The United Nations Security Council and War:The Evolution of Thought and Practice since 1945 (84 page)

On 19 August 1999, Nigeria’s new president, Olusegun Obasanjo, wrote to UN Secretary-General, Kofi Annan, informing him of Nigeria’s intention to withdraw 2,000 of its peacekeepers from Sierra Leone every month. The Nigerian president, however, offered to subsume some of Nigeria’s 12,000 troops under a new UN mission.
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Obasanjo began the phased withdrawal on 31 August and suspended the process only after a plea by Sierra Leonean president Ahmed Tejan Kabbah and Annan not to leave a security vacuum in Sierra Leone. But with the UN’s realization that Obasanjo was not bluffing when he announced the withdrawal of Nigerian troops from Sierra Leone, Annan was forced to recommend to the Security Council that a UN peacekeeping Mission in Sierra Leone (UNAMSIL) take over from ECOMOG. The mission was established in October 1999 under an Indian Force Commander, General Vijay Jetley.
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Obasanjo rejected a Security Council proposal that ECOMOG continue to protect Freetown and undertake enforcement actions against rogue rebel elements.
Nigeria’s president realized that ECOMOG, in being saddled with these dangerous tasks, would remain a useful scapegoat if things went wrong in Sierra Leone. As the UN was widely criticized for failing to protect safe havens’ in Bosnia and civilians in Rwanda, critics would have been able to blame any failings in Sierra Leone on ECOMOG rather than the UN. Nigeria thus refused to remain in Sierra Leone in a situation in which there would be two peacekeeping missions with different mandates, commands, and conditions of service.
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The UN Secretariat turned down ECOMOG’s request for the UN to finance the entire ECOMOG force, though about 4,000 of its peacekeepers were subsumed under the new UN force.
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ECOWAS and other sub-regional organizations continue to question why their peacekeepers should be accountable to a Security Council that refuses to finance their missions.
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There was also much hostility directed against the presence of Nigerian peacekeepers from within the UN’s Department of Peacekeeping Operations (DPKO). Many UN officials insisted on a reduced Nigerian role while overselling a new UN mission to Sierra Leoneans who were misled into believing that the Blue Helmets would be prepared to fight the country’s rebels.
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In order to fill the vacuum left by the departure of Nigerian peacekeepers, UNAMSIL was expanded to 11,000 troops in February 2000, and eventually to more than 17,500 peacekeepers.
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Oluyemi Adeniji, a Nigerian diplomat who had served as the UN Special Representative in the Central African Republic, was appointed as the UN Special Representative in Sierra Leone. This compensated Nigeria for not gaining the force commander position which Obasanjo had wanted but which had been strongly resisted within the UN Secretariat and Security Council.
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UNAMSIL’s core contingents consisted of Nigerian, Indian, Jordanian, Kenyan, Bangladeshi, Guinean, Ghanaian, and Zambian battalions. But the logistically ill-equipped UN force soon ran into difficulties. The RUF prevented the deployment of UNAMSIL to the diamond-rich eastern provinces, and, from May 2000, attacked UN peacekeepers, killing some of them, holding 500 of them hostage, and seizing their heavy weapons and vehicles.
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The rebels were seeking to exploit the vacuum created by the departure of Nigerian peacekeepers from Sierra Leone. A brief British military intervention with about 800 troops between May and June 2000 helped to stabilize the situation in Freetown and its environs.

UNAMSIL also experienced its own internal problems. A UN assessment mission sent to Sierra Leone in June 2000 found serious management problems in the
mission and a lack of common understanding of the mandate and rules of engagement. The assessment mission noted that some of UNAMSIL’s military units lacked proper training and equipment.
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There were constant reports of tension between the UN’s political and military leadership
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even before a confidential report written by General Jetley was inadvertently leaked to the international media in September 2000. In the report, the Indian force commander accused senior Nigerian military and political officials of attempting to sabotage the UN mission in Sierra Leone by colluding with RUF rebels to prolong the conflict in order to benefit from the country’s illicit diamond trade. No evidence was provided for the allegations. Tremendous political damage was, however, done to UNAMSIL by this incident: Nigeria refused to place its peacekeepers under Jetley’s command, and India subsequently announced the withdrawal of its entire 3,000-strong contingent from Sierra Leone in September 2000. India was followed by Jordan which cited the refusal of the UK to put its own forces under UN command as a reason for its departure.
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Following the difficulties with the RUF, ECOWAS also agreed, as the Nigerians were withdrawing their troops, to send a 3,000-strong rapid reaction force, consisting largely of US-trained Nigerian, Ghanaian, and Senegalese troops to bolster UNAMSIL.

After the events of 2000, an International Contact Group for Sierra Leone was established by the Security Council involving the US, the UK, and key donor and ECOWAS governments. The Group held periodic meetings in order to mobilize funds for Sierra Leone’s peace process. In recognition of the role of the illicit diamond trade in fuelling this conflict, the Security Council prohibited the global importation of rough diamonds from Sierra Leone in July 2000 until a certification scheme was put in place for official diamond exports three months later.
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At a UN hearing in the same month, Washington and London strongly criticized Liberia and Burkina Faso for their alleged role in diamond-smuggling and gunrunning in support of RUF rebels in Sierra Leone. The Council thus imposed sanctions on Liberia’s diamond exports and slapped a travel ban on its officials in March 2001,
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even in the face of opposition from several ECOWAS leaders who argued that Taylor’s help had been vital in securing the Lomé accord.

The UN’s disarmament programme for 72,000 Sierra Leonean combatants was completed in January 2002. UN-monitored elections in May 2002 saw president Kabbah re-elected in a landslide victory and the RUF Party (RUFP) failing to win a single seat. The decade-long war in Sierra Leone was finally over. In September 2004, UNAMSIL completed the transfer of primary responsibility for maintaining
peace and security to the government of Sierra Leone. By the end of December 2004, the UN had about 4,000 peacekeepers in Sierra Leone.
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After five years of sometimes tortuous peacekeeping, the UN finally withdrew its remaining troops from Sierra Leone in December 2005. Though the country remained largely peaceful in 2005, many peace-building challenges remained unresolved. The UN had spent an estimated US$5 billion in Sierra Leone in five years,
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but much of this had gone towards its peacekeeping mission rather than to reintegrate ex-combatants into society; to reverse massive youth unemployment; to restructure a new national army; or to help restore state institutions.

The UN established an Integrated Office in Sierra Leone (UNIOSIL) in January 2006, under Executive Representative Victor da Silva Angelo, to coordinate international peace consolidation efforts and to support the government with the organization of the 2007 elections. However, given past experiences in Liberia, Angola, and the Central African Republic (CAR), it is highly unlikely that this office will have sufficient resources and staff to assist the Sierra Leonean government effectively in its peace-building tasks. The government in Freetown collected revenues from its diamond industry of only US$82 million in the first half of 2005, and more than half of its diamond mining still involved unlicensed operators.
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Violent student and labour protests increased amidst widespread youth unemployment and weak government capacity. Instability in Côte d’Ivoire, the fragile situation in Liberia, and reports of encroachment into Sierra Leonean territory by Guinean troops occupying disputed border areas in April 2006 could still threaten the country’s new-found peace.
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We next turn our attention to the role of the UN Security Council in Côte d’Ivoire. Several mediation efforts by ECOWAS in Accra, Ghana, and Lomé, Togo, eventually led to the brokering of the Linas-Marcoussis accord in France in January 2003. The accord established a transitional government with a neutral prime minister, Seydou Diarra – a respected northern former diplomat – who was mandated to oversee the disarmament of the rebels and to organize elections. Ivorian president Laurent Gbagbo and his supporters felt that they had been railroaded into this accord and resented being treated on a level of parity with the rebels, thus setting the scene for anti-French demonstrations in Abidjan.
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France, which has maintained a permanent military base in Côte d’Ivoire since the country’s independence
in 1960, deployed about 4,600 troops to monitor the ceasefire (Operation Licorne). And 1,288 troops from largely francophone Senegal, Niger, Togo, Benin, and Ghana known as the ECOWAS Mission in Côte d’Ivoire (ECOMICI) were also deployed in the country by early 2003 in what represented the fourth ECOWAS military mission to a West African country in thirteen years. Nigeria, which had been the backbone of the ECOWAS missions in Liberia and Sierra Leone, would contribute just 5 troops to a UN mission in Côte d’Ivoire, underlining its historical rivalry for leadership of West Africa with both Paris and Abidjan.
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The ECOWAS mission in Côte d’Ivoire was largely financed and equipped by France, with other logistical and financial assistance provided by Belgium, the UK, the Netherlands, and the US. ECOWAS promised to increase the number of its peacekeepers to 3,209 if funds could be secured, and on a visit to New York in April 2003, its Ghanaian Executive Secretary, Mohammed Chambas, asked the Security Council to provide these funds.
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Meanwhile, France also sought – like Britain in Sierra Leone – to use its permanent seat on the Security Council to secure a substantial UN peacekeeping force in Côte d’Ivoire.
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Tensions over the Anglo-American occupation of Iraq in March 2003 at first contributed to Washington’s reluctance to sanction a large UN force in Côte d’Ivoire. After France overcame American opposition, the Council authorized a political assistance mission in Côte d’Ivoire (MINUCI),
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which was then transformed in February 2004 into the US$400 million a year, 6,240-strong UN peacekeeping mission (UNOCI).
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The mission was mandated to work alongside the 4,600 French troops to maintain a zone of confidence’ between government and rebel troops and to implement the Marcoussis peace accord. UNOCI was also tasked to oversee the disarmament of 26,000
Forces Nouvelles
troops and 4,000 government soldiers. The peacekeepers further provided security to opposition politicians in Abidjan. Senegalese general Abdoulaye Fall was named force commander of UNOCI which also had a 700-strong contingent from Morocco: one of France’s most reliable African allies. By November 2004, the UN force, under Special Representative Albert Tevoedjre, had 5,995 peacekeepers. The small ECOWAS force was rehatted’ under this new UN mission, as had occurred in Sierra Leone and Liberia.

UNOCI was rocked in November 2004 when government soldiers attacked
Forces Nouvelles
positions and killed nine French soldiers in the northern city of Bouaké. French troops destroyed the entire Ivorian air force of nine planes, resulting in violent demonstrations against French interests and a mass evacuation of about 10,000 foreign (mostly French) citizens from Côte d’Ivoire. Jittery French troops killed about fifty government-backed ‘Young Patriot’ demonstrators outside Abidjan’s Hotel Ivoire where many foreigners had taken shelter. These violent demonstrations by government-backed and other militias continued throughout the conflict, sometimes resulting in murders of innocent civilians. The distrust between the former colonial power and many Ivorians, fanned by a government that feared that Paris was bent on its removal, reached new heights. Gbagbo’s supporters accused France of trying to recolonise’ the country by using agents’ like Burkina Faso.
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The
Forces Nouvelles
rebels accused Guinea of backing the government militarily. While Gbagbo talked of leaving the French-dominated CFA (Communauté Financière Africaine) franc currency zone, his hard-line speaker of parliament, Mamadou Coulibaly, called for a complete break with the former colonial power. Gbagbo was further angered when France pushed the Security Council to impose an arms embargo and legal sanctions supported by largely francophone countries and Nigeria at a summit in Abuja.
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There were also splits between the
Forces Nouvelles
rebels which sometimes resulted in deadly military clashes. Both the UN and French Licorne troops came under attack and frequently had their freedom of movement restricted by the warring factions.

Part of the complication of the Ivorian case lay in the proliferation of external mediators which raised obvious questions about too many cooks spoiling the broth. Presidents John Kufuor of Ghana, Nigeria’s Olusegun Obasanjo, Gabon’s Omar Bongo, Sierra Leone’s Ahmed Kabbah, Togo’s Gnassingbé Eyadéma, and Niger’s Mamadou Tandja were all involved in peace-making efforts. South Africa, ECOWAS, the AU, the UN, and the Francophonie all nominated their own special envoys to Côte d’Ivoire. AU Chairman Obasanjo appointed South Africa’s Thabo Mbeki as the organization’s mediator in November 2004, bringing some focus to the peace-making process. After his appointment, Mbeki visited Abidjan and called the parties to Pretoria to discuss their differences. The Ivorian factions had gone to Accra in July 2004 in a meeting chaired by Kufuor and UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan, and attended by thirteen African heads of state. The Accra III accord that emerged set a new timetable for implementing the Marcoussis accord: amending of discriminatory nationality and electoral laws by September 2004, and starting the disarmament process by October 2004. Both deadlines were missed.