The Role Of The African Union In Implementing Humanitarian Interventions In Africa

Humanitarian Intervention has throughout most of its history,been characterized by controversies both when it happens and when it fails to happen.The polemics usually arise from discrepancies between stated objectives of humanitarian interventions and their often-antithetical implementation realities.Following the violent political crisis of February 2011 in Libya,the United Nations Security Council passed Resolutions 1970 and 1973 to authorize member states to intervene to protect civilian populations from a purported imminent massacre.The UNSC authorizations provided the perfect grounds for France,Britain,the US as well as other collaborators to militarily intervene in Libya to pursue their strategic interest objectives.The African Union,although had early on initiated diplomatic solutions to the political crisis,was sidelined and frustrated by the coalition,led by France,Britain and the US.It is fair to state that the UNSC Resolution 1973 did not categorically specify any particular country or group of countries to engage in the 2011 humanitarian intervention in Libya.However,the African Union have over the years,been at the forefront of managing security problems on the continent.The AU,despite its challenges,was largely successful in conducting the 2003 humanitarian intervention in Sudan,the 2003 intervention in Burundi and the 2007 humanitarian intervention in Comoros.The United Nations,the US,and other Western states supported the AU in previous humanitarian interventions on the continent.Despite the apparent faith in its previous work of handling interventions,the AU was,for the first time,utterly sidelined during the 2011 intervention in Libya.The primary research question for this dissertation,therefore,is what factors accounted for the isolation and frustration of the African Union's diplomatic solutions during the 2011 intervention in Libya.The secondary question is what arrangements can facilitate effective collaboration between the UN and AU in delivering peace and security in Africa? The dissertation employs a qualitative methodology,which is based on relativist ontology of social reality as well as interpretive epistemology.The interpretive epistemology focuses on the prominence of meaning that characterizes actions in the conduct of humanitarian interventions in Libya.It provides the basis for rigorous analysis,interpretations,and explanations of the praxis of humanitarian intervention in the general context of Africa,and the specific context of Libya.In terms of data collection,the research employs triangulation to obtain relevant data from multiple credible sources for the analysis.The primary data were obtained from the stakeholder institutions that were directly involved in either the design or implementation of the 2011 intervention in Libya.These primary data includes press conferences,resolutions,meetings,reports and official communiques that were issued from the stakeholder institutions.The secondary sources include relevant publications,peer-reviewed journals and news articles on the 2011 intervention in Libya.Textual analysis approach was used for the data analysis.By this,the study carefully analyzes and interprets the content and context of communications rather than the structure of it,the source and purpose of the text,the period of its origination,as well as the intended audiences for the text.The main argument underpinning this study is that concerning the implementation of the humanitarian intervention or R2 P in Libya in 2011,pursuit of strategic interest was more important to the intervening states than the stated normative goal of civilian protection.Thus,in other to achieve the strategic interests,the intervening states,especially France,Britain,the United States as well as Qatar and the UAE,purposely frustrated and sidelined the African Union,which they saw as a potentially antagonistic actor.In effect,none of the real reasons for the intervention was about civilian protection as claimed.Thus,this dissertation elucidates that the reasons for AU isolation were two-dimensional.That is,to achieve the intervening states' strategic interests on the one hand,and obliterate the possibility of a potentially antagonistic actor,which the AU was assumed to embody.The AU was deemed potentially antagonistic because of the perceived proximity of Muammar Gaddafi to the internal political dynamics of the AU at the time.Two years before the political crisis in Libya,Gaddafi was elected the chairman of the African Union.During his reign,he doled out massive financial support to the African Union,a gesture he continued after his term expired.Moreover,it was no secret that Gaddafi previously supported many anti-colonial struggles in Africa,and many of the rebels he once supported later turned presidents of various African countries.Jacob Zuma of South Africa,Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe and Yoweri Museveni of Uganda were some of those anti-colonial rebels who later became presidents.Based on these facts,the key intervening states considered the AU as a potentially antagonistic entity that might frustrate their latent goals of achieving strategic interests under the guise of civilian protection.In terms of the strategic interest motivations of the intervening states,the study finds that France,Britain,the US,and Qatar militarily intervened in Libya in order to improve their share of Libyan oil production.WikiLeaks and UK House of Commons investigations corroborate this assertion.The crave for Libyan oil was so strong that while the intervention was still ongoing,Qatar rushed to announce that it was in charge of buying and marketing the Libyan crude oil on behalf of the rebel forces seeking to overthrow Gaddafi.Libya before the 2011 intervention,accounted for 1.6 million barrels of ‘sweet' crude oil a day.The research further finds that for France,the 2011 intervention in Libya was also a way to reassert its influence and power across the world but more importantly in Africa and Europe.In Africa,France intervened to thwart Gaddafi's effort to supplant France as the dominant power,especially among Francophone African countries.Thus,for France,the intervention and the subsequent disruption of the Gaddafi regime was a sine qua non to the preservation of the status quo,which is an imperialist,paternalistic and neocolonial relationship between the West and African countries.For Sarkozy,if France was to remain relevant in Africa,Gaddafi must be destroyed at all cost.Moreover,the study explains that due to the weakening financial situation of France during the Eurozone crisis,the country had painfully taken the backseat and accepted Germany's decisions as fait accompli.Sarkozy was criticized for being reduced to Merkel's yes-man.These criticisms pushed Nicolas Sarkozy to want to demonstrate,mainly to Germany,that in terms of military and foreign policy,it was still a global force to reckon with.Germany knew this and consequently opposed military intervention from the outset.Britain collaborated with France during the intervention for the same reason.France-Britain close coordination was an attempt to develop further the military alliance,which they had already formalized in November 2010,as a counter to Germany's overwhelming economic and political power in the European Union.Similarly,Qatar and the United Arab Emirates militarily engaged in Libya because of their geopolitical interest considerations.The study finds that the geopolitical situation in the Middle East at the time made Gaddafi a prime target.The Arab leaders considered Gaddafi a threat to their hegemony in the region.The Qataris,the Emiratis,the Saudis,the Lebanese,the Israelis,and many others hated him for various geopolitical reasons.Therefore,when the opportunity came for them to bring Gaddafi down,they swiftly did it.For the United States,the strategic consideration for the military intervention in Libya was more about continuing its military policy on the continent.Thus,the United States intervened in Libya to expand its influence on the continent,militarize,and strengthen its Africa Command,which was seen to be in fierce competition with Pan Africanist alternatives,which was being championed by Muammar Gaddafi.In terms of improving the collaboration between AU and the UN in delivering civilian protection mandates,the dissertation proposes a decentralized arrangement,which would emphasize preventive action through a comprehensive early warning information sharing mechanism.Decentralized collaboration also means that the AU,with the support of the international community,should become first-responders to humanitarian intervention emergencies in Africa.This is because of the African Union's comparative advantage of possessing a better understanding of the social,cultural and political dynamics of its member states.The study asserts that Africans are not looking for the international community to solve their problems,but they are hoping for assistance that follows their own lead in handling security problems.This dissertation concludes by identifying some valuable lessons that should guide the design and implementation of future humanitarian interventions in Africa.The first lesson is that despite the conceptual contributions of R2 P to humanitarian intervention concept,there persists a high proclivity for intervening states to abuse civilian protection mandates in pursuit of their strategic interests with humanitarianism as a decoy.Secondly,the language and scope of intervention mandates fail to conceptualize all conceivable actors that may be involved in the humanitarian intervention chain.As a result,opportunistic actors,such as terrorist groups and opposition parties may take advantage of and sabotage the normative values of humanitarian interventions.For example,they may play double roles as perpetrators and victims of crimes,concoct or exaggerate evidence to invite external interventions to help get rid of a government they oppose.Furthermore,there is the arbitrariness that comes with interpreting UNSC resolutions.During the 2011 intervention in Libya,intervening states chose to apply interpretations that supported their strategic interest objectives.It is true that unlike domestic or municipal laws,international law lacks positivist interpretations.However,this reality could be largely mitigated if intervention mandates are devoid of clearly ambiguous terms.Chapter OrganizationThis dissertation is organized into seven chapters.Chapter 1 provides a background to the study.It covers the research questions,objectives,research methodology and design,review of previous literature,and the significance of the study.Chapter 2 establishes the theoretical foundation of the thesis.In this chapter,the study leveraged on the explanatory advantages of both neorealism and regime theory to explain the reasons for sidelining and isolating the African Union in the 2011 humanitarian intervention in Libya.Neorealism explains the structural constraints and the self-interest motivations for the intervention,while regime theory explains the important roles that some institutions played in cost sharing and legitimating the intervention.Chapter 3 discusses the humanitarian interventions that have taken place on the continent of Africa since 2001,and the roles played the African Union in its design and implementation.The chapter establishes that before the 2011 humanitarian intervention in Libya;the African Union had always played significant roles in humanitarian interventions and other security arrangements on the continent.Chapter 4 explicates how the 2011 humanitarian intervention was implemented in Libya and how the African Union's diplomatic solutions were isolated and frustrated by France,Britain,the US,and other state actors.Chapter 5 explicates the reasons for the isolating the African Union in the implementation of the 2011 humanitarian intervention or R2 P in Libya.The chapter avers that the isolation was due to the intervening state's desire to achieve strategic ends on the one hand and their willingness to obliterate a potentially antagonistic actor,which the AU embodied.Chapter 6 discusses the existing peace and security architecture of the African Union,the challenges it faces and how it can be strengthened to handle future cases of humanitarian interventions on the continent.Chapter 7 provides a summary of the research lessons,recommendations as well as the conclusion of the study.