The United Nations Security Council and War:The Evolution of Thought and Practice since 1945 (82 page)

In reference to the three questions posed in the introduction, we can conclude that the Council has not been able to articulate a coherent policy with regard to Afghanistan. Throughout the conflict the Council has been instrumentalized by the interests of its Permanent Members, notably the USSR/Russia and the US. When it was involved, through sanctions and post-conflict reconstruction, the effect of its policies has been limited, and in the case of the reconstruction of Afghanistan, the failure of its policy is now widely recognized. This analysis has revealed that the Council has not provided a framework through which a legitimate regime could be born, but rather has been a forum in which Permanent Members furthered their own short-term interests.

Despite the fact that proper reform of the Security Council is, in reality, very unlikely, one cannot fail to highlight the Council’s inability to adapt to the current international environment. In the absence of an international hierarchy, we will continue to require a forum where the rules and practices of international security can be properly defined. However, at present, as revealed in the case of Afghanistan, the Council was not even able to act as the spokesperson for the ‘international community’, the existence of which is yet to be demonstrated.

ADEKEYE ADEBAJO
*

S
INCE
the end of the Cold War in 1989, West Africa has been among the most volatile regions in the world. Local brushfires have raged from Liberia to Sierra Leone to Guinea to Guinea-Bissau to Senegal to Côte d’Ivoire in an interconnected web of instability.
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Owing in large part to neglect by the United Nations (UN) Security Council, West Africa has gone further than any other African sub-region in efforts to establish a security mechanism to manage its own conflicts.
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The Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) Ceasefire Monitoring Group (ECOMOG) intervention in Liberia between 1990 and 1998 was the first such action by a sub-regional organization in Africa relying principally on its own men, money, and military material. It was also the first time the UN had sent military observers to support an already established sub-regional force. The ECOMOG intervention in
Sierra Leone to restore the democratically elected government of Ahmed Tejan Kabbah to power in 1998 was equally unprecedented, and the UN took over ECOMOG’s peacekeeping responsibilities by 2000.
³

Building on the two experiences in Liberia and Sierra Leone, as well as the ECOWAS interventions in Côte d’Ivoire and Liberia in 2003 – both missions were also later taken over by the UN – West Africa’s leaders are currently attempting to institutionalize a security mechanism to manage future sub-regional conflicts. This mechanism could eventually become a system of subsidiarity directed by a Nigerian-led ECOWAS in which West Africans take decisions over security issues in their own sub-region without prior UN Security Council authorization: an issue that does not seem yet to trouble the Council much. In crafting the ECOWAS security mechanism of 1999, West African leaders feared that the UN Security Council could delay approval for necessary action in cases of sub-regional instability. They have thus interpreted
Chapter VIII
of the UN Charter – dealing with regional arrangements – to allow military interventions in cases of regional instability and unconstitutional changes of government, with the flexibility of informing the Council
after
troops have already been deployed. This approach is controversial and not universally recognized under international law, with many arguing that the UN Security Council is the only legitimate body that can sanction the use of force.
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In seeking to establish a Pax West Africana, ECOWAS leaders may be trying to define their own sub-system of international law that does not require prior UN authorization, but rather legitimation by ECOWAS.

But despite the lofty aspirations of West African leaders, hopes of a self-run security system are currently confronting the harsh reality of a lack of unity, capacity, and resources, as the three cases of Liberia, Sierra Leone, and Côte d’Ivoire will clearly demonstrate. The UN Security Council was forced eventually to take over all three missions from ECOWAS’s logistically ill-equipped and under-resourced peacekeepers. A division of labour was then worked out between the Council and ECOWAS in which the West Africans contributed the core of UN peacekeepers (and usually the
political or military heads of the missions), while the Security Council contributed additional troops, financing, and political oversight of the missions. This chapter will examine peace-making and peacekeeping cooperation between the UN and ECOWAS in Liberia, Sierra Leone, and Côte d’Ivoire.
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It will draw policy lessons from all three missions, which can guide future cooperation in the area of conflict management between the UN and ECOWAS.
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The chapter sets out to address four important questions related to the role of the Security Council in West Africa. First, what impact did the Council have on the management of the conflicts in Liberia, Sierra Leone, and Côte d’Ivoire, and can its role be considered a success or a failure in each case? Secondly, did the role of the Council change during the course of the three conflicts? Thirdly, what was the reaction of regional actors in West Africa to the role of the Council in these three cases? Finally, what lessons can the Council learn from these three conflicts in order to act more effectively in future cases in West Africa and beyond? The first three questions will be addressed in assessing the three cases, as well as in a short analytical section on the significance of the cases in relation to these questions. The final question about the policy lessons for the Council will be tackled in a concluding section that offers four policy recommendations for the Council’s future conflict management role in the areas of burden-sharing between the UN and ECOWAS; gaining and sustaining the political and financial support of key Council members; crafting targeted sanctions against ‘spoilers’ who obstruct peace processes; and harnessing the relative military and political clout of local hegemons like Nigeria to the UN’s conflict management efforts.

Liberia and Sierra Leone both endured a decade of civil wars that resulted in nearly 300,000 deaths and the spilling across borders of over one million refugees.
Liberia’s civil war lasted from December 1989 until early 1997 and was fought mainly by eight factions.
⁷
Elections in July 1997 were won by the most powerful warlord, Charles Taylor. The conflict erupted again in 1999 and ended only with Taylor’s enforced exile to Nigeria in 2003. ECOMOG’s involvement in Sierra Leone’s civil war was inextricably linked to its peacekeeping efforts in neighbouring Liberia’s civil war. The Revolutionary United Front (RUF) had invaded Sierra Leone from Liberia in March 1991 with the assistance of Taylor’s National Patriotic Front of Liberia (NPFL), resulting in several hundred Nigerian, Ghanaian, and Guinean troops being deployed to assist Sierra Leone, a fellow ECOMOG member, to defend its capital of Freetown. ECOMOG’s role in Sierra Leone increased tremendously after late Nigerian autocrat General Sani Abacha diverted peacekeepers from the concluding Liberia mission to Sierra Leone in an attempt to crush a military coup by the Sierra Leone Army (SLA) in Freetown in May 1997. After the putsch, the military junta invited the RUF to join its administration. They thus cemented a marriage of convenience between soldiers and rebels, giving birth to the ‘sobel’
⁸
phenomenon in West Africa. A Nigerian-led ECOMOG force reversed the coup in February 1998 and restored the elected president, Ahmed Tejan Kabbah, to power. However, the unsuccessful but devastating rebel invasion of Freetown in January 1999 demonstrated that ECOMOG was unable to eliminate the rebels as a military threat. In both Liberia and Sierra Leone, logistically ill-equipped and poorly funded peacekeeping missions
⁹
were unable to defeat recalcitrant rebels who refused to implement peace accords, and a military stalemate forced political accommodation and the appeasement of local warlords. The UN Security Council eventually stepped in to authorize a more international peacekeeping force under its control in both countries.
¹⁰

The conflicts in Liberia and Sierra Leone highlight the interdependence of security in West Africa and the importance of adopting a regional approach to conflict management, a point that the Security Council recognized by establishing a UN Office for West Africa (UNOWA) in Senegal in 2001.
¹¹
The civil war in Liberia had led to deep political splits within ECOWAS, with several francophone states opposing the Nigerian-led intervention which had also largely involved Ghana, Guinea, Sierra Leone, Senegal, Mali, and Gambia. The Liberian civil war had been triggered from Côte d’Ivoire, and the rebels received military support from Burkina Faso and Libya. The subsequent instability on the Guinea-Liberia border, and the rebel invasion of Liberia’s northern Lofa county by Liberians United for Reconciliation and Democracy (LURD) rebels in 1999 saw governments in Conakry and Monrovia supporting rival rebel movements against each other’s regime.

The descent of Côte d’Ivoire – formerly an oasis of calm amidst West Africa’s troubled waters – into conflict, took many observers by surprise. Though operating an autocratic, patrimonial political system between 1960 and 1993, Ivorian leader Félix Houphouet-Boigny had managed this system with great dexterity and adopted an enlightened policy towards the country’s large immigrant population – estimated at a quarter of the population.
¹²
The Ivorian leader died in December 1993. Houphouet’s heirs – Henri Konan Bédié, General Robert Guei, and Laurent Gbagbo – showed less skill and foresight than
le vieux
(‘the old man’) in managing the political system.
¹³
They instituted a xenophobic policy of
Ivoirité
which discriminated against Ivorians of mixed parentage and ‘foreigners,’ many of whom had been born in Côte d’Ivoire or lived in the country for a long time. The exclusion of former Ivorian premier Alassane Ouattara (who apparently had one parent born in Burkina Faso) from contesting presidential elections alienated many of his northern Muslim constituents, while Gbagbo – whose flawed election under the Ivorian Patriotic Front (FPI) in November 2000 was boycotted by most of the North – dismissed about 200 mostly northern soldiers from the army. These tensions culminated in a coup attempt by largely northern officers in September 2002 and the eventual emergence of three rebel factions: the Mouvement pour la Justice et la Paix (MJP), the Mouvement Populaire Ivorien du Grand Ouest (MPIGO), and the Mouvement Patriotique de la Côte
d’Ivoire – all later became known as the
Forces Nowvelles
. Gbagbo accused Burkina Faso and Liberia of fomenting the rebellion, while Taylor accused Côte d’Ivoire of backing Movement for Democracy in Liberia (MODEL) rebels. Liberian and Sierra Leonean fighters were reported to be fighting on the side of both the government and rebels in the Ivorian conflict. The war spilled over 125,000 Ivorian refugees into Liberia, Ghana, Guinea, Mali, and Burkina Faso.

Having provided the context for the role of the Security Council in West Africa’s wars, we next turn our attention to the three cases of Liberia, Sierra Leone, and Côte d’Ivoire.

The Security Council’s involvement in Liberia’s civil war was slow and tentative, underlining the UN’s historical reluctance to undertake peacekeeping missions with regional organizations.
¹⁴
ECOWAS requested technical assistance from the Council in 1990 to establish a peacekeeping force. The UN Secretariat in New York did not respond positively, though James Jonah, UN Under-Secretary-General for Special Political Questions, was dispatched to regional peace meetings and became a trusted adviser for ECOWAS leaders and a strong advocate for ECOMOG within the Secretariat.
¹⁵
When the Liberian civil war erupted, Security Council action was blocked at first by the three African members – Côte d’Ivoire, Zaire (now the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC)), and Ethiopia – who reflexively opposed interference in the internal affairs of an Organization of African Unity (OAU) – now the African Union (AU) – member state. While African countries could not veto any Security Council action, Council members traditionally deferred to their African colleagues when discussing action on continental issues. Côte d’Ivoire was also supporting Charles Taylor’s NPFL faction. Only after political consensus had emerged within ECOWAS and ECOMOG had intervened in the conflict did the Security Council issue a statement, at Abidjan’s request, commending ECOMOG’s efforts in January 1991.
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Many ECOWAS states strongly opposed a UN presence in Liberia in these early stages, as they did in Sierra Leone, out of fear that the Blue Helmets would steal the glory for ECOWAS’s sacrifices.
¹⁷

West African governments, however, strongly lobbied the Security Council to impose an arms embargo against Liberia’s warlords in November 1992 after nine
ECOWAS foreign ministers had participated in a Council debate in New York.
¹⁸
This marked the start of increasing UN involvement in peace-making efforts in the same year that the new UN Secretary-General, Boutros Boutros-Ghali, had just published his landmark
An Agenda for Peace
report calling for increased collaboration between the UN and regional organizations.
¹⁹
The Cotonou accord of July 1993 saw the Secretary-General dispatch a Special Representative, Trevor Gordon-Somers, to take the lead from ECOWAS in peace negotiations. The agreement also called for the involvement of UN and OAU peacekeepers in Liberia. A Joint Ceasefire Monitoring Committee was mandated to investigate and resolve ceasefire violations. The Committee was chaired by a UN Observer Mission in Liberia (UNOMIL) and involved ECOMOG as well as representatives of all of Liberia’s armed factions. ECOMOG’s 16,000 peacekeepers had an explicit right of self-defence under Cotonou which mandated them to exercise ‘peace enforcement powers’ with the approval of a UN-chaired Ceasefire Violations Committee. The UN was effectively being sent to ‘police’ ECOMOG’s peacekeepers: a role that was to fuel tensions between both forces.