The United Nations Security Council and War:The Evolution of Thought and Practice since 1945 (83 page)

Demonstrating the increasing but still insufficient international attention that Liberia was attracting, the Security Council established the $US 5,650,000 a month UN Observer Mission in Liberia in September 1993, dispatching 368 unarmed military observers to Liberia by early 1994 under Kenyan General Daniel Opande.
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Under the Cotonou agreement, UNOMIL was responsible for monitoring the cantonment, disarmament, and demobilization of Liberian combatants, as well as overseeing the UN-imposed arms embargo of 1992. UNOMIL was also mandated to work with ECOMOG which had primary responsibility for disarming the factions. The UN’s mandate further obliged it to report on human rights violations and to coordinate humanitarian assistance. ECOMOG would be responsible for ensuring the security of UNOMIL’s civilian and unarmed military personnel.

Sharp disagreements soon arose between ECOMOG and UNOMIL. Initial friction was already evident after the arrival of the UN military observers in 1993. ECOMOG’s logistically ill-equipped peacekeepers were often heard complaining that the UN did not make its vehicles and helicopters available for their use, and felt that the better paid UN staff flaunted their status while leaving most of the difficult tasks to ECOMOG. These problems were further exacerbated by Boutros-Ghali’s allegations, in an October 1994 report to the Security Council, that ECOMOG had collaborated with anti-NPFL combatants during fighting in Gbarnga in September 1994.
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ECOMOG officers felt that these accusations detracted from other praiseworthy activities by their peacekeepers like escorting humanitarian
relief convoys to the countryside and providing security to displaced persons in Monrovia and Tubmanburg. But ECOMOG’s cooperation with anti-NPFL factions, dating back to the beginning of its mission in Liberia, was not in dispute.

There were five other key areas of disagreement between ECOMOG and UNOMIL. First, ECOMOG soldiers, who earned US$5 a day and were often irregularly paid, were irritated that UNOMIL observers were earning US$100 for performing far less strenuous and risky activities. Secondly, ECOMOG wanted UNOMIL strictly to observe’ rather than supervise’ disarmament. Thirdly, ECOMOG’s officials were irritated by what they regarded as UN Special Representative Gordon-Somers’ unilateral disarmament negotiations with the parties without proper consultation with ECOMOG staff. The fourth area of disagreement involved UNOMIL’s Chief Military Observer, General Opande, and ECOMOG’s Nigerian Field Commander between 1993 and 1996, General Mark Inienger: both held different views about disarmament strategy. Opande asked that Charles Taylor be given the benefit of the doubt in his offer to disarm his combatants unilaterally and talked of the NPFL’s ‘good faith’. Inienger and his officers considered this view naive, and saw Taylor’s offer as an attempt to avoid close scrutiny of his arms and military positions. The final area of disagreement involved ECOMOG’s criticism of UNOMIL for deploying some of its military observers without consultation with the West Africans who were mandated to protect them.
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UNOMIL argued that it had obtained the consent of the factions to deploy, and that it could not fulfil its mandate by remaining in the capital of Monrovia. It also accused ECOMOG of violating its mandate by not protecting UN personnel and by restricting their freedom of movement.
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It is important to note how regional and Liberian actors viewed the UN’s role in Liberia. Gordon-Somers resigned his post in December 1994. During his two-year stint, the Jamaican technocrat had become deeply unpopular among Liberian political actors for what they considered to be a reckless push for the premature installation of an interim government before the completion of the disarmament process, and for his apparent willingness to accommodate warlords like Charles Taylor and Alhaji Kromah. After the debacle over the stillborn Akosombo accord in September 1994, which awarded Liberia’s powerful warlords seats on a ruling Council and was strongly opposed by Liberia’s civil society groups as well as the Nigerian government, Gordon-Somers wrote to Boutros-Ghali and requested that he be withdrawn from his post, saying that he had achieved as much as he could in Liberia.
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With ECOMOG struggling to overcome its financial difficulties and political divisions, Boutros-Ghali suggested in February 1995 that the Security Council establish a large UN peacekeeping force under which ECOMOG would be
subsumed.
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But with the most powerful members of the Council – particularly the US – increasingly wary of proliferating peacekeeping missions amidst the disasters of Somalia in 1993 and Rwanda in 1994, the proposal met with an eloquent silence. After Boutros-Ghali’s threat in June 1995 to withdraw the UN’s sixty-three observers from Liberia, nervous ECOWAS states reacted by warning that any UN withdrawal would compromise ECOMOG’s efforts and could lead to the further destabilization of the West African sub-region.
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This again underlined the importance, for reasons of international legitimacy and attention, of the largely symbolic UN presence to ECOMOG’s efforts. But it also underlined the complex relationship between the UN and ECOWAS. While ECOWAS leaders wanted the UN’s political legitimacy and greater military and economic resources, they were concerned about the UN coming in late in the day to steal ECOMOG’s thunder after several years of lonely peacekeeping. Military cooperation between the UN and ECOMOG after the start of the disarmament and demobilization process in 1996 saw continued joint investigations of ceasefire violations and UNOMIL’s verification of the arms and ammunition secured during ECOMOG’s cordon-and-search operations. Two weeks before elections in July 1997, the UN deployed 200 observers to Liberia to monitor the poll. The four-year UNOMIL presence in Liberia eventually cost the international community no more than US$115 million.
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This mission was more effective in providing ECOMOG with political legitimacy than in bolstering military efforts on the ground.

Despite ECOMOG’s peacekeeping presence in Liberia between 1990 and 1998, the lack of security sector reform and reintegration of ex-combatants into local communities, as well as Charles Taylor’s autocratic rule and the transformation of his NPFL rebel movement into a private security force to protect his regime, eventually triggered the second civil war in a decade when LURD rebels attacked Liberia from Guinea in 1999. The volcanic situation in Liberia threatened to spread its deadly lava across the sub-region. After fighting between Taylor’s government and rebels in June and July 2003 that killed an estimated 1,000 civilians in Monrovia, the warlord-turned-president was pressured by regional leaders and the US to go into exile in Nigeria in August 2003. In the same month, a Comprehensive Peace Agreement was signed by all of Liberia’s parties which called for the establishment of a National Transitional Government under businessman, Charles Gyude Bryant.

A Nigerian battalion deployed in Liberia shortly after Taylor’s departure. These were the advanced units of a 3,600-strong ECOWAS Mission in Liberia (ECOMIL) which became part of a UN peacekeeping mission to which Ghana, Senegal, Mali, Benin, Gambia, Guinea-Bissau, and Togo also contributed. The US sent a small
force of 200 soldiers – who remained off the Monrovian coast – to provide limited logistical support for ECOMIL, while the UN took over the peacekeeping mission in October 2003.
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Burned by their earlier experiences in Liberia and Sierra Leone, the Nigerians agreed to deploy only if the UN took over the force three months later. Stung by its own experiences in Somalia when eighteen American troops had been killed in October 1993 during a botched military mission, Washington was only too willing to support a Nigerian-led mission in order to avoid pressure to intervene itself in Liberia – a country set up by freed American slaves in 1847 with long historical ties to the US.

The Security Council mandated the UN Mission in Liberia (UNMIL) to support the implementation of the ceasefire agreement and peace process; to provide assistance for security sector reform; and to facilitate humanitarian and human rights assistance.
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No doubt to maintain Washington’s interest in the mission, American diplomat Jacques Paul Klein was named Special Representative of the UN Secretary-General. UNMIL’s largest contingents came from Bangladesh, Ethiopia, Nigeria, and Pakistan. By May 2004, 14,131 troops had arrived in Liberia.
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While UN peacekeepers were able to avert the imminent bloodshed in Monrovia and to increase stability in the country during the three-year mission, sporadic incidents continued throughout UNMIL’s stay: inter-factional fighting within LURD; fighting in Nimba, Grand Bassa, and Bong counties; churches, mosques, and property being burned; and ex-combatants embarking on violent demonstrations. Rampant corruption within the interim government was also a frequent source of concern.

The Joint Monitoring Committee chaired by UNMIL – and former UNOMIL – force commander General Daniel Opande, and consisting of all the factions and government forces, met regularly to try to resolve security disputes. Disarmament of the factions began in December 2003 and was completed in October 2004, by which time 101,449 combatants had been disarmed and demobilized, as well as 612 ‘mercenaries’ from Côte d’Ivoire, Ghana, Guinea, Mali, Nigeria, and Sierra Leone. An Implementation Monitoring Committee also started meeting in November 2003 chaired by UNMIL and ECOWAS and involving representatives of the AU, the European Union (EU), and the International Contact Group on Liberia, which extended its work to the Mano River basin in September 2004. An International Reconstruction Conference for Liberia in New York in February 2004, pledged US$522 million towards the country’s rebuilding, US$244 million of which had arrived six months later.

Liberia held elections on schedule in October and November 2005. UN peacekeepers provided security in the election which Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf, a former Liberian finance minister and former head of the UN Development Programme’s
(UNDP) Africa Bureau, won to become Africa’s first elected female head of state. Despite these polls, the security situation in Liberia remained fragile. Plans for restructuring a new Liberian army proceeded slowly, as the international community once more failed to provide sufficient funding for both this exercise and reintegrating ex-combatants into local communities. There was a US$3 million shortfall for security sector reform in December 2005
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and a US$5 million deficit in the reintegration of ex-combatants in March 2006
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, raising fears of future insecurity. Since the failure to undertake security sector reform in 1997 and to provide jobs for ex-combatants had contributed greatly to a return to war after only two years, the Security Council would be wise to prioritize these two key areas to ensure that its annual peacekeeping investment in Liberia of about US$700 million between 2004 and 2006 is not wasted. The Council wisely decided to maintain the UN peacekeeping mission in Liberia until at least 2007 so as to ensure a gradual drawdown of its troops.

Significant cooperation between the UN Security Council and ECOWAS in Sierra Leone started in March 1995 with the appointment of the UN Special Envoy, Berhanu Dinka, who was involved in negotiations between the government of Ahmed Tejan Kabbah and RUF rebels in Abidjan in 1996. The Abidjan accord soon became a dead letter due to the profound distrust between Dinka and Côte d’Ivoire – the host – as well as the pernicious role played by Akyaaba Addai-Sebo, a friend of Charles Taylor and reportedly of Ivorian foreign minister Amara Essy.
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Addai-Sebo was the representative of International Alert, a London-based Non-Governmental Organization (NGO), who is said to have encouraged RUF intransigence during negotiations. After a military coup toppled Kabbah in May 1997, the Security Council imposed an arms and oil embargo on Sierra Leone five months later.
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The Council established the UN Observer Mission in Sierra Leone (UNOMSIL) in July 1998 under Indian General Subhash Joshi.
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UNMOSIL was tasked with monitoring the military and economic situation in Sierra Leone; observing respect of international humanitarian law; and monitoring the disarmament and demobilization of ex-combatants. But with only about fifty observers, the UN played a very limited role alongside ECOMOG’s 13,000 troops. As in Liberia, there was strong resentment among ECOMOG soldiers against the better-paid and better-resourced UN military observers. As one ECOMOG officer wryly put it: They
[UN observers] are here on picnic and holiday. I wish we could open the beaches for them to sun-tan and enjoy their dollars.’
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Another issue that caused friction between ECOWAS and the UN was the intervention by a largely Nigerian force in Freetown to reverse a military coup in February 1998. An ECOWAS Committee of five foreign ministers was consulting with UN Security Council members in New York at the time, and diplomats on the Council felt that they should have been informed about the intervention. The foreign ministers were, however, themselves unaware of the timing of the intervention.
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The Lomé agreement was signed in July 1999 between Kabbah’s government and the RUF. The accord provided for cabinet posts for the RUF in a Government of National Unity and gave its leader, Foday Sankoh, a ceremonial vice-presidency as well as the Chairmanship of a Commission for the Management of Strategic Resources. The RUF had committed many atrocities during the conflict – including the amputation of limbs and countless massacres – and many people were uncomfortable with its presence in the government. As with earlier accords in Abidjan (1996) and Conakry (1997), a controversial amnesty was offered for war crimes, though the UN Special Representative, Francis Okelo, entered a reservation for the organization in cases of crimes against humanity. The UN was asked to contribute troops to help oversee disarmament and to provide staff to help conduct elections, while an ECOWAS-chaired Joint Implementation Committee was established to meet every three months to oversee the agreement’s implementation. This Committee was also charged with monitoring the repatriation and resettlement of 500,000 Sierra Leonean refugees from Guinea and Liberia.
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