by Adam Habib
Wednesday, August 04, 2010
Johannesburg — THE recent African Union (AU) summit in Kampala saw SA come under significant pressure to send troops to bolster Ugandan and Burundian peacekeepers in Somalia. African leaders, however, were not the only ones applying the pressure. It seems the Americans and Europeans are also pressuring the South African government to support the initiative. And this pressure is having some effect.
This was apparent from a statement by International Relations and Co-operation Minister Maite Nkoana-Mashabane, who in an interview on the BBC indicated that SA would wait for a formal request and deliberate on the matter.
While cautious not to commit, Nkoana-Mashabane did intimate that the matter would be given serious consideration by the South African government.
The only voice of caution seems to be from Defence Minister Lindiwe Sisulu, who warned the portfolio defence committee in Parliament that SA runs the risk of terrorist bombings should it decide to send troops to Somalia. The obvious retort to this concern is likely to be that SA cannot have its foreign policy dictated by the fear of terrorist threats - whether by Somalia's Islamist insurgency group, al-Shabab, or anyone else. Moreover, as advocates of sending in the troops are likely to remind us, SA's prestige in Africa will be severely impaired if it refuses to assist other African countries due to a fear of becoming a terrorist target.
Apart from terrorist threats, there are much more serious grounds on which to establish the argument for not sending troops to Somalia.
The essential purpose of sending troops into Somalia or anywhere else is to make a difference on the ground. But SA's deployment of a few thousand troops in Somalia is unlikely to fundamentally change matters on the ground.
It may enable better protection of the Presidential Palace and the general political leadership in the capital, Mogadishu, but the addition of a few thousand troops is not going to change the situation in the rest of the country, large swathes of which are already controlled by al-Shabab.
The net effect is that SA's participation is likely to be only symbolic. Yet such symbolism must be balanced against the risk of failure, and the effect this would be likely to have on SA's reputation as a regional power.
More importantly, failure and the higher risk of terrorist bombings may turn domestic opinion against peacekeeping operations on the continent and make it increasingly difficult in the future for the government to pursue its African objectives.
Perhaps most importantly, sending in the troops runs the risk of making belligerent foreign actors and their continental proxies think that there are no consequences to their adventurous behaviour.
After all, the mess that is now Somalia is not simply a product of domestic developments. While Somalia has for two decades been a failed state, an uneasy stability had emerged by the start of the new millennium, at least until the Ethiopian invasion in December 2006.
Encouraged by the US, which saw it as a way to advance its "war on terror", the Ethiopians entered Somalia thinking it would be a short incursion through which they could establish a proxy regime. Instead, they soon found themselves mired in a long-term war they could not win.
The invasion had the effect of radicalising and militarising what until then had been a relatively benign but conservative Islamic movement, provoking an outright civil war.
Many, including SA, warned that this would be the outcome. But Ethiopia and its western patrons refused to heed the warning. In addition, the AU did not act forcefully enough against Ethiopia, allowing a bad domestic situation to deteriorate into what has now become a regional crisis.
Essentially, what we now have is a case of SA being asked to go in and assist with the clean-up of a mess that was created by others. Obviously a simple "we told you so" response is not appropriate in the circumstances.
But neither is an uncritical intervention. The only intervention that would be justifiable is a qualified one that exacts a price from the belligerent external actors, and that is a service and support to an alternative political agenda. One such price could be underwriting part of the cost of any peacekeeping and political intervention.
Another could be the exclusion of the protagonists from any process to determine a political solution. And a political solution should be the key aim of any agenda to send in our troops.
Such a political agenda should consist of three elements. First, it must involve all domestic stakeholders engaged in the conflict. Second, it must incorporate a societal reconciliation programme that has been successfully implemented in other parts of Africa. Finally, democratic elections must be held as soon as is feasible, with a commitment from all domestic, regional and foreign players that the outcome will be respected.
With regards to the latter, regional and foreign actors must be constrained from imposing their own proxies in Somalia.
Only on the terms of such an alternative political agenda can SA argue convincingly that it is not the proxy of the previous aggressors. Moreover, such an alternative political agenda would legitimise SA's deployment of troops as it would complement a political and reconciliation process.
In the end it may even enable SA to avoid the kind of terrorist attacks to which others have been subjected.
It is by no means assured that the AU, regional players or foreign governments such as the US and the European countries would accept these political terms for SA's engagement. If they do not, SA should walk away and not send its troops to Somalia.
On the other hand, in the unlikely event that these terms are agreed to, SA could send its troops as peacekeepers since it would not only have the effect of at least giving us the opportunity to unravel the mess created by the US and Ethiopia, but it would also bolster SA's peacekeeping credentials.
After all, is this not one of the primary objectives of SA's Africa agenda?
Habib is Deputy Vice-Chancellor: Research, Innovation and Advancement at the University of Johannesburg.