Liberia’s security will remain precarious until concentrated efforts are made to disarm next-door Côte d’Ivoire, General Daniel Opande, the Kenyan military commander for the UN mission in the west African state, said.
”I can assure you that at the end of our mission in Liberia, we will have collected all the arms, but the country will remain at risk if in Ivory Coast the guns are still in the hands of the wrong people,” said Opande.
Fighters and arms have slipped easily across the forested border since late 2002 to help Gbagbo put down a rebellion in the west of Côte d’Ivoire and recruit reinforcements to wage the second of two civil wars to pummel Liberia since 1989.
And while a peace pact signed in August last year has muted concerns that conflict will erupt again in Liberia, the same cannot be said for Côte d’Ivoire, which remains suspended in a state of near-war 22 months since a failed coup against President Laurent Gbagbo in September 2002.
Rebels who still hold Côte d’Ivoire’s north have refused to disarm despite the presence of some 4 000 French troops and a mounting number of United Nations peacekeepers.
Humanitarian aid workers say that a new prefect has been installed by the Gbagbo government in the border town of Guiglo who has been sympathetic to the Liberian rebels in preparation for a resumption of war in Côte d’Ivoire’s west.
Diplomats and non-governmental organisations insist that the weapons smuggling continues, by fighters prepared to either take up arms should war in Côte d’Ivoire resume or to eventually hand them over to the UN peacekeeping mission there, which will offer greater incentives once disarmament begins.
Fighters turning in weapons in Liberia are granted a $300 stipend along with vocational training or schooling and food rations, while over the border they would receive $900 for their participation in the disarmament programme.
UN peacekeepers moved into southeastern Grand Gedeh county on July 9 to begin disarming the Movement for Democracy in Liberia (Model), a splinter rebel movement known to have been backed by Gbagbo in their battle against Charles Taylor, the former Liberian president now in exile in Nigeria.
The force commander resisted confirming incidents of cross-border smuggling, choosing instead to point to successes by the Ethiopian peacekeepers operating in southeastern Liberia as well as by joint border patrols with both Côte d’Ivoire and Sierra Leone.
Opande has been a major advocate of a cooperative approach to peacekeeping in the troubled west African subregion, convening regular meetings with his regional counterparts in a bid to stem the flow of weapons and fighters.
”We have seized a good quantity of weapons including mortar guns, rocket-propelled grenades and other arms that were hidden and we have interdicted arms from moving from one point to another,” Opande said.
”We are quite satisfied with the process going on in Grand Gedeh as the number of arms turned in is … the most encouraging so far, because the ratio is 1,8 combatants for every arm [handed to peacekeepers].” – Sapa-AFP