Libya’s largesse and Muammar Qaddafi’s role in the creation of the African Union (AU) could explain the body’s opposition to military action against the embattled strongman, experts said.
They said the economic clout of North African states also partly explained the AU’s soft stand on the uprisings in the Arab world.
“Undoubtedly the fact that five states — Algeria, Egypt, Libya, Nigeria and South Africa — are each committed to paying 15 percent of the African Union’s budget renders the organization as an institution very hesitant to upset the leaders of these countries,” J. Peter Pham, director of the Atlantic Council’s Michael S. Ansari Africa Center, said.
“It is all the more so the case with Libya which, because it habitually pays the dues of members in arrears, [and] is probably responsible for nearly one-third of the AU budget,” said Pham, whose body advises the US government and its European counterparts on strategy in Africa.
The AU’s panel on Libya yesterday called for an “immediate stop” to all attacks after the US, France and Britain launched military action against Qaddafi’s forces.
While underscoring the need for “necessary political reforms to eliminate the causes of the present crisis,” the AU called for “restraint” from the international community to avoid “serious humanitarian consequences” in Libya.
Apart from the purely financial considerations, there is also a symbolic aspect to the body’s stance on Qaddafi, said Fred Golooba Mutebi of the Institute of Social Research at Kampala’s Makerere University.
“The whole United States of Africa concept was driven by Qaddafi,” who was AU chairman for the 12 months to January last year, he said.
The AU was born in the 1999 Sirte Declaration, named after a summit hosted by Qaddafi in his hometown on the Libyan coast.
The declaration said its authors felt inspired by Qaddafi’s “vision for a strong and united Africa.”
“The AU as an organization has benefited significantly from Qaddafi’s wealth,” Mutebi said.
“All these ex-rebels [who are now presidents] have benefited from Qaddafi’s largesse,” he said, quoting Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni as a classic example.
Aloys Habimana, deputy director of Human Rights Watch’s Africa division, said many African heads of state resent the Libyan leader’s attempts to control the AU and head his much-cherished dream: the United States of Africa.
The AU has taken a firmer stance on three West African crises: Most recently Ivory Coast, and previously Guinea and Niger.
Habimana attributes this to the AU’s tendency “to defer to sub-regional bodies when it comes to peace and security matters.”
There is no direct North African equivalent for the regional groupings for south, west and east Africa, although the North African nations are members of the Arab League.
Handouts aside, Libya has invested billions of US dollars in sub-Saharan Africa. It has interests in more than two dozen African countries, while its petroleum refining and distribution unit Oil Libya has interests in at least as many.
However, the mercurial Qaddafi has also caused a lot of embarrassment for the AU with his histrionics and by adopting positions opposed to that of the organization as a whole.
Elected to head the body in February 2009, the Libyan leader set the tone for his presidency when he asked his peers to refer to him as “the king of kings of Africa”.
He is invariably the most flamboyant figure at any AU summit.
In Kampala in July last year, he put up his Bedouin tent in the grounds of the conference center after walking out of a session to mark his disagreement with the way discussions were going. Six months earlier in Addis Ababa, in a vain bid to keep the AU chair for an extra year by flouting AU statutes, he had a representative of his traditional leaders’ forum decked out pageant-style with gold necklaces and a scepter, to make an unscheduled and theatrical speech in favor of retaining Qaddafi.
Tom Odhiambo, who teaches at the University of Nairobi, said although Qaddafi “pays the bills for some of the small and poor African nations,” the AU habitually failed to back uprisings as its members had no “moral stature.
“Most of its members are obsessed with retaining power at all costs — the old nonsensical argument about not interfering in the affairs of a member state is just that: nonsense,” Odhiambo said.
SEEKING CHANGE: A hospital worker said she did not vote in previous elections, but ‘now I can see that maybe my vote can change the system and the country’ Voting closed yesterday across the Solomon Islands in the south Pacific nation’s first general election since the government switched diplomatic allegiance from Taiwan to Beijing and struck a secret security pact that has raised fears of the Chinese navy gaining a foothold in the region. The Solomon Islands’ closer relationship with China and a troubled domestic economy weighed on voters’ minds as they cast their ballots. As many as 420,000 registered voters had their say across 50 national seats. For the first time, the national vote also coincided with elections for eight of the 10 local governments. Esther Maeluma cast her vote in the
Nearly half of China’s major cities are suffering “moderate to severe” levels of subsidence, putting millions of people at risk of flooding, especially as sea levels rise, according to a study of nationwide satellite data released yesterday. The authors of the paper, published by the journal Science, found that 45 percent of China’s urban land was sinking faster than 3mm per year, with 16 percent at more than 10mm per year, driven not only by declining water tables, but also the sheer weight of the built environment. With China’s urban population already in excess of 900 million people, “even a small portion
UNSETTLING IMAGES: The scene took place in front of TV crews covering the Trump trial, with a CNN anchor calling it an ‘emotional and unbelievably disturbing moment’ A man who doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire outside the courthouse where former US president Donald Trump is on trial has died, police said yesterday. The New York City Police Department (NYPD) said the man was declared dead by staff at an area hospital. The man was in Collect Pond Park at about 1:30pm on Friday when he took out pamphlets espousing conspiracy theories, tossed them around, then doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire, officials and witnesses said. A large number of police officers were nearby when it happened. Some officers and bystanders rushed
HYPOCRISY? The Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs yesterday asked whether Biden was talking about China or the US when he used the word ‘xenophobic’ US President Joe Biden on Wednesday called for a hike in steel tariffs on China, accusing Beijing of cheating as he spoke at a campaign event in Pennsylvania. Biden accused China of xenophobia, too, in a speech to union members in Pittsburgh. “They’re not competing, they’re cheating. They’re cheating and we’ve seen the damage here in America,” Biden said. Chinese steel companies “don’t need to worry about making a profit because the Chinese government is subsidizing them so heavily,” he said. Biden said he had called for the US Trade Representative to triple the tariff rates for Chinese steel and aluminum if Beijing was