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Sierra Leone crisis: A case of a collapsed state |
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The embattled UN force in Sierra Leone and the inability of the Western world to come to the aid of the UN in the face of unmitigated disaster now constitute a test of the credibility of the UN. This UN's credibility crisis over Sierra Leone is a 21st century phenomenon, while the UN debacle over Somalia and the UN abandonment of Rwanda in the face of genocide could be said to be the 20th century phenomenon. What is making the UN's credibility crisis over Sierra Leone an unmitigated catastrophe is the inability of the UN to reach for an appropriate modality from its arsenal of modalities for meeting the kinds of humanitarian crises in Africa. The UN's credibility has become an issue as the UN's handling of the humanitarian crisis in Sierra Leone is compared with its record in non-white world such as in Cambodia and Mozambique after the cold war and recently in East Timor. It is how to make the UN reach for appropriate modality from its arsenal to the resolution of the Sierra Leone crisis that is the subject of this memorandum. One should not forget that the Sierra Leone crisis raises many issues for the US policy makers and for the African-American opinion leaders especially after the US Summit on Africa and the various show of understanding of the African plight. The commitment of the Clinton administration to the African renaissance is on trial. We should not forget the abandonment of Africa by Britain and her allies in Europe. After all Sierra Leone is the former colony of Britain. What is obvious and well known to me as a former senior policy maker in Nigeria is that Africa does not have a constituency in the US or anywhere in the Western world. What are the African leaders doing for their people? All these are not the subjects of this memorandum even though they are relevant to the crisis and its resolution. THE MYTHS ABOUT THE CRISIS The protracted war in Sierra Leone and the recent UN disaster arose from the fact that the Sierra Leone crisis was a victim of certain myths and misconceptions from the beginning. Unless we understand these myths and misconceptions, the resolution of the problems may become unattainable. The international community must get over these myths and misconceptions in order to appreciate the nature of the Sierra Leone crisis as that of a collapsed state. There are three prevailing myths about the crisis in Sierra Leone. They are (1) the myths about the nature of the rebellion or insurgency, (2) the myths about the motives and orientations of the West African leaders and military officers in Sierra Leone, and (3) the myths about the legitimacy of the government in place in Freetown. ON THE NATURE OF INSURGENCY There are erroneous assumptions about the nature of the insurgency in Sierra Leone. We seem to forget the basis of the origin of the insurgency in the first place, the issues in the insurgency, the changing character of the insurgency and the changing objectives of the insurgent armed groups. Emphasis seems to have been focused on the so-called 'rebel group' and the brutality associated with its members. Not to recall the basis of the insurgency may be the beginning of the error about the Sierra Leone's protracted wars, which unless this error is overcome, the international community would continue to make colossal mistake. In order to aid in the search for an understanding of the nature of the crisis, I shall raise some of the myths in search of understanding.
Second, is that the war in Sierra Leone is recent and that it dates back to when the elected President came to power as if the war is a reaction to the new regime. This is not true. The insurgency antedates the elected President and has survived many regimes with changing complexity in the issues in the war and with changing character of warlords since March 1991. Third is that the Revolutionary United Force (RUF) is a monolithic armed insurgent group that can enter into a cease-fire with the traditional army from the international community. This is not true. It has never been a monolithic group since the emergence of the RUF. No one seems to recognize that there were many mutinous groups from the regular army brought about by the war in Liberia and the various coups and counter-coups in Sierra Leone. We also seem to forget the emergence of the vigilante groups and foreign mercenaries in the crisis in addition to the foreign armies working for the elected President. Of course, we seem to forget the activities of the West African soldiers in the ECOMOG Peacekeeping Force. All these are armed groups with various agenda. Fourth is that the armed insurgent group as the RUF has a discernible leader that can honor an agreement and that when one deals with the such a leader of the RUF, Foday Sankor, all the problems about the war are solved. We seem to forget that the graduates of the Benghazi Training School of Rebellion in Libya are different from regular warlords. How many times did Charles Taylor, a Graduate of Benghazi enter into an agreement with the international community and how many of them did he honor? Taylor only honored the one, which made him the ruler de facto of the country before the election and the one which ensured that the transition arrangement, he was virtually assured that he would be the President even before the election. It was obvious to the international community that Taylor would not have accept the results of the election, if he had lost. He would not have agreed to go for the election if he knew he would not 'win'. It was a false assumption that Sankor would honor an agreement entered into with regular armies. Foday Sankor has no interest in a peace arrangement, which is counter to the interest of the many groups in the insurgency and for him the Lome Accord was a tactical move, a tactical retreat as the revolutionaries would say and not an abandonment of the grand strategy. . But the objective or grand strategy, which we do not know and never tried to know, still remains. Fifth is that the RUF in Sierra Leone is an appendage of Charles Taylor's National Liberation Movement in Liberia, that when the War-Lord-turned President is dealt with or settled through blackmail, all the problem of Sierra Leone are solved. This is old as the insurgency in Liberia. Should this not have been resolved as a package? This was lost when the peace was worked out in Liberia as an isolated case. We also do not remember the common bond between Taylor and Sankor from their common link with Libya. Sixth is that the war in Sierra Leone has origin in the diamond resources in the hinterland. We should begin to ask the question, which comes first, the diamond or the issues in the insurgency? We do not have to this. What is also absent in the analysis, which associates diamond with the insurgent activities is that with or without the diamond, the insurgency has roots in many years of the mismanagement of Sierra Leone in the hands of many Africans. The same diamond was also mismanaged and used for the oppression of the people by previous rulers of Sierra Leone. We should also ask whether the 'diamond' is just an instrument or a resource for the prosecution of the war or an end of the insurgency? Would the crisis be resolved with or without the diamond? The war would have still originated and would have still remained unabated. It is therefore erroneous to argue that when the diamond resource is taken away from the RUF leaders, the RUF would crumble. This is an oversimplification of the nature of the crisis in Sierra Leone. The situation that produced the lumpen youth and insurgency among the students in Sierra Leone still needs to be addressed. ROLE OF WEST AFRICAN STATES The origin of the Nigerian involvement in Liberia and later in Sierra Leone still needs to be analyzed, a lot of it we will never know. It was not because the Nigerian military dictators loved the people of Liberia or of Sierra Leone so much as we are made to believe. What I'll say through this medium is that the political leaders from the West African countries and their armies in the peacekeeping force had individual and some vague notion of national interests, which made them get involved in the war, first in Liberia and later, in Sierra Leone. General Ibrahim Badamasi Babangida, the Nigerian military President initiated the Nigerian military involvement in Liberia and later in Sierra Leone. He genuinely wanted to protect his two military friends, who were the Presidents in charge of Liberia and Sierra Leone (Doe and Momoh) respectively. Did he have any policy aside this limited objective is a matter for General Babangida's memoir but it is not borne out from the facts in the public domain then. Did he have special any love for the people of these two countries? Again this was not borne out from record of the way he handled his intervention. He later sold the idea of supporting these two military leaders to other West African political leaders. This was how what was purely a Nigerian military adventure or operation in Liberia, an affair of the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS). This was how the ECOWAS military monitoring group was born and called the ECOWAS Monitoring Group or ECOMOG. Whether it was called a West African affair, it was essentially a Nigerian military operation as Nigeria contributed well over 80% of the force and finance in the operation. There is new group of rich Nigerians called the ECOMOG millionaires because they made money from Nigerian involvement in ECOMOG. There is also a class of retired army officers who made their fortune from Liberia and Sierra Leone in the same diamond business and in the looting of these countries. It was well acknowledged in Nigeria, that General Babangida had some personal interest in initially sending the Nigerian soldiers to Liberia to protect Samuel Doe against Charles Taylor. Why he specifically wanted to stop Charles Taylor was never disclosed and discussed. The case of General Momoh the President of Sierra Leone has never been understood except that General Momoh was his course mate in the Command and Staff College. The two families developed some common bond. General Babangida wanted to 'remake' Doe, who was basically an illiterate. This was why he came up with a fanciful idea of organizing university education for Doe and his ministers, while they were in government. This was the origin of the setting up with Nigerian money of the Babangida Institute of International Affairs under which ten Nigerian Professors were sent to Liberia to 'educate' Doe and other members of his administration. How many people knew that Doe graduated through this process? The original plan of Nigeria and of the West African states associated with Nigeria was to stop Charles Taylor at all cost from taking over the government of Liberia, even after the death of Samuel Doe. Taylor had his allies in the border towns in Sierra Leone led by Sankor. This was how Sankor intensified his campaign in Sierra Leone, which later led to the down fall of the government of General Momoh in Sierra Leone through another military coup and the introduction of a new military group in Sierra Leone. France and his allies in West Africa (Ivory Coast and Burkina Faso) supported Charles Taylor and by extension the insurgent groups across the border in Sierra Leone as part of the French plan to check the Nigerian power in West Africa. The French government believes strongly that Nigeria was acting in furtherance of the British 'imperial design' in the West African sub-region. The change of policy in Nigeria to support Charles Taylor in 1994 and to support the democratic transition program in Sierra Leone in 1997 arose under General Abacha for separate reasons. Abacha's policy must be seen first within his personal economic plan to make money from Sierra Leone as the evidence of his investment in Sierra Leone later proved. Second his intervention was to sell himself to the world as a regional leader interested in peace and later as one interested in democracy in West Africa. The US on the one hand imposed sanction on Nigeria after the annulment of the June 1993 Presidential election especially after the extra-judicial murder of the minority advocate, Ken Saro-Wiwa. But the US on the other hand was providing support directly to the ECOMOG military operations in West Africa and indirectly to General Abacha. It should be noted that the United States that did not like Abacha had to cooperate with him in Liberia and later in Sierra Leone. General Abacha was used by the US to meet her foreign policy goals first in Liberia where one would have thought the US had commitment as the founder of that country. General Abacha met the US needs. But the US does not have that kind of moral obligation to the people of Sierra Leone, hence Washington support for the outcome of the election, which produced Ahmad Tejan Kabbah would not lead the US to overreact to the crisis in Sierra Leone. Why did the US develop a new friendship with the Nigerian dictator? The US publicly endorsed and welcomed the activities of General Abacha who moved the Nigerian troops to Sierra Leone when soldiers working with the armed insurgent group stormed the Presidential Palace and overthrew the elected President. This was one of the ironies in the US policy in Africa that an anti-democratic regime like one run by General Abacha was the preferred institution for the defense of democracy in Sierra Leone. The imperial, religious and personal motives of General Abacha in West Africa would never be known. All these that had to die with him leaving behind tales of why he sent Nigerian troops to install the elected president in Freetown and detain the leader of the insurgent group in Nigeria against his will. What should be noted is that there has always been a conflict of orientation and motives among West African leaders for getting involved in the war in Liberia and in Sierra Leone at various stages. The international community may never understand the conflict of orientation among the West African political leaders. Also undiscussed is the plundering propensity of the military officers who saw the war in the sub-region as one of making some quick money in foreign exchange and traffic in precious metals. It is generally known that some of the military officers would want to see the war continue. Their credentials as democrats and human rights warriors cannot justify their commitment to the restoration of peace and democracy in Liberia and later in Sierra Leone. There is no doubt that the RUF is an insurgent group and not necessarily a rebel group. There is no doubt that the act of insurgency does not carry with it democratic credentials. It therefore had never laid claim to democracy. That it is out to undermine the 'democratically' elected government under President Ahmad Teja Kabbah is a truism because it believes that the emergence of Ahmad Kabbah was not a response to the issues that gave rise to the insurgency. The insurgent group does not believe that President Kabbah's continued stay in office in Freetown under the protection of foreign troops is a response to the issues in the insurgency. What should be noted is whether the leader of the RUF sees himself as an alternative leadership or a competitor for the soul of the people of Sierra Leone? What should be noted also is that the military junta then and the leaders of the RUF did not believe in the democratic election, which produced Ahmad Taja Kabbah as the elected President of Sierra Leone in 1996. This is confirmed in the official documents of the UN Security Council. The beginning of the resolution of the lingering crisis in Sierra Leone is an acceptance that the state of Sierra Leone had collapsed. Such an acceptance would lead to a new and neutral arrangement that all parties could trust to organize a transition for the country from its collapsed state to new order. The Lome Accord ignored these. ON THE STATUS OF THE ELECTION IN 1996 There is so much misunderstanding about the status of the election held in 1996, which produced Ahmad Tejan Kabbah as the President of Sierra Leone in place of the military junta that came to power in 1992. I warned against that election in 1996 not because I liked the military regime then, but because the 'political atmospherics' for a free, fair and credible election did not exist then in most of Sierra Leone. The military that came to power in 1992 with a promise to resolve the insurgency warned against that election as the insurgent group would not accept the result of the election to which it is not a party. This was elementary, one would have thought. The document of the UN also confirmed this. The international community did not address the question as to what problem the election was meant to solve. Certainly it was not meant to resolve the issues in the insurgency, which dated back to 1991. The elected president was not in a position to do so since 1996 and would not be able to do so today. As a Sierra Leone citizen and friend once asked me, 'what basis is the elected government called 'the government of Sierra Leone' and others called the 'rebel groups'? This is an unresolved issue in the myth surrounding the Sierra Leone crisis and the UN is a victim of this myth. All the documents of the UN seem to dichotomize the parties in the crisis into the Government of Sierra Leone and the RUF. This is an oversimplification of an extremely complex situation in Sierra Leone. The international community led by the US has a history of not addressing the real issues in the crisis in Africa. I can speak from my Nigerian experience. Unfortunately the US believes that election is a one thousand diseases cure. Hence the military junta against its best judgment was pushed to organize an election in 1996 when over half of the country and the most economically endowed part of the country was under the control of the insurgent group, the so-called rebel. Has the situation changed today? I hope Rev. Jesse Jackson would push the State Department and the White House to see beyond the elected government in Freetown and appreciate the enormity of the crisis as involving the all peoples of Sierra Leone. I hope Rev. Jackson would call for an overall settlement for all the groups in Sierra Leone. One could therefore understand the position of the international community today. It pushed for the election in 1996 and sees a moral obligation to defend the outcome of that election. Since it sanctioned the election of Ahmad Kabbah, it is morally bound to rally round the new 'democracy' in Sierra Leone even when it has to be protected in an enclave around the capital city of Freetown or in exile in Guinea. . The international community is acting on the basis that a democratic regime anywhere should not be allowed to go under in an encounter with a rebel group anywhere. But the international community might have forgotten that the issues in the insurgency in Sierra Leone have nothing to do with the person of Ahmad Kabbah, who left his UN job to subject himself to the election and became the democratically elected President. The international community might have forgotten that the phenomenon of the 'lumpen' youth and the insurgency in Sierra Leone did not start this year, but rather it started way back under the administration of the settler/freed slaves. The phenomenon of insurgency became more complex and critical from the oppressive and corrupt rule of the one party regime under the All Peoples Congress (APC) since 1960s. What is lost to the international community is that the democratic election was organized despite the fears of the military junta in 1996 about the lingering insurgency. The fear of the insurgent group was aggravated by the fact of an election. To the insurgent group the end of the election was a reenactment of the sources of the insurgency. The insurgent hroups see the newly elected government as part and parcel of the oppressive and corrupt administration of settlers/freed slaves regime of the past. What was also lost to the international community was that the so called democratic election was a partial election, which did not extend to the areas controlled by the rebels and consequently did not receive the mandate of the rebels which have different agenda which antedated the democratic election. It is therefore a myth to think that Sierra Leone is a democracy. In addition to all the foregoing myths identified, as long as they are not taken as such and dismissed, the international community would fall prey to what Jane Perlez calls 'peace on the cheap' (New York Times, May 9, 2000). That 'peace on the cheap', unless it is understood as such, may not lead to the resolution of the humanitarian catastrophe in Sierra Leone. This is the situation we are in today. The import of this memorandum is to emphasize that the foregoing are myths around which the Lome Accord was arrived at, which later formed the basis of the plan of the international community such as the ill-fated UN Mission. One is not surprised with what is happening to the UN in Sierra Leone. If one were to deal with the foregoing myths one by one, one would be engaging in an academic exercise and in the end one could miss the import of this memorandum, which is to revisit the problem and proffer a solution to it. The import of this memorandum is two-fold: 1. That there is a need to rethink the nature of the crisis in Sierra Leone within the 'Crisis of State' in Africa. The State as we know a State in Sierra Leone had collapsed. Simple. It does not have a government and does not have control over the territories of Sierra Leone and does not have control over those who called themselves as citizens of Sierra Leone. 2. That the resolution of the crisis should be within the traditional practice in different parts of the world where there is a crisis of state, such as Cambodia and Mozambique in the past and recently in East Timor. The UN normally assumes the role the State Authority in such a case. 'CRISIS OF STATE' IN AFRICA AS THE SOURCE OF CRISIS IN SIERRA LEONE. There is an urgent for the international community to revisit the question of 'peace keeping' and 'peace enforcement' in Africa in a situation where it is so obvious that the state has collapsed. Where the State has collapsed there is no peace to keep. What is needed in a collapsed state is peace enforcement. There are two problems here. One is that the international community has not been able to come to terms with the need to deal with what Ali Mazrui calls the 'bondage of boundary'in Africa. The international community assumes the sanctity of the colonially inherited state as inviolable. This is a separate issue, even though germane to the problem in Sierra Leone would be handled differently later in another memorandum. But it is serious. The second issue is that the international community has not been able to come to terms with obvious fact. Is it not obvious today that the humanitarian crisis in some African states, such as the refugee crisis, the problem of displaced persons, the protracted internal wars, the man-made famine, and diseases etc. arose from the inability of the colonially inherited states to function as states? This is the subject of this memorandum. These two problems are prevalent in two settings in Africa. One setting has to do with those states afflicted with protracted internal or civil wars such as in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Sierra Leone, Angola, Somalia and the Sudan. The other has to do with those states afflicted with minority rule of ethnic/racial group that subjects the majority ethnic group to permanent subjugation such as in Rwanda and Burundi. The problems in these two kinds of African states are no different from the problems, which afflicted Cambodia and Mozambique that had to be tackled differently from the traditional peacekeeping mechanism. Hence in my view, the problems in Sierra Leone seem to defy solution from the international community amenable to the traditional peacekeeping mechanism. The consequences of non-solution to these protracted internal wars and crisis and minority rule are more refugees, more displaced persons, more miseries, more man-made famine, more diseases, etc. Hence the solution to the crisis in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), Sierra Leone, Angola, Sudan and Somalia Rwanda and Burundi should be a repeat of the international plan used in the resolution of the State crisis in Cambodia and Mozambique by the United Nations. It was recently put in place in place in East Timor. The UN should formally declare the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), Sierra Leone, Angola, Sudan Somalia, Rwanda and Burundi as collapsed or collapsing states that are devoid of internal legitimate order. The UN should formally assume the formula used in the restoration of order in Cambodia and Mozambique by immediately assuming the position of the TRANSITIONAL AUTHORITY to run the state of Sierra Leone and embark on the following tasks:
(1) the enforcement of a cease-fire, Under the Lome Accord, the foregoing critical issues germane to the comprehensive settlement were either absent or they were assumed as the job of the government of President Kabbah. The Accord even assumed that there is a Constitution in force in Sierra Leone to which all groups are committed whereas the reality on the ground is that the system of law had collapsed since 1997. The UN Security Council Resolution on Sierra Leone (1270 (1999) which grew out of the Lome Accord even said that the Mandate of the UN is to "assist the government of Sierra Leone in the implementation of the disarmament, demobolization and reintegration plan". How could a government in Sierra Leone without an army of its own and dependent on civil defense forces, mercenaries and foreign troops be in a position to decide on the issue of 'disarmament', 'demobilization' and 'reintegration'? It is under this that the UN Peacekeeping force is meant to enforce. The Lome Accord Article X on the Review of the Constitution mandates "the government of Sierra Leone shall take necessary steps to establish a Constitution Review Committee", which shall function "in accordance with Part V, Section 108 of the Constitution of 1991." Did we know that insurgency commenced in 1991 with the rejection of the government in existence then in 1991? Did we know that the government in Sierra Leone was rejected in 1991 when the partial election took place? The Lome Accord Article XII on the National Election Commission also mandates the Government in Sierra Leone to set up the National Election Commission. The Accord made a provision for the government of President Kabbah to seek the assistance of anybody that that government may care to invite to assist it. What is expected to be done by the government of Sierra Leone is not only unrealistic, it is not practicable under the condition, which led to the protracted wars in Sierra Leone. All these issues were neglected in the Lome Accord. Article VI of the Lome Accord talks of the COMMISSION FOR THE CONSOLIDATION OF PEACE. A thorough reading of what is to be done and the various bodies to be set under the Commission, one gets the impression that things are normal in Sierra Leone. This is the body that should be set up by the international body such as the UN or the Commonwealth which would have power over and above the so-called government in Sierra Leone and the so-called rebel group in control of a vast section of Sierra Leone. The Commission and the functions to be performed by the Commission are therefore not realizable. FIVE ASPECTS OF THE END OF THE UN EFFORT IN CAMBODIA AND IN MOZAMBIQUE For how the goals of the UN's effort was carried out in Cambodia and in Mozambique that would be relevant to Sierra Leone and other African countries, we should review the two UN Resolutions on Cambodia (UNTAC) and Mozambique (ONUMOZ) respectively. I am referring to the UN DOC. A/46/608, S/23177 of 1989 known as the Comprehensive Settlement Agreement as it applies to Cambodia. For the Mozambique case we should refer to the General Peace Agreement of Mozambique 1992, (Amsterdam, African-European Institute, 1992 and the various Resolutions of the UN Security Council on Mozambique. A review of the relevant documents and the literature on the success of the UN program of state creation in these two cases shows that a comprehensive program should focus on five key issues. One is the military aspect, which involves the imposition of a cese0fire, enforcement of the ban against foreign military aid and advisors, cantonment and demobilization of 70 % of the armed forces of all the factions and the consolidation of the remaining forces into one united national army. Two is the humanitarian aspect, which involves the repatriation of refugees and finding them a livelihood guaranteeing political prisoners are released and ensuring human rights in general. Three is the political aspect, which involves the direct involvement in the election process such as the issuing of regulations, wording the ballot monitoring the ballot announcement of the results and installation of government on the basis of known regulation for forming post election government. Four is the administrative aspect, which involves the taking over of essential security services critical to the transition such as police, defense, finance, and institutions for civic participation. Five is the economic aspect, which involves the provision of economic base such as short term aid and guarantees of long term aid to the growth of the economy and making sure the natural resources of the country are national put into use. I had the opportunity to read the Lome Accord signed by the President of Sierra Leone and the Leader of the Revolutionary Front (RUF) of July 14, 1999 and the UN Security Council Mandate on Sierra Leone (1270 of 1999 of October 22, 1999). It is not a comprehensive agreement compared with the documents on the agreement in respect of Cambodia and Mozambique in the past and recently on East Timor. Consequently the UN mandates on Cambodia and Mozambique and even on East Timor are models for the planners of Comprehensive Settlement in Sierra Leone to emulate. IMPLICATIONS FOR SIERRA LEONE SETTLEMENT AND OTHER AFRICAN COUNTRIES. If the Sierra Leone crisis were to be approached from the above five aspects, a new Sierra Leone would emerge after the period of the internationally enforced transition period, which could take a minimum of five years. This means that there should be a UN Transitional Authority for Sierra Leone, which will undertake five main tasks: (1) the military, (2) the humanitarian, (3) the political, (4) the administrative, and (5) the economic. The implications for the future of Sierra Leone would be the following: 1. It means that UN would have to set up immediately a TRANSITIONAL AUTHORITY .in place of the present 'democratic government' propped up by the various foreign armies, mercenaries and civil defense groups under President Ahmad Tejan Kabbah in Freetown. 2. The Transitional Authority should create the enabling environment for all groups and parties to be ready to form part of the new political order once the opportunities arise. 3. It means that the various armed groups: the insurgent army of various kinds, rebel groups, the foreign aided armies of the so-called democratically elected government and the Civil Defense groups would have to be disbanded by force, if need be, with a view to establishing a new national army. 4. It means that all the refugees outside Sierra Leone and the displaced persons within the country would come home and be rehabilitated. 5. It means that the diamond, the natural resource would be put into national use during and after the period of transition in addition to the international support for economic reconstruction of Sierra Leone. 6. It means that a free, fair and credible election would not only take place, there would be a government that reflects the will of the entire people of Sierra Leone for the first time in the history of Sierra Leone would be formed. These foregoing key aspects of the above experiment worked in Mozambique in Africa and I do not see why it would not work in Sierra Leone. It can be replicated in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Somalia and in the minority led states of Rwanda and Burundi. The current Lome Agreement and the UN Security Council Mandate under which the UN is pursuing 'peace' in Sierra Leone is deficient. It cannot give peace to the people of Sierra Leone. It is a peace on the cheap. It is not comprehensive enough and would only deliver an elusive peace for the people of Sierra Leone. GOAL OF AFRICA IN SIERRA LEONE The above should be the goal of the West African Heads of States who are anxious on resolving the crisis in Sierra Leone. Nigeria and other countries should not rush to send young people as soldiers to die in a war, whose mission is undefined and which in the end would leave Sierra Leone worse off. What soldiers are doing mow is maintain the President Kabbah and his men in Freetown while the civilian population is left at the mercy of the various armed groups popularly called the RUF. The British troops sent to Freetown are performing the similar function of ECOMOG troops of guarding the government in Freetown while the peacekeeping soldiers abducted by the insurgent army and the civilian population are virtually abandoned and maybe waiting for Rev. Jesse Jackson. Will the government in Sierra Leone allow for an overall settlement in Sierra Leone independent of his outfit in Freetown? The protection of the government in Freetown seems to be the end of peace keeping in Sierra Leone, hence the refrain in the jargon in the media in the US and in UK to protect the democratically elected President in power in Freetown. The international community has technically abandoned the people of Sierra Leone unless it is though the image of the government in Sierra Leone as the Lome Accord categorically showed and reinforced by the UN mandate. Will Rev. Jesse Jackson be able to move the international community to see the problem as beyond the narrow vision of how to protect the government in Freetown? Africa should reject the vague promise of the US that equipment and some money would be provided the African troops unless the UN is willing to redefine the mission of the international effort in Sierra Lone. The goal should be a comprehensive peace in the tradition of Cambodia and Mozambique in the past and recently in East Timor. For a comprehensive peace to work the need for peace, must be initiated by the parties to the conflict and they must accept two basic principles. One is that both of them must come to realize that no one could win on their respective terms. Two is that the characterization of 'government' and the 'rebels' should be done away with in the interest of peace. The UN mandate on Sierra Leone based on the Lome Accord on Sierra Leone did not meet these two elementary issues in the search for a comprehensive peace. THE US, BRITAIN AND THE UN AND AFRICA. The UN Secretary General of the UN should stop calling on the US as the leader of international community to come to the aid of the UN in Sierra Leone without a review of the end that such an international effort is meant to achieve. He seems to have forgotten that the colonial power that left the state of Sierra Leone in ruin is Britain. Britain like the US in Liberia created two nations in Sierra Leone and the fight in both countries are linked to the colonial hangover. Britain should do more of the rescue operation in Sierra Leone, just as the US should have done in Liberia. The end of the current UN effort in Sierra Leone would not lead to a stable and democratic order in Sierra Leone. What ever is achieved today would not hold. What the UN should do is come up with a comprehensive plan for peace and challenge the international community led by the US and Britain as the former colonial power to foot the bill. This is still absent today. The beauty of the experiment in Cambodia and in Mozambique that is being proposed for Sierra Leone is that it does not create the moral problem for the US and other European powers that are scared of the Somali syndrome or the Rwanda moral crisis. The UN Secretary General should copy how the collapse of Cambodia and Mozambique was salvaged by the UN under his predecessors and apply the same method to salvaging African collapsing or collapsed states. It is noteworthy that the international community is bailing out the East Timor on this plan. Why does the Secretary General of the UN think that the makeshift approach to resolving the crisis in Sierra Leone and in the Democratic Republic of the Congo was what he should do for the continent? On why the US is not doing more than what it is doing through the UN, there is an explanation for this. The Secretary General should spare the US President, Bill Clinton the need to provide the US citizens for the military or other aspects of the transition in Sierra Leone or in any part of Africa. The US policy is directed by the domestic consideration that would not make the US President want the US citizens in an election year to die in Africa. Africa does not have a constituency in the US. Human rights issues in Africa are not election issues in an election year. African issues are on the back burner under any administration. The US policy makers are scared of aids in Africa and of many unknown diseases such as they brought from the desert storm. They do not want their soldiers to be victims even though they pushed for the provision of a daily dose of condun for peacekeepers in Africa. The US and the European Union should be ready to produce the money for the fundamental restructuring of these failed or collapsed states instead of the 'peace on the cheap' hurriedly rushed to Sierra Leone. This should be the goal of Rev. Jackson. The international community should avoid the practice of sending ill-equipped armies under ill-defined rules of engagement and ill-defined goal for the international effort in Sierra Leone. The above experiment can be contemplated for the Democratic Republic of the Congo. The Democratic Republic of the Congo had had well over 9 wars; none of them was ever resolved and the issues in one linger on and complicate another. One even took the life of the Secretary General of the UN. If the wars in Congo in the past were between factions in the country, the war of today is the first 'African world war' according the US Secretary of State with many players from African countries. How do we cope with an 'African world war' superimposed over many warring factions in the country?. Short of a total and comprehensive peace plan for the Democratic Republic of the Congo, the UN would be doing more harm than good, if the international community should undertake the 'peace on the cheap' and venture to send troops to Congo as peace keepers. Just as we have no peace in Sierra Leone to keep for now in the absence of a comprehensive peace, there is no peace to keep for a long time to come in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. What is needed in Sierra Leone and in other collapsed states in Africa is not more arms or armies and more blood letting of the innocent people and more humanitarian miseries from peacekeeping forces. What is needed is some comprehensive settlement for all African people within the four walls of Sierra Leone or in any other states in Africa. The current efforts in the international community cannot be said to be geared to a comprehensive settlement in Sierra Leone. The African countries through the Organization of African Unity (OAU) should revisit the issues of (a) state collapse in the continent and (b) the bondage of boundary in Africa. The OAU should take the initiative, devote a special session to deal with these two issues and challenge the international community assist Africa solve the catalogue of humanitarian crises in the continent. Africa should not expect the UN or the international community to tell the leaders of the continent that all is not well with many states at the moment from the two issues above.
Professor Omo Omoruyi The first draft of this memorandum was sent to the UN and the Commonwealth immediately the Lome Accord was pronounced virtually dead. My intention then was to suggest explanation for why it failed to produce the kind of peace it wanted in Sierra Leone and proffer some suggestions for a way out of the lingering crisis in Sierra Leone. Now that Rev Jesse Jackson has been saddled with the Sierra Leone matter, I am also sending him a copy of this memorandum. I wish through him a solution could be found for the people of Sierra Leone. I followed the above with a personal letter to the President of Nigerian counseling him on the need for Nigerian involvement to be geared to the goal of COMPREHENSIVE SETTLEMENT and not the defense of the Government in Freetown. I wish President Obasanjo will chart a new course for the sake of the people of Sierra leone. 
Omo Omoruyi |
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