By Dean Diyani
JUBA, Sudan
On April 23, in Baidoa, a senior U.S. State Department official singled out Eritrea for frustrating peace in Somalia by arming and training Islamists there.
That very day, the Eritrean President Isaias Aferwerki’s plane touched down in the Southern Sudan capital town, Juba, on a visit that was a part of efforts to broker peace in the troubled Darfur region, Eastern Sudan, and build confidence between Sudan’s south and north.
The multitude of people lining Juba’s main, and only tarmacked road, didn’t know the guest, or even how to spell his name right. Emma Lobor, 12, a student at St. Kizito Primary School, braved the early morning sun, but he shook his head when asked if knew the guest for whom he sang. And, at the airport, a billboard posted on wooden poles read, “H.E. Isaiah Aforg (sic), you are cordially welcomed to the land of peace.”
Aferwerki’s visit to Sudan puts him and his country right at the center of two of Africa’s most devastating conflicts – Darfur and Somalia – in which the tiny African country with 4.9 million people has been deeply mired.
But mostly the Eritrean President’s visit puts on the spot the differences, thus far, in the way the international community has tried to resolve the two conflicts.
In one, Darfur, peace efforts have taken a largely multilateral approach; and with Sudan caving in to a hybrid U.N./AU force, light is beginning to appear at the end of the tunnel. In the other, Somalia, the peace efforts have been unilateral, and the country seemingly sinks ever deeper into chaos.
Aferwerki’s visit to Southern Sudan, coming only a week after South African president Thabo Mbeki’s visit, is the latest in a series of planned presidential visits that Southern Sudan President Salva Kiir hopes would build momentum for a regional solution for Darfur, and a regional consensus for a way forward over the troubled implementation of the Comprehensive Peace Agreement.
Salva Kiir established a 7-man SPLM Task Force on Darfur March 31, appointing as its chairperson the SPLM special envoy on Darfur, Rev. Clement Janda, who, for five months, was involved in the Darfur peace talks held in Abuja, Nigeria, in 2006.
Mbeki arrived in Juba less than two weeks later, and, after meeting Sudanese President Omar al Bashir, announced that the only sticking issue before Khartoum allows a U.N. force was whether or not they could use helicopters. Mbeki described that as a small issue.
By inviting Mbeki as the first African head of state to Sudan, the SPLM Darfur Task force has displayed acute understanding of diplomacy. And that is that South Africa’s position as Africa’s powerhouse had to be respected, and a nod from South Africa could easily have the other countries following suit.
And important also is the invitation of Aferwerki, a man deeply involved in the Darfur and Eastern Sudan conflicts, that he’s the only one who could easily bear down on the regime in Khartoum and the rebel groups in Darfur.
With those two visits alone, Salva Kiir’s Press Secretary Ayom Wol put out a celebratory cry, declaring the Darfur task force as ‘gaining momentum’.
The Eritrean president may not have received the same hospitality had he instead visited Uganda, where only last month, he snubbed President Museveni when the later visited Eritrea on a Somalia mission. Neither would he have expected flowers from the other regional countries that form the Inter-Governmental Authority on Development that Eritrea walked out of in April, accusing them of backing Ethiopia in Somalia.
But in the Sudan, Eritrea has in the past backed rebel groups in the south, including the SPLA, and in Darfur, which are fighting the regime in Khartoum. And even if the ordinary people didn’t know the guest, signs were written allover Juba that Aferwerki’s support was
appreciated by the ruling class.
“The Women League of the SPLM thanks H.E. Aferwki (sic) for his support to the SPLM,” read a banner, reflecting the support Eritrea gave the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement during its war against the Islamist regime in Khartoum.
Aferwerki’s influence in Africa’s largest country is apparently also understood by the National Congress Party in Khartoum.
At a November mini-summit on Sudan in Libya, Aferwerki was urged (by Sudan) to mediate in the Darfur conflict and its spillover into Chad and the Central African Republic.
Eritrea mediated a peace agreement between Sudan and eastern rebels in October 2006, and observers reckon that Eritrea’s success in that peace deal was more to do with its influence on the rebels than with anything else.
On the other hand, the Somalia peace plan has taken a different turn, shunting Aferwerki, the man with possibly the largest influence on the Islamists, to the sidelines..
“The regional powers were sidelined,” says a new briefing paper from Chatham House, “and multilateral efforts to support Somalia undermined by the strategic concerns of other international actors – notably Ethiopia and the United States.”
Ethiopia feared the destabilisation from insurgents based in Somalia; the U.S. worried that al-Qaeda cells are incubating within the horn of Africa country.
After fierce battles in Mogadishu, Somalia is looking better, but unilateralism, according to the authors of the report, has made Somalia more prone to al-Qaeda cells than when it was under the failed Islamic Courts Union.
“Whatever the short-term future holds, the complex social forces behind the rise of the Islamic Courts will not go away,” reads the briefing.
Darfur and Somalia have also differed in how the peacekeeping forces were crafted. Whilethe AU led the search for peacekeepingforces in Darfur led by South Africa, in Somalia, such efforts were started by Ethiopia. Following the rout of the Islamic Courts Union,
Ethiopian Prime Minister Meles Zenawi visited Ugandan President Museveni to sell him on a Somalia force. Once Uganda accepted, in the ensuing excitement, the U.S. sent emissaries and U.S. generals to visit Museveni.
Analysts believe that there were problems with this.
One was that it sought to undermine the geopolitics of the region. By feting Mr Museveni, whitewashing him from his other failed adventures in DR-Congo, and dressing him up as a powerbroker on the continent, the U.S. rubbed the continent’s real powerhouses – Nigeria and South Africa – the wrong way. That African countries spent more time fighting each other over a U.N. Security Council seat in 2005, rather than unite and lobby for a permanent security council seat for Africa, says much about how far the countries take their influence.
Second, was that the main players in the Somalia conflict didn’t take the time to read the social dynamics of the horn of Africa. As he reveled under spotlight, for instance, Museveni told IRIN that, “We are black people, this is a black continent – our continent. You cannot bring that Middle Eastern nonsense here.” It’s unlikely that such xenophobic outbursts could win over hearts for a peacekeeper, and they exposed Uganda’s lack of understanding of the region. Masses of people in the north, and northeastern Africa have for decades considered themselves middle-eastern, if not Arab. To them Arabisation and Islamisation are a part of their life.
Also, in Somalia, unlike in Darfur, there was a failure to take into account the fears of some of Somalia’s key neighbors. “We have always been at war,” Nesredin Abdulrahman, an Eritrean state journalist attached to Aferwerki’s press team told this correspondent in Juba during his president’s visit. It’s little wonder that Museveni’s visit to Eritrea was a diplomatic failure. Aferwerki’s office issued a statement moments after Museveni left: Aferwerki had told Museveni to immediately withdraw from Somalia. According to a Ugandan source,
Museveni’s presidential jet flying from Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, was denied permission to land in the Eritrean capital Asmara, with Eritrea saying it was flying from a country with which they are at war. The Ugandan Head of State then reportedly flew to U.A.E, before landing in
Asmara.
It’s easy to see why Eritrea considers itself at war.
After all, the border dispute that resulted into a war between the two is yet to be resolved, with international community setting a deadline to the two countries to resolve the conflict this year.
In retrospect, the world seems to be coming to grips with the failure to look at Ethiopia’s entry in Somalia from Eritrea’s view point. U.S. Assistant Secretary Frazier, while in Baidoa, admitted that communication with Eritrea has been sparse.
“Very clearly Eritrea has played a game of trying to oppose Ethiopia everywhere in the region,” Frazier added, according to VOA. “And that probably fundamentally goes back to addressing the issue of the border. I do not believe that Eritrea has taken a position of
supporting extremists as a sort of ideological orientation, or a common interest with extremist elements across the region. I think that they are also supporting rebels in Darfur for the same reason.”
Frazier is apparently admitting to diplomatic failure in Somalia.
Aferwerki appears willing to work under a multilateral arrangement over Somalia as he’s doing under Darfur, although he wants Ethiopia to withdraw from Somalia first.
Asked by this correspondent how he expected to build multilateral efforts to resolve the Darfur conflict, yet his country had just walked out of the 7-member Inter-Governmental Authority on Development, Aferwerki said Eritrea stands on the side of the people
of Southern Sudan the same way it does the people of Somalia because
they “want to see justice done here.”
“If a nation is weakened, invaded, the civilians are tortured, we can’t condone such efforts that are illegal,” the Eritrean president replied. “In regard to what’s happening in Somalia, we need to say, No, to injustice.”
It’s clear that Aferwerki has dug in.
Naughty stories are written about him – he has banned political parties, curtailed the creativity of his people by limiting their economic freedom by putting major enterprises under party control, fought independent media, armed.
But from the signs on this sunny morning in Juba, when schools wereVclosed and pupils told to stay home or go line the roads to welcome a president they didn’t know, Aferwerki’s grip on the region cannot simply be wished away.
Casual in appearance, wearing Sandals, and what the trademark maoist suit that was once loved and adored by socialists, such as Tanzania’s Julius Nyerere, and communists alike, Aferwerki stepped out of the plane at 11.05 a.m., inspected a Guard of Honor alongside Salva Kiir, before a lady placed black gowns, and a silk ribbon, the presidents’s names sown into them, around the necks.
The cameras clicked just as the people were ushered into the waiting cars. Then, the presidents drove away, leaving the well paved airport behind, and riding, at a snail’s pace, along the dusty, bumpy, potholed road past the Joint Donor Team resident.
The presidents, heads sticking out of the Land Cruisers, during the half-hour ride, waved back. Ahead of them, were three outriders – one dropped out of the convoy after an apparent mechanical problem – wearing caps, white trousers, white shirts and gloves and black shoes. And at the only rated cement and brick hotel, Southern Sudan Hotel, where the presidents would later hold talks, an oil refilling station Imaton Gas next door was ordered to shut down for the day.
Behind the presidents’ cars, the doors of all the vehicles were wide open, with about two dozen heads – some ministers; others body guards – sticking out.
The columns of school children, sweat trickling down shiny, young faces, lined the dusty road, the only one with asphalt in Southern Sudan.
The pupils waved.
Others sang.
They may not know Aferwerki’s stranglehold over his people, but because they
remember Eritrea’s help during the Sudan civil war, they are willing to fete and listen to him. It’s not difficult to imagine Aferwerki having the same influence on the Islamists in Somalia. And that means that it’s time he was put at the center of a long lasting solution for Somalia.
(First published by Africa Insight, Nation Media Group, May 3, 2007. By Dean Diyani, aka, Badru Dean Mulumba)
