, which became part of the reason for transferring the peacekeeping baton to the UN force ONUB in June 2004.
Just as AMIB was winding down, the AU began its second armed peace operation, AMIS, in June 2004. This involved military observers, a protection force, police officers and a variety of civilian and humanitarian components (for an initial assessment see Williams, 2006). It also operated alongside humanitarian NGOs and the UN mission in the south of Sudan, UNMIS. Initially, AMIS 1 consisted of some 60-80 monitors protected by a Protection Force of approximately 300 troops. Shortly thereafter, in late July, the AU Assembly suggested that the Protection Force's mandate would include ‘the protection, within the capacity of the Force, of the civilian population’ (AU, 2004a: para. 8). This was wholly unrealistic given the strength of the Janjawiid and Government of Sudan forces operating in Darfur and the tiny size of AMIS. The AU belatedly recognised this problem when on 20 October 2004 it decided to ‘enhance’ AMIS by authorising the deployment of 3,320 personnel (AU, 2004b). When the security situation in Darfur continued to worsen, the AU decided on two more waves of expansion whereby AMIS 2 was supposed to consist of 7,000 troops by the end of September 2005 and 12,000 troops (in AMIS 3) by spring 2006. In practice, by 1 February 2006 AMIS had 4,815 troops and 1,390 civilian police (AU, 2006a).
Shortly thereafter it was apparent that discussions were taking place within the UN about how and when a UN operation should take over from AMIS (see, for example, UN, 2006; VandaHei & Lynch, 2006). The UN Department of Peacekeeping Operations estimated this could take until 1 January 2007 despite speculation that AMIS would run out of funds by the end of March, 2006 (Refugees International, 2006). The fact that such discussions took place caused some consternation within the AU for at least two different reasons. First, some AU members were apparently worried about agreeing to a UN force, thereby acting against the wishes of the Government of Sudan which had undertaken a lobbying campaign to prevent such an outcome (Reuters 2006). But others within the AU were worried for a different reason. As the Head of the AU's Peace Support Operations Division, Bereng Mtimkulu (2005:36) put it,
How well can the AU salvage institutional pride when clearly it cannot stay the course in complex operations owing to fragile structures and unpredictable funding and other resources?
AMIS's recent experiences suggest some conclusions similar to those already noted about the AU's operation in Burundi. First, the AU was prepared to accept a political fudge by deploying a hopelessly weak force that refused to challenge the Government of Sudan's position despite clear evidence that Darfur was enduring ‘grave circumstances’ (namely war crimes, genocide and crimes against humanity as set out in Art. 4(h) of the AU Charter). Second, once again, the AU was unable to deploy its peacekeepers in significant numbers without the assistance of NATO and EU states. Third, the military backbone of AMIS came from just three states, Rwanda, Nigeria and Senegal. Fourth, once again, the AU mission lacked the funds to cover its $465 million annual operating costs as well as adequate transportation and intelligence capabilities. Nevertheless, in areas where significant numbers of AMIS peacekeepers eventually arrived, they did have a positive impact on the security of at least some of Darfur's desperate civilians. The problem was these areas were few and far between.
(In)capacity
These operational difficulties raise the question of what capacity African states currently possess to conduct complex and multidimensional peace operations and how well the AU is doing in relation to its target of creating an ASF by mid2010. A good practical indication of the continent's current capacity can be gauged by counting the number of African personnel deployed on UN and other peace operations both within and outside Africa.
According to figures published in late 2005 by Conflict Trends (2005:39-53), African states deployed 17,175 troops to the seven UN peacekeeping operations active on the continent. In addition, African states deployed approximately 4,900 further troops in AMIS. The bulk of these contributions came from just nine states: Ethiopia, Ghana, Kenya, Morocco, Namibia, Nigeria, Rwanda, Senegal and South Africa.
Outside the continent it is clear that African states contribute far fewer troops to UN peacekeeping operations. As of 31 January 2006, only 19 African states contributed to a total of 1,544 personnel deployed on UN peace operations outside Africa. The four missions involving African personnel were UNIFIL (646 Ghanaian troops), MINUSTAH (168 Moroccan troops and 581 police from 15 other African states), UNMIK (141 police from seven African states and three military observers), and UNOMIG (one policeman and four military observers).
Several inferences can be drawn from these figures. First, less than half of the AU's member states are contributing personnel to UN peacekeeping operations, and the bulk of contributions are coming from just nine states. Second, by early 2006 the total number of peacekeeping personnel deployed by African states was approximately 23,600, roughly the equivalent of one large peace operation such as UNSOM II in Somalia or UNPROFOR in Bosnia-Herzegovina. In this sense, Africa's capacity to keep the peace on the continent is woefully short of what is required. As a result, to envisage the AU's planned regional brigades as a substitute for UN peacekeeping would be a dangerous mistake. Consequently, the crucial practical question is how should the AU's emerging structures relate to the already existing UN structures? Unfortunately, the answer to this question has not always been clear.
Mixed messages on the use of force
Which actors have the authority to legitimate the use of force in peace operations has been a long-running source of international debate. In the African context, the legal bone of contention has been Article 4(h) of the AU Charter. This states that the Union has the right ‘to intervene in a Member State pursuant to a decision of the Assembly in respect of grave circumstances, namely war crimes, genocide and crimes against humanity’. In theory a decision to trigger Article 4(h) could come from an initiative within the Assembly, from a recommendation by the Peace and Security Council, or at the request of an AU member state under Article 4(j).
Although Article 4(h) is yet to be invoked, the Union's Legal Adviser, Ben Kioko (2003: 819) described it as institutionalizing a shift in the AU's stance from non-intervention to ‘the doctrine of ‘non-indifference’.’ This development is particularly striking because, as Kioko (2003: 821) reveals,
When questions were raised as to whether the Union could possibly have an inherent right to intervene other than through the Security Council, they were dismissed out of hand. This decision reflected a sense of frustration with the slow pace of reform of the international order, and with instances in which the international community tended to focus attention on other parts of the world at the expense of more pressing problems in Africa. Furthermore, the process of drawing up the Constitutive Act took place not long after the OAU Assembly of Heads of State and Government had adopted the Ouagadougou decision defying the sanctions imposed by the UN Security Council on Libya in connection with the Lockerbie crisis. … [African] leaders have shown themselves willing to push the frontiers of collective stability and security to the limit without any regard for legal niceties such as the authorization of the Security Council.
with the Panel [High Level Panel on Threats, Challenges and Change] that intervention of Regional Organisations should be with the approval of the Security Council; although in certain situations, such approval could be granted ‘after the fact’ in circumstances requiring urgent action(AU, 2005a: 6).
At the strategic level, and in terms of the provisions of the Protocol establishing the PSC, the AU constitutes a legitimate mandating authority under Chapter VIII of the UN Charter. In this regard, the AU will seek UN Security Council authorisation of its enforcements actions. Similarly, the RECs/Regions will seek AU authorisation of their interventions(AU, 2005b:5).
Conclusions
The AU has made considerable institutional progress in developing its capacity to conduct complex peace operations. The operational evidence, however, suggests that there is a considerable way to go before the AU should be thought of as a serious and effective keeper of the peace. At this stage, therefore, relying on the mantra of ‘African solutions to African problems’ will fail to save the victims of Africa's wars and give the continent's ethnic cleansers and genocidaires the upper hand. Even if the ASF is fully operational before the Union's 2010 deadline it should not be seen as a substitute for UN peacekeeping. Consequently, more effort must still be devoted to ensuring that well-resourced UN operations are sent to Africa's crisis zones in a timely manner. As one recent analysis concluded,
Expecting weak and poor democracies to bring peace in failed states, when they often cannot do so at home, is clearly unrealistic(Cilliers et al. 2006).
The European commission considers gender & security
Meredeth Turshen
The Unit for Protection and Security of the Citizen, attached to the Joint Research Centre, which is attached to the European Commission – a mouthful to designate a group that develops new satellite imaging technology for civilian monitoring and surveillance – convened a workshop on gender and security on 8 March, International Women's Day. With Lake Maggiore sparkling in the foreground and the snow-capped Alps looming as a dramatic backdrop, a group of 50 scientists, mostly women, grappled with new definitions of security that could appreciate the concerns of women as well as men.
GMOSS (Global Monitoring for Security and Stability, a consortium of EC governmental member research units and some industry partners) met to discuss their activities at what they called an ‘information market’ (where there was much talk about the needs of users – aka clients) on 7 March. The following day (after most of the men left), GMOSS assembled a group of women academics and representatives of nongovernmental and intergovernmental organisations to talk about women in conflict and post-conflict reconstruction and peace building. GMOSS asked each speaker to address the meaning of security from a gender perspective.
We had interesting things to say: how the meaning of security as has changed from security of the state into human security with new dimensions beyond physical safety (Ruth Jacobson, Bristol University); how UNDP has led the process of redefinition by documenting the meanings of economic, food, health, environment, and political insecurity (Meredeth Turshen, Rutgers University); how these concepts of security are gendered (Susie Jacobs, Manchester University); how gendered insecurity plays out in sites of militarised conflict (Wenona Giles, York University); how men's violence against women (and men are responsible for 90% of all physical violence) is rooted in male roles and masculinities (Ingeborg Breines, UNESCO); how the increased presence of women in conflict prevention, peace negotiations, peacekeeping, disarmament, accountability for war crimes, post-conflict reconstruction, and peace education could change the outcomes of conflict (Rawwida Baksh, Commonwealth Secretariat); and how the presence of a gender advisor on the scene in the emergency response to and recovery from disasters like the Asian tsunami made a difference to the lives of widowed men and surviving women (about 30% more women than men died in sampled districts in Indonesia and Sri Lanka).
The final speaker (Johannes Klumpers of the EC Women and Science Unit, the only male speaker) explained that gender equality had been part of the EC's agenda since 1957, that the quality of scientific work improves when women are included, and that the present plans call for meeting a target of 40% women on panels that advise, monitor, and evaluate projects. The ‘Women and Science Unit’ collects sex disaggregated data in Europe; it funds very little research.
Questions from the audience followed the panelists’ presentations (abstracts are available on the GMOSS website). Does gender analysis described for Africa and Asia also apply to Europe? What can scientists do about gender inequality? What kind of technical assistance would have helped deliver gen-der-sensitive assistance after the tsunami? What indicators could technicians use to apply technology? What kind of satellite imagery can help with land issues in monitoring potential conflicts? How does the gender dimension in vulnerability inform a spatial or socio-geographical analysis or mapping of conflicts and disasters? Should the EC shift its focus from security to stability? The questions revealed a lack of consensus on the premises on which the women speakers based their presentations, namely that the classic formulation of national security had given way to an emerging paradigm around human security. A poll conducted by anonymous ballot during the workshop determined that the majority of participants thought that security was a matter of perception and that apparently men and women had different perceptions of security.
A gendered perspective on security
From a gendered point of view, there are ten threats to human security and in each women are at a greater disadvantage than men. Economic, food, health, education, employment, environment, personal, community, political and legal, and cultural insecurity are all aspects of human insecurity. Most can be measured statistically with indicators showing not only male/female inequalities but also North/South inequalities, racial and ethnic inequalities, and class inequalities within countries. In each case, the indicators show a worse situation in war-torn countries. The data shown here are for sub-Saharan Africa.
Economic insecurity
Poverty and homelessness are two dimensions of economic insecurity; unemployment is considered separately. There is more poverty in the South than North (see Table 1).
The World Bank defines poverty as GNI per capita less than $2 per day, or $730 per year. The average GNI per capita was $1,243 for sub-Saharan Africa in 2003. Poverty is greater in war-torn societies, and it affects women more than men. Table 3 shows poverty in selected wartorn countries in Africa, comparing estimated earnings of women and men. There is also more poverty among racial and ethnic groups that are discriminated against, but statistical data documenting this claim are scarce for Africa, even in South Africa, which no longer compiles data by race (see Table 2).
Women aged 15 to 64 years comprise about 25% of the population in most African countries, and children under 15 years of age comprise around 45%. Because African women have primary responsibility for their children, these figures can be aggregated: together women and children comprise between 69% and 74% of the population. In comparison, the equivalent figures for the US and UK are 54% and 51% respectively. It is important to note that the frequently cited figure for refugee populations comprising 80% women and children is not far above national averages. The problems raised by poverty in war-torn countries have specific gender dimensions: new forms of slavery, bonded labour, sex work, and the predatory organisation of human trafficking (for example, 85% of conflict zones report the trafficking of women and girls [Save the Children 2002]).
| Poorest Countries | 2003 | 1986 | Richest Countries | 2003 | 1986 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Burundi | 100 | 240 | Norway | 43,350 | 15,400 |
| Congo (DRC) | 100 | 160 | Switzerland | 39,880 | 17,680 |
| Sierra Leone | 150 | 310 | USA | 37,610 | 17,480 |
| Malawi | 170 | 160 | Japan | 34,510 | 12,840 |
| Niger | 200 | 260 | Denmark | 33,750 | 12,600 |
| Mozambique | 210 | 210 | Sweden | 28,840 | 13,160 |
| Rwanda | 220 | 290 | UK | 28,350 | 8,870 |
| Nepal | 240 | 150 | Finland | 27,010 | 12,160 |
| Uganda | 240 | 230 | Austria | 26,720 | 9,990 |
| CAR | 260 | 290 | Netherlands | 26,310 | 10,020 |
| Source: World Bank World Development Report 2005 |
| Country | Male | Female | Country | Male | Female |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Chad | 1,525 | 902 | Ethiopia | 931 | 487 |
| Congo, D.R. | 903 | 500 | Mozambique | 1,341 | 910 |
| Côte d'Ivoire | 2,142 | 792 | Rwanda | 1,583 | 985 |
| Eritrea | 1,125 | 579 | Sierra Leone | 783 | 325 |
| Source: UNDP Human Development Report 2005 |
| Angola | 69 |
| Burundi | 71 |
| Congo (Kinshasa) | 73 |
| Côte d'Ivoire | 71 |
| Eritrea | 70 |
| Ethiopia | 70 |
| Liberia | 70 |
| Mozambique | 69 |
| Niger | 72 |
| Rwanda | 70 |
| Senegal | 70 |
| Sierra Leone | 71 |
| Somalia | 71 |
| Sudan | 71 |
| Uganda | 74 |
| Source: www.cia.gov |
Food insecurity
A concomitant of poverty and war is the disruption of food production and markets, which increase food insecurity, leaving women and children weakened and susceptible to disease. The data for food insecurity in war-torn countries are not disaggregated by sex, although we know that pregnant and lactating women have greater needs for high quality nutrition.
Health insecurity
Generally women have a longer life expectancy at birth than men, though in certain age groups, more women than men die in some societies. The risk of dying in pregnancy and childbirth is disproportionately high in poor countries, where the risk (for example, 1 in 12 in Burundi) more closely resembles the rate (16 per 100,000 live births) in rich countries. High maternal mortality rates reflect the fact that during wartime the number of women in labour reaching a health facility with a skilled attendant on duty is severely reduced.
There are many more issues to consider under the heading of health security: the correlation of violence against women with rising rates of AIDS among women; the correlation between certain tropical diseases in women and women's greater exposure because of the gendered division of labour; the association of wom-en's deaths from Ebola with women's task of washing corpses, etc. War creates a pro-natalist environment, which puts pressure on women, affecting their reproductive choices; the result in some countries after World War Two was the phenomenon known as the post-war baby boom. Demographers have done almost no research on this phenomenon in Africa.1
Employment insecurity
We know that, worldwide, women earn less than men, that women are in lower echelons than men in all hierarchies, that more women work in the informal sector, and above all, that much of women's work is unpaid and not accounted for in national accounts. Informal employment (non-agricultural) in 1994 and 2000 in sub-Saharan Africa was 63% for men and 84% for women (UN Millennium Project Task Force on Education and Gender Equality, 2005). Women's wage employment differed significantly between industrial countries (46.4%) and 9 sub-Saharan countries (29.5%) in 2002 for which there are data. As to job security, few data are available, but apparently more women than men are unemployed as shown in Table 9. Work responsibilities shift dramatically in wartime, but we do not have data to document these changes. The collapse of livelihoods is the most dramatic consequence of violent conflict.
Environmental insecurity
The way war changes environments needs far more analysis. We know that war damages the physical environment, and this has a long-term impact on women's lives. We know that the military pollutes the physical environment and that this affects women's reproductive health. Damage to the natural environment is long-term. Military operations destroy wildlife habitats and contaminate land, air, and water, affecting food supplies. Chemicals and radioactive materials cause damage that can last for generations because these substances remain in the environment. It appears that, by virtue of the gendered division of labour, women are more dependent than some men on environmental resources. It follows that degradation, pollution, and natural disasters affect women more.
The sowing of landmines on agricultural and pastoral lands in Africa has exposed women and children to death and injury because women are the majority of farmers and children graze livestock. Few measures of environmental management are published: they include the generation and recycling of waste (including nuclear waste) and the percentage of national territory designated as protected, but I found no data for Africa.
Education insecurity
The data on educational inequality are unequivocal: lower rates of female literacy, school enrolment, and university degrees in the poor countries of the South. In war-torn countries, all of these figures are worse. It is sufficient to contrast net school enrolment ratios in sub-Saharan Africa and the industrialised countries.
Personal insecurity
Global prevalence data for violence against women show high rates for both intimate partner violence and non-fam-ily or stranger violence – more than half of the women surveyed in Zambia. Scattered data on intimate partner violence for sub-Saharan Africa reveal 41% of Ugandan women and 48% of Zambian report an intimate partner having physically abused them, and 25% of Zimbabwean women report an intimate partner forcing sex on them (UN Millennium Project Task Force on Education and Gender Equality, 2005).
The costs of such violence are only now beginning to be computed. Intimate partner violence costs the United States about $12.6 billion each year; it costs Nicaragua $32.7 million (1.6% of GDP) and Chile $1.73 billion (2% of GDP) (Waters et al. 2004). Non-monetary costs include increased suffering, illness, and death; abuse of alcohol and drugs; and depression. The economic multiplier effects include increased absenteeism; decreased labour market participation; reduced productivity; lower earnings, investment, and savings; and lower in-ter-generational productivity (UN Millennium Project Task Force on Education and Gender Equality, 2005).
Personal insecurity is of course greatest in wartime. The shifting trend over the 20th century from troop deaths to civilian deaths is well documented. Scholars do not usually specify the gender change in this trend: the burden of death has shifted from male troops to women and children who make up two-thirds to three-fourths of the civilian population. The type of conflict is another way to deconstruct the trend from troop deaths to civilian deaths. The four types of collective violence are as follows: genocide, international wars, internal wars, and terrorism (ranked in descending order of lethality).
Death rates are highest in genocidal wars: in Rwanda, an estimated 800,000 died during the 1994 genocide, which is an annual death rate of 44%. Put another way, approximately 11% of the population died, raising the crude death rate from 172 per 10,000 per year (before 1994) to 4,266 per 10,000 per year (in 1994). Deaths in international wars fall into two categories: troops (note that the per cent killed has fallen dramatically since World War II) and civilians (the highest recorded figure is 5% of Korean civilians from 1951 to 1953). About three times more soldiers than civilians die in international wars. It is not known whether more civilians die in international wars than in internal wars because it is difficult to distinguish soldier and civilian deaths in internal wars, though it appears that the civilian risk of death in international wars is half again as high as the risk of death in internal wars. In the three internal wars in Africa for which there are data – Burundi (199398), Sudan (1982-96), and Sierra Leone (1997-99) – the crude death rate was lower than the baseline rate, which is the expected death rate in the absence of war.2
Terrorism appears to have a greater psychological than demographic impact. In the decade of Islamist terror in Algeria (1992-99), an estimated 60,000–100,000 people died, but the crude death rate remained far below the baseline.
One obvious consequence of the higher mortality among adult men is more widows and more female-headed households. The per cent of widows is far higher in Africa than in industrial countries regardless of conflict because of polygamy, age differences between spouses, and a shorter life expectancy for men than women; war accelerates this trend.
The available data for household heads who are women show that the figure of 42% for southern African household is the highest in the world (see Table 4).
| Country | M | F |
|---|---|---|
| Angola | 45 | 48 |
| Burundi | 41 | 42 |
| Chad | 47 | 50 |
| Congo, DR | 45 | 46 |
| Cote d'Ivoire | 45 | 46 |
| Mozambique | 40 | 42 |
| Sierra Leone | 36 | 39 |
| Sub-Saharan Africa | 45 | 46 |
| Source: World Bank World Development Report 2006 |
| Country | 1970 | 1997 | Country | 1970 | 1997 | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Angola | 2,103 | 1,903 | Ethiopia | … | 1,858 | |
| Burundi | 2,104 | 1,685 | Mozambique | 1,896 | 1,832 | |
| Chad | 2,109 | 2,032 | Rwanda | 2,224 | 2,056 | |
| Congo, DR | 2,178 | 1,755 | Sierra Leone | 2,449 | 2,035 | |
| Eritrea | … | 1,622 | Sub-Saharan Africa | 2,271 | 2,237 | |
| Source: UNDP Human Development Report 2000 |
| Poorest Countries Rate | Rate | Risk1 in: | Richest Countries | Rate | Risk 1 in: |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Burundi | 1,000 | 12 | Norway | 16 | 2,900 |
| Congo (DRC) | 990 | 13 | Switzerland | 7 | 7,900 |
| Sierra Leone | 2,000 | 6 | USA | 17 | 2,500 |
| Malawi | 1,800 | 7 | Japan | 10 | 6,000 |
| Niger | 1,600 | 7 | Denmark | 5 | 9,800 |
| Mozambique | 1,000 | 14 | Sweden | 2 | 29,800 |
| Rwanda | 1,400 | 10 | UK | 13 | 3,800 |
| Nepal | 740 | 24 | Finland | 6 | 8,200 |
| Uganda | 880 | 13 | Austria | 4 | 16,000 |
| CAR | 1,100 | 15 | Netherlands | 16 | 3,500 |
| Source: UNICEF The State of the World's Children 2005 |
| Angola | 45 |
| Burundi | 25 |
| Chad | 16 |
| Eritrea | 28 |
| Ethiopia | 6 |
| Guinea-Bissau | 35 |
| Mozambique | 48 |
| Rwanda | 31 |
| Sierra Leone | 42 |
| Somalia | 25 |
| Uganda | 39 |
| Sub-Saharan Africa | 42 |
| Source: UNICEF The State of the World's Children 2006 |
| Primary | School | Secondary | School | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| M | F | M | F | ||
| Sub-Saharan Africa | 70 | 62 | 29 | 24 | |
| Industrial Countries | 95 | 96 | 91 | 92 | |
| Source: UNICEF, The State of the World's Children, 2006 |
| Country | M | F |
|---|---|---|
| Botswana | 16 | 24 |
| Lesotho | 31 | 47 |
| Namibia | 28 | 39 |
| South Africa | 27 | 33 |
| Source: UN, The World's Women 2005 |
| WW One | WW Two | |
|---|---|---|
| Troop deaths | 8.6 | 17.3 |
| Civilians deaths | 6.9 | 20.3 |
| Source: Garfield & Drucker, 2002 |
| Source: Garfield & Drucker, 2002. |
| Age group | 45-59 | 60+ |
|---|---|---|
| N. Africa | 19% | 59% |
| Sub-Saharan Africa | 16% | 44% |
| USA (1991/97) | 34%* | 55+* |
| Source: UN, 2000; *world's highest figure |
| Northern Africa | 12% |
| Southern Africa | 42%* |
| Rest of Sub-Saharan Africa | 21% |
| Source: UN, 2000; *world's highest figure |
| Women in government at ministerial level % of total | Seats in Parliament held by women % of total | |
|---|---|---|
| Angola | 5.7 | 15.0 |
| Chad | 11.5 | 6.5 |
| Congo, DR | 12.5 | 10.2 |
| Côte d'Ivoire | 17.1 | 8.5 |
| Eritrea | 17.6 | 22.0 |
| Ethiopia | 5.9 | 7.8 |
| Mozambique | 13.0 | 34.8 |
| Sierra Leone | 13.0 | 14.5 |
| Source: UNDP, Human Development Report, 2005 |
Community insecurity
Minority communities may be oppressed by institutionalised and social discrimination; in war-torn countries the State may single them out or they may join insurgent groups. Women in inter-ethnic or inter-religious marriages may be placed in ambiguous even dangerous situations in which their loyalties are questioned (for example, in the Biafra civil war); and in countries where radical versions of religious institutions are vying for power, non-conforming women may be harassed or even killed (in the Algerian conflict, Turshen 2002).
Political & legal insecurity
We have been celebrating the election of Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf in Liberia, a first for Africa, even as we note women's lack of political representation more generally. Women may lose legal status in the course of war, especially if they are widowed and are dispossessed from their homes and the land they have cultivated. This is one reason that repercussions for the exclusion of women from peace talks are grave.
Cultural insecurity
Beyond the personal insecurity, which includes the fear of physical violence and crime, and community insecurity, which includes oppression by the community, disintegration of one's community, or discrimination against one's community, there is also a specific kind of cultural insecurity related to ethnic cleansing, forced evictions, internal displacement, and refugee status, which destabilise cultural identity. Leaving behind the artifacts of one's culture in the midst of armed violence, losing the material indicators of one's cultural heritage that may be destroyed willfully or incidentally in the fighting, may be especially traumatising for women because they are so often freighted with the duty of conserving cultural values and teaching them to their children.
The ten threats to security just outlined could also be regarded as the fallout of war, the stuff of daily headlines from the frontline. When discussing women and children who are regarded as victims of war requiring humanitarian responses, there is a tendency to de-politicize war. Yet these threats to human security are highly political: they play out against a background of two decades of increasing poverty among Africans and the feminisation of poverty in Africa. Behind the headlines are the historical legacies of conflict, including the legacies of the Cold War, as well as the altered political and economic environments in which women in war-torn societies live, now dominated by neoliberal ideologies.
Systemic subordination of women
Although all of us believe in the importance of gender equality, the current thrust of feminist research is to reveal the power relations and institutions that sustain and perpetuate gender inequality. Although it is important to continue to document male/female inequalities because we still lack many of the details needed for postwar planning, we also need to look at the systems of subordination that undergird women's inequality.
The study of conflict offers us insights into the fate of women when war disrupts systems of subordination. All of us have witnessed the destabilisation of gender, generational, and social class hierarchies in wartime. The fracturing of social ties permits some women to take on new roles and responsibilities, to become head of their household or leader of their community. And some women traders become rich.
We have observed that positive gender shifts are fragile. Society may not support women's new economic, social, and political roles, and new regimes easily deny their demands for participation. Women's war ‘gains’ – such as new opportunities for leadership – are often reversed in the aftermath of conflict, though the reversal is not inevitable. Basic services – education for children and illiterate adults, health care for all – can transform women's chances. Truth commissions and other mechanisms of accountability and reparations may contribute by explicitly recognising wom-en's war ordeals – like rape committed in a systematic manner, and enforced prostitution – and lead to the rehabilitation of women in the eyes of society. Women's early participation in peace negotiations and the creation of a new government may help the new government set gender priorities.
It is doubtful, however, whether such improvements in women's standing will change the structures of subordination.
While some women move forward, we have also observed regressive trends in war-torn societies: a tightening of men's control of women, a narrower definition of culturally sanctioned gender roles. In conflicts that target ethnic or religious identity, women living alone are prey to predators, rapists, traffickers, and looters. Lacking the protection of family and community, women are especially vulnerable to enemy troops; some women attach themselves to soldiers for support. Women who serve rebel armies are not always welcomed back into their society, and the children of rape are rejected outright. Sometimes both outcomes occur in the same country – some women emerge as leaders while others are ostracised.
The contradictions of women's losses and gains in conflict have led us to explore the nature of masculinity and how war transforms men's expectations of themselves and others. Judy El Bushra (2003) showed that in Angola, Mali, and Somalia, even gender role reversal, in which women take on such male roles as breadwinner, is not accompanied by an ideological shift in women's status, either within the household or outside of it. Women remain subordinate to men, and ideologies of male superiority and masculinity remain intact. Feminists are thus challenged to integrate research on men and masculinities into our work on women in war-torn societies. As R.W.
Connell (2005) has written, women are the subjects of national and international policy documents concerned with gender equality; ‘men are present as background throughout these documents.’ There is an implied comparison with men as the advantaged group, but it is difficult to raise issues about men's interests, problems, or differences without a real dialogue on ‘the relational character of gender.’
Xenophobia increases in wartime, as do racism, sexism, prejudice, and discrimination. Women have studied the gendered structures of ethnicity, trying to understand their rigidity and fluidity. An especial challenge is to track the gendered expressions of ethnicity under the pressures of violent conflict. The fate of women in inter-ethnic marriages during conflict offers some clues about the intersection of gender subordination and ethnic discrimination.3 Power-hungry leaders often manipulate both ethnic conflicts and religious confrontations. We have documented the blatant, sometimes brutal, use of women in these struggles. Analysis requires the integration of new understandings of gendered religious identities into studies of communal conflict.
The kinds of research I am outlining here are not so easily quantified as gender inequality. Counting numbers in religious or ethnic categories is useful, but tells us little about gender relations within and between groups. Studies of refugee and immigrant women are new avenues of research that reveal the gendered nature of ethnic and religious identities, but these necessarily use qualitative rather than quantitative methods.
When conflict ends, a country's physical infrastructure can be swiftly rebuilt. In the desire to return to some semblance of ‘normalcy’, national and community leaders may also rush to reconstruct old patriarchal patterns of gender relations.
The aim of feminist research is to see if conflict offers an opportunity to set new values of women's human rights in place.
Meredeth Turshen, Rutgers University; e-mail: turshen@123456rci.rutgers.edu
Tuareg take up arms
Jeremy Keenan
Several dozen Tuareg, led by Hassan Vaghagha (Fagaga), leader of the
Mouvement National pour la Libération de l'Azawad, attacked two army bases at Kidal (NE Mali) and another at Menaka near the Niger border on May 23. The Kidal bases were quickly overrun, with most of the 400 garrisoned troops reported as fleeing – in spite of the muchpublicised US training of the Malian army. The rebels looted the armouries, disappearing into the desert before reinforcements arrived. Casualties were light: 2 soldiers, 2 rebels but no civilians were killed.
Vaghagha, a leader of the 1990s Tuareg rebellion, had been integrated into the Malian army as a Lieutenant-Colonel, but deserted in February, demanding more development for his region and a better deal for Tuareg in the defence forces, many of whom have deserted in recent months. A rebel spokesman in Bamako stated:
We do not want war … We want to enter into negotiations with the government … Our region is poor and we want to see it developed quickly. We also have problems regarding our integration into the army.
The uprising follows Libyan leader Muammar Qadhafi's recent launch in Timbuktu of his ‘Great Sahara’ state project. Depending on interpretation, this would stretch from Senegal to the borders of Iraq or be something more tangible in the form of a Libyan-backed Tuareg federation extending across northern Mali and northern Niger, southern Mauritania, northern Burkina Faso and southern Algeria. The idea has caused ructions in Algeria, as well as Niamey and Bamako. Libya opened a consulate in Kidal in February.
Whether Qadhafi's pronouncements incited the rebels, as Algeria claims, is still uncertain. He was certainly aware of Tuareg resentment towards both the Americans, whose ‘War on Terror’ has led to the ‘invasion’ of their lands and lost livelihoods, and local governments. The latter have used the pretext of the ‘War on Terror’ to crack down on legitimate opposition. In Mauritania, this resulted in a successful coup against President Ould Tanja last August. Both the Niger and Algerian governments have provoked their Tuareg in attempts to portray them to the Americans as ‘putative terrorists’.
With the US fabricating and over-hyping the ‘security’ importance of northern Mali, the Kidal attack came as no surprise. The question is whether the uprising spreads to Niger, which is possible, and to Algeria, which is unlikely.
This widespread resentment is being compounded by the way foreign oil and mining companies are moving into the region with complete disregard for indigenous rights.