- Title: [SW Column] (Jamal Gabobe) Is
Djibouti's Peace Plan Really About Peace?
- From:[]
- Date :[14 May 2000]
Is Djibouti's Peace Plan
Really About Peace?
By Jamal Gabobe, April 14, 2000
Several years ago I attended a seminar on American Foreign policy in
the Middle East at the University of Washington. The seminar was run by an American
ambassador to a Middle Eastern country. Towards the end of a long-discussion, I asked the
ambassador, "I know that Somalia is not your area, but do you know what is the U.S.
policy about Somalia?" Without batting an eye, the ambassador replied, "any
suggestions, Jamal?" He could afford to be frank in this case because there was no
policy to sell or to be diplomatic about. After the killing of 18 American soldiers and
the dragging of an American soldier in the dusty streets of Mogadishu, most Americans did
not want to have anything to do with Somalia. Being representatives of a democratic
country, American officials reflected the general thinking of the electorate and stayed
away from anything that had to do with Somalia.
Unlike American officials, the United Nations, a body that is not
accountable to citizens but to bureaucrats most of whom represent oppressive regimes, had
shown no such willingness to re-evaluate its goals and methods in Somalia after its
disastrous failures and humiliating withdrawal from that country in 1995. As soon as the
United Nations reluctantly got out of Somalia, it was already busy cooking-up or endorsing
schemes for solving the Somali problem. One U.N.- engineered or U.N.-endorsed Somali peace
and reconciliation meeting after another were tried in places such as Kenya, Egypt,
Ethiopia, Libya, Yemen, places that are neither known for peace nor reconciliation.
The latest call for such a conference has come from tiny Djibouti,
which is hosting a conference on Somalia from April 20 to May 5, 2000. A few months before
its independence from France, William F. Schmick and James Pringle wrote in Newsweek
(Jan.17, 1977) about this port city:
"Djibouti's natural resources consist principally of sand and
camels. The colony (known formally as the French Territory of the Afars and Issas, after
its two tribes) has no industry, apart from prostitution and its Coke and Pepsi-Cola
bottling plants. The territory is one of the poorest on earth, with an unemployment rate
that stands at 80 per cent."
To complete the picture, Elizabeth Peer also of Newsweek wrote (July
11, 1977) on the occasion of Djibouti's independence: "With Djibouti's 90 per cent
unemployment, 90 per cent illiteracy, no natural resources, three college graduates and an
official count of 20,000 camels, one of the finer geopolitical ironies is that any one
covets it at all."
In my last visit to Djibouti, I saw no improvements in that grim
picture. If anything, things had gotten worse. The deteriorating economic situation,
coupled with the feeling among many of the second major ethnic group, the Afars, that
political power was being monopolized by the president's tribe, led to a rebellion in 1991
that was only half put down in 1994 when the rebels split into two factions and the
government cut a deal with one of them. This rebellion is still alive in parts of the
country. As if that were not enough, Djibouti's government decided to take Ethiopia's side
in the Ethio-Eritrean conflict thus entangling itself in a vicious war. To top it all,
Djibouti has now decided to destroy the hard-won stability that exists in Somaliland and
some parts of the former Somalia, all under the guise of bringing peace and reconciliation
to Somalia.
Instead of pointing out to Djibouti that its priorities should be to
improve the livelihood of its people and not to fan the flames of war between Eritrea and
Ethiopia or create chaos in Somaliland, the U.N. has blessed Djibouti's misguided policy
toward Somaliland and Somalia. The U.N. is also yet to take Djibouti to task for its open
violation of the Security Council's resolution against providing arms for either country
in the Ethio-Eritrean war, although it is common knowledge that much of the weaponry
destined to Ethiopia, passes through Djibouti's port. The U.N. and many of the countries
lining up behind Djibouti's claim that it is trying to restore civil society in the former
Somalia, could have taken this opportunity to remind it that its claim would have a better
chance of being taken seriously if it led by example and started building that civil
society at home
How does minuscule Djibouti get away with all of this? It does
it by invoking the authority of an organization called IGAD. This organization was started
by Djibouti's former President Hassan Gouled Aptidon in 1988. The aim of this organization
when it was first established was to fight locusts and drought which are endemic in the
region, as can be surmised from its name the Inter-Governmental Authority on Drought and
Development. But somewhere down the line, Mr. Aptidon and some of the other dictators in
the region got the bright idea that having the word drought as part of the organization's
name made it seem unsexy or unattractive, so they decided to drop the word drought and
change the acronym to IGAD.
But although IGAD's members dropped the D for drought and kept the D
for development, its inauguration did not result in much "development" in the
positive sense of the word. Consider these facts about the seven countries (Ethiopia,
Eritrea, Somalia, Djibouti, Sudan, Uganda, Kenya) that make up this organization:
1- Ethiopia and Eritrea are at war. To give an idea of how deadly
this conflict is, the Economist (March 13th, 1999) reported: "In four days of
fighting at the end of February, it now seems that up to 40,000 soldiers were killed or
wounded in the battle for Badme." The economic costs of the war are as horrendous as
the human ones. Africa Research Bulletin (Feb.1st-28th, 1999) reported, "The UN Food
and Agriculture Organisation reckons Eritrea has the world's second lowest per capita
calorie intake and Ethiopia the fifth lowest; two of the world's poorest countries were
estimated to be spending at least $1m a day on this inscrutable war." While both
countries have shown strong commitment to pursuing the war, neither country has shown the
same level of concern for the possibility of millions of their citizens dying from a
looming famine.
2- Ethiopia and Eritrea are fighting a proxy war in Somalia. Both
countries have their favorite warlords in Somalia, which they arm and support in violation
of the U.N. Resolution 733 that has imposed an arms embargo on Somalia in January 1992.
3- Ethiopia, Eritrea, and Uganda were all until recently allies
against another IGAD member, the Sudan, and were trying to overthrow its government.
4- Sudan is engaged in a seventeen-years-old civil war which has so
far resulted in the estimated deaths of 2 million people. Slavery is also still practised
in Sudan at this day and age.
5- Uganda, an IGAD member, has made a name for itself as the country
that produced Idi Amin. It has been in a state of civil war with the Sudan-based the
Lord's Resistance Army since 1987, and is also facing a rebellion in the western part of
the country. Moreover, it is at war with Kabila's Congo. It's even in conflict with its
one time ally, Rwanda, over how much loot should each get out of the resources-rich Congo.
6- Kenya the seventh member
of IGAD is also rife with corruption, human rights violations, and periodic ethnic
cleansing among its tribes. AIDS, Africa's silent killer, is rampant in several of the
IGAD countries. In Kenya alone, John Prendergast (former director of African Affairs at
the National Security Council) and Professor Ken Menkhaus of Davidson College, say in an
article they co-wrote, that AIDS has resulted in a 15 years drop in life expectancy which
"is as devastating as any civil war."
7- Most of the IGAD countries have shown clear lack of diplomatic
skills and frequent disregard for international protocol. The top prize on this topic, of
course, goes to Eritrea which has been quick to go to war every time it had a conflict
with a neighbor. Eritrea not only immediately severed relations with Sudan as soon as the
two countries started having problems, but even turned the Sudanese embassy into the
office of the Sudanese opposition groups. But there are many close runners-up. Examples:
-"Djibouti's formal breaking of diplomatic ties with Eritrea in
November 1998 sparked a crisis within the organisation as Djibouti-in contravention of the
norms of diplomatic immunity-initially prevented the IGAD's executive secretary, Tekeste
Gebray, an Eritrean national, from entering the country. Eritrea then requested that
November's summit be shifted to Kenya. This was refused and no Eritrean delegation
attended." (EIU Country Report 1st quarter 2000 Ethiopia Eritrea Somalia).
-Ethiopia's expulsion of Eritrea's Ambassador in Feb.1999 (Economist,
Feb.13, 1999)
Members of this obnoxious club and the equally odious OAU and Arab
League, have taken turns to announce to the world that they are working to create peace
and stability among Somalis. This is the third time Djibouti sends out invitations
supposedly to help Somalis. Yet Djibouti has not even explained why the previous
conferences on its soil failed, let alone the more than 12 large conferences and various
mini-conferences to solve the Somali problem. The only consistent message that has been
coming from Djibouti is that its aim is to build civil society in Somalia. It never says
how. Neither does it answer the question how would an impoverished country like Djibouti
which has failed to build a "civil society" in its own country is going to do so
in another country.
There is another message that has been emanating from Djibouti, which
is, that this conference would sideline the Somali worlds. Again, here too, it does not
say how "little Djibouti" will achieve what the United States and the entire
world could not do in Somalia during the U.S./U.N. humanitarian intervention in Somalia.
But since Djibouti's twin aims of building a civil society in
Somalia and getting rid of Somali warlords have as much chance of becoming a reality as
Djibouti becoming a superpower, one can only conclude that there are other reasons behind
the President of Djibouti's current Somali initiative. The most obvious ones are that
Djibouti wants to use this conference to divert attention from its domestic problems, and
to give the country a higher international profile. The EIU Country Report (1st quarter
2000 Ethiopia, Eritrea, Somalia, Djibouti) put it this way: "Active regional
diplomacy has the additional benefit of overshadowing Djibouti's troubled domestic
political scene, in which Mr Guelleh's authoritarian rule will continue to be
contested."
Djibouti also wants to
position itself as a guardian of Somalis so that it could seek international assistance
which is earmarked for Somalis which it could then appropriate or dispense of any way it
wants. The most important reason, however, is an unstated one: the destabilization of
Somaliland. Djibouti's government has used all the tricks in the book, including outright
bribes, to stir the flames of discord and conflict in Somaliland. And when not actively
promoting the dismantling of Somaliland, it tries to marginalise it by lumping it with the
warlord-controlled fiefdoms of Somalia.
One is naturally bound to ask why would Djibouti want Somaliland to
fail as a state. The immediate answer is that Djibouti sees Somaliland and particularly
its port of Berbera as a competitor. But the main reason is the poor quality of Djibouti's
ruling elite which has no clear understanding of the nature of Djibouti's relations with
its neighbors, its interests and its role, not only with regard to Somaliland but the
region as a whole.
The confusion on the part of Djibouti's elite is reflected in a
pattern of pursuing policies of short-term gains at the expense of the port-city's
long-term interests. The coming conference is just one example of this pattern. Djibout's
elite, in this case, are sacrificing the country's long-term interests in having cordial
relations with its neighbor Somaliland, for short-term monetary benefits and the temporary
thrill of the international spotlight. Djibouti's rulers have shown similar
thoughtlessness in their decision to sever relations with another neighbor, Eritrea. There
are indications that Djibouti is even mismanaging its relations with its third neighbor,
Ethiopia. Djibouti has been sending mixed signals as to the kind of relations it wants
with Ethiopia.
Djibouti's current President, Mr. Guelleh, for instance is on
record as saying that he wants his country to form a confederation with its much larger
neighbor. However, when Djibouti's Ambassador to Cairo, Mr. Mahmoud Ali Youssef, was asked
by the Middle East Times (April 22-28, 1999) about this, he answered, "Do you think
that we, as a stable country, want to come into federation with a country that is at
war?" There are also signs of conflict
between Ethiopia and Djibouti over tariffs at Djibouti's port.
Somalilanders have a long history of feeling disappointed and
betrayed by Djibouti. In the 1980s, during the height of the genocide being committed
against Somaliland's people by the government of Siyad Barre, many Somalilanders fled to
Djibouti, but Djibouti's government to the eternal disgrace of that country, refused to
treat those people as refugees and handed some of them back to Somalia and certain death.
Djibouti has even invited to its coming conference many of the high-ranking officials who
were responsible for killing thousands of people in Somaliland. Furthermore, the current
president of Djibouti Mr. Ismail Omar Guelleh himself has been implicated in the murder of
French judge Bernard Borrel (Le Monde, 13 January 2000).
In the early fifties, the Canadian writer, Margaret Laurence, went
from Somaliland to Djibouti with her engineer husband and his Somali crew to pick up some
machinery. After a lot of trials and tribulations they finally had all the equipment.
Riding through Djibouti as they headed back to Somaliland, Margaret summed-up her feelings
this way: "Farewell to the homesick city, the shabby Paris of the Gulf of Aden. Nabad
Gelyo, Djibouti - may we never see you again."
The Somalilanders traveling with her felt the same way she did. It's
exactly how a lot of Somalilanders see Djibouti today.
Jamal Gabobe
___________________________________________________________________________________
[Column] |