Blaming the international community too much for the deficiencies of its action, particularly in the Sahel and in the Lake Chad Basin, we Africans have come to realise that perhaps our continent is not part of this global community after all.
By Seidik ABBA, Journalist & Writer (Columnist)
This worldview leads us to adjudge that “only others” are responsible for the absence of a solution to the acute crises blighting the Sahel and the Lake Chad Basin.
This posture excuses us (and it is too easy) from asking legitimate questions about intra-African solidarity and the usefulness of the various mechanisms that are supposed to guarantee peace, security and stability on the continent.
Can we honestly blame Poland for not mobilizing against the jihadist threat in Mali, while Egypt does not do any better? Can we denounce the inaction of Lithuania in Burkina Faso while Ethiopia does not do as much? Can the Netherlands be criticized for not scrambling a response to Niger which faces the threat from terrorist groups while South Africa has not raised a finger? Can we blame Canada for not mobilising against Boko Haram in the Lake Chad Basin when Algeria is indifferent to it?
It was just last September that the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) decided to hold an ad hoc summit in Ouagadougou over the terrorist threat in the Sahel, which after Burkina Faso, Niger and Mali, is likely to extend to coastal countries such as Benin, Cote d’Ivoire, Ghana or Togo.
If we want our indictment of the international community to be credible, we must start by building on and consolidating intra-African solidarity.
The continent has the human, financial and logistical capacity to demonstrate solidarity with the Sahel and the Lake Chad Basin.
While the action of the French force Barkhane in the Sahel is strongly criticized by public opinion in the region, Paris announced the upcoming arrival in the area of European Special Forces as part of a new military initiative dubbed Takuba (in the Tamashek language).
The chances of Egyptian, Algerian, Ethiopian or Kenyan special forces are in no way greater than the chance for us witnessing deployments from Lithuania, the Netherlands, Poland or even Norway and Sweden.
It is a comfortable position to blame others, but not to assume one’s share of solidarity.
After criticizing the French operation Serval in Mali in January 2013, African countries announced in May 2013 in Addis Ababa, during the 50th anniversary of the African Union, the immediate creation of the African Crisis Response Capacity (CARIC).
Six years after CARIC was announced with much fanfare, it still has no staff or headquarters, let alone logistics and military means.
It is therefore no better than the African standby force and its five regional brigades that are yet to materialise in tangible form, despite the stashes of documents and reports, as well as endless meetings to this end.
Security in the Sahel and the Lake Chad Basin is certainly part of the overall security that requires a determined mobilisation of the international community.
But in the meantime, a more frank and massive commitment from the rest of the world, we can at least have more intra-African solidarity.
Africa has all the means for such solidarity, if it wants it and commits itself to it.
Otherwise, the continent will for a long time continue to be the theater of foreign interventions by outside powers.
ABS/Dng/fss/as/APA