FOROYAA Newspaper (Serrekunda)
Suwaibou Touray
1 April 2008
interview
We have been focusing on politics, in general, and Gambian politics, in particular. In the last edition, we have followed the narration of events as they unfolded during the civil war of the West African Nation of Liberia.
We have stopped where the West African Magazine interviewed General Quainoo, the first Field Commander of ECOMOG.
We stopped where General Quainoo said they had to fight their way through to secure the various bridges and the roads in the designated positions of phase two.
Let us follow part Two of the exclusive interview in which General Quainoo clarified his role as ECOMOG commander and the part he had taken and the general confusion that had surrounded the intervention of ECOMOG.
Q. The NPFL had never agreed to your coming in as a peacekeeping force..
A. We had a dilemma. The reality on the ground was that people were dying and atrocities were being committed
Q. Your arrival marked the first taking of prisoners in the long running fratricidal war?
A. The faction's fighters hardly targeted each other. The defenseless civilians were the ones killed.
Q How did the population react to your landing?
A. It was impossible to judge immediately, since we had to fight. The moment the fighting subsided thousands of people flocked to us. We evacuated those who wanted to leave. We had to feed thousands as they were really hungry. We gave them garri. We wished we had more. Many desperate and frightened people had been simply boiling green leaves. People suffered a lot. As we tried to help them they ended up crying for the fact that we were there to end their nightmare.
Q. How were you received by President Doe and the Armed forces of Liberia (AFL)?
A. Doe had then lost all his control over the country. ECOWAS had taken a decision for Liberians to appoint an interim President. Dr. Amos Sawyer who was selected as the new leader after the "All-Liberian Conference" was my commander-in-chief along with the then ECOWAS Chairman, Gambian President Dawda Jawara.
Q. How do you respond to claims that that ECOMOG went in to protect Doe?
A. That is their opinion. There are even those who believed that, as he was elected President by his people, nobody had the right to remove Doe from power, including ECOWAS.
Q. Given this confusion, how exactly did you understand your mission after landing?
A. Listen, I have already told you that during my consultations, West African leaders had different motives for stepping in. They had their national interest at stake. Up till today we do not have a legal framework for ECOWAS on military intervention. So in going to Sierra Leone for example, there was no agreed framework for security and humanitarian intervention. There is no Common policy for intervention and we still don't have one.
Q. How did you get to be appointed the Force Commander?
A. Having decided to establish ECOMOG the leaders turned to the issue of who was to command it. This was a major political decision. When Dr. Bundu raised the matter, Ghana's name was proposed. I was nominated by President Rawlings. Nigeria's Babangida approved it.
Q. Didn't you realise it was going to be a tough job since you were called to command troops mainly contributed by a country other than yours?
A. Never forget that Nigeria and Ghana have had a long tradition of military co-operation, but there were other problems. When we were leaving Freetown, there were unexplained delays. A Nigerian military envoy handed me a letter from Gen. Sani Abacha, then the chief of defence staff. The letter required all Nigerian officers above the rank of major to return immediately to Nigeria. The reason apparently was that my Guinean deputy force commander, Lamin Mangasouba, was a lieutenant colonel and therefore they were not going to serve under him.
I tried to solve the problem at the Guinean Embassy, I was told that in Guinea, there is only one General and that is President Conteh. No one else is allowed promotion to this rank. I pressed the Guineans to solve the problem. They ended up promoting the officer to a full colonel. Yet still, the Nigerians found the arrangement unacceptable and refused to co-operate with the Guinean deputy force commander.
Q. What was the highest staff appointment Nigeria was holding at the time?
A. Chief of staff, Brig.Gen.Cyril Iweze. He was also ordered to leave.
Q. Command difficulties and threats from the NPFL apart, what were some of the initial problems you faced?
A. A major humanitarian tragedy. For instance, a woman would come to us with three babies, one on her back and two others, just like skeletons in a wheelbarrow. When she takes the baby on her back off, you suddenly realise he had been dead on her back all along without her knowing.
Hundreds of weak evacuees running away from the war would head for the port and try to board the boats by climbing the nets alongside them. Many fell into the sea and died.
There were people with untreated injuries, mainly gunshot wounds, people dying and foaming at the mouth. Terrifying scenes. We provided medical care and evacuated and fed the displaced. Even our soldiers gave out their rations.
Q What co-operation did you get from the armed groups?
A. Charles Taylor's NPF'L saw us as a threat. Prince Johnson's group and Doe's soldiers seemed to be more accommodating. They held meetings under my Guinean deputy and broke the ice, they even talked of disarming. I was cautious. Nothing was under control, and there was a lot of backstabbing in this war.
Q. Prince Johnson certainly stabbed you in the back by capturing President Doe in your ECOMOG perimeter.
A. I don't see how this remains a big issue. When people ask this question, they act as if we went into a Liberia that was at peace with itself and suddenly a commander in chief visited the port and was captured. Liberian factions were fighting for almost eight months before we landed. Nothing was secure; I was not secure; Doe was not secure; nobody was secure inside Liberia. We needed to secure ourselves in order to secure the country. When President Clinton came here, the security that was mounted was more than our own. We tried to impose areas of control in the confusion in which we found ourselves without success.
Where did Doe think he was going? Apparently he suddenly burst out from his Mansion with his security in tow not knowing where he was heading. I had no idea that he was on his way to see me. Suddenly, there he was, surrounded by bodyguards twice my size! They were rushing into the base. Their very size was frightening!
Prior to this unexpected visit, Doe had written to me describing himself as 'the monkey in the chair' and requiring that I visit him at the Executive Mansion in conformity with African tradition. I never went. Sometimes I get the feeling that because I did not go, he decided to come and see me without me knowing.
Doe told me that he was in this predicament because he was a native and he was not liked by Americo-Liberians.
He told me at the meeting that no one but the Liberian people who voted him into office had the power to remove him from office.
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