If I was sinking in a ship and I manage to place an SOS call to you, you would [try to] come to my aid, right? Well, the principle seems a little different when it comes to states, at least in Africa. On the 10th of December 2012, rebels launched an attack that swept through the north of the Central African Republic (CAR). By the time the dust had settled and a coalition government formed between President Bozize and the rebels, a good chunk of the northern part of the country was out of reach for the central government – just as in Mali. The CAR rebels were calling on President Bozize to step down and had already chased off the government army, dislodged the Chadian army who were in town to assist their southern neighbour and captured key towns close to Bangui, the capital of the country.
Central African Republic has never been a very peaceful country; but when trouble started in December 2012, President Bozize called for international help to defend the constitution of the country and its sovereignty. Bozize got help from Chad – a country that is struggling with its own issues and still hosts a UN mission and also from rich Gabon where peace talks were held and the coalition government agreed to. Governments responded differently but not too enthusiastically to Bozize’s call; President Thomas Boni Yayi (head of AU) visited Bangui and called on his “rebellious brothers” to cease hostilities. The Americans responded by evacuating their embassy to wait out the storm from home. Other countries did not bother to respond. But it was not the support that I find amazing; it is the deafening silence.
It was the response from Paris that got me writing. President Hollande of France responded that “If we have a [military] presence, it’s not to protect a regime; it’s to protect our nationals and our interests and in no way to intervene in the internal business of a country, in this case the Central African Republic”. It is still not very clear to me what interests he referred to or how a foreign army could protect French people and interests in CAR without interfering in the internal business of the country. But politicians are not always political scientists.
In a similar development, thousands of miles away in Mali, Islamist rebels have captured the north of Mali and declared it an independent Islamic republic since April 2012. By the end of 2012, the international community was still cosily dragging its feet on what to do about Mali – the Northern and the Southern bits present different security challenges. Only a couple of weeks ago, it seemed that ECOWAS was still drawing up a military plan and awaiting United Nations Security Council (UNSC) authorisation and money to deploy some 3000 peace keepers into Mali. While Africa is thinking, France is acting. France declared that the southward advance of the rebels towards Bamako threatened their own security and therefore intervened on January 11, 2013 from a base in N’Djamena, Chad. But how would the sacking of a government in Bamako affect France but not the fall of Bozize’s government in Bangui? Should the intervention be accepted as a response to Bamako’s plea for assistance or as a measure to protect France?
You need to know a few things about the current situation in Mali. First we recall the Arab Spring and the NATO led international campaign which brought down Ghadaffi’s government in Libya. We learnt that former Ghadaffi soldiers and mercenaries fled south into Mali leaving the embers of war in Libya. It was to find a hiding place for themselves that the Ghadaffi ‘rebels’ made a country for themselves out of Northern Mali; akin to the origin of Taiwan. The arms and firepower they brought down from Libya was enough to chase of the Malian defence forces and give them control of important and historic towns in Mali. So, it seems, today France is leading the international community to take down the same rebels they fought in Libya. And this campaign is likely to have repercussions in many places in Africa.
Since France’s first raids on the 11th, a lot has changed in the Mali conflict and a lot might have changed between my last full-stop and when you get to read this. The outpouring of support for France’s raid in Mali is remarkable and parallels only to the silence Bozize got with his own SOS. Now France is amassing an army in Mali, marching northward and driving back the rebels and waiting for ECOWAS to join in the fray. Perhaps the call of Mr. Hollande for a rapid ECOWAS deployment has had the most effect on West African politicians; ECOWAS “gave go-ahead” for troop deployment on 11th; Benin and Togo promised troops just as Niger, Burkina Faso and Senegal have done before. In Niamey, the parliament authorised the President to send troops to Mali. In Abuja, President Jonathan kept his promise when Nigerian troops arrived in Mali on 18th while a second contingent enroute to Mali came under terrorist fire in Kogi, Nigeria. One wonders if they were driving to Mali. In Algeria, the government gave France permission to use its airspace on the raid. Outside Africa, the UN Security Council gave a unanimous verdict of support to the French intervention; Britain promises logistic support and NATO hints at its readiness to join the fray.
On Wednesday 16th – only 5 days after the first French guns were fired in Mali, Islamist militants led by Mokhtar Belmokhtar held the Amenas Gas plant in the Algerian desert hostage. As I write, over 80 people (militants and hostages) have been killed. I doubt that the Algerian militants asked the opinion of the international group of the hostages on the French operation in Mali before putting them through such an ordeal which ended with a costly raid of the plant by Algerian forces. But what was it that Belmokhtar’s group wanted? They claim: “We are ready to negotiate with the West and the Algerian government provided they stop their bombing of Mali’s Muslims”.
Pronouncements from Paris clearly indicate that the French would not be in Mali for [too] long. Perhaps it is an optimistic belief that the operation would be short-lived and peace, order and territorial integrity would be restored in Mali in a short time. But maybe it would mean that should the ‘war’ crumble into a prolonged guerrilla-styled militancy, the French would conveniently bail out and leave the African nations with the burden of securing a transition to democracy and rebuilding the Malian State. Still, questions remain about the initially planned UN and ECOWAS intervention. When African troops begin operation in Mali, would they be working as a UN sanctioned ECOWAS intervention force or as allies of the French? Where would the promised logistic support from the UN for the ECOWAS intervention go to, now that France is doing lots of the fighting?
Though I have managed to ask many questions in this piece, I now return to my starting question: what is it that we owe our neigbours in Mali and in the Central African Republic? Should not our obligations be motivated by our respect for the sanctity and security of human rights in all the nations of the earth as well as our firm believe in international law? And to France, I ask how do you really define your interest, is there a theoretical possibility that the manner in which I scratch my head might be in your rightful sphere of interest? How should we, really, understand where your interests end and where ours begin? Is your intervention in Mali any different from the intervention of the US in Iraq which you vehemently opposed barely 10 years ago?
It is difficult for me to sit in the comfort of my room and judge accurately what ought to be done in Mali. But I think it is crucial that we as Africans understand and agree to our obligations to each other. If we must respond to SOS calls [and we should], then we must make clearly how we respond or ignore pleas be they from Bangui or from Bamako. If, on the other hand, there must be foot-dragging and debates to determine which SOS to respond to and which to discard, then there is need to lay down the principles that guide how our obligations are to be determined (obviously, not by France and its rhetoric of self-interest). We all need to know, beforehand, what kind of help is available from our neighbours in the days of trouble.
Daniel Nengak
Nengak Daniel Gondyi is presently a post-graduate student in International Migration and Ethnic Relations at Malmö Högskola in Sweden. He is also a Senior Programme Officer of the Abuja based Centre for Democracy and Development, CDD. He holds a Bachelors’ in International Studies from the Ahmadu Bello University. Read his full profile here
