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Kenya: The Big Three On Annan's Peace Team

Oscar Obonyo

27 January 2008

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Nairobi — Whether for real or cameras, the momentous handshake after a face-to-face meeting between Mr Mwai Kibaki and ODM leader, Mr Raila Odinga, gives an inkling of the credentials of the Kofi Annan-led mediation team.

Indeed, the effort by former United Nations Secretary-General and his team to bring Kibaki and Raila to the negotiating table last Thursday, within two days, is one of swift success.

Former Tanzania President Mr Benjamin Mkapa and Dr Graca Machel, wife to former South African President Nelson Mandela, completes the team.

And there are limited doubts that this panel of Eminent Africans appointed by Ghanaian President, who is also the chairman of African Union, John Kufour, is capable of unlocking the impasse.

The choice of Machel, who recently chaired a special team, interrogating Kenya's performance under the aegis of the African Peer Review Mechanisms (APRM), is particularly appropriate.

It seems she is not overly surprised at the turn of events as she was strongly convinced Kenya was sitting on a political time bomb.

Machel undertook the APRM study at the height of the constitutional referendum campaign in November 2005.

At that time, other issues included the release of Anglo Leasing and Goldenberg reports on economic crimes, the Ndung'u report on arbitrary allocation of public land and the Akiwumi report, which investigated "ethnic clashes", in which about 2,000 people lost their lives in 1992 and another 500,000 displaced.

In their report, Machel's team warned that these events were bound to have significant impact on the country's political future.

"Kenya has much strength that mitigate against the outbreak of mass violence, but it also exhibits many of the factors that have been markers of civil strife elsewhere such as strong ethnic divisions, socio-economic disparities, poverty and endemic corruption," the report noted.

Machel's fears have unfortunately come to pass and together with Annan and Mkapa, the team is now to design and arrive at what the former UN chief terms, "two phases of short and long term solutions".

And as they embark on a healing mission to bridge the rift between the troops allied to Kibaki and Raila, The Sunday Standard looks at the credentials of the three eminent Africans.

Kofi Annan

The soft-spoken seventh UN Secretary General (1997-2006) is widely regarded as the epitome of diplomacy.

Winner of the coveted Nobel Peace Prize in 2001, Annan brings to Kenya vast experience in peacemaking and conflict resolution.

Last Thursday, when President Kibaki and Raila engaged in a quiet war of might, for instance, one could not help noticing his equal treatment of the two as he continually referred to them as "these gentlemen" and "the two leaders".

Before his election as UN boss, Annan held several senior positions at the UN headquarters in New York, including human resources management (1987-1990), budget and finance (1990-1992), and peacekeeping (March 1992-December 1996).

In 1990, he facilitated the repatriation of international staff and citizens of Western countries from Iraq after it invaded Kuwait. He subsequently led initial negotiations with Baghdad on the sale of oil to fund humanitarian relief.

In relation to political crisis, in 1998, he led a mission to promote the transition to civilian rule in Nigeria and helped to resolve the stalemate between Libya and the UN Security Council the following year.

During his tenure, however, Annan barely scratched the surface of the Middle East question. His repeated verbal encouragement to the Israelis and Palestinians to resolve their differences hit a dead end.

Closer home, in Rwanda, he has been heavily criticised for not acting more urgently. He was head of the UN peacekeeping operations when the Rwanda massacres began in 1994. Close to a million people died as a result of the Hutu-Tutsi war.

With that experience, it is presumed that Annan is fairly equipped to remedy Kenya's situation by improving on past shortcomings as well as borrowing from successful instances.

But what is his likely approach to the current mess? Is he more inclined to fixing the humanitarian or political angle of the crisis? Answers to these questions could quickly help determine the direction of Annan's mission.

Annan's background paints him as one with more interest and ability to fix humanitarian and conflict challenges as opposed to political disputes.

Kibaki's PNU team is more interested in sorting out the humanitarian aspect and restoring normalcy while the priority for Raila and colleagues is a political remedy since they maintain Kibaki stole the December 27 presidential election as a baffled nation watched.

Annan's perceived leaning towards the United States is another possible pointer to the path he plans to pursue. The former UN boss, who has lived, worked and studied extensively in the US, has variously been described as the super-power's blue-eyed boy.

When he took over from Egypt's Boutros Boutros-Ghali as UN chief, it was anticipated that Annan would serve for a single term to complete the ten-year period slotted for Africans. The second term of Ghali was vetoed by the US.

When he sought a second term in 2001, the US President George W Bush spearheaded the global campaign for him.

And the US media, even in the current crisis, has not done Annan good service by over-praising him and by projecting him as having done all in his power to be sensitive to American priorities.

The US priorities in the Kenyan question, to quote former Law Society of Kenya Mr Abdulahi Ahmednassir, are driven by "enlightened self-interests".

The US, he says, is interested more in short-term peace and not democracy.

"The most revealing one is the initiative by US Assistant Secretary of State, Dr Jendayi Frazer, when she stated that African peacemakers in Somalia were without fuel as a result of the crisis," states the lawyer in an earlier article published in The Sunday Standard.

Born in Kumasi, Ghana, on April 8, 1938, Annan is married to Nane from Sweden, a lawyer and painter.

Graca Simbine Machel

Having had a brush with the political and tribal realities in Kenya during Nepad audit in 2005 and 2006, Machel is best placed to understand the crisis.

She is therefore suited to guide her colleagues through mediation.

Machel has witnessed acts of violence in the country, firsthand. While conducting the APRM study, she stumbled upon a host of other emerging issues, including the raid on the Standard Group Limited by State agents on March 2, 2006.

She also evaluated the Akiwumi report, which investigated "ethnic clashes", in which 2,000 people lost their lives and another 500,000 were displaced. Consequently, Machel will begin from a point of knowledge having foreseen seeds of this crisis.

But there are situations that Machel's APRM panel failed to capture right. On conflict resolution, the team notes that "Kenya's role in pacifying her neighbours and bolstering various conflict resolution mechanisms is admirable and to be emulated." Curiously, Kenya is now unable to resolve her own political quagmire - the reason Machel is around.

In her findings, Machel also lauds the Electoral Commission of Kenya, stating it is a credible body judging from "the manner it conducted the referendum. The body not only exercised its independence, but the results were also declared 24 hours after voting with neither camp disputing the outcome."

Today, the body stands indicted. It is largely responsible for the current crisis and most Kenyans now this.

Machel is a renowned international advocate for women and children's rights, and has been a social and political activist for decades.

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