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Simultaneously with this commentary, we have posted today (see here) an article written by one of our most
able and committed patriots, Mr Chukwu-Emeka PF Chikezie, about a report on
Sierra Leone, produced and recently published by the International Crisis
Group (ICG). We endorse the views that he has so lucidly expressed in his
essay and recommend it for close attention and careful study. We invite you
also to read the ICG’s report, which can be reached via this link Sierra
Leone: Time for a new
military and political strategy. The ICG must be living on a different planet if it believes that all of the recommendations contained in its report will carry the day for peace in Sierra Leone. It is hard to imagine that this organisation has been closely monitoring the ups and downs of Sierra Leone's conflict, for it to come up with these ridiculous proposals. Our view is that its gung-ho militaristic solutions will exacerbate and prolong the conflict well into the future. They must be stoutly rejected. We are prepared to accept other aspects of the report because they
contain good ideas. Once we remove the inflammatory language in which they
have been couched, we can for example readily identify with those on the DDR
programme, the strengthening of UNAMSIL and the setting up the Truth and
Reconciliation Commission. They are not new ideas and have featured
prominently in most commentaries on this site. Our view on an international
court or tribunal has
been briefly discussed. We would however have liked to see a clearly defined, active and
positive role for Sierra Leoneans to play in the ICG's peace configuration.
But since it has opted for a military solution, i.e. a strategy for war, it
would seem to us ex hypothesi that
the input of Sierra Leonean civic society, which they most probably think is
served by depositing Mrs Zainab Bangura on their Board, does not really enter
into their calculations. The ICG's conclusions are reactionary and defeatist. Has it been
driven to advocate a renewed military
initiative because it senses that the current British political initiatives, which are covering up for and bolstering
the failures and failings of President Kabbah's government, are not working?
We hope that it is not a precursor to some planned covert adventure in
violence for the sake of it. The ICG ought to know that whenever there is
conflict, those who hold themselves as having influence - in its case because
of the resources that it controls and the 55 or so powerful personalities who (it appears, nominally) sit on its
Board - must beware that if they cannot change
the situation for the better, then they should at least refrain from making
it worse than it is. But we also sense that there is frustration. It is not unusual. It is often the case that many who are
engaged in the long-drawn out search for peace in this crisis-ridden world, at
times reach the nadir of their patience and endurance. But that should never
be allowed to cloud one’s judgement. So, even when the task gets as tough and
enervating as ours, the temptation to rush to irrational conclusions and
actions that we may not be able to reverse should be resisted. The ICG has
allowed its frustration to run away with it and has come up with a recipe for
more crisis and mayhem. Paradoxically, it has produced an informative report. But this is
then spoilt with a non sequitur of
an executive recommendation, which is at variance with some of the analyses
in the body of the main report and amounts to little more than a gloss of
their own predisposition. Focus on Sierra Leone's position cannot be stated too often. As long as
the RUF and its allies out there are determined to keep their weapons, and
are prepared to use them to pursue their own agenda, they must be resisted
and met readily if need be with counter-force. The alternative is to allow
them to walk over everybody and take over the country. We are convinced that
the RUF and others realised this to be the case sometime ago. Although not a
cause for complacency, one encouraging instance has been the welcome drop in
the virulence, frequency and randomness of the hideous attacks of previous
months and years. Having thus spelled out to the RUF and their associates the futility
of pursuing such an agenda, we need now to continue engaging in serious and
meaningful dialogue with them as long as no one ups the stakes. In the
meantime we must move rapidly to create attractive political options and
demonstrably engaging and gainful economic alternatives so that this urge to
fight, fight and fight (a contagion that appears to have infected even the
ICG) and the understandable desire for revenge become less alluring for all
sides. Let the Peace Commission be given more resources to do the good job
that it is already doing so well and take its message deeper and wider into
rebel-held areas, to the combatants. Let the DDR programme be reconfigured so
it can be recognised by the RUF, ex SLAs and the CDF, and their respective
communities, as something for their benefit. These are the messages of hope
that are not being heard or spelt out loudly and clearly, simply because it
is not in the interest of some people, and some concerns, for this to happen. The ICG’s recommendations assume that outright military victory per se is the answer for Sierra
Leone's political problems. But there are difficult political matters, which
cannot be overlooked in trying to end a conflict that has been around for too
long. They are inextricably linked to the violence that we want to stop. The
urgency of the need for attractive political initiatives, which we often talk
about, cannot be overstated. The aim is not to reward the men and women of
violence but to encourage and steer them for good, towards a new way of life.
This springs from our realisation, which is very well sign-posted in ICG's
own account of the background to the conflict, that serious political aberrations
since independence in 1961 have produced a class of alienated and desperate
people who have been forced to exist on the fringes of society. You cannot
assuage the feelings of such people simply through the use of military force. Nowhere is the
ICG’s reasoning more confused than when it brazenly states in its main
report: “The international community
has confused the signing of agreements with achieving peace. Lomé and earlier
negotiations need to be understood as interludes within a wider strategy of
war through which the RUF bought time to seize power. A new peace agreement
that relies on the RUF being a cohesive force willing to adhere to a document
is pointless.” This is a strange and indelicate statement, coming from a
conflict resolution organisation. Surely, it is not the signing of agreements
that is wrong but, rather, how they are negotiated, what they contain and,
above all, how they will be implemented – whether fairly or not, in good
faith or not, by ALL the parties (and not just the RUF). But where more than
one party is involved in conflict, if the decision is taken to find a lasting
solution, how can one hope to proceed without consideration of the other
party or parties involved? To whom do we talk about ending the atrocities of
this war and ultimately about ending the conflict? Is the RUF – admittedly a
prime (though not the sole) agent of the misery of Sierra Leoneans - to be
considered as extraneous to the establishment of peace in that country? No! If the ICG were
to revisit its charter and redefine its own character, it will discover that
on this occasion, from the logic of its inflammatory statements, it is in the
wrong vocation and will be seen hence as existing to create rather than end
crises. The essence of what they are saying is that we must forget about all
agreements and discussions and instead hunt the RUF down or, in the words of
Zainab Bangura on BBC Radio 4 which gave this report prime time coverage on
the day it was published, “bring them to their knees”. We acknowledge that
many Sierra Leoneans share this standpoint as well. But we do not. We have heard
this meaningless militant drivel before and as we know, even when those who
ought to know better have misguidedly tried such action, it has neither
worked nor shown any prospect of success.
Does the ICG and those who follow its lead now consider that the
glorious ECOMOG campaign led by Nigeria, which was so widely supported and
during which so many thousands of Nigerians and Sierra Leoneans lost their
lives, was anything less than taking the war to the RUF? Did it "finish
them" or "bring them to their knees"? Was it not the very
escalation and its resultant potential for further chaos and suffering that
most certainly led to the hastily improvised Lomé agreement? The ICG wants us
to throw even that away and substitute it with their kind of peace. Make no mistake about it! We agree with the ICG when it says, “
Sierra Leone is a human tragedy”. But if its go-for-broke recommendations are
followed to the letter we will have crises and tragedies on our hands for the
foreseeable future. Sierra Leone is not a case for a quick fix. It needs a
solution that will hold and last. Escalating this conflict in the name of
ideology or because of the torpor of the political set up currently
bankrolled by the international community, will be ill advised and
unnecessary, and must be resisted fiercely. ©FSL |
