The South
African Institute of International Affairs
INTELLIGENCE UPDATE
21/2000
Sierra Leone burns while the UN fiddles
Sierra
Leone continues to suffer from its nearly decade-long war, and on the surface
little has changed. The rainy season is
ending and the war is sure to resume in earnest. The Revolutionary United Front (RUF) rebels are stronger than
ever, and their godfather, President Charles Taylor of Liberia, continues to
support them while deceiving the international community with spurious peace
prospects. The United Nations force,
UNAMSIL, lacks direction and languishes in Freetown begging for more troop
contributions, while suffering a critical net loss as two key countries
withdraw their battalions.
Behind the scenes, however, there are some new
developments. Charles Taylor’s
regime has suffered some setbacks and the RUF is showing signs of breaking into
smaller factions. The British have made
new, stronger commitments to the government of Sierra Leone and to UNAMSIL. Nevertheless, the possibility of long-term
peace remains elusive and may require more robust and unconventional efforts to
secure a peace.
Political
dynamics of the RUF
While the primary RUF
leader, Foday Sankoh, remains in prison, his designated replacement,
Colonel Issa Sesay talks peace.
Few Sierra Leoneans trust Sesay, and recent fighting seems to be
undercutting his offers. The RUF have
initiated a number of skirmishes with government militia, and last month they
made repeated forays into neighbouring Guinea, bolstered by Liberian soldiers.
There are signs of political
divisions within the RUF. The rebels have never had a popular base within
Sierra Leone; they have always relied on Charles Taylor for their support. It now appears that Sesay may not have been
Taylor’s first choice to replace Sankoh.
Taylor preferred Sam ‘Maskita’ Bockarie, who, unlike Sesay, is
based close to Taylor in Monrovia, the capital of Liberia. It appears that Sesay is more in control of
the less organised RUF in the western part of Sierra Leone, while Bockarie and
Taylor control the better-trained and better-equipped units in the east. The Kono diamond fields that fund both the
RUF and Taylor are in the east as well, and the RUF are consolidating their
grip on the area. There are frequent
helicopter supply flights from Liberia (flown by Ukrainians), and numerous
reports of rogue South African mercenaries and even Serbs, Israelis and an
American running training camps and providing support.
Events in Liberia could
influence what happens in Sierra Leone. A rebellion backed by dissidents in
Guinea has destabilised the north of Liberia.
The Liberian army has not received pay for some time now and seems
ineffective and unreliable. Taylor no longer trusts his handpicked bodyguards
either, despite their new equipment, recent training and higher pay. Instead, he seems to increasingly rely on
Sierra Leoneans from the RUF for his personal protection. There were also rumours that his treacherous
son, Chucky Taylor, may have tried to assassinate his father a few weeks
ago, and was ‘demoted’ as a result.
Therefore, Taylor’s days could be numbered, and if Taylor goes, so does
the RUF.
The United Nations
A collapse of
the Taylor regime could be just the thing needed to rescue the UNAMSIL
peacekeeping mission. Since the Lomé
Agreement broke down spectacularly in May, when a number of peacekeepers were
killed and hundreds disarmed and taken hostage by the RUF, UNAMSIL has been
licking its wounds in Freetown and its troop numbers have shrunk as a result of
political disagreements and infighting.
The currently authorised strength of 13,500 troops will decline when
both the Indians and Jordanians pull out their battalions. UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan would
like to increase troop numbers to 20,500, but few countries are stepping
forward to offer soldiers to this ill-fated mission. In any case, no one seems to have any idea what UNAMSIL would do
with the extra troops since the current troops are doing little beyond building
and manning useless road blocks on the streets of Freetown. Sierra Leone’s deputy
defence minister, Chief Hinga Norman, aptly described UNAMSIL as ‘an
elephant without bones’.
UNAMSIL has a new
commander, General Daniel Ishmael Opande of Kenya. He replaced Major-General Vijay Jetley
of India who left after a disastrous political confrontation with his Nigerian
lieutenants. The Nigerians have been
involved in the Sierra Leonean war for many years and resented the fact that
they were not given the leadership of the UNAMSIL mission. Worse, Jetley’s accusations (largely true)
that top Nigerian officers were colluding with the RUF in the diamond trade
ensured that Jetley would not stay long.
General Opande has his work cut out for him, but he will be
substantially aided by the fact that a very capable British officer, Brigadier Alastair
Duncan, has been appointed as his deputy. Duncan has experience in both
Bosnia and Northern Ireland which can only be good for the mission. The British
influence in the country is crucial.
The British
From the
Sierra Leonean perspective, the British are the most respected of all the key
players in the country. The UN is
regarded with contempt as a result of their collapse in May 2000 and their
refusal to fight the RUF even though the mandate specifically allowed for
this. The Nigerians are somewhat appreciated
due to their willingness to shoot at the RUF when necessary, but at the same
time they are derided for their lack of discipline and their involvement in
diamond smuggling. But the British are
a different story altogether and many Sierra Leoneans openly call for
‘recolonisation’.
The British are
reluctant players but they raise the level of their involvement in Sierra Leone
almost weekly. For several years they
have been running essential programmes designed to reform the Sierra Leone
Ministry of Defence, the police and legal system, and parliament. The collapse of UNAMSIL in May was a huge
setback, and it meant that their programmes, designed for the medium and long
term were in danger of being undermined by short-term events. British
troops were rushed in to bolster the UN mission and may have prevented total
collapse. This may have forced the British to increase their involvement beyond
what is politically tenable.
The incident in
September 2000 where the British had to rescue British Army officers taken
hostage by a military faction (the West Side Boys) resulted in the death of an
SAS soldier and was politically expensive.
Still, since May, the British have been retraining the unreliable Sierra
Leonean army in an effort to fill the short-term gap. Opinions are mixed as to the success of the retraining programme,
and it is important to keep in mind that the Sierra Leonean Army has changed
sides more than once. The retrained
units will soon be tested in combat. Expectations are low but it is hoped that
they will eventually be able to stand up to the RUF. If not, it will be another
severe blow to the British goal of stabilising the country.
More recently, the
British have sent the HMS Ocean—along with 400 crack Royal Marines—to a
position within striking distance of Sierra Leone. These troops are unlikely to see any combat, but they do make the
point that Britain is not going to stand by if the RUF threaten Freetown. They will also do much to bolster the
spirits of the beleaguered UNAMSIL mission.
This increasing involvement could cause serious political problems in
Westminster if there is no quick resolution to the war. A British withdrawal would be a worst-case
scenario for tiny Sierra Leone.
Paying for peace?
Many members
of Sierra Leone’s civil society have called for a private solution. The South African private military company
(PMC) Executive Outcomes virtually won the war back in 1997 but international
pressure forced them to leave. Since then, more than ten thousand Sierra
Leoneans have died as a direct result of the resumption of the brutal war.
Calls for a return of an
Executive Outcomes-type company are strong, not just among Sierra Leoneans but
also—off the record—among British and even UN personnel. From a military standpoint, ending the war
in Sierra Leone is not a difficult proposition. PMCs have indicated that Sierra
Leone could be secured in a matter of months with a few hundred professional
soldiers—at a fraction of the cost of the current UN mission. Questions of transparency and accountability
would have to be addressed first, but these issues seem trivial compared to the
problems UNAMSIL is facing. The choice is
between utilising a PMC to end the war, or watching the impotent UNAMSIL continue to dither while thousands more
Sierra Leoneans die.
Conclusion
If the UN is
left to find peace on its own, the
result will most probably be a de facto division of the country between the
RUF-occupied north and the government militia controlled south. UNAMSIL seems
to be in no hurry to do anything, and is simply waiting for events to
happen. If Taylor’s regime were to
fall, then perhaps inaction is the easiest action, since the RUF will probably
not survive long without Liberian support.
However, if Taylor holds on to power, the RUF will continue to cause
havoc in Sierra Leone and exacerbate regional instability through their attacks
on Guinea. If that happens, the outlook
for Sierra Leoneans will be much, much worse.
The British clearly want
a quick resolution, and their new deputy in UNAMSIL may be there to push for
more decisive action. The RUF are
militarily incompetent, and sustained pressure by the better UN units, the
retrained Sierra Leonean army, and the government militia could be enough to
force a new peace agreement. Whether
UNAMSIL is willing to become proactive instead of reactive remains to be
seen. The quickest way to end the
problem is for the UN to sub-contract the more robust military missions to a
private company, but the political opposition to surrendering this role to
private companies is formidable.
The most likely scenario is continued inaction by UNAMSIL; continued instability, but not collapse, within Liberia; continued friction, but not disintegration, within the RUF; and continued war for Sierra Leone.