ASSESSMENT OF THE IMPACT OF PEACEKEEPING MISSION IN AFRICA: A CASE STUDY OF ECOMOG INTERVENTION IN LIBERIA
ABSTRACT:
The study examines the ECOMOG intervention in Liberia in terms of its usefulness as a model for future African peacekeeping operations. Whilst the holding of elections in 1997 and the subsequent withdrawal of ECOMOG clearly indicate that the operation was not a failure in the way that, for example, Somalia was, this article argues that its success did not lie in its achieving answers to perennial peacekeeping problems. In terms of its intent, method and outcome, the intervention was deeply flawed and its eventual success lay in compromises made by Nigeria in the face of ECOMOG’s inability to produce the desired end-state at an acceptable cost. October 1999 saw the final withdrawal from Liberia of the ECOMOG peacekeeping force. For much of its seven year duration, the vicious civil war in the West African state of Liberia
barely touched Western consciousness. From the beginning of the war in 1989 to its formal conclusion in 1997, 200,000 died and 1.2 million were displaced out of a pre-war population of only 2.5m. The conflict itself exhibited all the manifestations of post cold-war intra-state conflict: state collapse; ethnic conflict; political fragmentation; warlordism; and a late and inadequate response from the United Nations.Yet despite the severity of the conflict, 1997 saw an agreement to end hostilities, the disarmament of warring factions, the establishment of political parties and elections in July 1997 which returned Charles Ghankay Taylor as President of the Republic of Liberia. A key component of the process by which conflict termination was achieved was the deployment of a peacekeeping force sent by the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) the ECOWAS Ceasefire Monitoring Group, or ECOMOG.1 The achievements of this deployment have been favourably compared by some commentators with the failures of Western operations
in Somalia and held up as “an example for the rest of the world to follow”2 and a “unique feat in both military and peacekeeping terms.”3 Understandably, therefore, there is a growing interest in the idea of a more developed African peacekeeping capability building in part upon this perceived success. In 1997 France established its RECAMP programme 4 and the US has introduced its Active Crisis Response Initiative. 5 ECOMOG troops have been actively engaged in Sierra Leone and deployed into Guinea-Bissau. There are, of course, good reasons why specifically regional responses make sense, not least the manifest unwillingness of the international community to countenance significant engagement.6 Nevertheless, the problems concomitant with an African regional initiative are many. The purpose of this paper7 is to examine the ECOMOG deployment in Liberia from 1989 onwards, focusing on its applicability as a model for African peacekeeping capabilities.
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