Africa Confidential
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www.africa-confidential.com 23 June 2000 Vol 41 No 13 AFRICA CONFIDENTIAL SUDAN 3 LIBERIA/SIERRA LEONE Hall of Mirrors The NIF regime is widely regarded Godfather to the rebels as brutal and repressive but the Dealing with Charles Taylor is key to any peace settlement. The UN may lift sanctions. NIF officials question is, how? have got Ethiopia and Egypt to say Khartoum has given up terrorism. The latest spate of sabre rattling between Monrovia and Freetown signals the final unravelling of the And shockingly, Cairo openly Sierra Leone peace accord signed in Lomé last July. The governments of President Ahmad Tejan pledges to prevent independence Kabbah and Charles Taylor are each accusing the other of preparing an invasion force. Both sides of southern Sudan ‘by any means’. have been moving troops towards their common border for ‘security reasons’. A key plank in the Lomé accord was that Liberia and its President would play a constructive role in persuading Corporal SUDAN 4 Foday Sankoh’s Revolutionary United Front to abide by the accord, surrendering its arms in exchange for jobs in a power-sharing government. He smiles and smiles That element of the accord, at least, relied heavily on mutual self-delusion. That has been Foreign Minister Mustafa Osman‘s stripped away since the collapse of the accord and Sankoh’s arrest last month (AC Vol 41 No 12). campaign against UN sanctions Yet Taylor remains, whatever Freetown says, key to any settlement in Sierra Leone. The end of has been a model of diplomatic diplomatic-speak between Monrovia and Freetown won’t have an immediate bearing on the military duplicity. It has skilfully exploited situation. Neither side is ready for a massive escalation of the proxy war between Taylor’s forces the strategic and commercial self- and Sierra Leone that has raged for nine years, two years longer than Liberia’s own civil war. Of interest of UN members states and is confident of success. the two, Taylor’s forces still have the means and the men to face down Kabbah’s shaky coalition of pro-government forces in a border war. Liberian Defence Minister Daniel Chea is accurate in his claim that Sierra Leone could not, currently, win a war with its neighbour. CÔTE D’IVOIRE 5 Yet neither side is looking at the border, which is clearly and unarguably delineated by the River Moro. The real focus is the diamond country of Kono District, home to the rich alluvial deposits The national along the River Sewa (see Map). There, the RUF and its Liberian and Burkinabè allies are prepared question to make their last stand. The RUF has been in continuous control of Kono since November 1998, General Gueï’s junta still hasn’t when it attacked in flying columns (highly mobile guerrilla units) in tactics developed by ex-South been able to decide whether former African Defence Force Colonel Fred Rindle. Along with other tactical specialists drawn from the Premier Alassane Ouattara is apartheid SADF (Rindle was a liaison officer for P.W. Botha’s regime and Jonas Savimbi’s rebels eligible to run as president. The in Angola) Rindle trained and equipped the RUF units to operate alongside Liberian and Burkinabè longer he delays, the more likely it fighters. looks that Gueï will stand himself. But he will have to watch Ouattara’s supporters in the junta’s own ranks. From apartheid soldier to Taylor trainer Rindle, who can be seen occasionally in Monrovia’s Mamba Point Hotel and styles himself as a BENIN 6 mining engineer, won Taylor’s confidence with the devastatingly successful 1998-99 offensive. The RUF and allies retook all of Kono District, before moving rapidly towards Freetown, where they took Kérékou, no coup the West African peacekeeping force, the Economic Commission of West African States Monitoring Group (Ecomog) by surprise. By 8 January 1999, RUF soldiers were giving interviews to the BBC Spiralling fuel prices, a troubled on satellite telephones from central Freetown: that invasion left more than 6,000 people dead and sale of the state cotton board and a whiff of corruption mean thousands more mutilated in less than a week. President Kérékou should worry From the frenetic military activity, the arms shipments to rebel-held Kono and the radio rhetoric about his re-election fight next from Monrovia officials, another major Liberian military operation is in train. Irritatingly for March against former President Taylor’s government, Kabbah’s government and the United Nations Mission in Sierra Leone now Soglo. Kérékou may be able to get good aerial reconnaissance reports of activity across the border. There is also far more human convince Benin that his errors have been less serious than Soglo’s intelligence available from former Sierra Leone Army (SLA) soldiers who fought alongside the RUF and from some recent operations behind the rebel lines, we hear. All this clearly shows trucks loaded with weapons, food and medicine going from Liberia into Sierra Leone along the three major RUF POINTERS 8 supply routes. One report suggests that a helicopter lent to Taylor by Libya’s Col. Moammar el Gadaffi to ferry UN hostages back to safety (500 were captured by the RUF at the beginning of May) Uganda/Rwanda, had been used to resupply RUF forces. Somalia/Djibouti Taylor’s ambivalent role - negotiator and ‘liberator’ of the UN hostages and godfather- and Eritrea/Ethiopia quartermaster of the RUF - has put him under greater Western scrutiny. In November 1998, the United States State Department’s Director for West Africa, Ambassador Howard Jeter, earned After Kisangani; time to talk; time of reckoning. 23 June 2000 Africa Confidential Vol 41 No 13 Kamaron G G Others, though, such as the Netherlands’ Ambassador to Côte G d’Ivoire and Liberia, Peter van Leewen, believe that a more Bumbuna imaginative selection of carrots and sticks might persuade Taylor l e Makeni k D GUINEA o to end his backing for the RUF and his meddling in Sierra Leone. R G Mag G D Lunsar buraka G G Any such strategy would have to address Taylor’s war aims in G D G Yengema G Sierra Leone: D B Yele G G Koindu a w Voinjama Falla e D Foya SIERRA S 1. Security. Many of Taylor’s former National Patriotic Front of LEONE D Bunumbu Kailahun Moyamba Segb wema Vahun Liberia soldiers have been fighting alongside the RUF for personal g D Daru n Bo D o RUF routes J profit. This enhances his reputation as the region’s guerrilla D from Liberia to D Kenema Giema Sierra Leone Zorzor godfather and generally stops them returning to Liberia to cause a B o Joru M LOFA trouble. However some of the fighting in Liberia’s north-west Bonthe o or COUNTY Pujehun D M Lofa County, which Taylor blamed on Guinean-backed rebels, Turn Gbatala ers Zimmi Pe (RUF training n. camp) may have been caused by disgruntled ex-NPFL and RUF soldiers B Bopolu fighting over spoils in the refugee camps close to the border. Gbarnga B Sulima Despite the proliferation of security units - Taylor’s ‘tontons Tubmanburg LIBERIA B Bauxite macoutes’ as they’re known in Monrovia on the old Haitian D Diamonds Robertsport analogy - government officials remain jittery about possible plots Kakata G Gold by one or other of the exiled warlords, such as Nigerian-based Bensonville 0 Kilometres 100 Roosevelt Johnson or US-based Alhaji Kromah. MONROVIA 0 Miles 50 2. Diamond trading. There is plenty of anecdotal and documentary evidence showing that most of Sierra Leone’s diamond production Taylor’s opprobrium by publicly stating that there was unambiguous is smuggled through Liberia and some specific indicators that the intelligence that the Liberian government was backing the RUF. business is handled by traders and valuers acting on behalf of This was later repeated by both the Nigerian and Ghanaian Taylor and his circle. It’s much harder to estimate what this trade governments following the RUF’s blitz on Freetown. The US is worth to Taylor. According to Antwerp’s High Diamond Council, Embassy in Monrovia, criticised by some Liberians for being soft Liberia’s ‘official’ diamond exports to Belgium were $269 mn. in on Taylor, insists there is no reason to change Jeter’s assessment. 1998 and $330 mn. in 1997. Last year, Liberian gem exports to On 13 June at a European Union meeting, British Foreign Belgium were reckoned to be over $300 mn. again. That is the only Secretary Robin Cook produced a new intelligence dossier on part of the Antwerp market that requires certificates of origin and Taylor’s military support for the RUF. This shows in detail how doesn’t include the city’s two other informal markets: the Taylor benefits from the smuggled Sierra Leone diamonds passing unregistered but legitimate diamond dealers and the totally illicit through Monrovia and concludes that the Liberian leader’s strategy recipients of smuggled stones. Nor does it include exports to the is to maintain his influence over eastern Sierra Leone through the increasingly important Tel Aviv market, which is even less regulated RUF, amid the breakdown of all state authority in the area. than Antwerp’s. The RUF demanded its cut, after getting most of the diamonds Brussels freezes Monrovia through forced labour, before handing over to Taylor’s trading The Cook report was convincing enough to persuade the other EU network. Documents found in Sankoh’s house in Freetown show ministers, some initially sceptical, to agree to freeze a two-year, 48 that Taylor and his traders took a substantial slice of the profit; million Euro (US$47 mn.) development aid programme for Liberia.