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Al-Ahram Weekly 1 - 7 June 2000 Issue No. 484 
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Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
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Al-Ahram Weekly 1 - 7 June 2000 Issue No. 484
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| Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
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Egypt Region International Economy Opinion Culture Focus Features Heritage Travel Living Sports Profile People Time Out Chronicles Cartoons Letters Out on a limb
By Gamal Nkrumah *
At the beginning of May, the outlook for Sierra Leone could hardly have been worse -- a lame duck government, a muddled United Nations peace-keeping mission, hundreds of UN personnel taken hostage in hostile territory held by insurrectionists, meddlesome British troops rushed in with a confused agenda and the formidable leader of the main armed opposition group forced to parade naked in the capital Freetown before his pro-government foes. As the month came to a close things looked a little brighter for the war-torn country, once coveted as a tropical paradise boasting plush beach resorts.
Happier times in Sierra Leone were already fading in 1991, when Foday Sankoh, a photographer from the city of Bo, spearheaded the Revolutionary United Front (RUF) armed insurrection that sparked the Sierra Leone's eight-year civil war. Sankoh had political ambitions as far back as March 1971, when as a student leader he took part in a bungled coup attempt to topple former Sierra Leonean President Siaka Stephens, led by Sankoh's uncle, army commander John Bangura.
Soon after, Sankoh went to Libya to undergo military training, where he was introduced to the rudiments of guerrilla warfare. Small wonder then that in the 1990s RUF's initial military success was so spectacular. Sankoh strengthened his ties with Libya and neighbouring Liberia, his two staunchest allies, and he soon held a large swathe of territory centred around his stronghold in the diamond-rich northeastern part of Sierra Leone. Diamonds mined in Makeni, Kono, Tongo, Daru and other locations were smuggled across the border into pro-RUF Liberia, and traded on the international market for arms.
Sankoh was taken into government custody a few weeks ago when British troops intervened as a mob of pro-government protesters abducted him at his house in Freetown. Although he has been vilified by the international community, his internment in "protective custody" has still spurred an outcry among human rights organisations demanding his personal safety and a fair trial.
"When Sankoh first escaped from government custody he was injured," Human Rights Watch spokeswoman Brownen Mandby told Al-Ahram Weekly. "Now that he has been recaptured, we are concerned that he is not summarily executed and we want him to stand a fair trial. This does not mean that Human Rights Watch absolves him of past war crimes."
Under an agreement signed in the Togolese capital Lomé in July 1999 -- ostensibly ending Sierra Leone's civil war -- the RUF was obliged to disarm and hand over its weapons to Sierra Leonean government troops, courtesy of the United Nations Mission in Sierra Leone (UNAMSIL). Sankoh and his RUF forces were given a blanket amnesty and he was accorded a ministerial post in the current government. Although the charges being brought against Sankoh hold him in breach of the Lomé Agreement, Sankoh's trial might have serious ramifications. Liberian President Charles Taylor ominously described Sierra Leone government plans to try Sankoh as "foolish" and many have taken the remark to be a veiled threat of Liberian reprisals if Sankoh is harmed or faces trial.
The Lomé Agreement was shaky from the start. It was considered risky for its unprecedented amnesty, particularly because agreements between successive Sierra Leonean governments and armed opposition groups have not been particularly binding. Twelve peace accords have been signed between the government and armed opposition and insurrectionist groups, the most important being the landmark agreement signed in the Ivorian capital Abidjan in 1996. However, violence escalated in 1997, 1998 and again last month, less than nine months after the UN-brokered Lomé Agreement was signed.
In South Africa, Sankoh's Senegalese-born wife, Fatou Sankoh, vehemently defended her husband when quizzed by reporters about her husband enlisting child soldiers in the RUF army. "Foday loves children. He's not the monster the British want people to believe he is," the naturalised United States lawyer told reporters.
After his deliverance from the hands of his tormentors in Freetown, Sankoh promptly lashed out against his British rescuers. "They have no business to be in Sierra Leone. They must not behave as if we are still their colonial subjects," he said. Actually, the neutrality of Sierra Leone's former colonial power in the civil war has been highly questionable.
Sankoh's recent arrest seems to have turned the tide of the war, with pro-government forces recapturing key towns, including the strategically-located Lunsar, which commands the crossroads that lead into the diamond-producing areas of northern and eastern Sierra Leone, still held by RUF.
RUF fighters are licking their wounds -- their noses have been bloodied, but they are far from being a spent force. After all, Sankoh came into his own just as the country was fast sinking into political anarchy; he has wide popular appeal, especially in the east of the country. He adopted a populist platform, shunning conventionality and publicly deriding government officials, foreigners "milking the country dry" and, lately, UN personnel.
"Who are the UN anyway," Sankoh growled. "They are just riding in big air-conditioned cars. They are just paper tigers," he told the press last month during the crisis over the UN peace-keepers taken hostage. By the end of May, all the UN hostages had been released, although four are unaccounted for.
It is against this tumultuous backdrop that this week's West African summit meeting was convened. Leaders from the 16-nation Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) converged on Abuja, the capital of Nigeria -- by far Africa's most populous nation and West Africa's matchless military superpower.
Nigeria has been catapulted into the rather thankless role of regional policeman, with tacit Western connivance and approval. Nigerian troops have played a pivotal role in propping up shaky, democratically-elected governments in the face of insurrectionist movements. In the late 1980s, Nigerian troops were dispatched to the tiny West African countries of Liberia, and later Sierra Leone, to quell armed rebellions.
The recent upsurge in violence in Sierra Leone was prompted by the unexpected death last month of the former Sierra Leonean army chief, Brigadier-General Maxwell Khobe -- a Nigerian national. The abrupt departure of Nigerian-led West African peace-keeping forces (ECOMOG) came shortly after.
In Abuja, Sierra Leonean President Ahmed Tejan Kabbah pleaded his beleaguered government's case and won a pledge for the deployment of 3,000 West African troops. Kabbah also wants to put Sankoh on trial for instigating the latest round of fighting and brazenly contradicting the conditions for the amnesty granted him under the Lomé agreement.
The future of Sankoh was the subject of much discussion in Abuja. "Sankoh will be taken out of Sierra Leone to be kept in a safer place," ECOWAS spokeswoman Adrienne Diop told reporters in Abuja. ECOWAS Secretary-General Lnasana Kouyate concurred, "We have decided to give security to Sankoh," he said.
However, ECOWAS officials are ambiguous on the question of Sankoh's trial. Sierra Leone's ambassador to the UN this week told The Washington Post that Sankoh would face trial. Human rights organisations charge both pro-government militias and the RUF with plying their combatants with narcotics so that they would commit more heinous war crimes.
War in Sierra Leone has been, by all accounts, abominably brutal -- mass murder of defenceless villagers, the arbitrary amputation and maiming of innocent civilians, kidnapping and rape and other gruesome war crimes. All warring factions have been party to the atrocities; both the RUF and the pro-government militia, the Kamajors, are accused of committing widespread atrocities and warring parties are notorious for constantly changing sides.
Troops loyal to Lieutenant-Colonel Johnny Paul Koroma, once a political partner of Sankoh, are now fighting alongside government forces. Sankoh and Koroma fought the Nigerians together and held the capital -- and much of the country -- until they were forced out last year when British and Nigerian-led West African troops stormed the war-battered capital. Today, Koroma is the unlikely ally of the president he successfully toppled a couple of years ago.
UN officials insist that the UN's Disarmament, Demobilisation and Reintegration (DDR) programme is well under way, but ultimately it was the controversial "Article Seven" of the Lomé Agreement that lies at the root of the recent escalation in violence. The UN Security Council insisted on interjecting a clause stating that if UNAMSIL forces come under attack, they have the right to defend themselves. Even if UN or other humanitarian convoys came under attack, the UN reserves the right to counter-attack. It is on these grounds that UN troops clashed with RUF forces last month when the RUF was closing in on the capital. But there are a number of unresolved questions; most puzzling of which is how the RUF managed to capture over 500 UN peace-keepers without a single shot being fired.
Sierra Leoneans are bitterly divided over several key issues -- chief among these is the question of foreign, including Nigerian, intervention. Sankoh and Kabbah are poles apart. President Kabbah, a suave career diplomat who served at the UN, is the acceptable face of Sierra Leone in Western and Nigerian eyes. Sankoh, on the other hand is portrayed by the international media as power-hungry, blood-thirsty and ill-mannered.
Kabbah's reliance on his ex-colleagues at the UN, many of whom scoff at the peace-keeping efforts of African bodies like the Organisation of African Unity (OAU) and ECOWAS, is another bone of contention between the RUF and Kabbah's government. The problem is that first ECOMOG, and now UNAMSIL, are widely viewed as partisan forces propping up and protecting the distressed government of President Kabbah. UNAMSIL now numbers 8,500 men -- still significantly short of the 11,000 troops authorised by the UN Security Council last month. Even worse, UNAMSIL is widely viewed as not being as effective as ECOMOG in Sierra Leone.
The UN failed to resolve the breakdown of law and order in Somalia in 1993, and similarly it could not avert disaster in Rwanda in 1994. The UN peace-keeping record in Africa is poor, especially in Somalia, Rwanda, Angola and the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), where a peace-keeping force of 5,500 personnel has been authorised -- though not deployed. The Abuja summit appears to be Sierra Leone's best hope at the moment. If, as expected, the UN fails in Sierra Leone, this would have a disastrous impact on other UN missions in Africa, but ECOWAS just might pick up the pieces.
