When the State Fails SSW_376_Prelims.inddW_376_Prelims.indd i 110/29/20110/29/2011 12:48:5812:48:58 PMPM SSW_376_Prelims.inddW_376_Prelims.indd iiii 110/29/20110/29/2011 12:49:0012:49:00 PMPM WHEN THE STATE FAILS Studies on Intervention in the Sierra Leone Civil War Edited by Tunde Zack-Williams SSW_376_Prelims.inddW_376_Prelims.indd iiiiii 110/29/20110/29/2011 12:49:0012:49:00 PMPM First published 2012 by Pluto Press 345 Archway Road, London N6 5AA www.plutobooks.com Distributed in the United States of America exclusively by Palgrave Macmillan, a division of St. Martin’s Press LLC, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010 In cooperation with The Nordic Africa Institute PO Box 1703, SE-751 47 Uppsala, Sweden www.nai.uu.se Copyright © Tunde Zack-Williams 2012 The right of the individual contributors to be identified as the authors of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library ISBN 978 0 7453 3221 5 Hardback ISBN 978 0 7453 3220 8 Paperback Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data applied for This book is printed on paper suitable for recycling and made from fully managed and sustained forest sources. Logging, pulping and manufacturing processes are expected to conform to the environmental standards of the country of origin. 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 Designed and produced for Pluto Press by Swales & Willis Simultaneously printed digitally by CPI Antony Rowe, Chippenham, UK and Edwards Bros in the United States of America SSW_376_Prelims.inddW_376_Prelims.indd iivv 110/29/20110/29/2011 12:49:0012:49:00 PMPM This book is dedicated to ‘real people of Sierra Leone’: the workers, peasant producers and the youth. It is your action that will determine the destiny of a once proud nation. SSW_376_Prelims.inddW_376_Prelims.indd v 110/29/20110/29/2011 12:49:0012:49:00 PMPM SSW_376_Prelims.inddW_376_Prelims.indd vvii 110/29/20110/29/2011 12:49:0012:49:00 PMPM Contents Preface ix Abbreviations xii Map of Sierra Leone xiii PART I Introduction: Background to War and Post-Conflict Peacebuilding 3 1. Multilateral Intervention in Sierra Leone’s Civil War: Some Structural Explanations 13 Tunde Zack-Williams 2. International Actors and Democracy Promotion in Post-Confl ict Sierra Leone: Time for Stock-Taking 31 Marcella Macauley 3. International Peacebuilding in Sierra Leone: The Case of the United Kingdom 65 Michael Kargbo 4. Intervention and Peacebuilding in Sierra Leone: A Critical Perspective 89 Jimmy D. Kandeh PART II 5. The Role of External Actors in Sierra Leone’s Security Reform 117 Osman Gbla 6. Gender, Conflict and Peacebuilding in Africa: The Sierra Leone Experience 145 Sylvia Macauley 7. Youth Marginalization in Post-War Sierra Leone: Mapping out the Challenges for Peace 172 J. D. Ekundayo-Thompson 8. Conflict and Peacebuilding in Sierra Leone: SSW_376_Prelims.inddW_376_Prelims.indd vviiii 110/29/20110/29/2011 12:49:0012:49:00 PMPM viii CONTENTS The Role of the Sierra Leone Diasporas 203 Zubairu Wai 9. Conclusion 247 Appendix 1 Historical Outline: The Making and Unmaking of Sierra Leone 251 Appendix 2 Minerals and the Mining Industry in Sierra Leone 257 Bibliography 259 About the Contributors 282 Index 284 SSW_376_Prelims.inddW_376_Prelims.indd vviiiiii 110/29/20110/29/2011 12:49:0012:49:00 PMPM Preface The idea for this collection came from the Nordic Africa Institute (NAI) via the head of research, Dr Cyril Obi. As a collective, we are grateful to the institute for the opportunity to create space for Sierra Leonean voices. It is true that Sierra Leoneans and others have published extensively on the war (Richard 1996; Abdullah 1997, 2005; Zack-Williams 1999, 2001, 2002, 2006; Bangura 2000; Bundu 2001; Gberie 2004; Adebajo and Rashid 2004), but the opportunity to meet and compare ideas and experiences has helped us to develop our reflections on the state of affairs in the country. The aim of the collection is three-fold: first to provide space for Sierra Leonean voices, in particular those within the country, to reflect on the nature and impact of post-conflict reconstruction and peacebuilding; second, to focus on the role of external interven- tions in post-conflict reconstruction; finally, to stimulate capacity building among those young researchers working in the area of peacebuilding. Though each individual was asked to tackle specific issues such as the role of regional actors, international actors such as the United Kingdom and the United Nations, and the role of security outfits such as Executive Outcomes, Sandline International and the Gurkhas, we make no apologies for overlapping discourses, as this is inevitable in such a project. Some contributors have tackled issues such as the implications of the war for women, the promotion of democracy, security reforms and the question of youth. An initial workshop was held in Freetown in 2006 to establish the modality and methodologies to drive the project. This was followed by another meeting in Uppsala by a much smaller group of the team looking at the major issues surrounding the pending general elec- tions due in July 2007. The latter meeting resulted in the publication The Quest for Sustainable Development and Peace: The 2007 Sierra Leone Elections (Policy Dialogue No. 2, published by the Nordic Africa Institute). One common thread holding the contributions together is the assertion that the civil war was not caused by greed or squabbling over the country’s diamonds. Though the political elite may have suffered from ‘chronic kleptomania’, it was the lack of political space and the ailing economy that drove young people into the bush and challenge for state hegemony. Diamonds may have prolonged the ix SSW_376_Prelims.inddW_376_Prelims.indd iixx 110/29/20110/29/2011 12:49:0012:49:00 PMPM x PREFACE war, but it was not the primary cause of conflict. Prior to the war, diamonds and other minerals (gold, platinum, chromites, iron ore, bauxite, rutile) had been mined for over fifty years (Zack-Williams 1995), accounting for over 70 per cent of foreign exchange earnings by the late 1970s. A significant percentage of the best stones were smuggled out of the country by organized foreign groups (includ- ing Lebanese dealers) and their Sierra Leonean accomplices, through routes that were well established in the period of the monopoly of the colonial mining company, the Sierra Leone Selection Trust (SLST), via Monrovia, the Liberian capital. This illegal export was the first part of a trade connecting illegal miners in Sierra Leone and cutters in Europe and the USA. Whilst these routes changed many times, by the early 1950s Lebanon and Monrovia had emerged as the two most important routes for illegally exported diamonds from Sierra Leone (Van der Laan 1965); in particular, cutters wanted a shorter route to the source that would involve fewer intermediaries and this gave a premium to the Monrovia market. Furthermore, the fact that the US currency was legal tender in Liberia, as well as being a currency free from restrictions and carrying a premium against other currencies, gave Monrovia an added premium. Proximity to the Sierra Leone deposits and the premium of the US dollar was not all that accounted for the triumph of the Liberian market. Liberia’s diamond trading laws can be traced back to the 1930s, with an amendment in 1955 in anticipation of the reform around the Alluvial Diamond Mining Ordinance in Sierra Leone (1956), which brought the monopoly held by the SLST to an end by legalizing corporate and individual mining. The export duty imposed by the Liberian authorities was 9 per cent on the declared value of the stone, compared to 7.5 per cent in Sierra Leone, which should have been a disincentive for dealers to smuggle the stones from Sierra Leone across the border. Indeed, the real export duty imposed by the Liberian authorities was between 1 and 2 per cent, thus producing an anomaly: according to the statistics no diamonds were imported into Liberia, so that the Liberian exports had to be considered as “domestic merchandise”. The existence of small diggings and with negligible production until 1957 gave a certain basis for clinging to this delusion. (Van der Laan 1965: 129) According to Van der Laan, it was clear that the success of the Monrovia market was based on the supply of diamonds from Sierra Leone, Guinea, Côte d’Ivoire and the Central African Republic (ibid.), and the president of Liberia stated that Sierra Leone diamonds SSW_376_Prelims.inddW_376_Prelims.indd x 110/29/20110/29/2011 12:49:0012:49:00 PMPM PREFACE xi formed a large proportion of the increased exports (Moyar 1960). Moreover, it is ironic that De Beers Diamond Corporation, which ran the Government Buying Office in Freetown, decided to set up an office in Monrovia in order to mop up the good stones that were being smuggled into the Liberian market. So what is this point of this narrative? Simply to point to the fact that the marketing of Sierra Leone diamonds always favoured Liberia, and there was no need for Charles Taylor, the Liberian warlord, to try to upset the status quo ante in order to obtain diamonds from Sierra Leone. There is a consensus among these writers that it is the mismanagement of the economy, which stemmed from the growing authoritarian nature of the state, and politics which emasculated the emerging ‘civil society’. This air of intolerance and widespread corruption impacted upon the economy as skilled individuals started voting with their feet, and economic decisions were based not on rational criteria, but were designed to satisfy a plethora of patrimonial networks, leading to the delegitimization of the state.