African Union faces challenges of peacekeeping in torn continent
- By He Wenping
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E-mail Global Times, March 17, 2016
The compromise and the insistence on military interventions of the AU fully reflect the difference between its hope to maintain constitutionality and democracy and its capability of execution. It is also embarrassing that the member states of the AU cannot reach an agreement easily on important issues and speak with one voice.
Coping with the spread of terrorism in Africa is another new challenge facing the AU Summit.
The North African unrest and Libyan Civil War ended in 2011, and since then undercurrents of turbulence and terror have been flowing in Africa under the surface of stability. After some North African countries such as Libya, Egypt and Tunisia underwent political and social reforms, Islamic extremists' influence expanded.
After the Libyan Civil War, Al Qaeda in North Africa came back with a vengeance and plenty of weapons and militants were dispersed from Libya to neighboring countries like Mali, Niger and Mauritania, directly leading to the growth of terrorist activities in Sub-Saharan Africa, including Nigeria and Kenya since the second half of 2011.
Now, three Islamic militant groups in Africa, namely the North African Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb, Somali Al-Shabaab and Nigerian Boko Haram, have started to work together, and the extremist terrorist group Islamic State, which was originally based in Iraq and Syria, has built a stronghold in Sirte, Libya as well. So the focus of anti-terrorism has shifted to Africa.
Nigeria and Kenya have both been hard-hit by continuous terrorist attacks in recent years and both were elected to the PSC of the AU in this summit, which tried to solve major security issues in Africa with other elected countries.
There is no difference of principle on anti-terrorism among African countries, which are determined to work together and solidly fight against terrorism, and especially to prevent it spreading among young people.
African countries are faced with a new challenge; how to fight against terrorism and in the meantime avoid the intensified military presence of Western powers in the name of anti-terrorism. They also face the difficulty of sorting out the relationship between anti-terrorism and development, and preventing the first from eclipsing the second.
The author is a senior research fellow at the Charhar Institute and a research fellow at the Institute of West-Asian and African Studies, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences.
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