ABSTRACT
ABSTRACT
This article provides a comparative analysis of two decades of Economic Community of West African States–initiated peacekeeping missions in Liberia, Sierra Leone, Guinea Bissau, and Côte d'Ivoire as a basis for understanding Africa's most advanced regional peace and security mechanism. It identifies the issues and debates around ECOWAS Cease-fire Monitoring Group peacekeeping—its merits, shortcomings and challenges, and the evolution of the Economic Community of West African States Peace and Security Framework. In conclusion, it draws attention to the gaps between rhetoric and reality, as a step toward grappling with the prospects for a sustainable people-rooted Economic Community of West African States peace and security agenda for West Africa.
INTRODUCTION
The Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) may have the most advanced mechanisms for addressing regional peace and security in Africa. This view is attributed to several factors: the role of the ECOWAS Cease-fire Monitoring Group (ECOMOG) in the 1990s in contributing to the restoration of peace to West Africa's trouble spots in the Mano-River Union states (Liberia and Sierra Leone), Guinea-Bissau, and Côte d'IvôireFootnote 1 ; its ability to adapt to changing national, regional, and global contexts by linking regional integration and development to an evolving peace and security framework; and its ability to cooperate with other regional and multilateral organizations, such as the African Union and the United Nations, in promoting peace and security in West Africa.
However, some have described ECOMOG as a “heroic failure,” by pointing to its institutional and operational shortcomings.Footnote 2 And those in favor of ECOWAS/ECOMOG intervention have not been oblivious to its weaknesses and limitations. Their point is that relevant actors should learn the right lessons from its experience and that the intervention force/conflict resolution framework should be strengthened and supported to consolidate regional peace and security in West Africa.
In seeking to further address these challenges, the Mediation and Security Council of ECOWAS on January 1, 2008, enacted the ECOWAS Conflict Prevention Framework (ECPF). Apart from being consistent with the evolution of ECOWAS's peace and security architecture, of which the ECOMOG experiences, the 1993 Revised ECOWAS treaty, the 1999 Protocol Relating to the Mechanism for Conflict Prevention, Management and Peacekeeping and Security, and the 2001 Supplementary Protocol on Democracy and Good Governance, are central, the ECPF also contains fourteen components relating to conflict prevention, human security, and aspects of peacebuilding, of which the ECOWAS Standby Force (ESF) is an important element.Footnote 3
The key challenge lies with transforming ECOWAS's sophisticated peace and security architecture, including its peacekeeping role, from rhetoric to practice. This article argues that the record of ECOWAS's peacekeeping is mixed, with rather disturbing evidence of institutional weakness, poor coordination within ECOWAS, paucity of resources, weak political will and capacities, hobbling, if not completely eclipsing, the organization's contribution to peace and security in West Africa.
The article is organized into four sections. First, the introduction identifies the critical issues. Following it is an analysis of ECOMOG as an instrument of regional intervention and peacekeeping. The third section further opens up the discussion on an analytical and comparative basis, drawing on four case studies: Liberia, Sierra Leone, Guinea Bissau, and Côte d'Ivoire. The fourth section draws out the lessons from almost two decades of regional peace keeping in West Africa and concludes with recommendations for the future.
EVOLUTION OF ECOWAS PEACEPEEPING: ECOMOG
ECOWAS began as a collective quest for self-reliance and economic development. After some earlier attempts at a West African economic community in the 1960s, two heads of state, Yakubu Gowon of Nigeria and Gnassigbe Eyadema of Togo played key roles in the signing of the ECOWAS treaty by fifteen member states in Lagos on May 28, 1975.
Nigeria's role was based on the perceived linkage between regional peace, on one hand, and development and national stability and security on the other hand. This, along with some border skirmishes in the region, led to two protocols on defense and security: the Protocol on Non-aggression (PNA, 1978) and that on Mutual Assistance on Defence (PMAD, 1981). Their principles, among others, provided for an emergency “Allied Armed Forces of the Community (AAFC)” but stopped short of providing for “a permanent ECOWAS standing army.”Footnote 4 However, as Aning notes, “by 1990, none of the procedural or integral decision-making aspects of the PMAD had been implemented.”Footnote 5 This was underlined by doubts among francophone states about Nigeria's real intentions in proposing the initiative as well as about the limited capacity of the ECOWAS secretariat at that time.
Due to the politics and intraregional rivalries between the two language blocs in ECOWAS, the seven francophone states (except Guinea) signed a separate nonaggression defence pact (ANAD) in 1977, which also provided for a regional standby force. As Adebajo notes,Footnote 6 several developments among the Francophone countries created divisions and weakened that bloc. These divisions turned out to be decisive when Nigeria used ECOWAS to form a regional force to intervene in Liberia, whose civil war had begun in December 1989 when Charles Taylor led his National Patriotic Front of Liberia (NPFL) across the border from neighboring Côte d'Ivoire through Nimba County in Liberia.
Acting on an appeal from the Liberian President, Samuel Doe, to ECOWAS for help against NPFL insurgents, and drawing on the PMAD, Nigeria's then military head of state General Babangida made the case for regional mediation in the conflict at the May 1990 ECOWAS meeting in Banjul.Footnote 7 ECOWAS set up a Standing Mediation Committee (SMC) with Gambia, Ghana, Mali, Nigeria, and Togo as its members to facilitate the mediation of the conflict in Liberia. The SMC called for a cease-fire and decided to establish a Cease-fire Monitoring Group—ECOMOG. Nigeria played the prominent role in pushing for the establishment of ECOMOG, to monitor and to effect a cease-fire in Liberia as a step toward restoring law and order, setting up an interim government, and preparing the ground for elections.Footnote 8 Nigeria, Guinea, Ghana, Sierra Leone, and Gambia contributed troops.
Much has been written on Nigeria and ECOMOG operations in Liberia and Sierra Leone.Footnote 9 The personal interests of certain leaders, including Nigeria's military president, Ibrahim Babangida, were involved. However, the Nigerian-led ECOWAS initiatives were significant both in the broadening of the scope of ECOWAS's functions and in the shift away from the nonintervention norm in fostering a collective regional security culture/regime for West Africa.
As a regional leader and in pursuit of its foreign policy toward West Africa, Nigeria provided an estimated 80 percent of ECOMOG's troops, provided 90 percent of the funding, and suffered an estimated one thousand fatalities.Footnote 10 This was despite initial opposition to the peace enforcement operation by some francophone states and by a Nigerian public that felt that domestic priorities needed to take precedence over foreign adventurism.
ECOMOG's performance was adversely affected by problems related to command and control, its ad-hoc nature, logistical shortcomings within the forces, poor coordination and harmonization between the contributing countries, poor coordination between ECOMOG field commanders and ECOWAS, weak political will, and lack of agreement about the nature and role of ECOMOG among West Africa's leaders.Footnote 11 Other constraints included resource challenges, capacity and institutional weaknesses within ECOWAS, allegations of corruption and high-handedness against some ECOMOG peacekeepers,Footnote 12 and confusion related to the need to anticipate and respond in a timely manner to the challenge of peacekeeping in West Africa.
CASE STUDIES IN COMPARARATIVE PERSPECTIVE
The Case of the Liberian Civil Wars (1989–1996, 1999–2003)
The ECOMOG intervention was justified on several grounds, including the necessity for “African solutions to African problems.” It was also defended on the basis of the need to intervene to stop an unfolding humanitarian disaster in Liberia and to stop the spread of the conflict to neighboring states that were already burdened with a steady stream of refugees from the Liberian civil war.
Nigeria's attitude, though largely consistent with its post-civil-war policy toward the subregion, was also reportedly influenced by General Babangida's friendship with the Liberian President, Samuel Doe.Footnote 13 The personal dimension to the relationship suggested that Babangida was not indifferent to the plight of Doe in the face of the onslaught by NPFL rebels. But AdebajoFootnote 14 argues that it was about “Nigeria's leadership aspirations in West Africa, Babangida's image of himself as a great leader, his desire to leave an indelible mark on Nigeria's history, and the aspirations of the Nigerian army to enhance its status and to prove its worth as a national and sub-regional asset.”Footnote 15 Of note is that both perspectives contain elements of Babangida's personal motives for intervening in Liberia. Beyond this was the concern among some heads of state and ruling elites that if rebellions against incumbent governments were allowed to succeed, it might encourage groups in other countries confronted by authoritarian regimes to take up arms against them. Both regime security and ruling elite interests were important factors for the intervention.
Charles Taylor had his own friends in high places in West Africa and beyond. The NPFL was believed to have received training and support from Muammar Ghaddafi's Libya (which reportedly had issues with Doe for closing down Libya's embassy in Monrovia and supporting the United States). The insurrection was organized from, and with the support of, Félix Houphouët-Boigny's Côte d'Ivoire and Blaise Compaore's Burkina Faso. In the cases of Boigny and Compaore, it would appear that both nursed grudges against Doe and provided arms and operational bases to the NPFL. According to some accounts, in 1980, Doe had ordered the execution of his predecessor in office, President Robert Tolbert, whose son Adolphus was married to President Félix Houphouët-Boigny's adopted daughter, Daisy Delafosse. Doe also failed to prevent the murder of Adolphus while in detention by his soldiers, in spite of appeals by Boigny to spare his son-in-law's life.Footnote 16 It is within this context that the Boigny's support for the NPFL can be understood. Taking an opposing side to Nigeria's Babangida would also provide him with an opportunity to checkmate Nigeria's support for Doe as well as curtail Nigerian ambitions within West Africa. Exploring this argument further, the Taylor-Compaore connection was linked to Compaore's being Boigny's son-in-law by virtue of his marriage to Adolphus Tolbert's widow, Daisy (who remarried after Adolphus was killed).
The personal dimension of support for either Doe or Taylor was hardly the ideal basis for peacekeeping involving some of the same forces locked in the contest to influence the outcome of the Liberian crisis. Quite early in the process, Charles Taylor, who had taken control of most of Liberia, including the capital Monrovia by August 1990, saw the Nigerian-led ECOMOG (made up of anglophone countries and Guinea) not as a neutral arbiter but as an interventionist force of “undemocratic and self-perpetuating regimes” seeking “to save the military dictatorship of Doe from collapse”Footnote 17 and preventing Taylor's NPFL from taking power.
Such misgivings, combined with poor logistics that were to plague and prolong the mission, transformed it from a cease-fire monitoring mission to an intervention and peace enforcement force, which took to fighting (the NPFL) from the day it landed in Monrovia in 1990. To land in Monrovia, ECOMOG had to get some cooperation from a breakaway faction of the NPFL, the Independent National Patriotic Front of Liberia (INPFL) led by Prince Yormie Johnson, and later from some elements from Doe's Armed Forces of Liberia (AFL).
Although ECOMOG eventually secured Monrovia and compelled the fighting factions to sign many peace agreements, these were short-lived or spoiled. Efforts to bring more countries into ECOMOG, including francophone member states did not really have much success. The situation was further complicated by increased fractionalization and the proliferation of armed groups in Liberia.
At the peak of the Liberian conflict about eight factions were involved in the conflict. Many were split along ethnic and personality lines, with their roots in the Doe dictatorship and outside support for or the opposition to Taylor. However, ECOWAS was able to finally get Taylor and the more potent armed factions to reach another peace agreement in Abuja in September 1996 and disarm under ECOMOG and UN supervision. On that basis, elections were held in July 1997. Charles Taylor's National Patriotic Party won the elections and Taylor won the presidential vote with 75 percent of the votes cast. However, it is important to note, that “in the end, contingencies and personal relations between ECOWAS leaders and Liberian warlords, rather than any structured plans, led to the end of war in Liberia.”Footnote 18
The Second Civil War
Liberians elected Taylor in the hope that he would abandon the barrel of the gun and embrace peace. But Taylor adopted a winner-take-all attitude, placing his loyalists in all positions of authority and converting most of his wartime fighters into the regular security forces. ECOMOG withdrew early in 1998, even as the UN observer mission in place was poorly resourced and staffed. Under such conditions, Liberia slipped back into civil war within a year after its postconflict elections. While Taylor kept up his support for the Revolutionary United Front (RUF) rebels in neighboring Sierra Leone and also provided support to some rebels in neighboring Guinea, Côte d'Ivoire reportedly provided support to the Liberian rebel group, Movement for Democracy in Liberia (MODEL), and Guinea provided support to Liberian United for Reconciliation and Democracy (LURD), which was also fighting the Taylor regime.
By 2003, MODEL and LURD had taken control of vast areas of Liberia and began to close in on the capital where Taylor was desperately holding on to power. Taylor's troubles were compounded after the Sierra Leone Special War Crimes court indicted him for war crimes in Sierra Leone's civil war. On August 4, the ECOWAS Mission in Liberia (ECOMIL) was deployed (with U.S. and international community support) into Monrovia. This time troops were contributed by Nigeria, Mali, and Senegal. A week later, Taylor resigned and went into exile, taking advantage of an offer of asylum in Nigeria as part of an ECOWAS–brokered peace deal.
Like the first ECOMOG Mission, ECOMIL also faced problems of resources and capacity in keeping the peace in Liberia. On August 18, 2003, the Liberian factions reached a Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA) in Accra, Ghana. This agreement laid the basis for a Transitional Government of Liberia (TGL), which would in two years oversee the demobilization, disarmament, and reintegration (DDR) process and prepare the country for elections. By October, the United Nations Mission in Liberia (UNMIL) took over the peacekeeping role of ECOMIL, whose troops were “rehatted” under the UN.
The Case of Sierra Leone's Civil War (1997–2002)
Similar to the Liberian case, the Sierra Leone war started as an NPFL–backed RUF insurgency against the inept and corrupt administration of President Joseph Momoh in 1991. Some accounts state that the RUF leader Foday Sankoh and some of his supporters had received training from Libya and had support from Burkina Faso. It was believed that Charles Taylor sought to punish Sierra Leone's President Momoh for supporting ECOMOG.Footnote 19 In the midst of the crisis, Momoh's government was toppled in a military coup led by an ex-ECOMOG Sierra Leone army officer in 1992. ECOWAS's initial reaction was to expand the mandate of ECOMOG to include Sierra Leone. A contingent of Nigerian troops was sent to Freetown.
Another coup in 1996 led to elections in February 1996 that were won by Tejan Kabbah, of the Sierra Leone People's Party (SLPP). However, in March 1997, Kabbah was toppled from power by another military coup led by Major Johnny Paul Koromah, who went on to establish the Armed Forces Ruling Council (AFRC), which later invited the RUF into the government. Kabbah then appealed to the international community for help. Nigeria, under General Abacha (who among other factors sought to limit the international isolation of his military regime), led the regional initiative for the restoration of normalcy in Sierra Leone. ECOWAS sent an ECOMOG force into the country led by Nigeria. It engaged the AFRC and RUF fighters in battle and was able to reinstate Kabbah to power by March 1998. ECOMOG was supported by a small 50 member UN Observer Mission in Sierra Leone (UNOSIL), but the observers were not involved in combat operations.
Unlike the case of Liberia, ECOMOG had some experience to draw on in its peace intervention operation in Sierra Leone. In spite of this, as in the case in Liberia, the Sierra Leone peacekeeping exercise exposed the weaknesses of ECOMOG and highlighted the role of neighboring countries in fueling the insurgency in Sierra Leone. These were made worse by divisions within ECOWAS as to how to respond to the crisis. Worse perhaps was the realization that “ECOMOG's ill-equipped peacekeepers were unable to defeat the AFRC/RUF alliance in guerrilla war” and that “relations between Nigerian peacekeepers and Sierra Leone civilians were ambiguous.”Footnote 20 The AFRC-RUF, capitalizing on ECOMOG's weaknesses, repeatedly attacked the interventionist force and the capital city Freetown. The view that Nigeria was dominating ECOMOG operations was also reinforced in the Sierra Leonean case.
According to Adebajo, “Nigeria provided at least eighty percent of ECOMOG troops (12,000 out of 16,000 in Liberia, and 12,000 out of 13,000 in Sierra Leone) and ninety percent of its funding during the military interventions in both Liberia and Sierra Leone.”Footnote 21 Stretched to its limit, Nigeria began to count its costs. In May 1999, President Obasanjo decided to wind down Nigeria's participation in ECOMOG. Thus, as in the case of Liberia where in October 2003, UNMIL took over the peacekeeping role of ECOMIL, and ECOMOG II was eventually replaced by the United Nations Peacekeeping Mission to Sierra Leone (UNAMSIL), which included some “rehatted” ECOMOG soldiers. Nigeria reportedly withdrew 8,500 of its troops from the Sierra Leone operations, while 3,500 were “rehatted” as UNAMSIL peacekeepers.Footnote 22
As in the case of Liberia, ECOWAS leaders tried to facilitate a deal between the government of Tejan Kabbah and the AFRC-RUF rebels at the Lomé Peace talks in July 1999, leading to an agreement granting the RUF amnesty and some cabinet posts. The RUF leader Foday Sankoh was offered the vice presidency and the ministerial portfolio for the country's minerals. The strategy of appeasing the rebels failed. Seizing on the vacuum left by the exit of ECOMOG forces, in May 2000 they attacked Freetown and held some of the UNAMSIL peacekeepers hostage. Eventually UNAMSIL, with reinforcements and support from the United Kingdom and the international community, was able to deploy throughout the country and complete the disarmament process and oversee elections that were won by Tejan Kabbah in May 2002, effectively signaling the end of the war.
In Liberia, the United States, after initial indifference, provided some logistical assistance toward the end of the ECOMOG Mission. In the case of Sierra Leone, the British (former colonial masters) mobilized diplomatic support for UN intervention in the country and also sent in paratroopers in 2000 when the UN peacekeepers were threatened by rebels. While the UK intervened briefly, the United States largely refrained from playing a direct military role in the conflict.
The Case of the Guinea-Bissau Civil War (1998–1999)
The roots of the civil war in Guinea-Bissau had both internal causes—the struggle for power between President Joao “Nino” Vieira and his erstwhile comrade and Armed Forces Chief, Ansumane Mane, and subregional dynamics.Footnote 23 It also took place in the context of the shift in Guinea-Bissau's international relations from its traditional close ties to Portugal to cultivating closer ties with France and neighboring francophone West African States, Senegal and Guinea. This was, in part, exemplified by Guinea Bissau's joining of the West African francophone CFA monetary zone.
The suspension of Ansumane Mane as the chief of the armed forces by Joao Vieira based on accusations that Mane had been involved in the illegal supply of arms to the rebels of the Mouvement des forces democratiques de la Casamance (MFDC) operating in Casamance (southern Senegal) triggered the war. The people of the Casamance region had some cultural and historical ties with the Diolas of northern Guinea Bissau, and the MFDC rebels fighting against the government of Senegal were believed to be sourcing most of their weapons from the illicit arms trade in neighboring Guinea Bissau.Footnote 24 Thus, Senegal had security concerns related to the activities of rebels across its porous borders with Guinea Bissau and Gambia.
The president sacked Mane, preempting the release of the findings of a parliamentary commission investigating the allegations against him (scheduled for June 8), which sparked fighting between both men's supporters. This was followed by a coup attempt on June 9 led by Mane, who appeared to have the backing of a larger number of soldiers. Vieira, in turn, appealed for help. According to Rudebeck,Footnote 25 the very day the coup announcement was made 1,300 troops from Senegal were already in Bissau. The following day 400 troops arrived from Guinea. Both countries cited bilateral defense pacts for rushing to Vieira's aid. The crisis in the country took place in a context where ECOMOG's capacity and will for regional peacekeeping had been severely sapped by the heavy demands of the its protracted operations in Liberia and Sierra Leone and by the competing domestic priorities of ECOWAS member states.
Also of comparative note was the observation that “like the ECOMOG interventions in Liberia and Sierra Leone, the Seneguinean intervention was undertaken without the blessing of the full ECOWAS authority.”Footnote 26 Senegal was keen on ensuring that a regime friendly to the MFDC rebels did not come to power in Guinea Bissau, while Guinea's Lansana Conte was acting on the basis of “friendship” with Vieira and Kabbah and was also keen to ensure that refugees from Guinea Bissau did not add to the pressures in his country, which was already beleaguered from large numbers of refugees from the conflicts in neighboring Liberia and Sierra Leone.Footnote 27
After an initial round of fighting, Vieira and Mane agreed to a truce facilitated by the Community of Portuguese-speaking countries (Comunidade de Paises de Lingua Portuguesa CPLP: Portugal, Angola, Brazil, East Timor, Cape Verde, Mozambique, Sao Tome, and Principe). The CPLP emerged for the first time as an international actor in peace mediation in the region.
ECOWAS sought to resolve the crisis, particularly after Vieira requested that ECOMOG intervene to bring peace to his country. An ECOWAS Committee of Seven: Burkina Faso, Côte d'Ivoire, Gambia, Guinea, Ghana, Nigeria, and Senegal looked into mediation of the conflict. Apart from ECOWAS, the CPLP, perhaps seeing an opportunity to step in to counter French and possibly Nigerian influence, took a role in the mediation process. Both ECOWAS and the CPLP overcame initial misgivings and later cooperated in getting Vieira and Mane to sign a cease-fire agreement in Cape Verde on August 26, 1998.Footnote 28 This agreement was breached as fighting resumed soon afterward.
A second peace agreement between Vieira and Mane was brokered in Abuja in November 1998. Regional leaders urged Senegal and Guinea to withdraw their forces, which would be replaced by ECOMOG peacekeepers. It was also agreed that a transitional government would be established to oversee the transition until elections could be held. However, unlike the cases of Liberia and Sierra Leone, an overburdened Nigeria did not take part in the ECOMOG Mission to Guinea-Bissau, preferring instead to play a mediatory role.
The ECOMOG operation was made up of 712 troops from Benin, Mali, Niger, Togo, and Gambia (with French support). According to Ero,Footnote 29 some of the contributing countries had their troops trained under the French Reinforcement of African Peacekeeping Capacity Programme (RECAMP), while the Benin soldiers were trained under the U.S. African Crisis Response Initiative (ACRI). However, the peacekeeping operation was still beset by the now familiar problems—poor preparation and limited resources and capacity. As Massey notes, “despite funding logistical assistance from France, the ECOMOG force was slow to deploy, undermanned and proved ineffective in fulfilling an over ambitious mandate.”Footnote 30 The role of foreign powers (resources, training, logistics, and mediation) in the Guinea-Bissau case highlights the role of France and Portugal (ex-colonial master) and underscores the reality that ECOWAS needed international support for peacekeeping in the region.
In spite of ECOMOG's presence, in May 1999, Mane's forces defeated Vieira's forces and successfully seized power. Vieira then sought refuge in the Portuguese embassy and fled the country. ECOMOG forces did not intervene to stop the fighting and were withdrawn shortly after a botched ECOWAS peacekeeping mission. Nigeria's nonparticipation in Guinea-Bissau partly contributed to the mission's failure, underscoring the country's importance for regional peace and security in West Africa.
The Case of Côte D'Ivoire (2002–2004)
In September 2002, a civil war started in Côte d'Ivoire, long regarded as a haven of peace and prosperity in a turbulent West Africa. The trigger for the war was a mutiny that quickly snowballed into a coup attempt against the government of President Laurent Gbagbo.Footnote 31 The conflict's backdrop included the crises of succession within the political elite after the death of the country's patriarch and long-term ruler Houphouët-Boigny in December 1993, the 1999 military coup, the exclusion of some contestants on the basis of their origins (immigrants, mixed parentage, immigrant parentage as noncitizens), and the deterioration of economic conditions in the country, which followed the collapse of cocoa prices in the world market and an IFI induced structural adjustment program.Footnote 32
Some accounts state that the September mutiny was led by northern officers who were dismissed by President Laurent Gbagbo. This gained credibility when, following the failure of the coup in Abidjan the rebels withdrew and took control of the northern part of the country. The rebel movement, the Mouvement Patriotic de Côte d'Ivoire (MPCI), later known as Forces Nouvelles De Côte d'Ivoire/New Forces (FN), set up its headquarters in Bouake in Northern Côte d'Ivoire and remobilized for an attack on the South. However, French troops intervened and halted this southward march.
Within months two other rebel groups—Mouvement Populaire Ivorien du Grand Ouest (MPIGO) and the Movement for Justice and Peace (MJP)—emerged in the Western part of the country. It was believed that the MPCI was supported by Côte d'Ivoire's northern neighbor, Burkina Faso. Charles Taylor also had accused Gbagbo of supporting MODEL rebels against his rule. It should be noted that veterans of the wars in Sierra Leone and Liberia were reportedly fighting as mercenaries in the factional fighting in Côte d'Ivoire.Footnote 33
As the war raged, several attempts were made at mediation by ECOWAS and France. This culminated in the signing of the Linas-Marcoussis Peace Accord (LMA) of January 2003. The LMA, agreed to by all sides to the conflict, provided for a cease-fire and an inclusive transitional government of national reconciliation (including FN members). It was expected that the national government would take steps toward healing the conflict in the country and for bridging the divides created by the politics of identity and citizenship, ahead of elections. ECOWAS followed up by sending its fourth cease-fire monitoring mission, ECOWAS Forces in Côte d'Ivoire (ECOMICI), made up of mainly Francophone West African countries: Senegal, Ghana, Niger, Togo, and Benin, operating alongside French forces (LICORNE). In May, with France playing a key diplomatic role within the UN (as in the case of the British in Sierra Leone), ECOWAS got some support from the UN Security Council resolution 1479, which established the UN Mission in Côte d'Ivoire (MINUCI) and sent seventy-six military liaison officers to support ECOWAS and French peacekeepers.Footnote 34
Like in the Guinea Bissau case, Nigeria under Obasanjo was absent from the ECOWAS Peacekeeping mission to Côte d'Ivoire, limiting itself to a mediatory role. Similar to the case of Guinea-Bissau, the ECOWAS peace mission to Côte d'Ivoire was largely underwritten with French (ex-colonial master) and international community support. It would appear that Nigeria had now refocused its energy more on the diplomatic rather than the military aspects of mediation in regional conflicts.
In November 2003, following reports of improved coordination of operations between MINUCI, UNMIL, and UNAMSIL and a report from the UN Secretary-General, the UN Security Council adopted resolution 1528 (2004), which established the United Nations Operations in Côte d'Ivoire (UNOCI) and the transfer of MINUCI and ECOMICI to UNOCI on April 4, 2004. It has been noted that UNOCI was “part of an emerging trend in UN peacekeeping in which the UN force is actually a hybrid of two or three peace operations,” with three important keywords in mind “transformation (of ECOWAS forces), absorption (of MINUCI), and co-habitation (with the French Forces).”Footnote 35 These authors have noted that UNOCI forces “have been well-prepared for their mission,” but “still faced some difficulties at the operational level.”
The UN supported the efforts of the ECOWAS mediation in Côte d'Ivoire. This included the Accra II and Accra III agreements of March 2003 and July 2004 and the mediation of the African Union (based on ECOWAS' request), which culminated in the signing of the AU–brokered Pretoria Agreement of June 2005 and the Yamoussoukro agreement of July 2005, to implement the DDR process and renew the mandate of the transitional government. ECOWAS's continued engagement with the support of regional organizations and the UN was directed at supporting the DDR process, building trust, and removing the political obstacles to peace in Côte d'Ivoire. In March 2007, President Gbagbo and Guillaume Soro of the rebel New Forces signed the Ouagadougou agreement brokered by President Compaore of Burkina Faso, creating a new transitional government, signaling the formal end of war, the transition to national unity, and the reconciliation and postwar elections.Footnote 36 Although these elections have been postponed, there is international confidence in the transition process, which in part resulted in another renewal of UNOCI's mandate by UN resolution 1865, until July 31, 2009, (UNOCI's mandate has since been extended again by UN resolution 1880 of July 31, 2009, until January 31, 2010), and the continued monitoring and support of the transition process by ECOWAS and the UN—which now maintains a regional office in West Africa (UNOWA), located in Dakar, Senegal.
TWO DECADES OF ECOWAS PEACEKEEPING: GOOD FRAMEWORK, POOR PRACTICE?
These four cases underscore the challenges facing regional peacekeeping in West Africa. They include resource, institutional, managerial, and leadership gapsFootnote 37 ; Nigeria's role; the role of the international community; great powers (with historical and strategic/economic interests); and the need for regional ownership of the peacebuilding agenda. In this regard, the concept, practice, and sustainability of regional peacekeepingFootnote 38 and the roles of the African Union and the United Nations in consolidating peace and security in West Africa are relevant.
ECOWAS peacekeeping has suffered from the crises that have bedeviled some of the countries in the region. Of note are the problems of weak political will, inadequate funding, and poor logistics. The reality of a sophisticated peace mechanism alongside a limited capacity for peacekeeping is further compounded by the lack of capacity for peace support operations and peacebuilding. Ismail notes that the “ability of the ECPF to do things on the ground” in relation to conflict prevention and management will have to contend with ECOWAS's weaknesses.Footnote 39 It would also appear that the ECOWAS levy, Peace Fund, and the proposed Fund for Conflict Prevention (FCP), must be strengthened to help address the problem of finance.
Nigeria's role has been writ large in ECOWAS's peacekeeping and security mechanisms. While the country may have regional hegemonic aspirations, the personal interests of certain heads of state and the military elite are also important factors. Since 1999, competing domestic pressures and the changing priorities of various Nigerian regimes have had implications for its West African policy, which has now shifted from leading direct military (peace) interventionism to more mediatory and preventive roles. However, the notion of West Africa as Nigeria's sphere of influence, giving the country a natural leadership role, underlined by its substantial contributions to ECOWAS and peace in the region, strongly suggest that Nigeria's continued stability, economic fortunes, and active role(s) will remain central to regional peace and security.
As Nigeria eased out of the direct ECOMOG operations in 1999, the UK, AU, UN, and France came to play important roles as partners in the peacekeeping operations in Sierra Leone, Liberia, Guinea Bissau, and Côte d'Ivoire. France, in particular, has been important in the peacekeeping programs in Guinea Bissau and Côte d'Ivoire. While the evidence suggests that the anglophone-francophone rivalry that threatened the first ECOMOG operation is virtually over and that “West African countries no longer question the need for Nigerian leadership but rather its penchant for a unilateral diplomatic style that offends the sensibilities of smaller, poorer and weaker states,”Footnote 40 questions still remain about Nigeria's influence in the face of some West African countries that seek leverage over their immediate neighbourhood on the basis of security and other concerns. What comes out of this is that Nigeria cannot go it alone, even if its clout and resources remain crucial within the regional and international community. Also, ECOWAS's prospects will remain tied to Nigeria's ability to address its own complex internal contradictions and challenges and the ability of the country's ruling elite to achieve a consensus on a coherent, strategic, and progressive policy toward West Africa.
The lessons from the rehatting of ECOMOG forces as UN peacekeepers in the face of severe logistical and operational challenges in Liberia, Sierra Leone, and Côte d'Ivoire are also relevant. While showing that “African solutions to African problems” needs international support and legitimacy, their hybrid force(s) also facilitated the end of hostilities and the return to peace to these countries. They exposed ECOWAS member countries' militaries to new doctrines, logistics, and capabilities. It has been observed that UN peacekeepers in some respects came in to take credit, “after ECOMOG had done the spadework.”Footnote 41 On its part, the UN identified challenges “related to the preparedness, the transformation and the command and control of the forces.”Footnote 42 This implies, among other things, that in order to be more effective, the rehatting of West African peacekeepers and ECOMOG–UN operations require more systematic joint planning, more resources, and better harmonization of perspectives on peace operations. It will need to avoid reducing ECOWAS peacekeepers to “playing second fiddle” to UN peacekeepers.Footnote 43
SOME RECOMMENDATIONS
Post–Cold War changes in the international system, along with the socioeconomic challenges in the region, have implications for the changing dimensions of the security environment. Beyond the peacekeeping paradigm of the 1990s, the ECOWAS member states will need to respond more proactively to transnational and cross-border crimes and risks alongside intrastate conflicts.Footnote 44 This also raises the issue of the role of the international community in supporting ECOWAS military and peace operations in the region. Some scholars argue that the international community must accept its responsibilities in supporting peacekeeping efforts in West AfricaFootnote 45 or note that in the face of the current global financial crisis “peacekeeping cannot be only an ECOWAS affair.”Footnote 46 Nonetheless, it may be equally important to be mindful of the attendant strategic consequences of dependence on external actors and powers, such as France, the United States, and the UK, particularly in a post–9/11 world as well as within the context of a “new” scramble for Africa.Footnote 47 Issues of support and ownership should be carefully negotiated in bridging the gap between the framework/mechanisms and the practice of peacekeeping and peacebuilding.
An expanded concept of peacekeeping, while paying closer attention to intraregional capacity for peacebuilding and continuously evaluating and upgrading capacity building for the ECOWAS Standby Force, ESF (replacing ECOMOG), is important. More attention should also be directed at the funding, autonomy, and capabilities of the three centers for the operational, strategic, and tactical training of ECOMOG officers: Kofi Annan Peacekeeping Training Centre in Accra, Ghana, National Defence College in Abuja, Nigeria, and Ecole pour le Maintien de la Paix (EMP) in Bamako, Mali.
The prospects for West African peacekeeping lie in the transformation of ECOWAS as well as of its member states. A new regional vision of “ECOWAS—From an ECOWAS of States to an ECOWAS of Peoples,” implying a paradigm shift from state (elite) centeredness to people (participation) centeredness, is key. ECOWAS's condemnation of the coup attempts in Togo (2005) and Guinea Bissau (2008 and 2009) and the coup in Guinea (2008), resulting in its suspension from the heads of state summit, indicates a good measure of consensus on support for democracy and zero tolerance for military dictatorships. But it still leaves out the reality that the peace and security framework is not the product of democratic debates among the peoples of the member states. The fundamental step is for ECOWAS member states to undergo radical transformation along participatory democratic and developmental lines under a visionary leadership and move the region toward popular ownership of the peace and security agenda. It must match its rhetoric of peace, security, and development with sustainable practice.
Notes
1. Adekeye Adebajo, Building Peace in West Africa: Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea-Bissau (Boulder Colorado and London: Lynne Rienner, 2002), 15. Also see Adekeye Adebajo, “Pax West Africana? Regional Security Mechanisms,” in West Africa's Security Challenges: Building Peace in a Troubled Region, eds. Adekeye Adebajo and Ismail Rashid (Boulder Colorado and London: Lynne Rienner, 2004), 8–9; Eric Berman and Katie Sams, Peacekeeping in Africa: Capabilities and Culpabilities (Geneva: UNIDIR and ISS, 2000), 75; Funmi Olonisakin, “Windows of Opportunity for Conflict Prevention: Responding To Regional Conflict in West Africa,” Conflict, Security and Development 4, no. 2 (2004): 181–198.
2. Lansana Gberie, “ECOMOG: The Story of an Heroic Failure,” African Affairs, 102, no. 406 (2003): 147–154. Also see Clement Adibe, “The Liberian Conflict and the ECOWAS–UN Partnership,” Third World Quarterly, 18, no. 3 (1997): 471–488; Christopher Tuck, “Every Car or Moving Object Gone: The ECOMOG Intervention in Liberia,” African Studies Quarterly 4, no. 1 (2000), available: http://web.africa.ufl.edu/asq/v4/v4i1a1.htm (accessed December 27, 2008).
3. Ecomonic Community of West African States, “The ECOWAS Conflict Prevention Framework” (Regulation MSC/REG 1/01/08, Abuja: ECOWAS, 2008), 14–16, available: http://www.ecowas.int/publications/en/framework/ECPF_final.pdf (accessed March 27, 2009).
4. Kwesi Aning, “From “Eco-pessimism” to “Eco-optimism”—ECOMOG and the West African Integration Process,” African Journal of Political Science 4, no. 1 (1999): 21–29.
5. Ibid.
6. Adebajo, Building Peace in West Africa, 35–36.
7. Berman and Sams, Peacekeeping in Africa, 84–85.
8. Gani Yoroms, “ECOMOG and West African Regional Security: A Nigerian Perspective,” Issue: A Journal of Opinion 21, no. 1–2 (1993): 84–91. Also see Clement Adibe, “Muddling Through: An Analysis of the ECOWAS Experience in Conflict Management in West Africa,” in Regional Integration for Conflict Prevention and Peace Building in Africa: Europe, SADC and ECOWAS, ed. Liisa Laakso (Helsinki: Department of Political Science, University of Helsinki, 2002), 103–169; Maxwell Khobe, “The Evolution and Conduct of ECOMOG Operations in West Africa,” ISS Monograph 44 (2000).
9. Funmi Olonisakin, Reinventing Peacekeeping in Africa: Conceptual and Legal Issues in ECOMOG Operations (The Hague: Kluwer Law International, 2000). Also see Festus Aboagye (ed.), Ecomog: A Sub-regional Experience in Conflict Resolution, Management and Peacekeeping in Liberia (Accra: Sedco, 1999); Amadu Sesay, “ECOMOG and Subregional Security in West Africa,” Conflict Trends 3, (1999): 27–29; Adekeye Adebajo, “Nigeria: Africa's New Gendarme?” Security Dialogue 31, no. 2 (2000): 185–199.
10. Adebajo, “Pax West Africana?” 293.
11. Report of the ECOWAS Workshop “Lessons from ECOWAS Peacekeeping Operations: 1990–2004,” Accra, February 10–11, 2005, 11–12.
12. Adebajo, “Pax West Africana? Regional Security Mechanisms,” 291–318. Also see Comfort Ero, “ECOMOG: A Model for Africa?” ISS Monograph 46 (2000).
13. Adibe, “The Liberian Conflict and the ECOWAS–UN Partnership,” 473.
14. Adekeye Adebajo, “Mad Dogs and Glory: Nigeria's Interventionism in Liberia and Sierra Leone,” in Gulliver's Troubles: Nigeria's Foreign Policy after the Cold War, eds. Adekeye Adebajo and Abdul Raufu Mustapha (Scottsville: University of KwaZulu-Natal Press, 2008), 187.
15. Ibid.
16. Adekeye Adebajo, Liberia's Civil War: Nigeria, ECOMOG, and Regional Security in West Africa (Boulder Colorado and London: Lynne Rienner, 2002b), 31–32.
17. Max Sesay, “Collective Security or Collective Disaster? Regional Peace-keeping in West Africa,” Security Dialogue 26, no. 2 (1995): 205–222.
18. Adebajo, Building Peace in West Africa, 67.
19. Ibid., 82.
20. Ibid., 90–95.
21. Adebajo, “Pax West Africana? Regional Security Mechanisms,” 293.
22. Ibid.
23. Lars Rudebeck, On Democracy's Sustainability: Transition in Guinea-Bissau, (Stockholm: Sida studies No. 4, 2001), 21–24. Also see Simon Massey, “Multi-faceted Mediation in the Guinea-Bissau Civil War,” Scientia Militaria, South African Journal of Military Studies 32, no. 1 (2004): 77.
24. Rudebeck, On Democracy's Sustainability, 23.
25. Ibid.
26. Adebajo, Building Peace in West Africa, 116.
27. Ibid.
28. Rudebeck, On Democracy's Sustainability, 24.
29. Ero, “EGOMOG, A Model 3 for Africa?”
30. Massey, “Multi-faceted Mediation in the Guinea-Bissau Civil War,” 94.
31. Guro Almås, “The Political Implications of Economic Adjustment: Crisis, Reform and Political Breakdown in Côte d'Ivoire,” in Perspectives on Côte d'Ivoire: Between Political Breakdown and Post-conflict Peace, ed. Cyril Obi (Uppsala: NAI Discussion Paper 39, 2007), 10.
32. Almås, “The Political Implications of Economic Adjustment: Crisis,” 19–27.
33. Adebajo, “Pax West Africana? Regional Security Mechanisms,” 299.
34. Ibid., 300.
35. Lansana Gberie and Prosper Addo, “Challenges of Peace Implementation in Côte d'Ivoire: Report of the Expert Workshop by KAIPTC and ZIF,” ISS Monograph 105 (2004).
36. Cyril Obi (ed.), “Perspectives on Côte d'Ivoire: Between Political Breakdown and Post-Conflict Peace” NAI Discussion Paper 39 (2007), 5–6.
37. Kwesi Aning, Africa, Confronting Complex Threats: Coping with Crisis (IPA Working Paper Series, New York: International Peace Academy, 2007), 11–12, available: http://www.ipacademy.org/asset/file/139/IPA_P-RPT-AFRICA_Final.pdf (accessed January 2, 2009).
38. Olawale Ismail, “The Dynamics of Post-conflict Reconstruction and Peace Building in West Africa,” NAI Discussion Paper 41 (2008): 40.
39. Interview with Dr. Olawale Ismail, Research Fellow, Conflict, Security and Development Group, Kings College London, March 19, 2009.
40. Adebajo, “Mad Dogs and Glory,” 198.
41. Interview with Professor Amadu Sesay, Department of International Relations, Obafemi Awolowo University, Ile-Ife, Nigeria, March 27, 2009.
42. United Nations, “‘Re-hatting’ ECOWAS Forces as UN Peacekeepers: Lessons Learned” (New York: UN, February 2005), available: http://www.un.org/Depts/dpko/COE/referencedocuments/ECOWAS%20Rehatting.pdf (accessed March 27, 2009).
43. Interview with Sesay March 27, 2009.
44. Cyril Obi, “Terrorism in West Africa: Real, Emerging and Imagined Threats?” African Security Review 15, no. 3 (2006): 87–101. Also see Cyril Obi, “Nigeria's Foreign Policy and Transnational Security Challenges in West Africa,” Journal of Contemporary African Studies 26, no. 2 (2008): 183–196; Aning, “From “Eco-pessimism” to “Eco-optimism.”
45. Adebajo “MadDogs and Glory,” 197. Also see Ismail, “The Dynamics of Post-conflict Reconstruction and Peace Building in West Africa.”
46. Interview with Ismail, March 19, 2009.
47. Cyril Obi, “Scrambling for Oil in West Africa?” in A New Scramble for Africa? Imperialism, Investment and Development, eds. Roger Southall and Henning Melber (Scottsville: University of KwaZulu-Natal Press, 2009), 191–198. Also see Charles Ukeje, “Globalization and Conflict Management: Reflections on the Security Challenges Facing West Africa,” Globalizations 5, no. 1 (2008): 46.