IGAD Impasse and African Union Crisis

By El Obeid Ahmed Murawah

The Ugandan capital, Kampala, will host, this Thursday, the summit meeting of the east African Inter-Governmental Authority for Development (IGAD), responding to a request submitted by the Republic of Somalia, at the background of the crisis that surged between the Republic of Somalia and Ethiopia. The IGAD Chair has added to the agendas of the meetings, the issue of the situation in the Sudan.
And despite the fact that three out of the seven members of the organization are boycotting the meetings, namely the Sudan, Ethiopia and Eritrea, which are directly concerned with the deliberations of the meeting, the IGAD chair has insisted to hold the meeting on time, as if the meeting were an objective per se, and that as applying the saying “they willed, so it be”.
Under the acute financial deficit, the organization is suffering from, and that the majority of its members do not object to selling their position, the under regional organization has thus handed its rein to the donors and its decisions become exposed in the bidders in the international political market and those wishing to get a decision or specific stand by the organization, have to produce their bidding. And essentially this is the point of difference with the Sudan, with regard to Khartoum’s most recent stands. In fact, after regaining some degree of confidence from the Sudan- a founding member of the organizations- to act as facilitator for the Sudanese – Sudanese negotiations, the chair of the organization and some other leaders gave in to some quarters that lured them to play confusing role and to mix up the dossiers and papers a new. Therefore, they started challenging Saudi Arabia in the role it has been playing for some time on ending the war in Sudan, via the Jeddah Forum. They thus offered themselves as mediators elbowing Saudi Arabia, in the issue of ending the war in the Sudan.
It is clear that the position taken by the Government of Sudan, a few days ago, to suspend dealing with IGAD on the particular dossier of war and peace, was a carefully considered position. The least that could be said about that position is that it sent a clear warning message to more than one quarter stating that enough of your futility and interference in Sudanese internal affairs, and that the Authority – if it wants to have a positive role – then it must adhere to the rules of its founding charter, respect the sovereignty of member states, and stop treating rebels and negative movements as if they were entities representing their countries.
IGAD got itself into trouble when it allowed others from outside the continent be involved in the Sudan war to direct its decisions in the interest of the party they were behind in the war, and it implicated behind it the parent regional organization (the African Union), which was dealing with Sudanese affairs through IGAD, because it maintained Sudan’s membership in it has been frozen for more than two years, and perhaps this explains why the Chairman of the African Union Commission rushed yesterday to avoid the matter and appoint three high-ranking figures, who were said to be close to him, to deal with the Sudanese dossier.
The African Union and IGAD have to understand that the crisis is not related to persons or to mechanisms, but rather to the approach through which they operate. If they genuinely want their endeavors in the Sudan question to succeed, then they have to snatch back the two organizations from those who kidnapped their role and to make of the slogan of “African solution for
African problems” a living reality not a rhetorical matter and they have to disallow any further negative foreign interventions in the African affairs, otherwise Sudan is a master of its own destiny and will not bother with what they say or do