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New Chapter for African Peace Keeping

The Nation (Nairobi)
ANALYSIS
September 10, 2003
Posted to the web September 10, 2003

By Jonathan Power
Nairobi
African peace-keeping has perhaps at last found the right turning on the
dangerous road of ethnic strife, tribal war and warlordism that besieges too
many countries.
When President Olusegun Obasanjo of Nigeria engineered, or rather enticed, the
removal of Liberian despot Charles Taylor to exile in Nigeria last month, it
turned the page on a new chapter in African peace-keeping efforts.
It has been nine years since the US/UN debacle in Somalia, when the US command
of the UN peace-keeping force decided to cut and run after the gruesome death
of 18 American soldiers.
This was followed by a period during the Clinton administration when the US
stood back from Africa's wars. The administration effectively vetoed a major
peace-keeping operation that might have stood a chance of forestalling the
Rwandan genocide.
The combination of a rebirth of political confidence in now democratic Ghana,
Senegal, Mali, South Africa and, most importantly, Nigeria, together with the
surprising Bush administration's decision to play back up to Nigerian-led
diplomacy and peace-keeping in Liberia and to support UN peacekeeping in the
Congo, has transformed at a stroke the outlook for dealing with African wars,
present and future.
It can be seen on the streets of Monrovia. After 23 years of on-and-off war
which has witnessed atrocities of unbelievable cruelty, there is now a
semblance of peace. Fighting is still going on in the bush, with the rebel
movements unwilling or perhaps unable to persuade their troops to down arms as
the recent peace agreement mandates them to do.
But the capital itself is taking its first tentative steps to normalcy. The
markets have been reopened. The streets have been cleared of accumulated
rubbish. UN agencies are chlorinating 5,000 wells and the Red Cross and others
are battling the outbreak of cholera that has so far claimed a thousand deaths.
The Nigerian and other West African peace-keepers appear omnipresent and this
time they seem disciplined, effective and well trained - unlike 1995 and 1996,
when a badly conceived, badly led, peace-keeping operation led by Nigeria's
military government brought dishonour on the country.
Its soldiers were brought ignominiously home, a thousand in body bags, after
earning an appalling reputation as rapists, looters and brutalisers. Today, in
total contrast, observers, including the UN chief representative, the American
ambassador and American officers on the ground speak highly of their
proficiency.
When Gen Obasanjo flew into Monrovia recently, the crowds thronged his route,
waved and shouted, clearly immensely joyful. He had a sober yet essentially
idealistic message both for the interim government of President Moses Blah
(Taylor's deputy) and for his own troops.
He reminded the government, still peopled with the ranks of mass murderers
whose hatred for the rebels runs deep, that "you need to forgive one another.
The only thing that can give peace is love." And to his troops he said: "Even
if you are provoked, you must not provoke. You are here to help serve, not to
harm or oppress."
In conversation on his three hour plane ride from Nigeria, Mr Obasanjo talked
in detail of how this peace-keeping effort has been a breakthrough. "African-
led diplomacy, combined often with African troops, backed up by the UN and now
the US ('if we don't have superpower support our chances of success are slim')
is the recipe for success".
He sees this pattern as one to be replicated elsewhere - including in the
Congo.
Nevertheless, there is one thing that spoils the picture and will perhaps be
the stumbling block that stops Mr Obasanjo from winning the plaudits he seeks
both at home and abroad. It is the refusal to countenance handing over Taylor
to the UN War Crimes Court in Sierra Leone.
"By giving this one man asylum I have saved thousands of lives. What more does
the international community want?" Actually the Security Council, for now, is
giving him an easy ride on this one. But in three or so years' time, if peace
and democracy still prevail, it might be opportune for Mr Obasanjo to encourage
Taylor to return home.
Then, as in Yugoslavia, a democratic Liberian government can decide, just as
Serbia's did with Milosevic, that the time is right to turn him over to a war
crimes' court. Then the world would really know the worm has turned in Africa.
Mr Power is an internationally syndicated columnist.

   

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