IRIN Focus on extra troops in Sierra Leone

As the peace process in Sierra Leone unravelled, the international community turned increasingly to regional power Nigeria to intervene once more to contain renewed attacks by the Revolutionary United Front(RUF). Not only the United Nations, but also Britain and the United States indicated their wish to have Nigeria send back troops to Sierra Leone after pulling them out following the July 1999 peace accord between the government of President Ahmad Tejan Kabbah and the RUF, led by Foday Sankoh. The choice of Nigeria is informed by the country’s previous role in the war against the RUF and the Armed Forces Revolutionary Council (AFRC), a military junta that toppled Kabbah in May 1997 and then ruled for nine months in alliance with the RUF. A mainly Nigerian force deployed by the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) restored Kabbah’s government in February 1998. Eleven months later, the ECOWAS Peace Monitoring Group (ECOMOG) drove the AFRC/RUF from Freetown, parts of which the rebels had occupied in January 1999. Nigeria has some 4,000 soldiers in Sierra Leone - down from over 12,000 at the peak of the war in early 1999. They are part of the United Nations Mission in Sierra Leone (UNAMSIL). Some 2,000 of them were due back home by the end of May “but the UN is likely to request an extension and we’re not likely to oppose that”, Nigeria ’s chief of defence staff, Rear Admiral Ibrahim Ogohi, said last week after hosting a meeting in Abuja of ECOWAS defence officials to discuss the possible redeployment of ECOMOG in Sierra Leone. Ogohi used the opportunity to restate the Nigerian position on Sierra Leone, first articulated by President Olusegun Obasanjo soon after he took office last year. “If we are going back (to Sierra Leone), it is clear our economy will not support stationing troops there as before. We are ready to be there but on one condition - the UN or friendly countries will pay for our involvement,” Ogohi said. Recent discussions between senior Nigerian government officials and a British defence delegation, as well as talks with US President Bill Clinton’ s special envoy for Africa, Reverend Jesse Jackson, are widely believed to be centred on precisely how such assistance could be provided. Even without external pressure, Nigerian officials say, the country would have been ready to intervene without much prodding but for the cost implications. Since it was revealed that Nigeria spent over US $8 billion while intervening in the civil wars in Liberia and Sierra Leone in the past decade, further expenditure on such operations has become very unpopular with the Nigerian public. “Most Nigerians fail to see any benefits the country has gained from such foreign military involvements and would rather that Obasanjo’s government left Sierra Leone’s problems alone and face pressing domestic problems,” a senior official of the Nigerian Institute of International Affairs in Lagos told IRIN. “But the government is keenly aware of the dangers of allowing the Sierra Leone crisis to fester and infect the entire region,” he added. Since the latest deterioration in the Sierra Leone peace process, Obasanjo has declared that it would be unwise to allow the gains of Nigeria’s previous intervention to be eroded. In other words Nigeria would act to ensure that the seeds of regional instability sown in Sierra Leone do not germinate. Notwithstanding domestic concerns about foreign military adventures, Nigeria is concerned about the perceived role of Libya in fomenting the insurrections which first gripped Liberia and later spread to neighbouring Sierra Leone. Senior military officials have also expressed apprehension over the role of Burkina Faso under President Blaise Compaore in funnelling arms to RUF and remain supicious of France’s designs over the region, most of whose countries are former French colonies. “These concerns will ensure that Nigeria retains more than a passing interest in events in the subregion,” regional analyst Akpan Etukudo says. “But at the same time there is a strong feeling in the government that Nigeria has not received due recognition, even from the UN, for its past efforts and would want to make some political capital out of current efforts to make it commit troops once more to Sierra Leone,” he told IRIN. Local newspapers last week reported Vice-President Atiku Abubakar as telling the visiting British delegation that Nigeria should be accorded its rightful place as the main regional peace enforcer. Analysts saw it as a polite protest against the failure of the UN to appoint a Nigerian to command UNAMSIL despite the experience and accomplishments of Nigeria’s army on Sierra Leonean terrain: they blame that oversight for the current difficulties of UNAMSIL.