Signs are not good for future Western participation in peacekeeping missions
Chris McGreal
There are two views of what the British are up to in Sierra Leone. The critics contend that the dispatch of hundreds of Royal Marines and paratroopers to occupy Freetown, the quiet takeover of many functions of the Sierra Leonean government by Whitehall and the United Kingdom’s backing of an increasingly unpopular and uninspiring president are just another example of the old exploitation of Africa. The British, they say, are doing it all for the diamonds.
Others, including the Labour government in London, see it differently. What is happening in Sierra Leone, they argue, is evidence of a new way of thinking in the West; of an intent to put Africa’s interests first in dealing with Africa and not to just consider the immediate security or financial advantages for more powerful nations.
If it is the latter and it seems unlikely that the British government would gamble the lives of its soldiers and political credibility at home on such an unpredictable venture for the limited benefits of Sierra Leone’s diamond mines then the self-interest is still not so far from the surface.
Somalia and Rwanda have made it difficult for Western nations to intervene in Africa, and near impossible for them not to. The Americans’ failed and bloody attempt to turn an aid protection mission to Somalia into a crusade to impose its vision of government fell flat when the warlords resisted and United States military commanders could think of no better response than to massacre civilians. That hardly mattered to the American public, but the killing of more than 20 US soldiers and the sight of some of their corpses being dragged through Mogadishu brought an abrupt end to the mission.
Then came Rwanda. After Somalia, Washington had no desire for its troops to go anywhere near Africa. The US, with strong British backing, blocked any attempt by the United Nations to halt the genocide. There is not much doubt that a commitment by the security council, and the dispatch of the 5?000 troops the head of the UN mission in Rwanda said he needed, could have halted the mass murder. For a start, well-armed and trained foreign troops would not have been confronting a disciplined, experienced army but mostly loosely organised militias armed with machetes. Instead, it was left to the one European power with a disturbing self-interest to lead the intervention.
France viewed the war in Rwanda as an attempt by the US and Britain to muscle in on its corner of central Africa. Paris sent its troops not to stop the genocide but to prop up the regime that organised the slaughter when it was facing defeat at the hands of Tutsi rebels.
Rwanda left France’s Africa policy in tatters. Paris made no such attempt to protect Mobutu Sese Seko in Zaire when his time came. Instead, with the Cold War at an end, the West thought it easy enough to extricate itself from responsibility for its many legacies in Africa.
But the guilt of inaction in Rwanda festered. Unable to ignore Africa but unwilling to involve itself too closely, Western governments have latched on to the promise of “African solutions to African problems”. This allows them to say they are willing to help but don’t want to behave like colonialists by pushing the Africans aside. What it really means is that they can buy their way out of the problem as the Americans have by training Nigerians and Ghanaians to fight in Sierra Leone. It also explains their enthusiasm for Africans leading the way in Congo.
Western powers are increasingly looking to the developing world for markets but before that relationship moves beyond merely selling, to major investments, foreign firms want stability. The war in Congo, the crisis in Zimbabwe and Thabo Mbeki’s controversial approach to Aids are all viewed as reasons by much of the rest of the world to steer clear of Africa.
Africans might argue, quite correctly, that no one views the war in Kosovo, or organised crime and corruption in Italy, or stolen elections in the US as reasons to steer clear of the West. But unfortunately Africa’s experience has lowered the threshold for viewing the continent as just not worth the trouble.
Yet there are efforts to try and lay the ground for stable government. The British military intervention in West Africa is the first of its kind since the end of the colonial era, leaving aside the brief return of UK rule to Zimbabwe in the run-up to independence. But for months before the soldiers arrived in large numbers, Whitehall bureaucrats began to permeate the West African state’s civil service, including its finance ministry, police and defence headquarters.
Officially they are there to offer advice and training, but they also happen to keep an eye on the books. Some have called it a form of recolonisation, but the commitment helped ensure that the British could not simply go home when the war loomed.
Then came the military intervention. The UK planned to get its troops in, kick the UN peacekeeping mission into shape, get the Sierra Leone army fighting and then go home. But the Sierra Leone army made only limited progress, although it did manage to keep the rebels from the gates of Freetown. And the UN force failed to shape up as its Indian commander was pushed out amid bitter infighting with the Nigerian contingent.
That raised another shadow the spectre of regional colonisation. Many, including the Indian UN commander in Sierra Leone, fear that the Nigerians are building their own little empire in West Africa. The Nigerian army looted Liberia and is keen to take control in Freetown.
The future of Western involvement in Africa will in large part depend on the new US president’s view of the continent and the UN. The signs are not good. Some say Tony Blair is driven by the same Christian self-righteous belief that sustained missionaries in Africa a century ago. George W Bush has a very different ethos. He believes in business above all. He has scorned the UN and international peacekeeping. Bush’s Vice-President, Dick Cheney, has an unenviable record on Africa. He opposed sanctions against apartheid South Africa and, as a member of Congress in 1986, voted against a resolution calling for the release of Nelson Mandela.
Bush’s national security advisor, Condoleezza Rice, is an African American who shows little interest in this continent. She is opposed to peacekeeping in Kosovo, let alone Africa.
The future secretary of state, Colin Powell, was chair of the joint chiefs of staff during the Somalia debacle and is known to be resistant to any US military involvement in Africa. All in all, the Bush administration is likely to have as little to do with Africa as possible.