www.africa-confidential.com 9 June 2000 Vol 41 No 12 AFRICA CONFIDENTIAL SIERRA LEONE II 3 SIERRA LEONE I Kabbah, the survivor President Kabbah, strengthened by Moving the mandate the arrest of Foday Sankoh and the The credibility of the UN and British missions depends on the recent successes of the loyalist forces, contest between around 25,000 Sierra Leonean fighters should improve his local and international standing but there is still The future of President Ahmad Tejan Kabbah’s government and of the United Nations Mission in Sierra distrust between him and some who Leone (Unamsil) rests on a hastily constructed security pyramid. At its apex are Sierra Leone’s ‘teeth fight in the name of his government. forces’, a disparate grouping of serving and former government soldiers and their allies. At the base is But to many, 1997 coup leader Johnny the British military component, a taskforce of about 800 paratroopers, marines and special forces, most Paul Koroma, now claiming to be both born again Christian and born of whom are due to leave in mid-June but will be on standby if the government is threatened again. again soldier, looks a more convincing Sandwiched between the British and the Sierra Leonean forces is the UN military mission, whose strength leader than the elected Kabbah. has been bolstered from 11,000 to 13,000 troops; UN Secretary General Kofi Annan has now asked the UN Security Council to approve a further increase of the force to 16,500, making it the biggest UN NIGERIA 4 peacekeeping mission since that in Cambodia. Total failure, in the sense of the Kabbah government being overthrown and the Revolutionary United Mixed reviews Front invading Freetown, is unlikely now: both the UN and the British government are locked into preventing that. Equally, real success for Unamsil and sustainable peace look elusive. As Africa A general strike against the hike in Confidential went to press, the pro-Kabbah forces were making steady progress against scattered RUF fuel prices looms over President Obasanjo, a year into his first term as units north-east of Freetown. The Kabbah forces were set on moving into the RUF’s northern stronghold civilian leader. This follows a series of Makeni and then moving east towards the RUF’s diamonds heartland in Kono district. of sectional and religious confrontations in the north, west and Real battles lie ahead east and a stand-up fight between the President and the cavalier Speaker The weather might help the government forces. The current rainy season is bad for RUF food supplies of the National Assembly, Chuba and fighting operations but good for mining alluvial diamonds in the east. So Kabbah’s forces might be Okadigbo. But it may be that able to move ahead, bringing the major RUF areas in the north under their control and leaving Unamsil Obasanjo’s greatest achievement - forces to fill in behind them and re-establish their disarmament and demobilisation camps in Makeni. and that of his government - is to have Nevertheless, the real battle for the diamond fields in the east remains to be fought. Reports abound of survived while Nigeria’s ambitious soldiers observe the political scene. the RUF digging in there, backed by various mercenary forces. In principle, the Economic Community of West African States (Ecowas) is to send a force of 3,000 to help Kabbah’s forces retake the Kono fields. It is a huge undertaking, made harder by the lack of coordination among the various forces meant to SENEGAL 5 take on the RUF. It is still being debated within the UN whether this West African force will operate under a UN mandate. Nigerian diplomats want the UN mandate to be toughened to unambiguous peace Wade makes his mark enforcement; now, it’s halfway between peacekeeping and peace-enforcement. Such an operation could The democratic elan has survived easily become a bloodbath, especially as the RUF and its Liberian allies might see it as their last stand. and thrived in Wade’s first 100 days Unless such an operation was carried out as part of a broader plan to secure and police the diamond as President. But the public is now fields, it might do little for peace. Most encouraging is an international consensus that securing and looking for the ‘sopi’ (change) he promised. holding the diamond fields is a key to ratcheting down the RUF war. If the sort of international effort that has been put into securing Freetown is used in the diamond fields, there could be a breakthrough. This is no longer peacekeeping on the cheap. By default, this is now peace-enforcement with a heavy SOUTH AFRICA 6 price tag. Both Britain and the UN are investing substantial monetary and political capital in the revamped operation. The British government now has more political, diplomatic and security involvement in Sierra Come in, it’s private Leone than in any other non-British territory: it has senior officials in the Ministry of Defence (some 200- President Thabo Mbeki and team try 300 UK military trainers are to help rebuild the Sierra Leone Army, SLA); Britain has provided the to hold the line between the trades Inspector General of Police; Keith Biddle, there are senior British officials in the Treasury and the unionists who want to protect Central Bank of Sierra Leone; and there are more British officials from the Department of International employment and business which wants state companies sold off fast - Development (Dfid) working on the myriad reconstruction and rehabilitation projects. and cheap. The UN role is less extraordinary but no less critical. In early May, Unamsil was in psychological collapse. The RUF’s taking of some 500 UN military observers was the first real test of Unamsil’s mettle. It followed an announcement by the UN Force Commander, Major General Vijay Kumar Jetley, that POINTERS 8 his forces would deploy in the diamond fields of Kono district, the RUF’s economic stronghold. This World Bank, South crisis highlighted the UN’s lack of serious intelligence capacity: it had no means of running reconnaissance operations to ascertain RUF mobilisation or the flow of weapons to its fighters from neighbouring Liberia. Africa, Congo-K/ This lack of intelligence proved disastrous for military operational reasons and for diplomatic contacts Zimbabwe 9 June 2000 Africa Confidential Vol 41 No 12 Momoh but did not support the 25 May 1997 coup against Kabbah by GUINEA forces loyal to Maj. Johnny Paul Koroma. 2. The new SLA are the virgin soldiers recruited in the past year by the government and its Kabala GUINEA GOV Chief of Defence Staff, the late Brig. Gen. Maxwell Khobe, the Nigerian officer credited with organising the defence of Freetown in NORTHERN PROVINCE January 1999. All these recruits, many drawn from secondary schools, Kambia Bumbuna GOVERNMENT claim never to have belonged to fighting units, either government or OFFENSIVE Makeni GOV UN rebel, before. They were expected to be a key part of the new army Rogberi Port Loko Junction Magburaka being trained by British and other foreign officers. GOV UN UN UN Lungi 3. The ex-SLA or ‘Armed Forces Revolutionary Council soldiers’. Matotoka UN Lunsar Yengema X X These were former government soldiers who joined with Koroma’s FREETOWN Masiaka GOV SIERRA troops after the 1997 coup. Their military skills vary enormously. UN WESTERN AREA LEONE EASTERN Kailahun Some are UK-trained officers, others are infantry men recruited Moyamba PROVINCE UN during the junta period; some, such as Colonel S.O. Williams, had Bo Daru GOV UN been detained at Pademba Road Prison for disloyalty to Kabbah but Kenema GOV UN have now been brought in to command pro-government forces; some WESTERN GOV UN are former RUF soldiers motivated more by opposition to RUF leader Bonthe PROVINCE Sherbro Island Corporal Foday Sankoh and RUF sponsor Charles Taylor than any Pujehun loyalty to Kabbah. About 200-300 of these soldiers, such as the Occra LIBERIA Atlantic Hills Boys or the West Side Boys, have spent much of the last two Ocean years in the hinterland north-east of Freetown. Their main complaint is that the RUF got more from the Lomé Accord than they did. 4. The Civil Defence Forces. These are dominated by the Kamajor Protective horseshoe around Freetown by SLA / UN / UK forces militias moulded into a fighting force first by Alpha Lavalie, a Areas under RUF control stalwart of Kabbah’s Sierra Leone People’s Party, and then by Sam GOV Towns protected by government forces Hinga Norman, now Deputy Defence Minister. The Kamajors are UN Towns with UN deployments drawn mainly from the Mende people in the south-east and initially UN Towns where the UN has been forced out 0 Kilometres 100 appeared to co-exist with the RUF, many of whose recruits were also X Contested towns 0 Miles 50 Mende. Yet after his 1996 election, Kabbah’s distrust of the government army and his fear of the RUF led him to rely increasingly on the with RUF sponsors in the Liberian and Burkina Faso governments. Kamajors and other civil defence units. Their operations carry the Not only was the UN losing militarily, it descended into internal same sort of mystique as the RUF and they are effective in warding off recrimination. At one stage, Jetley’s assistants were blaming the entire rebel attacks. Despite the efforts by South African company Executive crisis on an allegedly garbled message from Unamsil’s then Outcomes to turn the Kamajors into a new national army, they lack the spokesperson, Philip Winslow, about RUF forces advancing towards cohesion and discipline to run a military offensive.