The Nam: Looking for Alignment?
Last week signified the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM)'s forty-eighth annual meeting. The NAM's existence commenced with the 1955 Bandun Treaty; the group is also known as the G77 or the Bloc of 77. Do not find confusion with these names. In the same way that the G7 group of industrialized states added Russia but no one calls it the G8, the G77's membership actually exceeds seventy-seven states.
At its inception the NAM served a vital role. Its members were former colonies and developing countries who wanted a way to assert their independence. Most of the members had governments who displayed Marxist tendencies but did not want an open alliance with the Soviet Union. Hence the name "Non-Aligned Movement".
The NAM soon emerged as an important faction in UN General Assembly votes. The G77 members typically presented alternative proposals intended primarily to annoy the US and distract the Soviet leadership from funding its defense programs. The NAM's calls for economic aid were a guiding factor that raised the Cold War into a truly global conflict.
The fact that the NAM members were "non-aligned" gave the aligned states the idea that the "non-aligned" states should and easily could be converted as allies. The obvious way to accomplish this was to take advantage of the prevailing political instability that plagued many NAM countries.
The most drastic consequences of this process of attempted conversion transpired in Somalia and Angola. Intervention in Angola began by inciting Marxist rebels such as the MPLA with promises of fighters and weapons. These promises eventually led to deployment of Cuban military conscripts and experts to support the MPLA. This process of intervention prolonged what began as a purely domestic conflict by at least five years, but accepting or rejecting the external support was entirely beyond the authority of Angola's official "non-aligned" quasi-government.
Somalia is a much more complicated NAM disaster story. Somalia was more than "non-aligned" during the Cold War; Somalia had alliances, but it changed those alliances at varying intervals as a way to protect itself against the problems in Ethiopia. As a consequence of that time of agonizing post-colonial existence, Somalia plunged itself into a perpetual situation of ungovernability. During the last fifteen years, Somalia has existed without an official government. The UN intervention during the early 1990s solved nothing. Famine and gangs armed with automatic rifles and machine guns still control most aspects of Somali life.
The grasp of warlordism in Somalia seems unrelenting. Several attempts to establish coalition governments, warlord co-operation, territorial settlements, and other methods to bring at least a semblance of peace have been made, but each effort leads to a new round of chaos. At a renewed peace talks attempt last week, the warlord representatives could not even be brought together in one room. The "peace talks" ended in a gun battle in the streets.
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