Optimism From West Africa: Sierra Leone and Liberia Have Escaped the Conflict Trap
Last year was tough for United Nations peacekeeping operations, especially in Africa.
In the Democratic Republic of the Congo, local people demonstrated angrily against the perceived inability of peacekeepers to protect civilians in the east of the country. In Mali, the junta government became increasingly hostile to the peacekeeping presence. In South Sudan, peacekeepers struggled to contain violence against civilians; and in the Central African Republic and Mali, peacekeepers must contend with the presence of mercenaries committing serious human-rights abuses.
To this catalogue of frustrations, we can add the resurgence of armed gang violence in Haiti. The UN has fielded six peace operations there stretching back to 1993. The last one, a 15-year presence, ended in 2019, under trying circumstances. Haiti’s relapse underlines the danger for countries afflicted by civil war of falling into conflict again, a syndrome that the World Bank calls the “conflict trap.”
While this snapshot is somber, two past UN operations leave room for optimism.
It is 20 years since the civil wars in Sierra Leone and Liberia ended. Those conflicts, in West Africa, featured punitive amputations, notorious “blood diamonds” and the tragedy of child soldiers forced to commit atrocities.
The wars spilled into neighboring countries, creating, according to Usaid, “one of the world’s worst crises.” A visiting Security Council team warned that “the stability of the sub-region was looking particularly precarious.”
So how have Sierra Leone and Liberia defied the odds to escape the conflict trap? Can they keep that status as they each face presidential elections later this year?
David Harris of Bradford University in Britain and I have attempted to discern and describe the principal factors that contributed to the post-war stability of Sierra Leone and Liberia. Four factors stand out. The most critical was post-conflict leadership and the legitimacy of government.
At the end of the respective wars, Presidents Tejan Kabbah of Sierra Leone and Ellen Johnson Sirleaf of Liberia faced deeply fractured societies traumatized by years of brutal violence and poor governance. Their administrations were certainly not flawless (allegations of corruption and nepotism dogged them), but they sought to build national cohesion, which their predecessors had conspicuously failed to do. As a result, they gained and retained a large measure of national support and the confidence (and resources) of the international community. At the end of their mandates, they had the eminent good sense to step down in accordance with term limits. Read More…
