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Al-Ahram Weekly 21 - 28 January 1999 Issue No. 413 
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Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
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Al-Ahram Weekly 21 - 28 January 1999 Issue No. 413
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| Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
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Egypt Region International Focus Economy Opinion Culture Features Living Travel Sports People Time Out Chronicles Cartoons Letters A luta continua?
By Gamal NkrumahToday, the battle cry "a luta continua" rings hollow. Talk of the "armed struggle" sounds like an old melody played off key, and violent insurrections no longer have the romantic allure they once had. In the heady days of the sixties, there were real causes to die for -- national liberation, social justice. But why should vultures pick at bodies in deserted streets, or city landmarks be reduced to burned-out shells, just to keep one clique in power rather than another? Power politics is just not a good enough reason.
There is a degree of play-acting over civil wars in Africa, something which all the players concerned -- African governments, rebel forces, Western powers and humanitarian aid agencies -- have come to understand all too well. Foreign interference is invariably given as the main reason for the perpetuation of these conflicts. The wisest course would be for African governments to resist the temptation to interfere in the domestic affairs of their neighbours. Yet getting this message through to those concerned has proved extremely difficult.
Meanwhile, the United States preaches "good governance" and democracy American-style, while the humanitarian aid agencies continue to see Africa as their last frontier. They are supposed to tidy up the mess, but often end up accused of only making matters worse.
Many African countries are at last registering impressive economic growth rates. The continent's greatest strength is the resourcefulness of its people against all odds. But Africa's human resource development is continuously interrupted by its ongoing civil wars in Angola, the two Congos, Sierra Leone, Somalia and Sudan.
Recently it is Sierra Leone which has been grabbing the headlines again. Aid agencies in the small West African country speak ominously of a "humanitarian catastrophe". Hundreds of thousands of Sierra Leoneans have been cut off from water, food and electricity. An estimated one million people in Freetown, Sierra Leone's war-torn capital, are in need of food and medical supplies.
The UN's World Food Programme (WFP), its children's agency (UNICEF) and refugee agency (UNHCR) made a joint appeal. "We are appealing to the sides to stop fighting. That is the first step to the beginning of an end to this ridiculous war," said a UNICEF spokesman. UNICEF also sounded the alarm bell, warning that about 350,000 people had been displaced within the country because of the conflict. On Sunday, UN High Commissioner for Refugees Sadako Ogata said she feared a repetition of a similar crisis last year, when 250,000 refugees fled abroad.
To call the war in Sierra Leone a "civil war" is actually misleading. The struggle for power is not between two rival domestic factions, but between a Sierra Leonean armed group, the Revolutionary United Front (RUF), which is widely believed to be backed by neighbouring Liberia, on the one hand and the Nigerian-led West African coalition force, ECOMOG, which purports to support the popularly-elected Sierra Leonean government of President Ahmad Tejan Kabbah, on the other. The bitterest irony in all this, is that Nigeria still does not have a popularly-elected president itself.
But African governments are not the only culprits. Western powers are busy interfering in African problems and fighting phony wars across the continent by proxy. Britain recently sent a warship to Sierra Leone in support of Kabbah. Last week, Royal Navy frigate HMS Norfolk docked in Freetown to assist the Nigerian-led peacekeeping force.
America and Britain had earlier accused Liberia of supporting the RUF's desperate bid to topple Kabbah. ECOMOG ousted the RUF from power 10 months ago, after a controversial storming of the Sierra Leonean capital. Since then, their attempts to restore order to the country has been nothing but a catalogue of disasters.
The RUF forces relinquished power, but hostilities continued in the countryside. Ethnic tensions between the Temne and the Mende have been exacerbated by the war. The RUF, backed by renegade soldiers from the junta, again stormed Freetown on 6 January. A Nigerian Defense Ministry spokesman recently said that ECOMOG troops were up against "a few pockets of rebels and snipers." Yet ECOMOG's mopping-up operations are not over, and hundreds of thousands of Sierra Leoneans are homeless and hungry.
What's especially puzzling about all this is that the international community makes so little of it. The Red Cross withdrew its expatriate staff from Freetown at Kabbah's request. Kabbah accused the ICRC and other international aid agencies of supporting and delivering arms to the RUF. ECOMOG troops have seized all radio communication devices, walkie-talkies and satellite phones from the humanitarian agencies in Sierra Leone, and all expatriate personnel have left the country. Local staff still carry out emergency relief, even as aid agencies accuse ECOMOG troops of conducting brutal searches and threatening to execute their employees.
In the course of the RUF attack, the UN headquarters went up in smoke and the Nigerian Embassy next door was razed to the ground. Even the State House, the main government building where Kabbah had his offices, and which now serves as a shelter for displaced people, did not escape the bullets and bombs.
Last Thursday, the RUF said it would begin a week-long cease-fire on Monday, on condition that the detained rebel leader Foday Sankoh was released. When Monday came, Sam Bockarie, Sankoh's deputy, said the week-long truce would go ahead anyway, even without Sankoh's release. Negotiations collapsed last week amid disagreement over how and when to free Sankoh, who has been sentenced to death for his involvement in the coup that ousted Kabbah. ECOMOG, which has regained tentative control of much of Freetown after two weeks of fierce fighting, supported the latest proposal.
Liberian President Charles Taylor said his government brokered what it called an accord. "We believe this is a very important development, after two days of very stringent negotiations with the Liberian government," Taylor told reporters in the Liberian capital Monrovia. Taylor added that Sankoh's release was "imminent".
Côte d'Ivoire and Liberia are the RUF's staunchest allies, while Ghana and Guinea are Nigeria's partners in the ECOMOG coalition. Besides his freedom, Sankoh has demanded official recognition for the RUF, who have been accused by donor agencies of exacting retribution on the ethnic Mende communities. Kabbah, for his part, has dismissed Sankoh's requests. Sankoh had urged his forces to stop looting and killing, but stopped short of asking them to end the war.
From the Vatican, the Roman catholic news agency MISNA announced that the RUF were prepared to release archbishop of Freetown, Monsignor Joseph Henry Ganda in exchange for a cease-fire. Ganda was kidnapped last week and is being held in an unknown location, along with an Italian missionary, Rev. Mario Guerra, who was abducted last November. There have been other kidnappings, and one Western journalist and several businessmen have been murdered
Meanwhile, in Angola, the government last week ordered UN personnel to leave the country and blamed the escalation of the Angolan civil war on "foreign interference." The UN has some 1,000 people in Angola, including 650 peacekeepers, where its Observer Mission is overseeing the implementation of the 1994 peace accords between the Angolan government and rebel movement UNITA. The current mandate expires on 26 February.
"The UN has lost control of the peace process, whose derailment is already a reality," Angolan President Jose Eduardo Dos Santos told Western reporters in Luanda last Friday. Angola's government on Saturday stepped up a mass conscription campaign. All Angolan men between the ages of 17 and 20 are to register for military service. Men between those ages are barred from leaving the country without government permission.
UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan grounded all UN humanitarian flights into Angola after the crash of two UN planes in mysterious circumstances. UN officials believe the planes were shot down, raising fears that UN personnel were being targeted in an attempt to drive them out of the country so that the warring sides can proceed to settle their differences alone. The peace process fell apart when UNITA refused to hand over territory it controlled and disarm its combatants. To the Angolan government's chagrin, UN sanctions against UNITA have had little or no effect. Angola has accused Zambia of supporting UNITA.
The war in the Democratic Republic of Congo is also sustained by direct military intervention by neighbouring countries. Zimbabwe and Angola are backing Congolese President Laurent Désiré Kabila against the forces of the rebel Congolese Rally for Democracy, backed by Uganda and Rwanda. Once again, in Congo as in Angola and Sierra Leone, the Roman Catholic Church, like the humanitarian and UN relief agencies, stands accused of interfering and making matters worse.
