Unpacking the Mystery of Mediation in African Peace ... - Swisspeace

Somalia, Khartoum Negotiations 2006
Mediation Style and Third-Party
Coordination
The international community was kept briefed on
the events in Khartoum, but there was little or no
direct involvement beyond that. The format of
the meetings had not been agreed upon. The
agenda was rather open; there was no clear separation
between the pre-negotiation and negotiation
phases. Formal sessions were rarely held, and procedural
issues, concerning questions such as participants,
location, and agenda, were rather
vaguely decided upon in informal meetings.
There was, however, a clear intention to try and
obtain a framework for an agenda for the talks,
with details to agreed subsequently. It seems that
there was no mediation/facilitation team, only a
series of AL diplomats and members of various
intelligence services. The AL members probably
never made sure that formal decisions were ratified
and discussed; rather they seemed to take an
approach of shuttling from one side to the other,
trying to find common ground while discussing
possible alternatives.
Phases of the Khartoum Talks
First round of talks (22 June 2006): Sudanese
President Omar al-Bashir, the chairman of the
AL, and the AL’s Secretary-General Amr Moussa
were among the mediators who met separately
with the delegations from the TFG and the CIC
in order to arrange face-to-face peace talks that
were to follow later that day. There was an initial
discussion on political collaboration, which
mainly focused on principles rather than on substantive
issues. The talks were otherwise centered
on security throughout the country and a possible
ceasefire.
This was the first instance of direct talks between
Yusuf and the Islamic courts, giving weight to the
negotiations and its outcome. Despite the climate
of mutual mistrust prior to the meeting, after
only one day of negotiation, the two parties
signed a framework agreement – drafted by the
AL and Sudan – calling for an immediate truce;
an end to media and military campaigns; and the
judgment of war criminals. In this document, the
transitional government and the CIC officially
recognized the other side’s legitimacy. 187 It was
signed by a prominent scholar representing the
CIC and by the Somali foreign minister. Two
particularly contentious issues, power-sharing and
the need for a peacekeeping force, were postponed
to a second round of talks scheduled for
15 July 2006. The quick results were due to two
factors: First, the parties agreed on vague wording
about combining forces and sharing tasks, i.e.,
nothing that demanded major technical discussions.
Second, it is plausible that all participants
simply went through the motions in order to satisfy
the AL and Sudan, knowing that nothing
would be done, which made it easy to sign an
agreement.
Within days after the signing of the ceasefire, developments
within the CIC threw the agreement
into question. The radical part of CIC convened
a meeting of like-minded leaders from other clans
and regions and reconstituted the CIC into a
more broadly-based grouping, the Supreme
Council of Islamic Courts (SCIC). Though the
moderate spokesman for the CIC remained the
head of a new eight-man executive, the new
body’s much stronger legislative council was
headed by the spiritual leader Hassan Dahir
Aweys, who is wanted by the US in connection
with terrorist acts. The relative powers of the executive
and legislative of the SCIC was unclear. 188
This turn of events alarmed Western governments
and especially Ethiopia, which now saw its
fears of a Somalia controlled by radical clerics realized.
Pre-negotiation for second round of talks (July–
September 2006): The planned follow-up talks
were postponed from 15 July until 2 September
2006, due to divisions within the interim government
over how to handle the SCIC’s dominance
and the total refusal of religious leaders to
attend meetings with the TFG after confirmed
reports that Ethiopian troops had entered Somalia
in July. In trying to salvage the upcoming
peace talks, AL diplomats carried out shuttle diplomacy
between the conflicting parties while
working on an agenda for the second round of
187 “Somalis sceptical over peace accord”, in: Mail & Guardian (23
June 2006), (http://www.mg.co.za).
188 Cromwell, Richard: “Somali Islamic Militia Defy Truce”, The
Institute for Security Studies (28 June 2006),
(http://www.issafrica.org).
69