Failure at Casablanca:
ELLIS, HARRY B.
By Harry B. Ellis Failure at Casablanca Neutralist leaders at summit meeting' split oyer Congo Casablanca The conference of neutralist leaders in this city early last month was largely a...
...Nonetheless, the resolution required the African states to do nothing concrete, and it will be surprising if relations between Israel and its African friends do not continue normal...
...Guinea, Morocco and the UAR already had said they were removing their troops from the UN command, and all the Casablanca powers had made plain their support of Lumumba...
...Obviously Nasser, fresh from his tumultuous welcome by Casablancan Arabs, had insisted that Palestine figure strongly in the conference...
...The conference had another point of interest...
...Harry B. Ellis is the Mediterranean and Middle East correspondent for the Christian Science Monitor...
...Presumably this went down hard with the leaders of Guinea, Ghana and Mali, all of whom maintain cordial relations with the Jewish state and even welcome Israeli technical aid...
...Both Nasser and Sékou Touré had to swallow their anger...
...Despite its own criticism of UN policy in the Congo, Ghana earlier had refused to join the rising chorus of those states deciding to withdraw their troops from the UN command...
...To date Ghana has said nothing about withdrawing its soldiers, though the UAR, Guinea and Morocco are now in process of recalling theirs...
...To understand this, one must look beyond the glowing January 7 communique to the private discussions held by the African leaders gathered at this Casablanca "summit meeting...
...Certainly their disagreement was divined and shrewdly assessed by the Brazzaville powers, as well as by the leaders of such African nations as Tunisia, Nigeria, the Sudan and Ethiopia, which either pursue proWestern policies or remain outside African regional groupings...
...It was concern over the Congo which had prompted the Casablanca meeting in the first place...
...At Casablanca he continued to insist that withdrawal of African troops from the UN command must be preceded by formation of an allAfrican command...
...He spoke in behalf of the jailed Lumumba and criticized UN support of President Joseph Kasavubu and Colonel (now Major General) Joseph Mobutu, but he did not go beyond this...
...Nasser's striking triumph on the Israeli resolution, a triumph that was foreshadowed in a strange way...
...In a meeting at the Guinean capital of Conakry in December these three powers declared: "We deplore the attitude of certain African heads of state who have adopted positions which threaten to compromise African unity seriously and strengthen neocolonialism...
...Despite this setback on the Congo, the Casablanca conference could not be said to have been wholly negative from the delegates' viewpoint...
...All the leaders present recognized the then imprisoned Patrice Lumumba as the legitimate head of government and supported the dissident pro-Lumumba regime set up at Stanleyville, capital of Oriental Province, by Antoine Gizenga, former Vice Premier in Lumumba's Cabinet...
...With lines thus clearly drawn, these three nations were eager to join other African neutralists at the Casablanca conference, and by conviction and foreign policy Nasser fitted snugly into their anti-Brazzaville position...
...the UAR agreed "in principle," but Nasser demanded as a precondition that "imperialist" officers in African armies must be dismissed...
...But in his speech of welcome King Mohammed made no mention of such an African force...
...Ghanaian delegation sources reported themselves under heavy pressure from the UAR and Guinea to abandon this stand, but asserted Nkrumah's refusal to do so...
...Through their "Casablanca Charter" the neutralists may have established a reference point, or rallying cry, comparable to the Bandung Conference and principles of 1955...
...In the face of this split the conference developed -one might almost say degenerated -into a search for a compromise that at least would allow a forwardlooking communique to be adopted...
...This insistence continued to the end, for the final communique branded Israel as an "instrument of imperialism and neocolonialism" in Africa...
...Such was the situation on January 3 when King Mohammed opened the Casablanca conference, which he had called primarily to forge a common Congo policy...
...the delegates of Algeria, Libya and Ceylon were more or less sidelined...
...Of the eight Casablanca conferees, Mali, Libya and the Algerians had no forces in the Congo...
...Guinea and Mali had responded favorably to the idea...
...In Nkrumah's view, such an action might involve the new African states in war against the United Nations itself...
...It was reported on good authority that Guinea and the UAR, supported in principle by Mali, had come to Casablanca to announce both withdrawal of African troops from the UN command and formation of an all-African force to be put at the service of Gizenga...
...President Gamal Abdel Nasser of the United Arab Republic, King Mohammed of Morocco, Premier Ferhat Abbas of the Algerian Provisional Government and the Libyan foreign minister were white Moslem Arabs...
...This is especially significant since the Casablanca powers had hoped through their talks to project their loose alliance into a dominant political role in emerging Africa...
...Indeed, he stressed the need of working through the UN to restore Lumumba to power and called for the creation of a permanent Congo committee whose members would be chosen by the UN General Assembly and be directly responsible to that body...
...At the heart of the Brazzaville grouping are four "Council of the Entente" states-Ivory Coast, Upper Volta, Niger and Dahomey-whose leaders are convinced that Africa's infant nations must ally themselves firmly with Western Europe if they are to survive...
...The resolution went on to demand the release of Lumumba, recall of the Congolese Parliament and the disarming of Colonel Mobutu's troops...
...This was aimed primarily at Ghana itself, onethird of whose Army officers are British, led by British Major General Henry T. Alexander...
...In particular they hoped to drown out the voice of the so-called "Brazzaville powers," an informal coalition of 12 new African states which in December had resolved to pool their foreign and economic policies...
...But, at Ghana's insistence, no timetable or deadline was set and each signatory appeared free to implement the resolution as he chose...
...But the assembled leaders appeared to have one thing in common-their outlook on the Congo...
...Herein lay the failure of Nasser and Sékou Touré to achieve their goal, and herein lay the proof that the so-called "neutralist" leaders were split among themselves...
...But the Egyptians make no bones of their concern over Israel's success in "penetrating" Africa, and Nasser apparently rammed through a resolution of his own wording...
...In itself this caused no surprise, but when foreign correspondents picked up their English and French translations of the King's address, they found no mention of Palestine in it at all...
...Apart from their common neutralist outlook, the delegates formed an oddly assorted group...
...Almost immediately certain basic divergencies began to appear...
...Instead Nkrumah had called last November for the formation of a united African command which might supersede the UN force in the Congo...
...To this command Morocco had contributed about 3,700 troops, Ghana 2,300 soldiers and police, Guinea 700 troops, the UAR more than 500 paratroopers and Ceylon eight officers...
...Thus the lineup at the heralded neutralist "summit" conference turned out to be Nasser, Sékou Touré and to some extent Keita on one side, and King Mohammed and Nkrumah on the other...
...We condemn African regroupings based on the languages of the colonialist powers and appeal to these heads of state to return to a more healthy and lofty conception of African unity...
...To back up this support the Casablanca powers, except Ghana, already had signified their intention of withdrawing their troops from the United Nations command in the Congo...
...Summoned hastily by Morocco's Minister of Information, the correspondents were told to write into their copies the King's two references to Palestine as a usurped land which must be restored to its rightful owners...
...Directly opposing this pro-Western position are Ghana, Guinea and Mali who, having proclaimed a union at least on paper, form the heart of those new African states urging a neutralist line...
...This shaft was aimed at the proWestern position of the Brazzaville powers...
...The fact that these four nations were not able to agree substantively on the Congo may have come as a shock to the conferees themselves...
...Ghana, Guinea and Mali, in other words, find it easier to accept friendship and aid from the Soviet bloc than from the former colonial powers of Britain and France...
...In other words, by compromising in a nonsubstantive way, Ghana pulled any real teeth from the resolution on the Congo...
...Ghanaian President Kwame Nkrumah, Guinean President Sékou Touré and Mali President Modibo Keita were subSaharan Negroes, many of whose people traditionally distrust the "slave-trading" northern Arabs...
...Thus the only new element in the resolution was Ghana's willingness to go along with the decision to withdraw troops...
...When King Mohammed opened the conference, he spoke forcefully of the injustice done to the Arabs by the establishment of Israel...
...Impaled on Nasser's demand, Nkrumah's proposal had hung dormant...
...The final delegate, Ceylon's Ambassador to the UAR, seemed almost a spectator at the talks...
...The compromise was found in Ghana's adherence to a resolution expressing the determination of the conferees to remove their troops from the UN command...
...By Harry B. Ellis Failure at Casablanca Neutralist leaders at summit meeting' split oyer Congo Casablanca The conference of neutralist leaders in this city early last month was largely a failure-especially on its main item of business, the Congo...
...Such a force, it was hoped, would serve as a lever to propel Lumumba back into power...
...By setting the conference in this relatively moderate framework, King Mohammed effectively weakened the ability of the fireeaters to achieve dramatic results...
...President Nkrumah, on the other hand, strongly backed the Moroccan King...
...Though they failed to spell out concrete panAfrican bodies, the Casablanca powers at least did lay the groundwork for an African consultative assembly and for joint committees designed to discuss and if possible coordinate political, economic, cultural and military policies...
...When Israel's envoys later asked the governments of Ghana, Guinea and Mali how they squared this resolution with their friendly relations with Israel, President Nkrumah was forced to say publicly that he stood by the Casablanca resolutions...
Vol. 44 • February 1961 • No. 8
