South Sudanese People's Liberation Army (SPLA) soldiers sit on a pick up
truck during a patrol in Malakal on January 21, 2014. South Sudan says
it will put key leaders of an alleged coup it claims triggered weeks of
fighting on trial. AFP PHOTO / HARRISON NGETHI
By Charles Onyango-Obbo
In Summary
- If we focus on the single wars in Somalia, CAR, and South Sudan, we won’t see the forest — the most radical remake of the security architecture in Africa. What’s next?
Days ahead of the signing of a truce by the
warring South Sudan parties in Addis Ababa, Sudan (Khartoum) and
Ethiopia criticised Uganda’s role in the crisis.
As the East and Horn of Africa grouping, the
Intergovernmental Authority on Development (Igad) met in December to
find a solution to the South Sudan crisis, Uganda President Yoweri
Museveni sent in his army.
On Tuesday, an army spokesman said the Uganda
military had helped President Salva Kiir’s forces recapture rebel-held
Bor and other key towns in South Sudan’s oil heartland.
However, a few hours after Ethiopia reportedly
expressed unease at what it, Khartoum, and others saw as Uganda’s rash
decision to jump the gun on the South Sudan crisis, Igad agreed to send a
5,500-strong intervention force to South Sudan.
What happened? Perhaps the surprise is that Addis
made the criticism at all, given that, according to diplomatic sources,
Uganda, the lead contingent in the African Union peacekeeping force in
Somalia, had led the diplomatic effort to bring Ethiopian forces into
Amisom.
Ethiopia is deeply resented in Somalia, being seen
as a predatory and brutal occupier. Ethiopia needed to join Amisom
first, because it gave its role in Somalia some diplomatic cover, but
most importantly because it could no longer afford its unilateral
expeditions.
It is therefore unlikely that it was throwing a
co-conspirator in Somalia under the bus, and risking losing a key
supporter in a project that will face criticism.
Secondly, this model of unilateral intervention,
then getting an AU, Igad, or UN Security Council anointment of your
military action, seems to be becoming the new regional norm.
Uganda and Rwanda have done it many times in the
DR Congo. And in the case of Uganda, South Sudan too. Kenya did the same
when its troops invaded southern Somalia to hunt down Al Shabaab
militants in October 2011. It became part of Amisom nearly a year later.
The Igad decision gave Uganda’s unilateral mission in South Sudan a belated blessing.
However, beyond this elope-and-marry-later
approach, is something bigger. Until mid last year, the only East
African Community member state that was not in this peacekeeping and
rebel-fighting business was Tanzania.
Dar es Salaam lost its innocence when it took the
lead in the UN Force Intervention Brigade in eastern DRC that is
credited with helping beat back the M23 rebels.
So we have Uganda in CAR, South Sudan, Somalia,
and DRC. Rwanda has just sent troops to CAR, but it has been in Darfur
and South Sudan for a while. Kenya, Ethiopia, Burundi (and Djibouti) are
in Somalia. And the latter two might well dip their toes in South Sudan
waters soon.
Together, these eight countries have used their
militaries to build a security wall stretching from the tip of the Horn,
into Central Africa to the border with West Africa, and southwards to
the border with Southern Africa.
If we focus on the single wars in Somalia, CAR,
and South Sudan, we won’t see the forest — the most radical remake of
the security architecture in Africa. What’s next?
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