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The
view from Monrovia, Liberia
By
Jonathan
Power
September 5, 2003
MONROVIA, LIBERIA - African peacekeeping has perhaps
at last found the right turning on the dangerous road of
ethnic strife, tribal war and warlordism that besieges
too many countries in Africa. When President Olusegun
Obasanjo of Nigeria, engineered, or rather enticed, the
removal of the Liberian despot, Charles Taylor, to exile
in Nigeria last month it turned the page on a new chapter
in African peacekeeping efforts.
It has been nine years since the U.S. /UN debacle in
Somalia when the U.S. command of the UN peacekeeping
force decided to cut and run after the gruesome death of
18 American soldiers. This was followed by a period
during the Clinton Administration when the U. S. stood
back from Africa's wars. The administration effectively
vetoed a major peacekeeping operation that might have
stood a chance of forestalling the Rwandan genocide.
The combination of a rebirth of political confidence
in now democratic Ghana, Senegal, Mali, South Africa and,
most importantly, Nigeria, together with the surprising
decision of the Bush administration to play back up to
Nigerian-led diplomacy and peacekeeping in Liberia and to
support UN peacekeeping in the Congo, has transformed at
a stroke the outlook for dealing with African wars
present and future.
It can be seen here on the streets of Monrovia. After
23 years of on and off war which has witnessed atrocities
of unbelievable cruelty there is now a semblance of
peace. Fighting is still going on in the bush with the
rebel movements unwilling or perhaps unable to persuade
their troops to down arms as the recent peace agreement
mandates them to do, but the capital itself is taking its
first tentative steps to normalcy. The markets have been
reopened. The streets have been cleared of accumulated
rubbish. UN agencies are chlorinating 5000 wells and the
Red Cross and others are battling the outbreak of cholera
that has so far claimed a thousand deaths. The Nigerian
and other West African peacekeepers appear omnipresent
and this time they seem disciplined, effective and well
trained - unlike 1995 and '96, when a badly conceived,
badly led, peacekeeping operation led my Nigeria's
military government brought dishonour on the country. Its
soldiers were brought ignominiously home, a thousand in
body bags, after earning an appalling reputation as
rapists, looters and brutalizers. Today, in total
contrast, observers, including the UN chief
representative, the American ambassador and American
officers on the ground, speak highly of their
proficiency.
When Obasanjo flew into Monrovia early this week the
crowds thronged his route, waved and shouted, clearly
immensely joyful. He had a sober yet essentially
idealistic message both for the interim government of
President Moses Blah (Taylor's deputy) and for his own
troops. He reminded the government, still peopled with
the ranks of mass murderers whose hatred for the rebels
runs deep, that "you need to forgive one another. The
only thing that can give peace is love." And to his
troops he said, "even if you are provoked you must not
provoke. You are here to help serve not to harm or
oppress."
In conversation on his three hour plane ride from
Nigeria, Obasanjo talked in detail of how this
peacekeeping effort has been a breakthrough. "African-led
diplomacy, combined often with African troops, backed up
by the UN and now the U.S. ('if we don't have superpower
support our chances of success are slim') is the recipe
for success". He sees this pattern as one to be
replicated elsewhere - including in the Congo where this
week the UN began a large scale deployment in the
country's violence-torn eastern provinces.
One cannot underestimate the sea change that has come
about. This generation of West African leaders, many of
whom like Obasanjo came to power by the ballot, seems
more confident, less seized with living out a reaction to
colonialism and more prepared to work hand in hand with
the western powers and the international community at
large. Likewise the U.S. and its western allies, in
particularly Britain and France, seemed to have found a
way to work with African leaders without being
counterproductively overbearing.
Nevertheless, there is one thing that spoils the
picture and will perhaps be the stumbling block that
stops Obasanjo winning the plaudits he seeks, both at
home and abroad. It is the refusal to countenance handing
over Taylor to the UN War Crimes Court in Sierra Leone.
He gets angry at the suggestion this must be done. "By
giving this one man asylum I have saved thousands of
lives. What more does the international community want?"
Actually the Security Council for now is giving him an
easy ride on this one. But in three or so years' time, if
peace and democracy still prevail, it might be opportune
for Obasanjo to encourage Taylor to return home. Then, as
in Yugoslavia, a democratic Liberian government can
decide, just as Serbia's did with Milosevic, that the
time is right to turn him over to a war crimes' court.
Obasanjo, when pressed, seems open to such a
solution. Then the world would really know the worm
has turned in Africa.
I can be reached by phone +44
7785 351172 and e-mail: JonatPower@aol.com
Copyright © 2003 By
JONATHAN POWER
Follow this
link to read about - and order - Jonathan Power's book
written for the
40th Anniversary of
Amnesty International
"Like
Water on Stone - The Story of Amnesty
International"
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