Sierra Leone: a Job for Africa

Once again, Sierra Leone is on the brink of being overrun by the brutal forces of guerrilla leader Foday Sankoh. Hundreds of U.N. troops sent into the country to enforce a bad peace agreement are being “detained” by Sankoh’s forces. The United States and Britain are loath to be sucked into yet another quagmire in Africa, and the badly equipped, poorly trained U.N. forces are not likely to do the job.

The weak government of President Ahmad Tejan Kabbah needs outside help, and the Nigeria-led regional force, which maintained order in Sierra Leone until the U.N. forces took over, should return. President Clinton was right in offering technical and financial support for this mission.

For much of the 1990s, Sankoh’s army subjected Sierra Leone’s population to a campaign of terror, killing and torturing thousands. He was captured, tried and sentenced to death last year. But as part of a badly fumbled U.S.-mediated peace deal last July, his fighters received amnesty and the guerrilla leader was released from jail, made a vice president and put in control of the country’s diamond industry. U.N. soldiers were brought in to enforce this peace accord.

The agreement never had a chance. Sankoh, a double-dealing psychotic, reneged on the agreement and seized several hundred U.N. peacekeepers operating in the demobilization camps. The U.N. command has admitted failure and appealed for reinforcement by a rapid-reaction force from the United States and other Western industrialized countries.

Washington soured on peacekeeping in Africa after it failed to unseat Somali warlord Mohammed Farah Aidid in 1993. But that does not mean the United States should do nothing while Sierra Leone descends into another calamity and the credibility of U.N. peacekeeping is tested.

Clinton rightfully offered to throw political and financial support behind the effort of Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo to reinforce U.N. troops in Sierra Leone with a West African regional strike force. Nigeria, a power broker in western Africa, proved itself last year when it played a decisive role in preventing Sankoh from taking Freetown, the country’s capital.

The strike force must have the power to enforce, not just police, the peace agreement, and the Nigerian soldiers should be paid U.N. peacekeeping rates to discourage them from looting. Success is worth the cost.