Libya: Where is the African Union?

African leaders including South African President Jacob Zuma and Congo-Brazzaville leader Denis Sassou Nguesso, meets with Libyan revolutionary leader Muammar Gaddafi. Libya has agreed to an AU peace plan., a photo by Pan-African News Wire File Photos on Flickr.

Libya: Where is the AU?

Monday, 16 May 2011 22:21
Zimbabwe Herald
By Farirai Chubvu

‘‘IT'S like having someone break into your house, rape your wife and kill your dog while you remain glued to the TV set as if nothing is happening.

"Where the hell is the African Union when Nato openly announces plans to kill Muammar Gaddafi, arms the rebels, provide them with air power and siphon Libyan oil at will?''

This post, which I picked on the social networking site, Facebook; aptly captures the lethargy shown by the African Union as far as Nato's destabilisation of Libya is concerned.

Can the African Union chairman, Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo and the Commission chairman Jean Ping please resign forthwith?

Their silence is an afront to everything the founding fathers of the Organisation of African Unity aspired for when they set up the OAU in Addis Ababa on May 25 1963.

How do the AU leaders or member states sleep at night knowing that the Anglo-Saxons are busy hunting down Gaddafi like a wild animal, and violating UN resolution 1973 that was issued to enforce a no-fly zone?

How can the westerners receive the leaders of the so-called Transitional National Council as if they are a legitimate government?

Who elected them?

Who gave them the mandate to represent Libyans?

Where does the UN stand in all this?

Can we say we have a UN Security Council let alone an AU Peace and Security Council when warmongers bomb the weak at will?

Given the precedent the AU has set in Libya, what will stop Nato from extending its war games to other parts of the continent since it now realises the AU is nothing but a paper tiger whose budget is largely funded from the West?

Where is the International Criminal Court? Is it blind to the crimes being committed by Nato in Libya?

The use of banned weapons like depleted uranium and cluster bombs?

The killing of Gaddafi's innocent grandchildren as young as 18 months?

Instead we have the ICC prosecutor, Luis Moreno-Ocampo, campaigning for and getting an arrest warrant against Gaddafi and not those who are butchering his people.

How many other nameless, faceless innocent Libyans have perished at the hands of the
Nato war machine?

What will it take for the AU leadership to get off their cowardly backsides and justify their existence? I used to be so proud of the AU, that was at a time I thought it had the same radicalism and focus as its predecessor the OAU that successfully led the charge for the decolonisation of the continent but I am not so sure anymore.

Cote d'Ivoire was the first mistake when the AU turned a blind eye to France's war games there.

Laurent Gbagbo was deposed by French troops who were backing Allassane Ouattara's rag-tag rebels.

And now in Libya, Nato becomes the airforce for the rebels, openly announces plans to kill Gaddafi, steals Libya's oil in broad daylight and the AU still sleeps soundly in Addis Ababa.

The AU must stand up top be counted.

In Libya westerners have shown utter contempt for the AU Panel as they continued to make pronouncements of what they want to see done in Libya as if South African president Jacob Zuma and the panel he was leading were dullards who did not know what they were doing in Libya.

From London, Washington to Rome, the clarion call was ‘‘Gaddafi must go!'' and not surprisingly the Libyan rebels refused to accept the peace proposals that was tabled by the AU panel and echoed their master's calls that Gaddafi should have no role to play in Libya.

But again, the AU only has itself to blame because they let the westerners have a field day in Libya to the extent of grabbing oil wells, extracting oil which they sold to themselves.

What many expected from the AU was an urgent summit on Libya to see how Africans can defend their brothers and sisters who are under siege from the Western warmongers.

Many expected an AU standby force in Libya to help Libyans repel the western attack and massive lobbying at the UN to get the Security Council to issue a resolution halting the attacks, and if need be to assemble a multi-national force to come to Libya's defence.

That is what a continental bloc worth its salt would have done but all we have had from Addis Ababa so far is suspicious, deafening silence.

Does this AU serve any other purpose other than a biennial meeting platform for the continent's leaders?

fariraichubvu@gmail.com