Diplomacy Weeps



The Independent (Banjul)

EDITORIAL
August 27, 2001
Posted to the web August 27, 2001

Banjul, the Gambia

Diplomacy, as we know it, has a no pact with adventurism. Nor is it in any
league with instinct. Its breathing substance is tact and reason lines its
path. That is why throwing caution to the wind is seen as a grievous sin in
the international system. The same is true of telling foreign diplomats in
their faces, that their countries, our benefactors, should go hang. Both
flow from the ranks of naivety and effrontery, which have become recurring
decimals in The Gambia's foreign policy engineering.

The hallmark of any good foreign policy dispensation is its ability to
maintain state and non-state actor friends in the international system and
win over as many enemy actors as possible, neutralizing the rest. In The
Gambia, however, the reverse appears to be the case as the thrust has been
towards turning friends into enemies, all in the name of sounding tough and
self-assertive.




Or how else can we explain the recent expulsion of the British Deputy High
Commissioner, Bharat Joshi? Simply put, it represents another level of the
Gambia government's underpinnings of the international community, which has
no place for free-style, erratic diplomacy and despotism. And if the reasons
were not unconnected with Joshi's presence at an opposition press conference
in his capacity as his country's desk officer in The Gambia, then the
international perception of the action as geared towards making sure that
the October presidential elections turned out in favour of the incumbent is
not out of place.

Of a certainty, the repercussions would not tarry. The British foreign
office has said the British government would react in the strongest possible
terms, meaning it may not stop at expelling a Gambian diplomat of
commensurate status with Mr. Joshi.

The chances are that it may sever diplomatic relations with The Gambia and
hence stop all grants and technical assistance, including the 600, 000
pounds sterling support to the Independent Electoral Commission and the
various grants given through the Department for International Development
(DFID). It may also cut off British air links with The Gambia, spelling doom
for the country's precarious tourism industry, which receives about 45
percent of its tourists from the British market. The very fact that in 1994,
the British tourist advice brought the industry to its knees is tortous to
remember let alone relive. In fact, the country is yet to recover from the
devastating impact of that advice, and if the British government re-enacted
it, it would be a nun dimitis for the industry, which plays a key role in
our already dehydrated economy.

We should of course expect the European Union and the Commonwealth to lend
support to any retaliatory action by the British government in view of its
influential role therein. Can we really afford yet another such situation?
Ours is a highly import-oriented nation and foreign loans and grants
dependent, and most of them come from the EU and the Commonwealth.

The Gambia government should therefore be wary of fueling the locomotive
engine of our isolation in the international arena. We need more genuine
international friends, not enemies. We need a foreign policy engineering
anchored on clear-sighted people-focused ideals, not a sham.



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