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Al-Ahram Weekly 15 - 21 June 2000 Issue No. 486 
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Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
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Al-Ahram Weekly 15 - 21 June 2000 Issue No. 486
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| Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
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Egypt Region International Economy Opinion Culture Features Travel Living Sports Profile People Time Out Chronicles Cartoons Letters Dog eats dog
By Gamal Nkrumah
What is one to make of the news from the many warfronts of Africa? Some 20 African countries are at war with one another or suffering internal civil conflicts. Battle lines are drawn for showdowns in Angola, Sierra Leone, the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), Sudan and the Horn of Africa. War is raging elsewhere, but these trouble spots appear for the moment to be the most news-grabbing.
This tapestry of continental torment is falling apart at the seams. An estimated three million people have lost their lives because of African conflicts over the past decade and almost 30 million people have been made homeless. In Congo, Rwandan and Ugandan troops are fighting for the control of the war-torn city of Kisangani, a regional centre for collecting diamonds and smuggling them into neighbouring countries. Here as elsewhere, these conflicts are being waged at a horrendous human cost and the civilian population has borne the brunt of the fighting.
While both the Rwandan and Ugandan governments have resolved to contain the rapidly deteriorating situation, the commanders on the ground in Kisangani are refusing to follow their respective governments' orders. Meanwhile, Moses Anafu, top advisor to the Commonwealth on African affairs, resigned amid rumours of illicit Congolese diamond trading. The Ghanaian national was apparently made executive director of Oryx Diamonds, a company which has a major concession in Mbuji Mayi, the Congolese diamond capital currently under the control of Zimbabwean troops.
These days it seems as though Western interventions in African wars are staged in search of a sense of purpose, but Washington's Africa policy is incoherent. The United States, with the United Kingdom and the United Nations tagging along, have taken it upon themselves to remedy disastrous situations, more often than not bringing about even more ruinous consequences.
Rather than calming the region, a string of half-hearted interventions have resulted in Washington's closest allies in Africa clawing at each others' throats. Rwanda and Uganda are embroiled in a power struggle in the eastern half of the DRC, and US allies Ethiopia and Eritrea are embroiled in an absurd and utterly ruinous border war.
But nowhere is Africa's predicament more poignantly drawn than in Sierra Leone. Through the good offices of US President Clinton's special envoy in Africa, Reverend Jesse Jackson, Washington brokered the now collapsed Lomé Peace Accord, signed in the Togolese capital on 7 July 1999. The choice of Lomé itself was controversial, since Togolese President Gnassingbe Eyadema is himself widely suspected of cashing in on illicit diamond trade in Africa. Washington prevailed over Sierra Leonean President Ahmed Tejan Kabbah to preside over a government that would include Foday Sankoh, the now widely-discredited leader of the armed Sierra Leonean opposition group, the Revolutionary United Front (RUF), himself now detained by the British.
More confusing still is that under the government drawn by the Lomé Agreement, Sankoh was given the minerals portfolio. US State Department spokesman Philip Reeker recently declared that the Lomé Accord had provided Sankoh with a "window of opportunity to participate politically in the reconstruction and rehabilitation of his country." Reeker went on to explain that, "[Sankoh] completely wasted that opportunity. The US doesn't believe that Sankoh should play any role whatsoever in the future political process in Sierra Leone." Yet while top Washington officials publicly castigate Sankoh, they refuse to back British proposals to stop the sale of Sierra Leonean diamonds through Liberia.
Richard Holbrooke, US ambassador to the UN and an old Africa hand concurred with Reeker, openly espousing the view that the Sierra Leone government and regional and international forces should try to break RUF's hold on the diamond-producing areas. "Lomé is hopefully dead," said US Senator Judd Greff, chairman of the House Appropriation Committee that oversees State Department spending. Speaking of the $50 million earmarked for UN peacekeeping forces in Sierra Leone (UNAMSIL), Greff warned, "The US will not turn a blind eye to the rape of the people and the land of Sierra Leone. We will demand that brutal thugs are held accountable for their atrocities and regional troublemakers must look with fear to their own future."
Western officials and the international media give such a monstrous picture of Sankoh that it beggars belief. By the same token, it may be that Sankoh was given a license to kill. "As soon as it is possible to disobey with impunity, disobedience is legitimate," noted French philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau. "The strongest being always in the right, the only thing that matters is to act so as to become the most powerful."
The international media insists that Africa's civil wars, border clashes, warlords and child soldiers be collectively treated as though they were some kind of lexical lunacy afflicting the continent. African leaders are beginning to understand what all this name-calling is for -- and it is not about allowing people to express themselves politically without fear or repression. It is more a game of releasing culpability.
And the people of Africa realise this. "Our people will greet your presence in our country with contempt, and we will encourage them to mount massive demonstrations in protest," read a revealing letter addressed to Rev Jackson by the multi-party Coalition for Democracy in Sierra Leone. Perhaps, this explains why Washington felt obliged to push Britain into intervening militarily on their behalf.
British Foreign Secretary Robin Cook, who is scheduled to visit Sierra Leone on Thursday, sees eye to eye with the Americans as far as Sankoh is concerned. Affirming that Sankoh remained under detention, Cook said, "It is our view that he must remain so until he is brought to justice." British intelligence reports now indicate that there is a widening rift within RUF between hard-liners in the north and moderates in the east, a suspicion strengthened by an intriguing remark this week from Brigadier David Richards, commander of the British forces in Sierra Leone. "Sankoh is off-limits. We believe that there is a new man being identified, a new leader, more moderate," Richards said.
After what former British Prime Minister Harold Macmillan memorably described as the "wind of change" sweeping across Africa in 1960, Britain tended to shy away from military involvement in the continent. But the past couple of years have seen a British comeback, albeit a checkered one, especially in Sierra Leone, Britain's first African colony. But here again, US policy plays a curious role, with British adventurism in Africa somewhat curtailed by none other than its closest ally.
A British-sponsored resolution imposing a global ban on the sale of illicit Sierra Leone diamonds was passed this week by the UN Security Council, only after references to Liberia were withdrawn. Britain originally wanted the ban to include Liberia, through which 95 per cent of Sierra Leone's illegal diamond trade passes. But Washington is currently currying favour with Liberian President Charles Taylor, who wields tremendous influence over the RUF, and refused to accept an extension of the ban to diamond exports through Liberia. Britain was forced to backtrack -- once again forcibly demonstrating the actuality of Pax Americana.
Fear of militant Middle Eastern governments and organisations cashing in on the potential wealth of Africa has hastened Western intervention in diamond-producing regions of Africa. After all it is an open secret that Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi is Sankoh's and Taylor's main benefactor, and despite his recent rapprochement with the West, he is still viewed suspiciously. Another issue that seems to worry Washington is the supposed connection between the illicit diamond trade and the wealthy and influential expatriate Lebanese communities in Sierra Leone and the DRC. The Shi'ite Amal militia in Lebanon, led by Sierra Leonean-born Nabih Berri, is known to have close links with Lebanese diamond dealers.
We are only now beginning to comprehend the full magnitude of the damaging impact such wars inflict on civilian populations and economies. In Sierra Leone, thousands of civilians are fleeing the heavily British-backed army offensive against the RUF. Western intervention is essentially about protecting Western interests. This should come as no big surprise. The notion that the West is waging war in Africa for Africa's sake is utterly ridiculous. The law of the jungle is little different from Rousseau's claim, "Every might that is greater than the first succeeds to its right."
