When
Peacekeeping
Becomes
Peace Enforcement
Geopolitical
Dynamics of West Africa Mediation
in the Liberian
Civil War 1990-1997 By Alhaji G. V. Kromah
(BA, LL.B., LL.M.,
MA, MAIR, SJD-cand.)
Posted July 4, 2008
Written 2002
ABSTRACT
This study examines the legal, political and interpersonal dynamics of
multilateral involvement in the Liberian internal armed conflict and
how the peacekeeping turned into peace enforcement operations. The
seven-year war, which began at the end of 1989, had a devastating
impact on the country and posed a demonstrable threat to the stability
of the rest of the West African sub-region.
The Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) militarily
intervened for peace, but not without a price for the benefactor and
the beneficiaries of the intervention. The peacekeeping force, ECOMOG,
had to militarily force its way into Liberia to contain the chaos
created by hostilities between the Liberian government and the rebel
NPFL forces. The latter had invaded the country from the neighboring
Ivory Coast with the expressed objective of replacing the government
of President Samuel K. Doe.
The ECOWAS decision to send in troops was official but not entirely
unanimous. The French-speaking Ivory Coast, which was openly
supporting the NPFL, led members who expressed political and legal
reservations. Nigeria, the English-speaking powerhouse, was
sympathetic to the government of President Doe.
The controversy did not only affect the ability of ECOMOG to contain
the conflict, but also underscored the legacies of France’s colonial
past in West Africa. Significant also was the involvement of Libya,
and this is compared to the relatively inactive role played at the
time by the United States, a country that connects historically to
Liberia. It was mostly former black slaves and their offspring going
back to Africa in the early 1800’s who declared the independence of
Liberia.
The interplay of competing and conflicting external interests in the
conflict indeed had its own complications for the intervention of
ECOWAS, though the military move by the sub-regional body generally
stood as a remarkable gain for an organization primarily founded for
multilateral economic integration.
Background
Within eight months of the 1989 Christmas Eve attack by insurgents of
the rebel NPFL led by Charles Taylor, the government of President
Samuel K. Doe had lost control over most of the country. An NPFL
breakaway group, the Independent National Patriotic Front (INPFL) led
by Prince Yormie Johnson, entered the suburbs of Monrovia, the
capital, poised to attack Doe’s Executive Mansion. Doe was
eventually killed and the nation began the winding road of a
devastating internal armed conflict that also hatched eggs of
instability in Liberia’s three neighboring countries (Sierra Leone,
Guinea, and La Cote d’Ivoire).
The 15-member ECOWAS had earlier before the death of Doe began a
series of meetings to contain the rapidly deteriorating strife in
Liberia. One of the most important decisions from the consultations
was the creation and deployment of ECOMOG. Though ECOWAS was an
economic and development association of nations established since
1975, it appeared prepared to assume a robust diplomatic and military
role in the Liberian conflict.
The cease-fire that ECOMOG was supposed to monitor was still an ECOWAS
wishful thinking. The intervention force arrived by sea in Monrovia to
a barrage of heavy artillery bombardment from the NPFL, which had also
closed up on the capital and was fighting to get the INPFL out of the
way. Charles Taylor vehemently condemned the coming of the
peacekeepers, claiming among other reasons, that ECOWAS was coming in
inspired by Nigeria to defend the Doe regime. Prince Johnson, then in
a political scheme of trying to lure Doe out of his downtown Executive
Mansion fort, welcomed the West African intervention.
Johnson said he would also cooperate with the Interim government of
National Unity (IGNU) that had been set up at an August 1990
conference of Liberians under the auspices of ECOWAS. The Conference
was convened in Banjul, The Gambia, whose head of state, Sir Dauda
Jawara, was the Current Chairman of ECOWAS.
Elements of Early External Involvement
African countries spanning from the West to the North were from the
onset involved with the planning and sustaining of the NPFL
insurrection while others were left panting under the shocking and
devastating consequences. Their involvement was as complex as the war
itself, but with time, the hidden dimensions unraveled.
Ivory Coast, Burkina Faso, France & Libya
The NPFL rebel group invaded Liberia from la Cote d’Ivoire (Ivory
Coast), Liberia’s eastern neighbor. Most of the officials and
families of Doe’s predecessor, William R. Tolbert, had taken refuge
in the Ivory Coast. Tolbert was killed nine years earlier in a
military coup led by Master Sergeant Doe and other young indigenous
non-commissioned officers of the Armed Forces of Liberia (AFL). The
Ivory Coast was also hosting thousands of members of the country’s
Gio and Mano ethnic groups, who had complained of being persecuted by
the Doe regime.
The President of the Ivory Coast at the time, Felix Houphouet-Boigny,
was not only an in-law of the Tolberts, but had also emerged over
thirty years of leadership as the doyen of French-speaking West
Africa. Boigny had a turbulent relationship with Doe over the death of
Adolphus Tolbert, son-in-law of the Ivorian leader, and the killing of
the older President Tolbert during the coup. When Taylor turned up in
Abidjan to begin planning his rebellion, it was thought that there was
little sign of discouragement from his host. Boigny would in fact
introduce Taylor to friends who would end up being the most dependable
sponsors and friends of the rebel leader.
The Gios and Manos fled to the Ivory Coast following a split between
Doe and Fellow Coup Maker Brigadier Thomas Quiwonkpa, a Gio. Generally
called the ‘Strong Man of the Revolution’ (the 1980 coup),
Quiwonkpa fled the country in 1984 and returned at the head of a
military insurgency against Doe by way of neighboring Sierra Leone.
The coup failed, and the former brigadier was killed. There was
accusation that the government carried out widespread reprisals
against the Gios, along with members from the related Mano tribe. But
the Government denied this citing Gios and Manos as serving in high
public positions. Most members of the two tribes, found in Liberia’s
Nimba County bordering the Ivory Coast, easily crossed the border to
their Ivorian kinsmen called Yacubas.
Taylor, who could identify with the Tolberts as an Americo-Liberian
and to the Gios through personal relations with the late Quiwonkpa,
successfully garnered financial resources on the continent and
recruits among the Gios and Manos. The connections in the Ivory Coast
were valuable as they extended to Burkina Faso where Taylor traveled,
coinciding with the overthrow and killing President Thomas Sankara.
The slain leader and Blaise Campaore, his deputy who overthrew him,
had helped Taylor establish relations with Libyan Leader Moamar
Khadafi who offered training and arms to Taylor for two years before
the invasion. Campaore’s wife, Chantal, was also a foster daughter
of Boigny.
France’s connection was a matter of media comments for several
months. The Ivorian colonial and post-colonial African ally had always
been uneasy about Nigeria’s becoming the absolute economic power
ahead of the Ivory Coast, France’s premier clientele state within
West African. In Nigeria, there were still memories of the role France
played along with the Ivory Coast when the military governor of
Eastern Nigeria broke away and declared a separate country called
Biafra. A British intelligence paper says that France secretly
provided large shipments of weapons to Biafra through the Ivory Coast
and Gabon, another Francophonie in Central Africa. When Biafra
collapsed, the secessionist leader, Col. Odumegwu Emeka Ojukwu fled to
the Ivory Coast and lived in exile for many years.
The French were also considered as having some indirect economic
interest in the NPFL war. When Taylor established control over most of
Liberia, a French businessman doing logging in Liberia before the war
reportedly joined with a French diplomat in the Ivory Coast to begin
commercial relations with Taylor. The diplomat is said to have
traveled to Taylor’s headquarters in Gbarnga, and with the forests
in the Ivory Coast rapidly decreasing, Liberia became a lucrative
alternative. French companies are said to have visited Taylor’s
control area, and being aware of the risky port conditions in the
area, converted the Ivorian Port of San Pedro into an export center
for Liberian logs. Besides timber, Liberian diamond and gold were in
abundance in the port area for onward trading in France.
France had a convergence of geopolitical interests with Libya, which,
as indicated supra, always wanted a closer relationship with West
Africa. The Libyan leader had grown from one of the early supporters
of the 1980 coup to a Doe archenemy in 1989. President Doe’s desire
to woo the friendship of the United States for the elections in 1985
induced him to adopt an impulsively belligerent stance against
Khadafi, perceived as an American offender. In one instance at the
1988 Non-Aligned Summit in Zimbabwe, Doe threatened to assault Khadafi
if the latter included Liberia in his condemnation of countries that
had started resuming diplomatic relations with Israel. African and
Arab countries had broken relations with Israel as an expression of
solidarity with the Palestinians after the 1973 Arab-Israeli war.
Reports from Harare indicated that Khadafi was bewildered by this “strange”
diplomatic posture of Doe.
Libya subsequently played host to the training of the NPFL rebels who
thereafter led the 1989 attacks into Liberia from the Ivory Coast. The
Ivory Coast, Burkina Faso and Libya together sustained the NPFL war
until policy changes began to emerge in the Ivory Coast with the death
of Houphouet-Boigny in 1993. Libya intermittently showed lack of
interest later as the war advanced with international media focus on
the conduct of the NPFL in the conflict. But Burkina Faso under
Campaore remained adamantly supportive. And until a few months before
the election of 1997 in Liberia, Burkina Faso never participated in
ECOMOG. Along with the Ivory Coast, Burkina Faso became one of the
countries of relative proximity that refused to contribute soldiers to
the multilateral force. The two French-speaking leaders, one a
protégé of the other, had stood firmly for reasons of family and
French politico-cultural solidarity to see their man, Taylor, assume
power in Liberia, a country outside of the French sphere of influence.
Sierra Leone & Guinea
While Ivory Coast was playing a critically supportive role for the
NPFL in the East, Liberia’s western and northern neighbors, Sierra
Leone and Guinea, were at minimum jittery over the events. For Sierra
Leone militias led by Foday Sankoh had been reportedly quietly
fighting alongside the NPFL in Liberia. With access to the
northeastern border from Liberia, Sankoh infiltrated his country and
announced the formation of the Revolutionary United Front (RUF) with
the objective of overthrowing the government of President Joseph
Momoh. A former corporal and photographer of the Sierra Leone army,
Sankoh had been jailed in 1971 on allegations of plotting to overthrow
the government. The RUF began waging war in Sierra Leone with
international speculation that the NPFL supplied military and human
resources across the border. Within one year of its formation in 1991,
the RUF had captured the entire border with Liberia. The rebel group’s
target, Freetown, the Sierra Leone capital, was a big center for
ECOWAS activities in Liberia. The city was the first venue of peace
talks initiated by Liberia’s Interfaith Mediation Committee composed
of Muslims and Christians, and served as temporary headquarters for
the air contingent of the peacekeepers.
Conteh-Morgan and Kadivar argue that the government of Sierra Leone’s
identifying with ECOWAS and providing the country as a staging ground
for ECOMOG was part of the “need to preserve and defend the
homeland.” The authors emphasize that the West African country’s
weak economy and inferior military made the Momoh government to
consider the deployment of the peacekeepers as a useful collective
approach in the sub-region that would help deter invasions. President
Siaka Stevens, before Momoh, had angered President Doe in providing
territory for the launching of the failed Quiwonkpa coup.
President Momoh, a former commander of the armed forces, changed
policies and linked his administration’s survival to that of the Doe
Government. Despite the poor quality of his military forces, he sent a
contingent of soldiers to form part of ECOMOG, besides making the
Lungi Airport available for the mainly Nigerian alpha jets that
carried out sorties against the NPFL near Monrovia. Both the NPFL and
the RUF pointed to the Sierra Leone government’s cooperation with
ECOMOG as the basis for the RUF entry into Sierra Leone. But the
training of Sankoh and his commanders in Libya was reason to believe
that the Sierra Leone mission had been planned independent of the
claims the rebel groups were making for crossing the border.
In the early days of the Taylor revolt, Momoh visited Monrovia along
with Gen. Lansana Conte, President of Guinea. The two men expressed
solidarity with Doe and condemned the invasion. Together with Liberia,
Guinea and Sierra Leone had formed the Mano River Union to harmonize
their custom policies and pursue general economic cooperation. Guinea
was the strongest militarily, and under former President Sekou Toure,
had on a number of occasions interceded in disturbance in Monrovia and
Freetown that would have led to coups. Besides the mutual
non-aggression agreement existing among the Mano River Union
countries, Guinea had individual defense pacts with Liberia and Sierra
Leone.
Relations with Guinea were the most harmonious President Doe had among
the leaders of the three neighboring countries. But it appeared that
the need to clearly communicate intentions between the two sides at
the onset of the war was a problem. Doe thought he had presented a
case to Conte to invoke a mutual defense pact that would have enabled
the Guinean armed forces to intervene on the side of the Armed Forces
of Liberia. The pact provides for such action in the event of a
military attack on any of the signatories by a foreign force. Doe said
the presence of Burkina Faso soldiers with Taylor qualified the NPFL
attack as an external aggression.
In Conakry, it was clear that Conte had not understood what Doe
thought was a request for Guinea’s intervention on the basis of the
pact. When the embattled Liberian leader sent a special envoy to
deliver the formal letter informing Guinea that there had been an
invasion of Liberia involving soldiers from Burkina Faso, Conte
replied that Guinea had already decided to participate in ECOMOG.
Besides, Guinea was struggling to cope with the vicious influx of
refugees from both Liberia and Sierra Leone, shouldering the biggest
and immediate brunt among African countries harboring refugees from
the two countries. Foreign Ministry officials in Conakry said this
created strains on the economy and social structures of Guinea, and
their government was not prepared to single-handedly join Monrovia to
battle the rebels.
Guinea, despite its reluctance to move in on a bilateral basis, was
one of the most determined members of ECOMOG for other reasons. NPFL
rebels, who overran the eastern suburb of Monrovia where a number of
African and European embassies existed, abducted the Guinean
Ambassador Tidiane Diallo along with a junior diplomat. Ambassador
Diallo had been on radio several weeks earlier repeating his
government’s warning to the NPFL and the INPFL against harassing
Guineans in rebel-held territory. He said the embassy was receiving
reports of maltreatment of Guineans due to the cordial relations
between Doe and Conte. Diallo and his colleague were later released
and allowed to travel to Guinea through the Ivory Coast. In the
vicinity of the Guinean embassy in the Congotown suburb of Monrovia,
at least 2000 Nigerian residents who had taken refuge at their embassy
were similarly subjected to torture or brutal killing.
Nigeria, the United States, Ghana and the Rest
Nigeria, the wealthiest in the sub-region and the most populous on the
continent, became the most decisive factor in the resolution of ECOWAS
to intervene diplomatically and militarily in the Liberian debacle.
Besides the close relations that had existed between Liberia and
Nigeria as two English-speaking countries with rich history in
advocating African liberation, President Doe and Nigerian Head of
State Ibrahim Babangida had developed a personal relationship. A
highway adjoining Monrovia to Sierra Leone was named after Babangida
as was the University of Liberia’s graduate school of international
relations. The Nigerian leader financed the school and seconded
Nigerian professors from the United States to teach at a session of
the school conducted at the Executive Mansion.
Doe had asked his Nigerian counterpart to intervene directly against
the NPFL, and though this did not happen, Taylor was on the BBC
African service accusing Babangida of already providing the help.
Nigeria instead took the diplomatic route through the otherwise
non-political organization of ECOWAS to deal with the Liberian
problem.
The West African giant had a number of crucial policy motivations for
its active involvement and initiative to resolve the Liberian crisis,
even if it had to mean military action. Mays refers to certain
Nigerian values that were threatened by the Liberian conflict. The
writer points out that the core Nigerian foreign policy values
included “the protection of Nigerian citizens, territorial integrity
of its embassies, and the discouragement of political upheavals in
West Africa.” Mays notes that although it is a given that civilians
suffer in wars, the NPFL got the reputation for murdering civilians
they came across, and that Nigerians were especially killed because of
the connection Taylor perceived to be between Babangida and Doe. A BBC
analysis bluntly added that “Western countries had refused to
intervene in Liberia, and so Nigeria, the regional giant, felt
something had to be done.”
The United States was embroiled in the 1990 Iraq war, and sent no more
than 200 soldiers to protect the US embassy in Monrovia and evacuate
its citizens. The United States, seen as the equivalent of a former
colonizing power in Liberia, defied general expectations in West
Africa by its refusal to intervene militarily. The US government
instead insisted that the crisis was an internal matter, and Liberians
should be left to settle it. UN Security Council members, in the
beginning, adopted the US position, though later on the UN dispatched
an unarmed military observer mission and provided diplomatic support
for the presence of ECOMOG.
The US government believed that with the Cold War coming to an end,
the value of cooperation from the Liberian government was considerably
diminished, according to the Assistant Secretary of State for African
Affairs in 1990, Herman Cohen. The US official actually revealed in an
interview that the State Department was advocating for Doe to resign,
and arrangements were made for him to live in exile in Togo, where
President Gnassingbe Eyadema had no problem receiving the Liberian
leader as a friend.
Doe was suspicious that Washington was no longer supporting him. The
embattled Liberian President reportedly told aides that he could not
understand how Charles Taylor escaped from a Plymouth jail in
Massachusetts, in a powerful country like the United States, while
waiting to be extradited to Liberia on charges of embezzlement. The US
ambassador in Monrovia, James Bishop, was reputed to be no friend of
President Doe, and unlike his predecessors, saw no need to establish
personal friendship with the President of Liberia.
In a highly revealing comment that has interestingly gone unnoticed in
most studies on the Liberian conflict, Assistant Secretary Cohen
actually said that Charles Taylor would have taken over the government
if the State Department plan of arranging for Doe to go into exile
were implemented. He said he was designated to travel to Monrovia and
persuade the President. The Assistant Secretary disclosed that though
the plan was never revealed to Doe, President George H.W. Bush’s
White House vetoed the State Department’s push for Doe to leave.
Cohen said Robert Gates, then Deputy National Security Advisor to
President Bush, did not give premium to the historical relationship
between Liberia and the United States. Cohen quoted Gates referring to
the relationship as “meaningless,” and that “it doesn't govern
us anymore; we treat Liberia just like any other country, and we have
no real interest there."
Doe himself had said on local radio that his resignation would have
meant turning the country over to Taylor, something he passionately
opposed. The alternative was to turn to his most trusted colleague in
the sub-region, Ibrahim Babangida. Doe’s perception was one of
confidence that a friend would not let a friend down in the gravest of
hours. He had maintained what he considered excellent personal
relations with the Nigerian leader, sharing nicknames like IBB for
Babangida, and SK for Samuel Doe. When the issue of an ECOMOG force
was being discussed, the embattled Doe still felt it was a strategy
designed by Babangida solely to rescue him, and that the inhumane
treatment of Nigerians and other West Africans by the NPFL was a good
justification for the Nigerian move. Nigeria radio’s constantly
talking about the anarchy and the deteriorating humanitarian situation
only reinforced Doe’s hope that Nigeria would swiftly intervene on
his side.
Ghana, for its part, was to contribute the first Field Commander and
the second largest contingent in ECOMOG along with Guinea. Though they
were not being specifically targeted, Ghanaians in Liberia were
frightened in the face of the maltreatment of Nigerians and Guineans.
In an interview with the author of this paper, former Ghanaian
President Jerry Rawlings said his country intervened due primarily to
humanitarian and sub-regional security reasons.
As for The Gambia, its size as one of the territorially smallest in
the sub-region did not matter. The Head of State, Dauda Jawara, was
the Current Chairman of the ECOWAS Authority of Heads of State, the
highest decision-making body in the organization. The country could
not galvanize troops of other West Africans and exclude itself, even
if it meant showing a token representation due to its military
incapacity.
Legalizing the Intervention
Perhaps it was due to competing and conflicting interests among the
anticipated external players of the Liberian civil war, but the delay
for any kind of intervention from anywhere for nine months since the
war began in Liberia baffled many Liberians. The battles had gone on
covering everywhere besides the few acres surrounding President Doe’s
mansion. The Liberian leader’s hope for a Nigerian and Guinean
intervention dwindled with the passage of time. As it turned out,
Nigeria was avoiding a unilateral action, searching for a collective
framework that would allow it move into Liberia, and if nothing else,
stop the emergence of a Charles Taylor government.
Legal Authority for Intervention
ECOWAS headquarters, based in the Nigerian capital of Abuja, was
meanwhile put to work through a Nigerian initiative to identify a
legal basis for collective intervention. The organization was the
closest outfit to work through after several attempts to introduce the
matter for UN action failed, and the now transformed Organization of
African Unity appeared as an inappropriate forum with the presence of
Libya and other powerful African nations. Nigeria could not easily
dominate. Besides the charter of the OAU was still grappling with its
charter provision that primarily forbade “interference in the
internal affairs of member states.” Political analysts in Africa
were pushing for the drastic reforming of the OAU to match the
conflict realities on the continent. The OAU successor, the African
Union, supports intervention in internal conflicts, but was set up
more than a decade after the Liberian war.
Despite the reluctance of the United Nations, its charter provided a
general legal framework for the operations of ECOWAS in Liberia. This
is within the UN charter’s context that “Nothing in the present
Charter shall impair the inherent right of individual or collective
self-defense if an armed attack occurs against a Member of the United
Nations until the Security Council has taken measures necessary to
maintain international peace and security.”
Though textually the UN Charter refers to international armed
conflicts, it is applicable to the Liberian conflict just as it has
been relevant to a number of internal armed conflicts involving the UN
itself in Africa. The United Nations Operations Congo (ONUC) was
designed to bring under control what was primarily an internal
conflict in 1960, though former colonial power Belgium was linked to
the troubles. When the peacekeeping posture could not contain the
conflict, ONUC was essentially modified into an enforcement outfit.
From a mandate of assisting the Congolese government to maintain law
and order and provide technical assistance, ONUC was empowered to
maintain the territorial integrity of the Congo, preventing the repeat
of the civil war and removing all foreign military forces from
Congolese soil. The mission could not have been accomplished without
pushing ONUC into an enforcement mode akin to the Liberian case.
Though the conflict in Liberia was internal, its multilateral
dimensions expanded the perimeters of the actual war through the
threat to life of nationals of Nigeria, Guinea, and Ghana, and others,
as indicated earlier. The issue of extra-territorial domain with the
NPFL attack on embassies was particularly crucial in Nigeria’s
motivation for intervention. The anarchy in Liberia was also
threatening the security of contiguous countries as was later seen in
the infiltration of NPFL-backed rebels into Sierra Leone from Liberia.
ECOWAS seemed to be the most appropriate and logical multilateral
vehicle to intercede, following the failure of the UN to move in. The
sub-regional organization, whose founding concept is attributed to
Liberia’s late President William V. S. Tubman, was already the first
to cut across colonial language zones and enhance cooperation in
cultural and social activities among the peoples as well.
ECOWAS evidently perceived not only peaceful co-existence among its
members but also importantly the need to protect each other as a
requirement for economic advancement. It adopted mutual defense
assistance protocols declaring that “any armed threat or aggression
directed against any Member State shall constitute a threat or
aggression against the entire Community.” The defense protocols
helped to set the legal basis for their intervention in situations
like Liberia’s. The 1981 protocol, while emphasizing
non-interference, maintained that ECOWAS could intervene in the “case
of internal armed conflict within any Member State engineered and
supported actively from outside likely to endanger the security and
peace in the entire Community.” In its fact sheet, the US state
Department agrees the protocols permit “legitimate intervention”
in member states.
The Doe regime was not sure about expecting intervention from ECOWAS
as an organization, but it certainly looked forward to Nigeria, the
most powerful friend, to step in on the side of the government.
Neighboring Guinea had the military reputation to be useful to Doe,
and it could be argued that from the early visit of Guinean President
Lansana Conte to Monrovia, the embattled Liberian leader expected that
there would be at least collaboration coming from Nigeria and Guinea.
And Nigeria and Guinea did deliver, though not in the Doe-estimated
approach. Nigeria’s decision was to pursue a collective approach
under the aegis of ECOWAS. At that point, it was certainly an
advantage for Babangida that a fellow former English-speaking colony
leader (and Muslim), President Dauda Jawara of The Gambia, would head
the ECOWAS Authority of Heads of State.
The 1981 Defense Protocol allowed the Authority to hold special
meetings on serious defense matters as the circumstance may require.
Where the member states determined it appropriate, they were to decide
on whether to intercede militarily and as such entrust the
responsibility to the Field Commander of the Allied Forces of the
Community provided for in the protocol. Though several months past
with the war raging in Liberia without sign of any outside
intervention, the ECOWAS summit that took place May 1990 in Banjul
under President Jawara became the most hopeful for Liberia. The
proposal of a Standing Mediation Committee (SMC) pushed by Nigeria was
approved to deal with the Liberian conflict. The SMC was quickly
elevated to be a permanent part of the ECOWAS structure, composing of
four member states selected by the ECOWAS authority, plus the current
chairman. The first group of members for the SMC became Nigeria, along
with Ghana and The Gambia. Two French speaking countries, Togo and
Mali were added. As a permanent organ of ECOWAS, the mediation
committee membership was to be revised every three years.
All the time, Nigeria kept publicly emphasizing the humanitarian and
security rationale for ECOWAS to make a move. President Babangida let
the world know that "[In] a sub-region of 16 countries where one
out of three West Africans is a Nigerian, it is imperative that any
regime in this country should relentlessly strive towards the
prevention or avoidance of the deterioration of any crisis which
threatens to jeopardize or compromise the stability, prosperity and
security of the sub-region.... We believe that if [a crisis is] of
such level that has [sic] the potentials to threaten the stability,
peace and security of the sub-region, Nigeria in collaboration with
others in this sub-region, is duty-bound to react or respond in
appropriate manner necessary to.... ensure peace, tranquillity and
harmony."
And surely at the SMC meeting in Banjul just two months after its
formal creation by the summit held earlier in the same city, Nigeria
and the four other members, operating under the mandate of the
Authority, decided on the setting up of ECOMOG. The five SMC members
were designated to provide the initial members of the intervention
force along with non-members and two of Liberia’s neighbors, Sierra
and Guinea. Appeals were later sent out to all ECOWAS members to
contribute troops. In her summary of the May 1990 unprecedented
decisions taken by the ECOWAS Authority of Heads of State through the
SMC, Ero summarizes their positions calling for:
1. The parties to observe an immediate cease-fire;
2. An ECOWAS cease-fire monitoring group (ECOMOG) to be set up for the
purpose of keeping the peace, and restoring law and order and ensuring
respect for the cease-fire;
3. A broad-based interim government in Liberia set up through a
National Conference of political parties and other interest groups;
4. Free and fair elections within 12 months leading to the
establishment of a democratically elected government;
5. The exclusion of all leaders of the various warring factions to the
Liberian conflict from the Interim Government; and
6. The creation of a Special Emergency Fund for the ECOMOG operation
in Liberia.
The decisions were to generate mounting controversy as it gave hope
for Liberia, a country that had seen all other countries, except
Ethiopia, become independent on the African continent. For the
majority of Liberians, any intervention was timely. In their eyes,
ECOWAS had stepped up to the task of collective responsibility to save
their lives when they were being turned away by US marines evacuating
Americans from the embassy grounds in Monrovia. At that point, the
choice of leadership had to be a suspended matter for Liberians. The
Doe Administration had lost control over the country, and Taylor’s
NPFL, hampered by the fight with its breakaway INPFL, and could not
take the capital.
Walraven, in his analysis of the legal references used by the SMC,
characterized the initial decision of the SMC to establish ECOMOG as
ultra virus (without the effect of law). He argues that it is the
Authority of ECOWAS Heads of State and not the Standing Mediation
Committee that should have authorized the deployment of ECOMOG. He
holds that specific institutions like the Defense Commission and the
Defense Council required by the 1981 Defense Protocol to handle
military matters such as Liberia’s, had not been set up, further
rendering the SMC decision unlawful. The author enthusiastically
agreed with Taylor’s Francophonie supporters - Ivory Coast and
Burkina Faso - that ECOMOG was interfering with the internal affairs
of another state.
Walraven, while advancing thoughtful areas for legal inquiry, may have
undermined his argument first by siding with supporters of Taylor
whose membership of not more than five in the 15-member organization
was seen as a protest from a minority group of sponsors of one of the
parties to the conflict. Second, the non-existence of the Defense
Commission and the Defense Council were creatures of a higher body,
the Authority of ECOWAS Heads of State, which, by implication, stated
that it could carry out its work in armed conflict situations through
the defense commission and the defense council mentioned by Walraven.
Where it has been agreed in protocols that subordinate working groups
be set up to facilitate the work of its creator, and that through a
collective act of the totality of its membership the organization has
not set up its subgroups, the implementation of a critical task by
superior organ, the SMC in this instance, cannot be considered
absolutely illegal due to the non-existence of complimentary units.
Walvren himself says a sub-committee on Defense within the SMC
designed the plan for ECOMOG. In the absence of the formal creation of
the Defense Council and Defense Commission, it did not appear that
collective negligence should have been further extended to a callous
disregard for the integrity of a member state slowly disintegrating in
armed conflict.
Third, the Standing Mediation Committee was set up as a permanent
organ of ECOWAS nine years after the 1981 Defense Protocol requiring
the Authority to take decisions in these matters. The SMC was to be
headed by the Chairman of ECOWAS, and its mandate clearly was to find
ways of ending the destruction in conflicts like the Liberian civil
war and then maintain law and order. It is understandable that an
organ of the community headed by the leader of the community itself
will take decisions on behalf of the rest of the group, particularly
if it had been broadly empowered to do so, and the security of life
and property is at grave risk.
ECOWAS, Doe and the Transition of Power
Decisions of the Standing Mediation Committee remained the key
guidelines, and the decisions were legally and diplomatically
unacceptable to Taylor’s supporters like Burkina Faso and the Ivory
Coast, it also presented a dilemma for President Doe. Two key SMC
presented a challenge to Doe: 1) the establishment of an intervention
force and 2) the convening of a conference to form an interim
administration. Doe had worked and looked forward for help to salvage
his government – a military presence from his colleagues -, which
was now coming in the form of ECOMOG. But the ‘help’ seemed to
have arrived when the only practical use Doe had for it was to have
him literally taken out of the country to save his life. As indicated
earlier, getting him out of the country was a plan contemplated by the
US State Department and rejected by the White House early 1990,
according to former Assistant Secretary of State Herman Cohen.
More troubling for Doe was the SMC declaration that a conference would
be held among Liberian political parties and civil society groups to
formulate an interim government of national unity that would lead the
country to fresh elections within twelve months, a period that would
have coincided with the end of President Doe’s six-year term. Doe
was nevertheless counting on the goodwill of Nigeria to ensure that
the Interim government mentioned would be only an expansion of his
government. He drew some comfort from the SMC declaration supra that
none of the leaders of the warring factions would be head of the
Interim Government. Besides, Doe believed even in those dying minutes
he could pull of a diplomatic or military gain and hold on to power.
Not ‘Collaborating’ With Doe
Instead of expressing publicly expressing apprehension about the SMC
decision, Doe dispatched a letter to the SMC stating that indeed “it
would seem most expedient at this time to introduce an ECOWAS
Peace-keeping Force into Liberia to forestall increasing terror and
tension and to assure a peaceful transitional environment.” Doe’s
letter seems to have left little room for misinterpretation. He had
taken the political and diplomatic offensive, actually preaching the
virtues of the anticipated deployment. He was hinting that he had
accepted the transitional government idea as well, without showing
that he was not assuming he would head it. After all, the ECOWAS had
certainly excluded the possibility of Taylor, a warring faction
leader, heading the interim administration. Even when Amos Sawyer was
selected as Interim President at the Banjul meeting of mixed Liberian
groups, Doe did not give any signal of having been replaced.
There has been no confirmation that the SMC was consulting with Doe in
taking the sweeping measures, including the decision to set up an
interim government. The 1981 Defense Protocol required that, “In
this case [decision to intervene in the internal conflict of a member
state] the Authority shall appreciate and decide on this situation in
full collaboration with the Authority of the Member State or States
concerned.” Doe assumed that his July letter would have been the
instrument to illustrate that ECOWAS still recognized him as
President, probably one reason for his fatal trip to ECOMOG
headquarters at the Freeport of Monrovia on September 9, 1990.
When ECOMOG spent nearly a week in Monrovia without officially
contacting him, Doe risked leaving his Mansion garrison to visit the
intervention forces’ temporary headquarters at the Freeport of
Monrovia to query the commander about not contacting him upon arrival.
While chatting with the Ghanaian Field Commander of ECOMOG, the
Ghanaian Lt. Gen. Arnold Quainoo, Doe was attacked, captured and
subsequently tortured to death by Prince Johnson and his INPFL
militias. Johnson and his men had welcomed ECOMOG when they entered
the seaport area under NPFL gunfire, and he was considered by the
peacekeepers as an unofficial collaborator.
Quainoo’s refusal to report to Doe upon arrival in Monrovia was not
an oversight. Quianoo said ECOWAS Executive Secretary told him not to
take sides with either the government or the NPFL. “You are going
there to protect the life and properties of the people, not to protect
the life of Doe,” Quainoo quoted Bundu. This gave reasons for cynics
to conclude that the Bundu statement was a feature in the events
surrounding the death of Doe at the ECOMOG headquarters.
The legitimacy of the Doe administration had remained a controversy
even among ordinary soldiers of ECOMOG. Quainoo said before they left
Freetown for Monrovia, his soldiers listened to Taylor on the BBC
talking about how they would be massacred if they ever went to
Monrovia. This angered the soldiers who began to ask why they were not
going in to support the Government of the day, which was the Doe
regime. Quainoo quoted some of the ECOMOG soldiers as saying in
Freetown: “All armies support the government of the day. Doe was the
government of the day. We have no right to go and select a government
for Liberia. So the question we are asking is why don’t we support
the President of Liberia.” The General said back in Ghana before his
departure, Ghanaian soldiers assigned with him said they saw the
military operation in two ways: either support Doe to remain in power,
or support Taylor. They could not understand the demand that they be
neutral between the two sides.
There have been other accounts on the motive of the trip to the ECOMOG
headquarters. One account says either the Nigerians or Americans had
arranged with Doe to get him out of the country. Another account
points to a conspiracy between Quainoo, the American Embassy and
Johnson to get rid of Doe since he was refusing to resign and leave.
Cohen’s statement supra that the White House never approved of a
rescue plan for Doe ruled out the account that the Americans were
trying to smuggle him out. It has never been established either that
the Nigerians, who were second in command in ECOMOG at the time, had
plans on that day to get Doe out. Neither has the conspiracy theory
involving the Americans, Quainoo and Prince Johnson ever been
verified.
What is cogent though is the short meetings reportedly held on the
same day among representatives of the INPFL, ECOMOG and Selley
Thompson, the official spokesman for Doe. In his eyewitness account,
James Youboty says INPFL rebels were shouting in the vicinity of the
Freeport that people would “hear good news by 2 o’clock this
afternoon.” Youboty explains that Thompson arrived shortly telling
President Doe that he had arranged the meeting with Quainoo. Youboty
said Doe quickly left the Executive Mansion for the Freeport without
his usual heavy escort, with people booing and cheering him at the
same time. After Doe’s arrival, a Ghanaian ECOMOG soldier stopped
his military escorts and assured them that they no longer needed their
arms as they were under the peacekeepers’ protection. In a matter of
minutes, Youboty explains, Johnson arrived with his men, fully armed,
shouting, “Doe must die today.” The INPFL began shooting and
subsequently disabled and snatched away Doe from Quainoo’s office
for the rebel base in nearby Caldwell where he was tortured to death.
The death of Doe threatened the esprit-de-corps in the hierarchy of
ECOMOG and brought swift reaction from Abuja and Conakry, though it
was evident that the two governments had already given up on a Doe
leadership in Liberia. The Nigerians launched what amounted to an
internal leadership among the peacekeepers, immediately taking over
the command of ECOMOG in person of Maj. General Joshua Dongoyaro, a
prominent officer in the Nigerian Armed Forces. Their men were not in
the area during the Prince Johnson episode, volleys of artillery soon
rang out against Johnson and his men from a Nigerian gunboat moving
into the port.
President Conte withdrew Brigadier Magasuba, who was with Quainoo and
Doe during the Freeport meeting. When the Guinean officer presented
Doe’s glasses and his stave to Conte, the President dishonorably
discharged the general from the army and banned him from living in any
part of Guinea besides his home village. The actions from the two
capitals demonstrated the extent of the close relations Babangida and
Conte maintained with Doe.
Even more critical was what appeared to have been a political split in
ECOWAS. Its Executive Secretary General, Abbas Bundu, was reported to
have said on BBC radio that the demise of Doe was a welcomed event as
it made the peace plan easier to implement. Chairman Jawara’s
spokesperson withdrew a similar statement that had earlier been
attributed to the Gambian leader on the same radio program.
The multiple contradictions that had characterized individual ECOWAS
member states’ reaction to the outbreak of the war had come full
cycle, showing in unexpected places like the secretariat of the
community, which was operating in the capital of Nigeria, proven
friend of Doe. NPFL supporters Ivory Coast and Burkina Faso had from
the onset rejected the decision of sending in ECOMOG on grounds
identical to what Taylor said: the peacekeepers would support Doe. Now
the drama had unfolded with Doe being killed at the ECOMOG base with
no resistance or interference from the group that was supposed to be
his partners. Among other things, it is the search for reasons to the
strange behavior of ECOMOG upon arrival that led Doe to his death on
their doorsteps.
Enforcement and the Road Ahead
Several meetings were going on to effect a cease-fire, which ECOMOG
was supposed to monitor, but then in the ECOWAS consultations with FC
Quainoo, the multilateral force was supposed to secure Monrovia,
already the object of fierce military contest between the government,
the NPFL and the INPFL. It was obvious that ECOMOG was coming in as a
peace enforcement group from the onset. It was more than implications
when Bundu ordered the high command to protect life and property. In
the words of Quainoo, Taylor was on international radio regularly
informing the peacekeepers of their fatal fate if they ever set foot
on Liberian soil. Whether it was war propaganda, the intensity of the
belligerency around Monrovia was sufficient to show that Taylor was
not joking. The West African troops remained militarily engaged with
the NPFL even while they facilitated the seating of the Interim
Government of National Unity (IGNU) headed by Amos Sawyer.
By October 1992, following several failed meetings in Mali and Togo
among the parties, the NPFL had decided to launch its major offensive
and take over Monrovia, ending in failure but demonstrating that by
necessity, ECOMOG could not play a neutral role, an observation the
Ghanaian foot soldiers had intimated to their commander in Ghana
before heading for Liberia. The SMC in its final communiqué on the
functions of ECOMOG made it clear that the force would keep the peace,
restore law and order and ensure that the anticipated cease-fire would
be respected.
The novel move undertaken by an otherwise multilateral economic
integration organization to commit financial and military resources to
a conflict that in many ways was fueled by couple of its key members
signaled a necessarily complex road ahead. The level of
non-cooperation would only be exacerbated by the fact that the
diplomatic variables were not confined to the sub-region, as evident
by the involvement of Libya with the NPFL, and the tacit support given
through French political and commercial relations with not only the
NPFL West African sponsors – Burkina Faso and the Ivory Coast –
but with the NPFL itself as explained above.
The revenue from Taylor’s massive business activities beyond Africa
were bound to turn him into a formidable force against the
peacekeepers, who evidently were determined to hold to their original
interpretation of remaining neutral – not supporting Doe nor Taylor.
The NPFL leader even set up a rival government and designated Gbarnga,
his headquarters in central Liberia as the capital. This was his way
of legitimizing his deals with the outside world as well as
demonstrating that the Sawyer interim government in Monrovia was
nothing but a caricature with no territory or resources to control.
Taylor was often on his radio referring to Sawyer and his officials as
‘cockroaches.’
Enforcement Woes
Taylor’s strength had remained at least undiminished and
posed an embarrassing challenge to Nigeria and the rest of the ECOMOG
contributing countries up to the reluctant departure of Babangida from
his country’s leadership in 1993. Nigerian jets and artillery in
operation deployed for more than two years, and Taylor was still
visible. Fatigue in the field and in diplomatic quarters had earlier
caused the Francophone ECOWAS members to begin adjusting their
strategy and give a more leading role in the peace process to the
Ivory Coast, the chief Taylor patron. The four agreements named after
the Ivorian City of Yamoussoukro attempted to include Taylor in the
Monrovia power-sharing arrangement, but the NPFL’s insistence on
heading the transitional government created obstacles.
Even the Americans once again came in through the unofficial
secondment of Former President Jimmy Carter, who was largely seen as
sympathetic to Taylor. He accused the peacekeepers of not being
neutral, meaning they should stop fighting the NPFL. The United States
lured Senegal into providing a battalion of their elite soldiers to
join the peacekeeping to enhance an image of neutrality. Taylor told
US officials that he believed in the impartiality of the Senegalese,
another French-speaking but cleared of direct collaboration with any
side in the conflict. Taylor told US Assistant Secretary of State for
Africa, Herman Cohen, that he was comfortable enough with the
Senegalese to disarm and fully cooperate with the peace process.
It didn’t take long for this arrangement too to collapse. According
to Cohen, Taylor showed distrust and “at one point, when the
Senegalese were playing the game where they were trying to move slowly
at the rate that Charles Taylor was indicating he could accept, slowly
moving into Charles Taylor's territory, [they] discovered an arms
depot which should [have been] dismantled, and seven of their troops
were deliberately murdered by the NPFL.” The Senegalese declared
themselves unqualified to serve as peacekeepers, and left. Troops also
came from Tanzania and Uganda to deal with the NPFL’s constant
claims of being singled out for destruction. They too eventually left
due to the intransigence of the NPFL.
With the infusion of news groups into ECOMOG and the lull in battle
with the NPFL, the force intermittently appeared to have adopted a
peacekeeping posture. Even the two Nigerian Field Commanders coming
immediately after the no-nonsense Dongoyaro actually paid visits to
Gbarnga as part of the “confidence-building mode” that combat
exhaustion had imposed on ECOMOG. The peace process had turned into a
political, diplomatic and military impasse.
The “Resistance” Movements
The entry of the NPFL-backed RUF into Sierra Leone targeting both
Liberians and Sierra Leoneans, along with the prolonging of the war
served as primary factors in the emergence of new warring factions,
all of them anti-Taylor. Between 1991 and 1993, the United Liberation
Movement of Liberia for Democracy (ULIMO) had infiltrated Western
Liberia from Sierra Leone where it was fighting alongside government
soldiers against the RUF. As the ECOWAS peace conference in the Benin
capital of Cotonou convened as part of the effort to get the NPFL
comply with the Yamoussoukro Agreements, ULIMO had to be accommodated.
It had driven Taylor away from Lofa County, the country’s largest,
and pushed the NPFL completely away from the Sierra Leone border.
The NPFL used the new faction addition as an official reason to pursue
its struggle for the Mansion. But in real terms there was actually no
increase in the number of factions, as the INPFL became defunct
following the 1992 NPFL massive offensive on Monrovia. ECOMOG invited
ULIMO some 60 miles away to help out. The NPFL was carrying on a
combination of heavy conventional and guerilla warfare, and the ECOMOG
thought the ULIMO presence would be useful. The resistance group moved
in to help ECOMOG and remnants of the Armed Forces of Liberia push
back the rebels. ECOMOG found it militarily advantageous to let
Liberians confront Taylor, though this did not fully translate into
permanent peace. By 1997 the year of the national elections, at least
eight warring factions existed. Except where they had skirmishes with
each other, their target was the NPFL.
Some Lessons
The diplomatic and military intervention of the Economic Community of
West African States in the internal armed conflict of Liberia exposed
a number of realities that should be useful in determining and
structuring future intervention efforts in West Africa.
First, the nature of internal conflicts that rapidly turn into anarchy
with enormous humanitarian implications increasingly requires that
intervention forces begin as peace enforcement operations.
Peacekeeping normally connotes there is peace – cessation of
military hostilities - that is to be maintained and monitored by the
peacekeepers. ECOMOG and its authorities knew that the NPFL rebels
were ready to resist their entrance into Liberia and that was
publicized abundantly. And when the ECOMOG troops arrived, it was
fierce battle from the start. ECOWAS had given the mandate to its
forces to restore law and order, which meant engaging in war if those
creating the disorder were a military force prepared to challenge the
peacekeepers. If on the other hand belligerent activities had stopped
and there was now left the need to put criminal activities and
lawlessness under control, the same mandate would have applied. It is
necessary that the mandate of a multinational military mission be one
of clarity and not be subject to multiple interpretations. The
circumstances of the conflict ought to be assessed and the required
mandate sufficiently explained to the high command and regulars of the
peacekeeping force.
Second, the wealth and military capability of Nigeria allowed it to
set the pace for the multilateral intervention. It received praises
for relatively containing the war, but where it considered certain
actions were in its national or other interest, it made bold moves
that did not necessarily meet the consent of other participants. This
affected the cohesion of the force and at some stages impacted the
pace at which the peace process advanced. Under the circumstances,
thus, where the United Nations recognized ECOWAS as the proper
sub-regional body to deal with the Liberian crisis, the international
community through the UN should provide the necessary financial and
other resources for the entire peacekeeping operation. A skewed
financial burden among the participating countries is likely to create
room for disproportionate dominance.
Third, ECOWAS should prioritize its economic objectives,
notwithstanding its relative success in conflict resolution. Economic
deprivation lies at the bottom of most of the upheavals warranting
intervention. Negative competition between English-speaking and
French-speaking blocs should be eliminated in favor of practical
economic and cultural integration programs that will generate wealth
and build a strong West African economic middle class. Civil society
organizations should make independent collaborating moves that will
pressure governments of ECOWAS member states to turn to conflict
prevention by pursuing productive economic and human rights policies.
In all of this, it must be noted that the role of sub-regional bodies
such as ECOWAS in assuming the risk to come to the aid of the
citizenry of a fellow member state is a fundamental test for
cooperation among states. ECOWAS member states were filled with
anxiety over whether to intervene in the Liberian conflict
individually based on their disposition towards the Doe government in
Monrovia. Others too, due to their connection with the rebels, stood
accused of not lending a helping hand. From the onset, ECOWAS faced
the pressure of these contradictions, and yet mustered the legal and
diplomatic wherewithal to intercede collectively. More than one
thousand West African soldiers died and several thousand more got
wounded, in the cause of trying to save the lives of people from
another country. ECOWAS’ decision to intervene in Liberia, as
controversial as it was among some of it members, demonstrated that
sub-regions were prepared to assume their responsibilities on behalf
of the international system. United Nations endorsement and supportive
involvement later confirmed the partnership that must be further
cultivated to make the external reaction time to conflicts bearable.
The Liberian experience clearly demonstrated the need to contain
internal armed conflicts, for they have the real possibility of
causing havoc for the contiguous countries and beyond. From Liberia,
rebel activities arrested the economic growth of Guinea, Sierra Leone
and now the Ivory Coast, whose late leader encouraged the rebellion.
Formerly considered as the capital of West Africa, the Ivory Coast
today remains literally partitioned between the government and rebels.
New mechanisms must be developed to deal with dictatorship, corruption
and political marginalization that serve as some of the root causes
for rebellion.
And finally, the ECOWAS experience and its many critiques should be
the impetus for the upgrading of the structures and sub-institutions
that would enable the organization become more responsive to its own
needs. Its involvement in Liberia, though of the highest quality,
generated sufficient controversy to indicate that there was need for
updating to conform with its expected obligations under international
law and legitimate sub-regional practices. Its legal instruments must
be strengthened from the lessons of its Liberian experience.
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