The OAU: A Failed Dream

When the Organization of African Unity was established on May 25, 1963, and its Charter signed by Heads of State and Government from 32 "independent" African States, its purpose was to:

"promote the unity and solidarity of the African States; defend  the sovereignty of members; eradicate all forms of colonialism;  promote international cooperation having due regard for the Charter of the United Nations and the Universal Declaration of  Human Rights; coordinate and harmonize Member States economic,  diplomatic, educational, health, welfare, scientific and defense policies."

What is the source of OAU's problem? I. W. Zartman put it best twenty years ago: "There is no OAU; there are only members and their interests come first." This is not meant to be funny or some sort of hyperbole. Let's face it; THE OAU DOESN'T EXIST!

But even Zartman had it half right. He forgot to mention another ailment: the OAU's Secretariat and its bureaucracy that functions effectively as a typical African government's bureaucracy--corrupt, self-indulgent, and famously inefficient. Yes the OAU has a secretariat that resides in the headquarters in Addis Ababa, but it has no functional purpose, other than enjoying the inexhaustible perks the Ethiopian government has shrewdly dispensed over the years. These perks have garnered huge good will for Ethiopia, to the point the OAU Secretariat works as if it were an extension of the Ethiopian Ministry of Foreign Affairs. No one can say this will benefit the rest of the continent. Yes "there is no OAU"; we are talking of reality, not the once-a-year existence ceremony that gives corrupt, self-indulgent Heads of State and Governments a photo opportunity. Take for example the OAU's chairmanship and who had it: Idi Amin, Mengistu Haile Mariam and now Gnassingbe Eyadema a person who, as a noncommissioned officer helped stage up a coup in 1963 that killed Togo's first President, Sylvanus Olympio, the same man is now implicated by a UN report as a key player in Savimbi's diamond cartel.

The OAU: An Instrument of Few Countries

The OAU was created to promote pan-African political unity, but the interests of some member states were put ahead of those of the continent and its people. As a result, no progress was made towards the goals solemnly announced in 1963.

One African country whose interest had been coming before that of Africa consistently is Ethiopia. As an avowed enemy of anti-colonialism, the OAU should have intervened on behalf of the Eritrean people as they were trying to get rid off Ethiopian rule. But, no, the OAU would have none of it because it did not want to tamper with Ethiopia's interest. The OAU, with a backbone made of marshmallow, was unwilling to defend its own principles. Why not? Because when principles and self-interest of important members collide, principles have to be sacrificed. This is how the OAU has done business in the past. No reason for it to change now. It is also sad to note that pan-Africanism had always served Ethiopian interests and Ethiopian interests alone. Look how Ethiopian propaganda was taken as a fact when the 1945 Pan African Congress said this in its Additional Resolution:

"In the interest of justice as well as of economic geography this Congress supports most heartily the claims of the Somalis and Eritreans to be returned to their Motherland instead of being parceled out to foreign powers."

The OAU had cynically defined Eritrea's case as an internal matter for Ethiopia. Hence not requiring OAU's involvement. On the contrary the OAU was willing to intervene in South Africa and Southern Rhodesia (later Zimbabwe). These too were internal matters of their respective countries, the only difference from that in Eritrea was the colour of skin of the oppressors: the Boers (white) in South Africa, Ian Smith (white) in Southern Rhodesia and Ethiopia (black) in the case of Eritrea. Of course the Eritrean struggle was slightly older than the OAU, but so were those in South Africa. Ian Smith's UDI (Unilateral Declaration of Independence) from the UK came in 1965. The reason the OAU intervened in Southern Rhodesia was not because UDI happened after 1963, but more because it was a black-white issue. Taking this into consideration why the OAU was stone deaf to the pleas of the Eritrean people for 28 years cannot be justified. When finally Eritrea won in 1991, the OAU was forced to accept, grudgingly, the reality of Eritrean independence. Even that acceptance came after the UN accepted Eritrea. Talk of African matters first being settled by the OAU.

After a brief 7 years of acceptance of Eritrea, the OAU continued its anti-Eritrea practices in 1998. Evermore attentive to Ethiopia's interest, the OAU looked the other way, hoping Ethiopia would have the upper hand, when tens of thousands of Africans perished in the Eritrea-Ethiopia war. The OAU as an organization said not even a word when tens of housands of Ethiopians, several of them OAU's workers, were expelled from Ethiopia for the Eritrean blood they carried in their veins. Knowing of these and other issues one can only say the OAU had lost its moral compass long time ago.

The OAU didn't intervene when Somalia was disintegrating; it didn't intervene when the Rwandan genocide was extinguishing lives right under its nose. Quite to the contrary the Rwanda genocide occurred when OAU's peacekeepers were supposed to prevent it.

To be fair the OAU has been making cursory remarks and Resolutions about Rwanda, Somalia and similar conflicts every year during the summit but nothing tangible have been done. The OAU has also produced a Report on Rwanda, but let's get this, it did not blame itself, but the French, the USA and other non-African organizations.

The early pan-African leaders of independent Africa were calling for abolishing, if not a readjustment of the "artificial" borders that were created by Europeans. It was a bold move that might have helped solve African problems, but wait, if such a bold step were to be adopted, it would have meant Ethiopia giving away the whole of Ogaden to Somalia. That
was against Ethiopian interest and the OAU opted for the 1964 Cairo resolution that calls for maintaining colonial  orders as they were inherited from the Europeans.

This meant the OAU had taken two contradictory stands: ignoring colonial borders when it came to Eritrea and affirming them when it came to the Ethiopia-Somalia case. This was done because it involved Ethiopia. This double standard of trying to appease Ethiopia had denied the organization the level of resolve it could have in solving its own conflicts.

The OAU: a Bankrupt Mediator

Forty years later the OAU is still being held hostage to Ethiopia's interest. The latest round of OAU mediation and the way the organization is handling it is another case in point.

Mediators, as I. W. Zartman puts it, "can act as communicators, as formulators, or as manipulators," depending on their "depth of involvement in the management and resolution" of a conflict. In its mediation effort of the Eritrean-Ethiopian conflict the role of the OAU has been more than what Zartman had in mind. Much to Africa's shame, the OAU Secretariat has functioned as an errand boy for the United States of America. There's no exaggeration to the observation that for all practical purposes, during the last two years, the OAU Secretary General Salim A. Salim has been taking orders from the U.S. State Department on key aspects of the mediation effort. If the OAU functioned as a communicator, it's only as a conduit for U.S objectives. The U.S used the OAU to communicate its views and positions on the conflict. The case of the infamous "non-paper" of February altogether is a different example. The "non-paper" was authored by Anthony Lake and his people in the US in consultation with the Woyanes, but to give semblance that the OAU did it, Lake decided to send the paper a day ahead of his arrival to Eritrea, by way of the Eritrean Embassy in Cairo. He then arrived in Asmara, ahead of Ouyahiya, and asked the Eritrean Government to discuss the "non-paper" with him. This means the OAU was not even used as a communicator. We have to see the recent proximity talks in Washington in the same vein. It was the US way of trying to impose its will on the OAU.

Not only with the Eritrea-Ethiopia conflict, the OAU cannot show a single success in its mediation efforts throughout its 37-year existence. Not in the Nigerian Civil war, the Algerian-Morocco or the Somali-Ethiopia border conflicts from the 1960s, the Angolan civil war and the Western Sahara problem from the 1970s. Not in the half-a-dozen civil wars from Somalia, to Sierra Leone in the 1990s, and above all the genocide of over a million Rwandans, the story of the OAU conflict prevention, management and resolution, has been the same, one major failure after another failure.

If the mediation effort between Eritrea and Ethiopia has any chance of succeeding it is going to be because the US and the EU are playing the role of manipulators. But the U.S and the EU have their own interest that may be at variance with the rest of Africa's. Here is the OAU that passes resolutions almost unanimously and yet it has to look for the US or the UN to enforce them for it. This and similar issues are what is making us say, "there is no OAU" or, it was, if we could say as an expression of disgust a sad day when the OAU, the current OAU, was born.

Typical OAU style: Celebrating Victory When There is Non

Though it was presented as a success story at the July 10-12 OAU summit in Lome, Togo, the OAU mediation effort in the Eritrea-Ethiopia conflict was anything but success. For sure the Algerians deserve a lot of admiration and gratitude for what they tried to achieve under the circumstance. But the Algiers Agreement was not fair and just and we cannot expect any positive out come out of it. The world might think the war has stopped, yes the war between the armies has stopped, but Ethiopian war on Eritrean civilians has just started. As we write Eritreans are being expelled from undisputed Eritrean territory, Mosques and Churches are being desecrated, property is being destroyed and women in their sixties are being gang raped. Is this a success story?

Contrary to OAU Secretary General Salim A. Salim's conclusion, the cessation of the hostilities that was signed is not and cannot be presented "as a significant victory for the people of the two countries, for all Africans and the OAU". The cessation of hostilities that was brokered June 18, 2000 between Ethiopia and Eritrea is too little, too late. By itself it is a useless agreement that would lead to nothing. As seen in the Washington proximity talks, the Ethiopians are trying their level best not to implement it before its ink dries. What is even more shocking is the latest statement by Meles Zenawi, here it is as quoted by Channel Africa on July 12, 2000.

"Ethiopian troops would remain at their positions in Eritrean territory until a full peace accord was signed."

"9. Ethiopia shall submit redeployment plans for its troops from positions taken after 6 February 1999, and which were not under Ethiopian administration before 6 May 1998, to the Peacekeeping Mission. This redeployment shall be completed within two weeks after the deployment of the Peacekeeping Mission and verified by it."

If this happens should Eritrea try to bend backward and sideward to accommodate Ethiopia? The answer should be absolutely no. Ethiopian army should not be allowed to stay in Eritrea. If the mediators want to help Ethiopia let them pressure the Ethiopian government to implement the peace plan it signed in good faith and without prevarication.

The OAU Powerless to defend its own Resolution

The OAU's Framework for Agreement vision was to demarcate the border within six months, but taking the nature of Ethiopian prevarication into consideration even six times six years would not do it. Furthermore, Ethiopia's intransigence not to demarcate any portion of the border before arbitration tells us that the TPLF government is interested in dragging this conflict forever.

When the OAU 1964 Cairo Resolution was passed the aim was to reduce all border issues to a one of a technical issue, the issue of demarcation. Ian Brownlie had put it this way:

 "The policy behind the [Cairo] resolution is clear enough. If the colonial alignments were discarded, alternative alignments would have to be agreed upon. Such a process of redefinition would create confusion and threats to peace. Even if the principles on  which revision was to be based were agreed upon, there would be  considerable difficulty in applying the principles to the ethnic and tribal [sic] complexities of African societies... The object of the Cairo resolution was realistic enough: decolonization was not  to be the occasion for new sources of doubt and controversy. .. if  the status of the principle of the 1964 resolution were undermined either by divergent practice or cogent objectives of principle,  then no doubt more quasi-historical irredentist claims might be  made." -- African Boundaries: A Legal and Diplomatic Encyclopaedia, pp. 11-12.