Washington, DC — In the Mano River region of Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea, armed insurgency has moved from country to country for years, one country's conflict feeding on another's. Most recently, due to fighting between the Liberian government of Charles Taylor and insurgents of the group, Liberians United for Reconciliation and Democracy (LURD), tens of thousands of Liberian refugees have fled into Guinea and Côte d'Ivoire.
Ecowas has called for an immediate cease fire and several Liberian opposition parties have echoed that call saying that Liberians prefer "ballots not bullets" as a way of attaining state power. But the Taylor's government has rejected the call. A cease fire "will only give the terrorists the opportunity to regroup and attack Liberia," the BBC quoted Liberian Information Minister Reginald Goodridge as saying. For its part, in a March 14 letter that effectively rejected an Ecowas invitation to participate in a "peace dialogue" that would have included Taylor, LURD's National Executive Council said "We want to move beyond Taylor."
Thus the region seems mired in continuing conflict. Although the elections just held in Sierra Leone have been hailed as a major milestone on the road to regional as well as national peace, the escalating fighting in Liberia is provoking fears that a spillover effect might threaten not only Sierra Leone's hard won and still fragile stability, but also contain seeds to destabilize much of West Africa.
"We have a plan for peace which begins with mediation," President Wade of Senegal told the Associated Press, "but (we) fear it may be too late."
AllAfrica's Charles Cobb Jr. discussed the developing situation with John Prendergast, formerly a special advisor on African conflict to the Clinton Administration and now co-director of the Africa program at the International Crisis Group. Excerpts:
In Sierra Leone I suppose the recently held elections and the process leading up to the election itself could be characterized as successful, both for the United Nations which has its largest peacekeeping force there, and in the sense of moving from a condition of civil war to a politics in peacetime. However, Sierra Leone sits in a larger regional context. In recent testimony before the House of Representatives Subcommittee on Africa you made the point that the threat of Liberia's conflict spilling back into Sierra Leone in the future is "real." Would you elaborate on that?
I think the dynamics for instability in West Africa emanating from the very clear agenda of [Liberian President] Charles Taylor and some of his military and political and commercial allies means that Liberia itself and its neighbors will forever be subject to the possibility of sustained destabilization.
The grand scheme that Taylor is operating under is one which sees a "Greater Liberia" in effect - this simply means that the influence that Liberia has in the region and the links it has in the region are preponderant, that the pliable regimes and bordering militias can ensure that policy objectives are met, whatever they might be.
And secondly, deeply intertwined with that is the desire to maintain control of as much of the natural resource base - the asset base in the entire region - as possible.
Of course it is a very rich region in minerals and Taylor has clearly utilized the links that he has with Sierra Leonean and Guinean opposition groups to secure a wider access to these natural resources - wider than just in Liberia.
So it is these intertwined objectives that end up leaving a constant cycle of instability in the region. And of course the response from the neighbors is to do the exact same thing, which is to arm Liberian opposition elements, of which there are many - both rank and file militia members as well as political dissidents who believe they have no way to come back to Liberia except through the barrel of a gun.
And that kind of cocktail of support and counter-support of cross-border insurgencies has left countries in turmoil. It bounces from country to country. For an extended period of time Sierra Leone bore the main brunt of this regional effort.
Now Liberia looks like it's in for its own 15-minutes of infamy in terms of the fight by the LURD (Liberians United for Reconciliation and Democracy) as it attempts to take Monrovia and who know when Guinea will be next.
So, it's an ongoing cycle and I think unless the regional ambitions emanating from Monrovia are dealt with, this kind of a cycle of violence will continue.
The idea that Taylor has ambitions to control the natural resources of the region won't surprise many, but you also specifically mentioned ambitions for a "greater" Liberia. Are we talking about ambition for a Mano River nation that he - Taylor - would head? Do you think that's what is at play here?
This is where the ambitions of Taylor and [Libyan leader] Al-Gadaffi really coincide. Taylor got his start and his early training in the Libyan school of insurgency.It sounds like a movie but it's actually the case that he went and was one of the early graduates of that elite school in Tripoli.
From the 1980s they both have shared this concept of confederation of states which would lead to wider African integration. In Al-Gadaffi's case - I can't assess his motivation - the one thing he seems to be genuine about is this desire to have a United States of Africa or Africa Union. This [Mano River region] is just one of many regions he's tried to do it in.
For Taylor this just seems to be a marriage of convenience and his commercial ambitions can marry up to Al-Gadaffi's sort of wider regional ambitions of confederation and he's able to milk Al-Gadaffi for a substantial amount of assistance and just talk the talk with him as many people do with the Libyans.
Taylor was able to do it effectively and sustain an assistance stream when everybody else was attempting to sanction or isolate Taylor in the madness of his policies.
Is this conflict, which is currently confined to Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea, likely to widen?
In Côte d'Ivoire there are elements in the military that support Taylor and there are elements, particularly in the political system, that are supportive of the LURD and want to try to take Taylor out. So any major activity on the military front inside Liberia will have inevitable repercussions there in Côte d'Ivoire.
There are also these kinds of dynamics in Burkina Faso and Guinea Bissau. There are actors in both of those countries who are sympathetic to one side or the other who at some point could be drawn in further if the conflict intensifies inside Liberia.
A scenario which is not completely out of the realm of the possible is that the LURD actually takes Monrovia at some point and drives Taylor to the border regions where he started which would lead him, along with his commercial backers, to intensify and stir the pot in these other neighboring countries.
So, it is of great concern to the Ecowas states that this thing which is already affecting quite deleteriously three countries, could actually expand much further.
Can we take Taylor's rejection the other day of calls for a cease fire as a signal that he feels he is being successful in getting on top this situation, in pushing back the LURD?
I don't see why either side at this point - at this high intensity, with no serious negotiations process in sight, with no other way to secure their objectives aside from the military card, and no side having a clear advantage at this point yet still believing they can win - I don't see why either side would agree to standing down the military option unless the stalemate becomes more of a hurting one.
They are not there yet. I don't expect from any side, any kind of interest in a cessation of hostilities at this point, although it certainly should be pushed very, very hard by the regional actors. But again, connected to a larger peace process.
This kind of highly unstable situation you've been describing would seem to throw a huge question mark over Sierra Leone. You have some RUF forces now kind of acting as part of Taylor's militia - a praetorian guard, if you will. I noted that Sierra Leone's President Kabbah, in addition to making himself Minister of Defense, appointed some individuals from what some see as a corrupt old guard into his new government. All of this would seem to add up to a high degree of vulnerability for this "new" Sierra Leone government.
If there isn't early consolidation of the democratic process, and there isn't a fair process of ensuring that the RUF political wing is as greatly accommodated as possible within the existing parameters of the system; and if there aren't clear benefits on the reconstruction side that go across regions rather than being focused more on SLPP ruling party strongholds; these are going to be early-warning indicators that will have an impact on RUF calculations as to whether any of them can be drawn back into military confrontation.
That's the internal (to Sierra Leone) dynamic. The external dynamic is, at what point might Taylor decide that the only way to take the pressure off this conflict inside Liberia is to attack neighboring countries, to go after supply lines and areas of support on border regions in both Sierra Leone and Guinea. Then, once again, you'd see the blow-back from Liberia's conflict in a more direct way.
So there are internal and external factors driving the potential for conflict in Sierra Leone today that Kabbah has a great deal of control over. If he governs magnanimously in this post-election period, and he is very, very fastidious in ensuring that there isn't any support for LURD going to Liberia from Sierra Leone, then he can perhaps help consolidate his gains from the election.
And isn't there an external factor with regard to both Sierra Leone and Guinea in the sense that the LURD gets a fair amount of backing from the Guinea government and to a lesser extent from the Sierra Leone government? Is there any inclination on the part of those two governments to reduce or eliminate their support for this rebel movement that is pressuring Liberia?
The Guineans will claim, of course, that they responded to the attacks on Guinea by Guinean dissidents supported by Taylor. And they will continue to claim that they are not providing assistance [to the rebels] although evidence appears quite substantially to the contrary.
I think the LURD will press this to its logical conclusion and make its run at Monrovia. And whatever elements in Guinea that support that will continue to do so. The [international] pressure hasn't been ramped up very much on Guinea.
It certainly could be ramped up for internal reasons - the instability that will be wrought, over the long run, by the rotting political system and non-democracy that exists in Guinea; but also I think the external issue of the whole cross-border activity into Liberia by the LURD.
I think both need be need to be subject of conditions for Western assistance. This is one where you have a real policy quandary for Western governments, the U.S. first and foremost.
They have established this relationship with the Guinean military to support training - it's a very modest program compared to some of the things we do in Europe and other parts of the world - but for Africa it's a rather substantial one.
Although the objective is effectively border control and self-defense, certainly it's not inconceivable that some of these training elements can be utilized in offensive as well as defensive capacities and passed on in direct or indirect ways to LURD elements.
So it's not failsafe in the sense that it is just aimed at and received by Guinean elements for defensive purposes only.
On the other hand, the policy objective, in the larger sense, is to put pressure on Taylor to negotiate in good faith, mostly through sanctions - to undercut his policy of destabilization in the region. So you have competing policy objectives: on the one hand, put pressure on Taylor, on the other hand the kind of human rights human rights problems, the kind of support for cross-border insurgencies that nobody wants to see. So it's a tough call, but more war in West Africa is not going to resolve the existing war.
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Yes, we need more pressure on Taylor but there are unexhausted, non-military means to achieve that and that is principally targeted sanctions on timber and the maritime sanctions that we've been calling for. That's where we really ought to ramp up the pressure.
Having little bits of military assistance going to Guinea which may or may not translate into some support for the LURD is not going to really influence the military battlefield that much; it just makes Western governments complicit with what may be very extraordinary human rights violations in the coming months.
A much better option right now would be to move forward finally - enforce the existing policies and expand the new ones, rather than trying this Mickey Mouse military strategy which really doesn't amount to much but makes it appear as if this is all a Western-backed strategy of overthrowing Taylor which it is just not substantial enough to be.
Is there something beyond sanctions that the U.S. should be doing in this region? As I recall, in your testimony you talked of the need for the U.S. to form a "contact group".
If you don't have increased pressure - whether it's military or sanctions - connected to a serious diplomatic initiative then it's not going to mean anything because there won't be any way to channel whatever compromises Taylor might be willing to make under pressure in to anything substantial or lasting.
So what needs to be attached to the effort of ramping up sanctions, what needs to be attached to the effort at the increasing isolation of Taylor, is beefing up diplomatic efforts aimed directly at Liberia.
First and foremost to do that, the external nations have to get their act together and unify their position on what they envision as the way forward. And that means the United States and the UK with its major investments in Sierra Leone and the French as a sort of basic trio in that contact group.
And bring along the Nigerians and come up with a unified approach of how to deal with the internal Liberian situation and, concurrently, how to more aggressively to deal with the regional insurgencies that each are supporting against the other in the Mano River area.
This is not a massive, Middle East peace process we're calling for. This is something a small contact group of a few nations that have significant interests or potential leadership capacity can do: get together on a fairly regular basis, plot strategy, operationalize that strategy by choosing a diplomat or one or two diplomats to take the lead in undertaking a negotiation process and just taking some leadership on this thing.
It doesn't cost that much. It doesn't involve a high investment up front to try to do that. If we're just pushing the pressure element and not having somewhere for the solution to be crafted, then it's only a half policy that can't succeed.
