Editor's Note: This article was written by Mukhtar Usman-Janguza: A London based Africa and Middle East public affairs commentator. He blogs at janguzaarewa.blogspot.com
For the referenced version of this article, click here.
Just
how true is the often heard claim that the Nigerian army brought peace to
Liberia and Sierra-Leone?
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Soldiers
stand guard during a military ceremony to honour war heroes (Akintunde
Akinleye/Reuters)
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Boko Haram’s five-year long
insurgency shows no sign of abating. With the group now seemingly capable of seizing
and holding territory, questions over the military’s competence have grown
louder. To rescue the army’s wounded pride our military and political leaders
often point to what they claim is the army’s “stellar credentials” in bringing
peace to war ravaged countries. The ECOMOG
missions in Liberia and Sierra-Leone in the 1990s, which the Nigerian military
led, is often presented as the prime exemplar of the army’s competence in
combat. I’ve lost count of how many times I’ve heard something like “our boys
brought peace to Liberia and Sierra-Leone” whenever questions are raised over
the badly mishandled war against Boko Haram. But just how true is this claim?
Nigeria’s commitment to restore
peace and stability to the two West African countries was undoubtedly commendable
– about $8 billion allegedly spent on the missions; up to 12,000 soldiers deployed;
and approximately 1,500 killed-in-action, including Brigadier General Maxwell
Khobe. By most estimates Nigeria provided 90 percent of the funding and about
80 percent of the total troops for both ECOMOG missions. This praiseworthy commitment
notwithstanding, the fact is the military’s interventions in Liberia and
Sierra-Leone failed to dampen the civil wars that ravaged those two countries.
Brief background on Nigeria’s
ECOMOG Interventions
Liberia
The civil war that destroyed Liberia
lasted eight gruelling years, 1989-1997. The human toll of the conflict was
shattering. Out of a pre-war population of 2.5 million, 200,000 – mostly
civilians – would die, and 1.5 million would be scattered into neighbouring
countries as destitute refugees.
On Christmas Eve 1989, Charles
Taylor crossed into Liberia from Cote d’Ivoire with 168 armed fighters. Calling
themselves the National Patriotic Front of Liberia (NPFL), their stated aim was
to overthrow Samuel Doe; the country’s dictator who had himself seized power in
a bloody coup in 1980. The ranks of Taylor’s rebels rapidly swelled in number.
Doe’s repressive and brutal decade long rule meant a significant section of the
country was already seething with discontent at the time of Taylor’s incursion.
The Liberian army, long crippled by decades of corruption, ethnic favouritism, and
political manipulation buckled in the face of this motley band of
ill-disciplined, Libyan trained, international rebel force (the nucleus of the
NPFL reportedly consisted of mercenaries from an assortment of West African
countries including Burkina Faso, Sierra-Leone, Gambia, Cote d’Ivoire – many of
whom had received rudimentary training in Libya).
As the NPFL raced to Monrovia, the
Liberian capital, they butchered civilians along the way – especially targeting
Doe’s ethnic kinsmen and other ethnic groups they believed had done well under
Doe. By the end of July 1990, the Liberian state had practically collapsed. With
roughly 90 percent of the country under Taylor’s control, with Doe besieged in
his Presidential residence, and with the NPFL and other ethnic militias having
free rein in the capital, a generalized state of insecurity prevailed in the
country. The Western Powers however, showed scant interest in the tragedy
unfolding in Liberia; leaving West African states to scramble a sub-regional
response.
In May 1990 at the behest of
Babangida, Nigeria’s military ruler at the time, a five-member Standing
Mediation Committee (SMC) comprising Nigeria, Ghana, Gambia, Mali, and Togo had
been formed within ECOWAS to
negotiate a political resolution to the crisis. Several rounds of mediation however
produced no tangible results. Charles Taylor felt he was on the cusp of
military victory; hence he had little incentive to commit to any political
settlement that may have resulted in a power sharing arrangement. Under
diplomatic pressure from Nigeria, the SMC recommended the deployment of a
sub-regional peacekeeping force to intimidate the warring parties back to the
negotiating table.
On the 7th of August,
ECOWAS established ECOMOG – the sub-regional force that was to enforce a
ceasefire – initially comprising troops from Nigeria, Ghana, Gambia, Guinea,
and Sierra-Leone. On the 24th of August, the ECOMOG troops were
inserted into Liberia: 3,000 initially, rapidly augmented to 6,000 within a
month. ECOMOG forces would eventually peak at 16,000 in 1993, before tapering
off to around 11,000 by early 1997. Nigeria, however, dominated the force –
providing both the overall commander and between 75-80 percent of the total
troops. Thus began Nigeria’s quest to pacify Liberia.
Sierra-Leone
It didn’t take long for the
Liberian conflict to spill into Sierra-Leone. Sierra-Leone was a troop
contributor to the ECOMOG mission in Liberia – with about 700 troops – and it
had been a strong supporter of Nigeria’s muscular approach to the Liberian
crisis. Sierra-Leone’s only international airport also served as the Nigerian
military’s primary staging post for operations in Liberia. Charles Taylor
therefore, keen to exact his revenge, facilitated the creation of a
Sierra-Leonean rebel group known as the Revolutionary United Front (RUF). In
March 1991, the RUF invaded Sierra-Leone from Liberia – igniting a brutal civil
war that would consume the country for the next eleven years. By 2002 when the
war ended, 50, 000 civilians had perished and 2.5 million people had either
become internally displaced or had fled to neighbouring countries.
The RUF incursion prompted calls
within Sierra-Leone for the redeployment of the country’s ECOMOG contingent for
internal security duties at home. But Babangida, keen to blunt perceptions of
ECOMOG being a Nigerian show (there was already considerable disquiet within
West African capitals over Nigeria’s overwhelming dominance within ECOMOG),
offered to deploy 1,200 Nigerian troops instead in return for Sierra-Leone’s
continued commitment to ECOMOG’s Liberia mission.
Nigerian policy however was limited
to bolstering the security of the capital city, Freetown. This insulated
Nigerian soldiers from direct participation in the escalating civil war
ravaging the countryside. Events in May 1997 would finally drag Nigeria into
the Sierra-Leonean vortex.
Much like Liberia, Sierra-Leone had
suffered decades of predatory rule which had caused state institutions,
including the military, to decay to the point of collapse. By the mid-90s, Sierra-Leone
resembled a “phantom
state” devoid of any institutional capacity and utterly dependent on others
to preserve its territorial integrity. Nigerian forces protected its capital from
being overrun by the RUF, while a South African mercenary firm and a tribal
militia made up of local hunters battled the rebel threat in the countryside.
On the 25th of May 1997,
taking advantage of the departure of the mercenary firm – their contract had
been terminated in January by President Tejan Kabbah following international
pressure – and barely one year into the country’s nascent democracy – Kabbah
had only been elected the year before – a handful of semi-literate corporals
and sergeants calling themselves the Armed Forces Revolutionary Council (AFRC) seized
power in a coup d’état. Announcing their intention to bring an end to the civil
war, they invited the rebels to come and join them in a coalition government.
Given such a dramatic turn of events, Nigeria, being the Kabbah government’s
protecting power, simply couldn’t allow such a humiliating affront to go
unchallenged.
After an initially botched attempt
to retake Freetown and reinstall Kabbah’s government on the 2nd of
June, Nigeria reinforced its forces in the bits of the capital it still
controlled, and shifted to bringing diplomatic and economic pressure to bear on
the AFRC/RUF regime. With the AFRC/RUF regime proving recalcitrant and unwilling
to yield to these pressures however, Nigeria’s patience finally snapped. On the
6th of February 1998, in a well-coordinated assault lasting about a
week, Nigerian forces dislodged the AFRC/RUF regime and expelled the rebels
from Freetown. The victory was nothing short of stunning. Buoyed by
triumphalism, the victorious soldiers were ordered to pursue the RUF into the
hinterland and militarily defeat them. Thus began Nigeria’s quest to pacify
Sierra-Leone.
Why Intervene and Did It Succeed?
Why Intervention?
Babangida initially hoped to
achieve two objectives by sending Nigerian troops into Liberia: Force the
warlords to commit to a political settlement, and contain the conflict from
spreading to neighbouring countries. When it became clear that Taylor’s
ambition of seizing state power for himself was the biggest obstacle to peace, two
new objectives gradually took shape: Crippling Taylor’s war machine, and
blocking his ascent to the Liberian Presidency. The reasoning being that with
Taylor’s military machine broken and his ambition frustrated, he would be more
likely to commit to a political solution.
In Sierra-Leone however, Abacha,
Nigeria’s then military ruler, initially had a limited objective when he
authorised Nigeria’s direct intervention in the country’s civil war: Overturning
the May 1997 coup and reinstating Kabbah to power. After Nigerian troops routed
the rebels in February 1998 and restored Kabbah’s government, perhaps flushed
with the impressive victory, a new objective emerged: Defeating the RUF and
pacifying the entire country. There was also a secondary objective which led
Abacha to opt for intervention. In the 1990s Nigeria was under limited
sanctions due to Abiola’s
incarceration and the hanging of Ken Saro Wiwa and his colleagues.
Therefore to improve the battered image of his regime and stave off the threat
of more stringent sanctions, Abacha, a military dictator at home, decided on
military intervention to safeguard a fledgling democracy abroad.
A further implicit reason which
powerfully shaped Babangida’s and Abacha’s decisions to commit Nigerian troops in
Liberia and Sierra-Leone has been attributed to a deep-rooted belief, shared by
most Nigerians, in the country’s destiny as West Africa’s leading power. The
interventions were therefore meant to demonstrate that Nigeria could police its
turbulent neighbourhood and shape the security environment of the sub-region.
Did
the Interventions Succeed?
Geopolitically, the interventions
improved Nigeria’s image. The attempts to pacify Liberia and Sierra-Leone
through the near unilateral use of military power enhanced Nigeria’s claim to
sub-regional leadership. Many commentators saw the country’s leading role in
ECOMOG as an indication that Anglophone West Africa finally possessed what the
Francophone sphere had in France for decades: A hegemon with the power and
resolve to stabilise weak regimes and reverse the tide of collapse in failing
states. Without Nigeria’s diplomatic and political leadership, and military and
financial commitment, the ECOMOG missions to Liberia and Sierra-Leone would
have never gotten off the ground. The geopolitical achievement however, should
not obscure the fact that Nigeria failed in its political and military
objectives.
Liberia
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Nigerian artillerymen
in action in Liberia (Patrick Robert/Corbis)
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In Liberia, all four objectives of (1)
forcing the warlords to durably commit to a political settlement, (2) containing
the conflict from spreading, (3) crippling Taylor’s war-machine, and (4) denying
him the presidency were not achieved. On the first objective, while many peace
agreements were signed, the agreements merely bought the warlords time to
recuperate for the next round of fighting. Hence, each failed not long after
being signed. On the second objective, the spread of the Liberian conflict into
Sierra-Leone dampened that hope. On the third and fourth objectives, Nigerian
forces were neither able to decisively break Taylor’s war-making resolve, nor
perpetually frustrate his ascent to the Liberian presidency. In fact Nigeria,
recognising it couldn’t militarily defeat Taylor, eventually reconciled itself
to a Taylor presidency.
Abacha, who came to power in 1993
and therefore inherited Babangida’s Liberia mission, reportedly didn’t share
the same antipathy that Babangida had for Taylor. The lack of personal
animosity between the two men paved the way for Taylor’s visit to Nigeria to
meet with Abacha in June 1995 to settle differences. This rapprochement eventually
culminated in Taylor’s election to the Presidency in 1997 with Nigerian
acquiescence – thereby bringing an end to Liberia’s first civil war. Many observers
were left wondering what exactly had been achieved: Taylor was exactly where he
would likely have been seven years ago without ECOMOG’s intervention. Taylor
himself, commenting on the outcome, wryly observed: “If we had been allowed to
win on the battlefield, we would have finished the war in six months in 1990”.
This peace however would prove
illusory. Within a year of his coming to power, Taylor, citing sovereignty
concerns, told ECOMOG to leave. And within two years, his repressive rule would
eventually plunge Liberia into another civil war which would last four years,
1999-2003. Abandoned by former allies and faced with encirclement by two rebel
armies, Taylor finally relinquished power in August 2003. If anything, it is
the outcome of this second war that is the source of Liberia’s current peace. And
Nigeria played absolutely no military role in it – save for sending peacekeepers
to monitor the ceasefire which concluded the war. So the notion that the Nigerian
army won the Liberian civil war and brought peace to the country is simply
false.
Sierra-Leone
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Nigerian
reinforcements arriving in Freetown, Sierra-Leone (Getty Images)
|
The army’s efforts in Sierra-Leone
were met with similar disappointment. The main objective of defeating the RUF
was not achieved. In fact reading Brigadier Adeshina’s (rtd) The Reversed Victory, one gets the
distinct impression that Nigerian forces came within a hair’s breadth of strategic
defeat.
After dislodging the rebels from
Freetown and restoring Kabbah’s government in February 1998, Nigerian troops
met with initial success as they probed deeper into Sierra-Leone to seek out
and destroy the RUF. As the troops advanced, the rebels melted before them. In
April, Kono District, the main diamond producing centre and the country’s
economic nerve-centre, fell to Nigerian troops. Many other cities similarly
fell to Nigerian troops – often after a token defence by retreating RUF forces.
Outright military victory seemed imminent. What was happening however, as has
been chronicled by Lansana Gberie, a leading scholar on Sierra-Leone’s civil
war, was that the RUF “carefully avoided confrontation” with Nigerian troops
during this phase. Having been badly mauled earlier in the Freetown battle, the
rebels instead withdrew to their forest redoubt to rejuvenate and rebuild their
shattered force. And the Nigerian soldiers “who lacked counterinsurgency
training, failed dismally to pursue the rebels to their hideouts, preferring
conventional assaults against towns”.
As the rebel strength recovered,
their attacks on Nigerian positions increased in intensity and frequency –
first only hitting isolated outposts with hit-and-run attacks, eventually
mutating into conventional assaults on supposedly well dug-in Nigerian
positions. By October, the momentum had palpably shifted in favour of the RUF.
In December, now with the wind in their sails, the rebels mounted a lighting
month-long offensive which saw them reconquer the northern and eastern portions
of the country. According to Brigadier Adeshina, so total was Nigeria’s
collapse in the north and the east that in some sectors the rebels recaptured
strategically vital towns “without firing a shot while pursuing our boys”.
On the 6th of January
1999, just under a year after they were forcibly dislodged from the capital,
the RUF stormed Freetown again, intent on reconquering it. In a bruising battle
lasting just under a month, Nigerian troops managed to expel the rebels and
reassert control over the capital city. As the rebels retreated, leaving
carnage in their wake, the belief that Nigeria could win a decisive military
victory on the Sierra-Leonean battlefield evaporated.
Lansana Gberie perfectly captures
the surprise which many felt at the revival in the RUF’s military power,
particularly as it was believed they were on their backs just a couple of
months ago: “The spectacular resurgence in rebel activities caused much
bewilderment. How was it that a group that had been routed from power without
much resistance, that had seen its control of nearly 70 percent of the country
reduced to scattered and isolated parts of northern and eastern Sierra-Leone,
and had been all but pronounced dead, resurge with such power and
destructiveness?”
The Sierra-Leonean President who,
during Nigeria’s early successes, had initially resisted calls for a political
settlement to the civil war bowed to reality. He signed a controversial peace
agreement with the rebels in July 1999 which granted them blanket immunity
and cabinet positions – the
leader of the RUF was made Vice President and minister of natural
resources. The UN was called in to monitor the newly agreed ceasefire and
co-administer with ECOMOG the disarming and demobilisation of the rebels.
This proved a false dawn. The RUF,
rather than disarm and demobilise as per the peace agreement, instead harassed
UN peacekeepers – in many cases stripping them of their weapons, and occasionally
holding them hostage. Concluding that the UN peacekeepers and ECOMOG forces
were too weak and demoralised to confront them, in May 2000 the RUF massed for yet
another assault on Freetown. The deployment of British troops finally stabilized
the volatile situation, and forced the rebels to disarm and demobilise. This
was what created the condition for durable peace to return to Sierra-Leone.
Commenting on the outcome of
Nigeria’s intervention, Gberie delivers this withering verdict: “Almost every
observer concluded, after the January 1999 attack on Freetown, that the
Nigerian-led ECOMOG force had failed, and failed disastrously. And no one
failed to notice that it was the robust presence of the British troops that
prevented the total collapse of the UN mission and a relapse into violence”. In
reality, though a highly commendable effort, Nigeria’s ECOMOG-led mission to
Sierra-Leone failed to quell the civil war and restore peace to the broken
country.
The
less than impressive outcomes in Liberia and Sierra-Leone, and the current
challenges in the fight against Boko Haram, underscore the urgent need for
comprehensive military reform.
For me the most important lesson to
be drawn from the ECOMOG missions is the urgent need for comprehensive and far-reaching
reforms of the military. For anyone familiar with the military’s operational
history, the current failures in the fight against Boko Haram will come as no
surprise. For example, many of the deficiencies which hampered the effective
use of military power in Liberia and Sierra-Leone – lack of combat readiness, poor
planning, command failure, obsolete weaponry, supply shortages, corruption etc.
– have also blunted the military’s operational effectiveness against Boko
Haram. If the same maladies that
afflicted the military in combat operations twenty odd years ago still
characterise its operations today, this tells me that the organisational rot in
the armed forces is deep and pervasive. Without looking at the military’s
operational history objectively, we will never recognise the need for urgent
military reforms. And without comprehensive military reforms Nigeria will
always struggle to deploy effective military power, whether abroad or at home.
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