Non-central governments, conflicts and foreign policy – Bob Wekesa

African scholars met in Lagos in early July 2019 to discuss a relatively new concept in foreign policy and diplomacy; the non-central governments (NCGs) in Africa’s international relations. This concept and expounds and expands the democratisation of foreign affairs over the past couple of years as seen in the appropriation of terms like non-state, sub-state and sub-national diplomacy both in practice and academia.

County governments exemplify Non-central governments’ involvement in diplomacy and foreign policy in Kenya. In Nigeria, the federal-state government system has been in place much longer, harking back to the pre-independence years. That Kenyan county governments, nationally organised under the ambit of the Council of Governors, are themselves a phenomenon that emerged only in 2013, goes to demonstrate the novelty in the practice and academic study of non-central government diplomacy. In part, the Kenyan county-governance system is therefore following in the path of the Nigerian system. For both nations, the concept and practice of non-central government diplomacy goes further to include just about any entity that has an impact on the international dimensions of governance.

Foremost, non-central governments are particularly interesting when armed conflicts are considered. Essentially, where you see armed conflicts, you see non-central governments playing an international relations role at their sharpest spike. Thus non-central governments are prevalent in fragile places such as Somalia, Afghanistan, Syria and South Sudan where central governments are greatly enfeebled.

Two non-central government organisations are cases in point: Boko Haram in Nigeria and Al Shabaab in Kenya. From the conflict dimension of international relations perspective, the regions in Nigerian and Kenya that are the theatres of these resilient insurgencies are also thrust into international diplomacy even though in unconventional ways. As non-central governments, both Boko Haram and Al Shabaab are meticulously organised, as the case of their subtle ambassadors and envoys demonstrates.

Granted, the Nigerian and Kenyan central governments are vested with foreign policy, international relations and diplomatic power. However, because the battles on their soil are being fought at the local level, the Muhammad Buhari and Uhuru Kenyatta administrations are constrained to negotiate and cede some of their functions to the local authorities. These are the north-eastern Nigerian states of Yobe, Kano, Bauchi, Borno and Kaduna and the Kenyan counties of Garissa, Wajir, Mandera, Lamu and to some extent, Mombasa.

It is not just that the non-central governments in the Boko Haram and Al Shabaab-infested areas are explicit and implicit partakers in the international relations of the Nigerian and Kenyan conflicts. It is that the nature of the conflicts strongly lends themselves to ideologies and geopolitics, which link with exogenous interests such as the Islamic fundamentalist organisations domiciled in the greater Middle East.

In both cases, the battle lines are drawn between the conceptual west, western liberalism and conservative Christianity on the one hand, and, the conceptual middle east; conservative, even fundamentalist Islam. Thus, we see a situation in which the localities of north-eastern Nigeria and north-eastern Kenya are thrust into competing global interests forged in religion and geopolitics. This is not a problem keenly felt by south-western and south-eastern Nigeria and central and western Kenya populaces.

Demographics are at play too. Just consider that the population of Kenya’s Daadab refugee camp hosts a population of 200,000 people making it essentially one of Kenya’s major towns. This is a burden not only on the national government but perhaps more on the Garissa County government. Reports indicate that there are over 2.4 million displaced persons in the Lake Chad Basin. This implies that local authorities in the north-eastern regions of the countries and the adjoining areas in Cameroon and Chad are forced to address the refugee problem. In many respects, these authorities are forced to work with, not just the national governments, but also international organisations such as the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees. This is another example of non-central governments playing an international relations role.

The question arises: to what extent have the central and the non-central governments in Nigeria and Kenya, and indeed elsewhere, converged or diverged with regards to the foreign policy formulation and implementation in their respective, conflict-wracked regions?

The proposition for negotiation between the Nigerian and Kenyan administrations on the one hand, and Boko Haram and Al Shabaab, on the other hand, has often been dismissed offhand. Once the recognition that these are well-organised non-central governments with a capacity to engage internationally, room for change in strategy could shift substantially. At any rate, there is a deadly ideological battle going on here as seen in Boko Haram and Al Shabaab’s allegiance to al Qaeda and ISIS.

Subject to further research, all indications are that agency with regards to conflicts of international dimensions is falling more on local actors and not just at the centre. The upshot is that the two contradictory concepts of globalisation and localisation have spawned the idea of “glocalisation” – that developments can be at once local and global!

A situation in which non-central governments take a leading role on matters in their backyards is to be expected. The wounds, pains and devastation wrought by conflicts in Borno State or in Mandera County are more acutely felt at the local level, the battlefield so to speak, than in the foreign affairs offices in Abuja or Nairobi.

This is the leverage of the sub-state and non-state actors that national and international actors seem to recognise and acknowledge but tend to ignore, fend off or treat with lip service. The argument from the core, to borrow Immanuel Wallerstein’s world system thesis, is that conflicts of an international nature are a matter of sovereignty. This is contestable given that peripheries know where the shoe pinches the most.

Dr Wekesa is a media and foreign policy scholar at the University of the Witwatersrand, South Africa and the research coordinator at the African Centre for the Study of the United States at the same university, bob.wekesa@wits.ac.za.

 

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