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Weapons of Mere Destruction

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Weapons of Mere Destruction WEAPONS OF MERE DESTRUCTION ECOWAS AND UN POLICY COUNTERING THE PROLIFERATION OF SMALL ARMS DURING AND IMMEDIATELY AFTER THE FIRST AND SECOND LIBERIAN CIVIL WARS. MA Thesis History of International Relations written by Lothar van Riel Under the supervision of Ms. Prof. Dr. M. van Leeuwen and Mr. Prof. Dr. W. Klinkert 5th of August, 2015 1 Page intentionally left blank. 2 Contents Introduction ............................................................................................................................................. 3 Historiography and historical context ..................................................................................................... 5 Historiography ................................................................................................................................. 5 The historical context of the Liberian conflict ................................................................................. 9 The First Liberian Civil War .................................................................................................................... 12 Acquire arms, acquire power ........................................................................................................ 12 International context ..................................................................................................................... 15 ECOWAS intervenes ...................................................................................................................... 17 ECOWAS mandate regarding SA/LW ............................................................................................. 18 ECOMOG lands .............................................................................................................................. 19 Doe’s murder ................................................................................................................................. 19 Preventing the spread of small arms ............................................................................................. 21 The First Liberian Civil War: Second Phase ........................................................................................... 25 Enter ULIMO .................................................................................................................................. 25 ECOMOG’s new strategy ............................................................................................................... 28 Cotonou Agreement: United Nations Observers .......................................................................... 29 Abuja Agreement........................................................................................................................... 34 Abuja II DDRR programme ............................................................................................................ 38 Taylor and peace ........................................................................................................................... 41 Types of weapons used and their origins ...................................................................................... 41 An ethnic war? ............................................................................................................................... 42 The Second Liberian Civil War ............................................................................................................... 43 Peace under Taylor ........................................................................................................................ 43 Liberia: A garrison state headed towards war .............................................................................. 44 Rise of LURD .................................................................................................................................. 48 ECOWAS and UN intervention....................................................................................................... 52 DDRR program ............................................................................................................................... 53 Types and origins of weapons ....................................................................................................... 58 International policy on small arms ........................................................................................................ 62 ECOWAS Moratorium .................................................................................................................... 62 UN embargo .................................................................................................................................. 63 The New ECOWAS Convention ...................................................................................................... 65 Continued ethnic grievances ......................................................................................................... 67 Conclusion ............................................................................................................................................. 69 References ............................................................................................................................................. 70 3 Introduction On Christmas Eve 1989, a force of 150 militias led by Charles Taylor marched into Liberia in a bid to take control of the country. Within months, the National Patriotic Front of Liberia (NPFL), as the amateur soldiers called themselves, seized control of the entire Liberian hinterland. Within years, Taylor managed to cultivate a pseudo-government, creating ministries, a private bank and even his own currency.1 The secret to the NPFL’s rapid advance was the deadliest weapon of the past thirty years: an adolescent male equipped with an Avtomat Kalashnikova – the AK-47. Of course, the AK-47 was not the only weapon that featured in the war. The small arms and light weapons (SA/LW) used during the war ranged from Belgian FN-FAL assault rifles, to American M-16’s to Chinese and Serbian made variants of the Kalashnikov. Unfortunately, these weapons were not limited to the Extended Civil War in Liberia either. Young men, women, and children brandished these arms not only in various conflicts in Africa, but also in Bosnia, Haiti, Cambodia and Colombia.2 According to a UN statement in 1997: “The excessive and destabilizing accumulation and transfer of small arms and light weapons is closely related to the increased incidence of internal conflicts and high levels of crime and violence. It is, therefore, an issue of legitimate concern for the international community. Groups and individuals operating outside the reach of state and government forces make extensive use of such weapons in internal conflicts. Insurgent forces, irregular troops, criminal gangs, and terrorist groups are using all types of small arms and light weapons.”3 There are several critical reasons why assault rifles and other light weapons are the arms of choice in these intrastate conflicts. First and foremost, they are relatively cheap and easily accessible. Following the end of the Cold War, millions of these weapons have been declared surplus by the nations that owned them. Consequently, they often fell into the hands of corrupt brokers, who were more than ready to sell them to organizations like Taylor’s NPFL. Secondly, these weapons are durable and remarkably easy to use. Especially the assault rifles based on the Russian Kalashnikov architecture, and to lesser extent the American M-16’s left over from the Vietnam War, require very little and simple maintenance. Finally, small arms and light weapons are easy to carry, transport and conceal and are capable of inflicting enormous damage. One of the conflicts that brought the destabilizing role of small arms to the attention of the international community was the First Civil War in Liberia. Their destructive capability was illustrated by the extraordinary amount of human suffering caused in the conflict: the war claimed the lives of over 200,000 people and displaced over a million. As these kinds of conflicts proliferate, the flood of small arms has become a relentless torrent. The death toll from small arms dwarfs that of all other weapons systems and in most years greatly exceeds the toll of the atomic bombs that devastated Hiroshima and Nagasaki. In terms of the carnage they cause, small arms, indeed, could well be described as “weapons of mass destruction”. Yet there is still no global non-proliferation regime to limit their spread, as there is for chemical, biological and nuclear weapons. Small arms proliferation is not merely a security issue; it is also an issue of human rights and of development.4 1 Stephen Ellis, The mask of anarchy: The destruction of Liberia and the Religious dimension of an African civil war (London 1999) 171. 2 Michael Klare, “The Kalashnikov Age,” The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists Vol. 55, No. 1 (January/February 1999). 3 United Nations (UN), “General and complete disarmament: Small Arms,” A/52/298 (27th of August 1997) 9-10. 4 UN, We the Peoples: The role of the United Nations in the 21st century (United Nations 2000) 52. 4 The outbreak of violent civil conflict in Liberia marked the beginning of a change to the political and security configuration of the region, and attracted millions of illicit small arms.5 The easy accessibility of timber and diamonds provided non-state actors with the opportunity to barter these natural resources for weapons, fuelling the small
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