South Sudan: Africa, Bashir and the ICC

Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir’s visit to Kenya’s constitutional celebration in August caused quite an international stir given his being on the International Criminal Court (ICC) wanted list.

Why would Kenya defy the ICC on the arrest warrant out for Bashir to face genocide charges regarding Darfur?

Suppose, however, there was more to the visit than met the eye? Could there be a connection between al-Bashir’s visit to Kenya and a regional conflict prevention diplomacy addressing the anticipated referendum on South Sudan self-determination in 2011?

And even that might be the tip of an ‘iceberg’ given polarisation between Nile Basin upstream countries in the East African Community (EAC) on the one hand and Sudan and Egypt on the other on the recently tabled Nile Basin treaty, signed by the upstreams but rejected by Cairo and Khartoum.

Indeed, could the Nile be part of the referendum peace versus conflict equation, given past dark hints of retaliation against upstream countries in East Africa developing their portion of the Nile against Egypt’s wishes tied to the colonial era treaty of 1929 between Egypt and Britain?

Hence, back to Kenya’s defiance of the ICC. Could there be a quid pro quo in the making? If not, there should be. After all, Khartoum could obstruct the 2011 referendum and/or destabilise the South via its time-tested technique of arming proxy forces against the Government of South Sudan (GOSS), as it has in the past against the SPLA.

Might it not be plausible that, as signatories to the ICC, Kenya and other EAC countries could hold the ICC arrest warrant over al-Bashir’s head as potential politico-diplomatic isolation leverage should Khartoum re-ignite a North-South civil war to forestall GOSS independence and other undermine and destabilise it? Moreover, could this not even become a cause celebre in an unprecedented mobilisation of sub-Saharan Africa, in what might develop into a sharpened North-South fault-line extending beyond Sudan in dividing the African Union (AU) between North African and sub-Saharan geopolitical camps?

And would this not throw a spanner in the geopolitical works of economic diplomacy for any number of external actors – like, for example, China, France, the Arab League, the Non-Aligned Movement or ultimately the UN?

Beijing, however, is already re-balancing its interests in Sudan as it goes about opening an official mission in Juba in anticipation of a southern referendum vote for independence. China will not be caught flat-footed given the predominance of Sudan’s oil in the South. But, then, this also ups Beijing’s stakes for responsibility in the unfolding North-South Sudan scenario.

All in all, these are extremely critical strategic considerations in as much as the Maghreb which, apart from Nigeria and South Africa, bankrolls the AU, has been much more united and focused on Sudan and Horn of African issues generally than sub-Saharan African AU members. Indeed, there is no clearly defined countervailing mobilisation in solidarity with the non-Muslim sub-Saharan ‘blacks’ of South Sudan in Africa as a whole, including, especially in sub-Saharan Africa.

However, should not sub-Saharan Africa do some judicious muscle-flexing in the wider pan-African interest on South Sudan as a ‘red line’ not to be crossed in the balance of power in inter-African relations between the North African Maghreb and sub-Saharan African interests? Moreover, this is a power equation that extends over into the anglophone-francophone divide wherein, in rough alignment with Paris, there exist an ever-ready Arab-dominated francophone Afro-Arab bloc of Maghreb geo-cultural hegemony which, in fact, among other things is a major bone of contention in the International Inter-Parliamentary Union, where there is a bid for Arab League hegemony on African parliamentarians.

Indeed, the Arab-dominance that is exerted in such instances masks itself in the garb of a ‘continentalism’ that is ranged against the much broader pan-African globalism that is inclusive of the sub-Saharan rooted African diaspora spread over the Americas, Europe and to some extent even in parts of the Middle East and Asia. Little wonder then that the Maghreb members of the AU have been lukewarm at best on the AU’s diaspora project wherein the African diaspora might be considered the AU’s Sixth Region.

And suppose the pan-African inter-parliamentary union initiative of establishing a Global African Parliament should gain traction after South Africa hosts next year’s much-awaited African diaspora summit? Thus far, within the international Inter-Parliamentary Union (IPU), it is the Arab Parliamentary Union orchestrating a proposed African Parliamentary Union, reportedly financed by Libya with the secretary-general, a Sudanese based in Cote d’Ivoire.

South Africa’s position, among that of other sub-Saharan members, is that it is the Pan-African Parliament that must represent the secretariat of the African geopolitical region of the IPU, not the Arab League-backed set up to represent Africa within the IPU. Thus, does the Sudan conundrum in its Darfur and North-South dimensions feed into a wider intra-continental power struggle over whose geopolitical agenda will determine Africa’s future.

But this digresses from ‘whither Sudan and the GOSS referendum.’ But there is a connection. It not outside the realm of possibility (probability being something else altogether) that a sub-Saharan/North African divide wherein executing the ICC arrest warrant against an al-Bashir waging renewed war against the GOSS could find expression in a Global African campaign inclusive of the diaspora and diasporan legislators as well as sub-Saharan parliamentarians putting pressure on their governments to honour the ICC arrest warrant, effectively circumscribing al-Bashir’s movements outside Sudan, save for the Arab/Muslim world and much of Asia.

Indeed, South-South cooperation could be complicated by such a scenario. But its potential doesn’t end there. After all the EAC is already in something of an undeclared war with Egypt and the Sudan over the Nile already, and it’s not unlikely that Cairo and Khartoum could retaliate by destabilising South Sudan and even Northern Uganda (and parts of eastern Congo and the Central African Republic) as well via the Lords Resistance Army (LRA) given suspicions that the LRA’s staying power results from covert Khartoum backing anyway.

The EAC could up the ante even more beyond leveraging the ICC arrest warrant. Let’s say war breaks out once again in South Sudan. An EAC summit could be held wherein the five heads of state declare the community, which is moving toward federation, as the focal point for an even broader geopolitical project: The launching of the Sub-Saharan Union of African States (SSUAS). Meanwhile, it should also grant associate membership in the EAC to the GOSS. Indeed, this should happen whatever scenario unfolds.

What is fascinating about such a gambit is that it need not necessarily mean a clean formal break-up of the AU, as much as the SSUAS constituting a ‘caucus’ or ‘lobby’ within the AU. Albeit, promoting a SSUAS option could employ an accession process toward membership wherein individual AU member states outside East Africa would join the Sub-Saharan Union at their own ‘speed’ and volition in what could effectively evolve into a ‘two-speed’ Africa. Diaspora countries such as those in the Caribbean Community (CARICOM) and diaspora communities such as in the US via the Congressional Black Caucus could join and/or become otherwise affiliated as well.

Divisive as such a Sub-Sahara Union scenario might appear, it really is not as ‘splittist’ as it appears as much as constituting a strategically alternative route to African integration that empowers sub-Saharan ‘black’ Africa and its diaspora in balancing the power equation between the North African Maghreb and sub-Saharan Africa. To be sure, it could complicate certain grand projects such as the COMESA-SADC-EAC tripartite free trade area (FTA) given the membership of Egypt and Libya along with the Sudan in the Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa (COMESA).

Might not the sub-Saharan members of COMESA move to have them suspended based on their complicity in conflict escalation in South Sudan and in retaliation over the development of the Nile waters in contravention of the 1929 Nile treaty?

On the other hand, this tripartite combine might also be moved to initiate a conflict resolution/management scenario (one that might include Algeria as well). Indeed, such a confrontation might even inspire greater unity among the sub-Saharan members of the tripartite orchestrated by the EAC and supported by South Africa and Ethiopia. This, in turn, could even conceivably bridge the Afro-Arab fault-line by holding out the prospect of expanding EAC accession to include Khartoum as well as the GOSS. Conceivably this constitute a route toward Sudan’s re-unification within a future greater East African federation.

However the Sudan scenario and its broader geopolitical ramifications unfold, there are, however, a number of caveats that can qualify the scenario outlined above. France would be sure to try and exert pressure via the francophone Afro-Arab coalition as a counter to a Sub-Saharan Union if not against implementation of the ICC warrant against Bashir. Otherwise, the one ‘good thing’ about French-inspired resistance is that this might limit the extent to which an SSUAS gambit might be perceived as a Western ploy to divide the continent.

Alternatively, it might go down as an Anglo-American backed anglophone hegemonic strategy to shift the power balance in Africa not just away from leverage exerted by the Maghreb but further away from Paris as well.

At the same time, however, it could throw a spanner in the works for China’s economic diplomacy on the continent. Indeed, Beijing might have every interest imaginable to exercise some preventive diplomacy aimed at forestalling renewed war and destabilisation in South Sudan as it would contemplate how complicated Africa’s geopolitical terrain could become at the expense to its mercantilist interests. Hence, the importance of Beijing’s diplomatic presence in South Sudan as well as in Khartoum.

In the final analysis, more than likely, a SSUAS – even an ICC leverage – scenario won’t happen. Bold stroke politico-diplomatic ‘great games’ of revisionism aimed at status-quo transformation may be just too much to expect out of Africa’s conservative political culture. Geopolitical imagination in the service of advancing Global Africa is a rare commodity on the continent. But the South Sudan/Nile conflict conundrum may well demand some game-changing scenarios if Africa’s movement into the emerging power sweepstakes is not to be severely set-back by Cairo-Khartoum ruthlessness at the continent’s expense.

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* Francis Kornegay is a research associate at the Institute for Global Dialogue and a political analyst with a particular focus on African and international geopolitical and foreign policy issues.
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