by Guy Arnold
At the end of December the RUF and the former Armed Forces Revolutionary Council launched a major onslaught upon Freetown. They were driven back by ECOMOG forces within two weeks but not before some 3,000 citizens had been killed and huge damage had been inflicted upon the city. The rebels remained within 20 miles of Freetown and appeared to have control over about 60 per cent of the country. Since repeated attacks upon their positions failed to dislodge them, Kabbah came under mounting pressure to restart negotiations. Nigeria was the mainstay of ECOMOG but at a cost of 900 lives and US$1 million a day. It now signalled that it wished to withdraw. Britain was the other source of financial support for the government. The two countries combined to persuade President Kabbah to reopen negotiations with the rebels and a national consultative conference was held in April. Liberian representatives also attended the conference at which President Kabbah rejected rebel demands for a total amnesty for their atrocities, a share in the government and the release from prison of Foday Sankoh. These objections, however, were overruled at a later meeting in Lomé, Togo, on 18 May. Here, under external African pressures, it was agreed as follows: a ceasefire should begin on 24 May and fresh talks on 25 May; that both sides should retain the territory they held, that humanitarian relief agencies should be given access to rebel-held areas, prisoners should be released and the United Nations be asked to deploy monitors to supervise disarmament and the rehabilitation of combatants. A peace agreement that was signed on 7 July provided for the release of Sankoh, who was to be given vice-presidential authority in the government, an amnesty for war crimes and rebel participation in the government. The agreement represented a major surrender to the rebels. There was immediate international condemnation of the blanket amnesty and, in any case, violent clashes continued in the north of the country. Relations between the former rebels and the 6,000-strong UN force that had been assembled rapidly deteriorated: the former rebels were afraid of being arrested to face charges of war crimes and also resented the UN refusal to pay for surrendered weapons.
The accord between government and rebels, which lacked any trust on either side, deteriorated until, on 7 February 2000, the UN Security Council voted to increase the UN peacekeeping force from 6,000 to 11,000 troops. In fact, by the end of 2000 there were 13,000 troops in the country, the largest peacekeeping force in the world. This build-up had been necessary to replace the ECOMOG force, which was withdrawn. The accord finally collapsed in May 2000 when the RUF abducted 500 troops of the UN Mission in Sierra Leone (UNAMISL). Full-scale fighting between the Sierra Leone army and the RUF followed. On 8 May 10,000 people in Freetown marched on the house of Foday Sankoh who was still nominally vice-president. Police fired on the crowd and Sankoh managed to escape. The shooting of the demonstrators and the obvious inability of the UN force to control the situation led to the deployment of 1,000 British troops. The rebels were forced onto the defensive and suffered a series of defeats. On 17 May Sankoh was captured in Freetown and President Kabbah announced that his immunity from prosecution was to be lifted so that he could stand trial. By 28 May all the UN hostages taken by the RUF had been released. Fighting continued to August when the RUF replaced Sankoh with Issay Sessay as their leader. The RUF now said that it was ready to commit itself to a peace agreement but this was aborted when the West Side Boys (WSB), a militia nominally allied to the government, kidnapped 11 British soldiers. Five were released on 30 August and the rest on 9 September when British troops stormed the WSB headquarters, killing 25 and capturing others. In November Britain sent a further 500 troops to Sierra Leone in reaction to the escalating crisis and a realization that the rebels would not honour any ceasefire. As long as the rebels controlled the diamond region they were likely to continue fighting. On 10 November the rebels agreed another ceasefire but the Kabbah government said ‘it had no intention of relaxing its stance’.
Britain had begun by sending substantial forces apparently solely to rescue Commonwealth citizens. Subsequently, these troops were used to strengthen the UN forces, which had suffered the humiliation of having 500 troops taken hostage. By the end of the year the bulk of the British force had been withdrawn although 300 troops were to remain to retrain the Sierra Leone army. The diamond region, which remained under RUF control, provided it with the financial means to continue the war. Sierra Leone was the classic example of a small country that could easily, and repeatedly, become the prey of warring factions and would-be warlords and in this respect was the perfect candidate for the status of a ‘failed state’. In February 2001 elections were postponed because of the security situation with the agreement of the UN and Britain. In March the UN Security Council voted to extend the UNAMISL mandate and increased its strength to 17,500. At the same time it criticized the RUF and other groups for their human rights violations. On 18 May the RUF and pro-government kamajor militias signed an agreement to end all hostilities; this followed a month-long offensive by the kamajor militias that had driven the RUF forces far back into the diamond fields. At the end of May the RUF and kamajor disarmed 2,500 soldiers and the RUF freed 600 child soldiers. The RUF demanded the creation of a transitional government by the end of September, insisting that it was no longer going to fight, but the government dismissed the demand. The government said it would only hold elections when all arms had been surrendered. In September the UN Secretary-General, Kofi Annan, announced that 16,000 RUF and pro-government militia troops had been disarmed although a further 9,000 combatants remained to be disarmed. In September 100 of the remaining 550 British troops were withdrawn from the country. By the end of the year the 17,500 UN peacekeeping force was operating at full capacity while 30,000 rebel and militia fighters had given up their arms although the process of disarming the rebels in the eastern part of the country was yet to be completed.
In January 2002 President Kabbah officially declared the civil war to be over; an estimated 50,000 people had died in 10 years of fighting. UNAMISL claimed that the disarmament of 45,000 fighters had been completed. A war crimes court was established. Sierra Leone troops, assisted by British military advisers, were deployed near the country’s sensitive borders with Liberia and Guinea. In February Britain’s Prime Minister, Tony Blair, visited Sierra Leone and told British troops that they had given the country ‘a chance to get back on its feet again’. In March President Kabbah ended the four-year state of emergency. In May Kabbah easily won the presidential elections, beating Ernest Koroma of the All People’s Congress by a comfortable margin; his SLPP won 83 of the 112 seats in the Assembly. In July a Truth and Reconciliation Commission (modelled on that of South Africa) was set up.
The war in Sierra Leone raised many questions that had not been answered when officially it came to an end. They concerned the efficiency – or otherwise – of the United Nations in its peacekeeping activities, what should be expected of regional intervention forces such as ECOMOG, and how long Britain would be required to prop up the government of Sierra Leone once the fighting was over. The RUF of Foday Sankoh was able to operate as long as it did because of the complicity of Burkina Faso whose President Blaise Compaoré traded arms in return for the diamonds that the RUF controlled, while it suited Liberia’s Charles Taylor to support the RUF since he, too, wanted a share in the diamonds. The RUF did not obtain its arms only from Burkina Faso. At the height of the fighting in 2000 a British airline and a Gibraltar-based arms trader were accused by the United Nations of exporting arms to the rebels in Sierra Leone. Foyle Air, the company at the centre of these UN accusations, admitted that it had delivered 67 tons of military equipment that included Sam-7 missiles, guided anti-tank rockets, 3,000 Kalashnikovs and 25 rocket-propelled grenade launchers from Ukraine to Burkina Faso. Thereafter, the company did not ‘know’ what had happened to the arms. When the arms eventually reached the RUF in Sierra Leone they were paid for by money earned from the illegal sale of diamonds.1 This single incident illustrates how easily arms can be smuggled into a war zone against a proclaimed arms embargo and raises many qu
estions about the attitudes of the big powers towards arms sales that fuel such wars: the five permanent members of the UN Security Council account for approximately 80 per cent of arms sales worldwide. The most worrying question of all must be: how long can Sierra Leone survive on its own once all the UN forces and British support have been withdrawn? Or must it depend indefinitely upon the willingness of Britain to intervene when necessary to prop up its legitimate government? If this proves to be the case it represents the creeping return of the imperial factor into Africa.
CONGO (BRAZZAVILLE)
Pascal Lissouba won the presidential elections of August 1992 against the former military general, Denis Sassou-Nguesso, who had been in power since 1979 but had been forced by popular pressure to abandon Marxism and the one-party state and hold open elections. At that time Lissouba did not feel secure since the regular army was dominated by officers from Sassou-Nguesso’s Mbochi tribe who were loyal to the former head of state. Lissouba, therefore, formed his own militia from the loyal Zoulou. In May 1993 indecisive legislative elections were followed by violence, which continued into 1994 and by February an estimated 300 people had been killed. In June 1997 a full-scale civil war broke out between supporters of Lissouba and supporters of Sassou-Nguesso. The outbreak had all the appearance of a determined bid to return to power on the part of Sassou-Nguesso. The situation was to be affected from the start by the fact that French troops were already in Brazzaville preparatory to evacuating expatriates from neighbouring Zaïre where the Mobutu regime was facing collapse. On 5 June fighting broke out in Brazzaville after the army had cordoned off Sassou-Nguesso’s house as part of an attempt to disarm his independent Cobra militia. On 7 June Lissouba accepted an offer from the Mayor of Brazzaville, Bernard Kolelas (who was also a contender for supreme power), to attempt to find a solution to the crisis. President Omar Bongo of Gabon offered his services as a mediator in what clearly was developing into a dangerous conflict. On the same day, a French soldier was killed in fighting in Brazzaville and France announced that it would send additional forces to reinforce the 450 French troops already there. By 9 June Brazzaville had been cut in half by the rival groups, both of which were using heavy weapons. A further 400 French troops arrived in Brazzaville and President Chirac appealed to Lissouba and Sassou-Nguesso to end the fighting. Both did order a ceasefire on 11 June but this broke down on the following day. French air force planes evacuated foreigners and by 15 June some 5,000 foreign citizens had left, most being ferried to Gabon. On 17 June a three-day ceasefire was agreed to allow the French troops to withdraw. On 21 June the UN Secretary-General, Kofi Annan, asked the Security Council to approve a force of 1,600 international troops to secure Brazzaville airport. Fighting continued, despite the ceasefire, and there were reports of atrocities against civilians, as well as looting, by both sides in the conflict. According to French military sources 2,000 people had been killed by the end of June with overall casualties reaching 10,000. The fighting continued throughout July and by 23 July estimated deaths had reached 4,000.
Meanwhile, as peace talks were being conducted in Libreville, Gabon, Lissouba had asked the Constitutional Court to postpone the presidential elections, which were due on 27 July, and to extend his mandate to its expiry date on 31 August. Sassou-Nguesso opposed any extension, which, he said, would lead to further fighting. Instead, he demanded the formation of a national government. The Libreville talks broke down on 19 July and on 22 July the Constitutional Court postponed the presidential poll, a decision that produced a furious response from the Sassou-Nguesso camp. Fighting continued through August and spread to the north of the country where Sassou-Nguesso’s forces captured Ouesso, the main town. A peace plan was advanced by President Bongo of Gabon to be rejected by Sassou-Nguesso on 21 August and Lissouba on 23 August. The government radio accused Bongo of favouring Sassou-Nguesso who was his son-in-law. Thirty-nine parties and groups that supported President Lissouba or the opposition Mouvement Congolais pour la Démocratie et le Développement Intégral (MDDI) (Congolese Movement for Democracy and Full Development) signed a power-sharing agreement although the Forces Démocratiques Unies (FDU) (United Democratic Forces) did not sign even as heavy fighting engulfed Brazzaville. The agreement came into effect on 31 August, the expiry date of Lissouba’s presidency, and provided for a government of national unity and the continuation of existing political institutions for an indefinite transitional period. Lissouba appointed Kolelas, who was the leader of the MDDI, as Prime Minister and gave him a mandate to form a government and bring an end to the three-month-old civil war. By mid-September casualties were estimated at between 4,000 and 7,000 dead while 800,000 people had fled the devastated capital. However, no end to the war appeared in sight.
Lissouba visited Paris where he announced that he would not negotiate with Sassou-Nguesso whom he described as a ‘common rebel’. Sassou-Nguesso’s Cobra militia, meanwhile, was fighting government forces in the north of the country. Interviewed on Radio France Internationale, Sassou-Nguesso said he believed there had to be a transitional government to reorganize the state and ‘organise credible elections’. A meeting of eight African leaders in Gabon called for a UN peacekeeping force and appealed to the warring sides to cease fighting. Lissouba sent Kolelas to this summit while he went to Kinshasa to meet the newly installed President Kabila. Kolelas struggled to make his new government work in what by then was a largely dysfunctional Brazzaville where fighting prevented ministers from getting to their offices. Sassou-Nguesso’s party refused to take up the five seats they had been offered in the coalition government. Kolelas proclaimed his aims as the restoration of peace, post-war reconstruction and new presidential elections. The war reached its climax in October when Sassou-Nguesso’s forces launched a massive offensive in Brazzaville; one by one the key points in the city fell and Kolelas’ government, which had never looked convincing, collapsed. The Cobra militia celebrated their victory by a wave of looting in a city strewn with corpses. A triumphant Sassou-Nguesso explained the civil war, without irony, in terms of ‘tribalism, regionalism, intolerance and political violence. In order that history does not repeat itself, we ought to attack the problem at the root and henceforth work for national reconciliation and unity to finally give birth to an indivisible and happy democratic Congo,’ he told his first press conference.2 The first problem facing Sassou-Nguesso was that of dismantling the various militias representing factions and elite groups that had sprung into being over the preceding years. On 25 October 1997 the Executive Secretariat of the Forces Démocratiques et Patriotiques (FDP) (Democratic and Patriotic Forces) announced that Maj.-Gen. Denis Sassou-Nguesso was President. He was sworn in at the Parliament building which was one of the few public buildings still standing.
The immediate and urgent question for Sassou-Nguesso was recognition by Africa and the position that France would adopt. Throughout the conflict France had maintained an apparently ambiguous attitude to the conflict though in fact the French government favoured a return to power of Sassou-Nguesso. His quick victory owed much to the intervention on his behalf of Angola whose President dos Santos had sent troops to help Sassou-Nguesso capture Pointe Noire, the centre of Congo’s oil industry and the key to the country’s economy. Dos Santos, of course, wanted a ‘return’ for his support in the form of the suppression in the Congo of any bases for UNITA or for the separatists of Angola’s Cabinda enclave. With the fall of Mobutu in Zaïre, Congo Brazzaville had become the last fuel and weapons base for UNITA. The greater part of Brazzaville’s 800,000 population, meanwhile, had dispersed in the bush or become refugees across the river in Kinshasa. France denied that it had intervened on behalf of Sassou-Nguesso in the civil war. Its sole object, Paris insisted, had been to support Omar Bongo’s efforts at mediation. On the other hand, Elf Aquitaine, the French oil multinational that handled Congo’s oil, had clearly favoured a return to power of Sassou-Nguesso, who had always looked favourably on its monopoly position. French denials of support for Sassou-N
guesso were not matched by the official reaction to his installation as President. A Foreign Ministry spokesman, Jacques Pummelhardt, said ‘It is a good thing’ and ‘it is essential for war ravaged Congo to commit itself wholeheartedly to the path of nation’.
Pummelhardt then, to distract attention from France’s role, denounced the ‘savage occupation’ of the country by the Angolan forces which had backed Sassou-Nguesso.3 The Angolan intervention was part of Luanda’s effort to eliminate all outside sources of support for UNITA. Towards the end of the civil war Lissouba was reported to be hiring UNITA mercenaries. Other mercenaries, with connections to French intelligence, had been leading Sassou-Nguesso’s Cobra militia.4 Sassou-Nguesso had always been a reliable ally of France, even in his Marxist days, and had been treated as a VIP when in opposition to Lissouba he had visited France. The French government now sent medical aid to Brazzaville and signalled its support for the new regime. The situation remained complex and dangerous. On 28 October, three days after the inauguration of Sassou-Nguesso as President, dos Santos announced that the Angolan troops would only be withdrawn after an agreement with the Congo government. When Sassou-Nguesso announced his new government in early November, he claimed that UNITA troops and other mercenaries had assisted Lissouba. Although the new Minister of the Interior, Pierre Oda, said that only security forces could carry arms, banning the various militias was not going to be easy. Cobra soldiers demonstrated and demanded incorporation in the regular security forces. Lissouba’s militia, the Zoulous, were given an ultimatum to come out of the bush and lay down their arms. Angolan support in the form of 1,000 crack troops had probably swung the balance in favour of Sassou-Nguesso. They were still in the Congo in 1998 despite calls in the US Congress for their withdrawal. Britain and the United States, which had been loud in their condemnation of the illegal coup in Sierra Leone in 1997, kept remarkably quiet about what, in real terms, was a coup by warfare carried out in Congo by Sassou-Nguesso. Clearly, they did not want to upset France and its President, Jacques Chirac, or interfere in a region which they considered came under France’s sphere of influence.