IRIN Focus on co-operation with the United States for regional peacekeeping

Among the more manifest gains for Nigeria from US President Bill Clinton’s recent visit is the decision to have US marines provide peacekeeping training for Nigerian soldiers destined for the UN Mission in Sierra Leone (UNAMSIL). Clinton said five Nigerian battalions would receive training and US equipment to help keep recalcitrant rebels in check and disarm all factions in the mineral-rich West African country, ravaged by almost a decade of civil strife. For Nigeria, which began pulling out its forces from Sierra Leone last year as UN peacekeepers began to arrive, the US undertaking appears to be a diplomatic victory as well as a significant reward for a decade of efforts to end conflicts in the region. Nigeria has proved to be a dominant force in West Africa through its military interventions in Liberia and later Sierra Leone. On taking office in May last year, President Olusegun Obasanjo declared his intention to withdraw Nigerian troops from Sierra Leone. In 1998, Nigerian forces had ousted the military junta that overthrew the elected government of Ahmad Tejan Kabbah the year before and defended the capital against an onslaught by rebels bent on regaining power. But after Sierra Leone's rebels and government concluded the Lome peace agreement in July 1999, Nigeria seemed in a hurry to withdraw, with Obasanjo citing the huge expenses involved: more than US $10 billion spent on its regional peacekeeping operations, which began in Liberia in 1990. However, while ordering a phased withdrawal of Nigerian troops in ECOMOG, the peacekeeping force of the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), Obasanjo had said Nigeria would participate in regional peacekeeping only if the international community underwrote the costs. This was not immediately forthcoming. However, the subsequent difficulties faced by UNAMSIL, with the rebel Revolutionary United Front (RUF) refusing to disarm, seem to have persuaded the international community to strengthen its support for the Nigerian troops, given their record of bringing the rebel forces to heel, a regional analyst at the Nigerian Institute of International Affairs in Lagos told IRIN. "The fact is also that the US somehow had always felt it owed Nigeria some debt of gratitude since its intervention in the Liberian civil war beginning in 1990 helped bring about peace and a democratically elected government seven years later," the analyst said. "As a former US 'colony', Liberia was essentially America’s mess when it dissolved into strife as the late Samuel Doe’s regime began to lose control in the face of an insurrection started by Charles Taylor. But the United States was not sufficiently interested to act and it now fell on regional power Nigeria to clean up the mess." As Nigeria dug into Liberia, at the cost of hundreds of soldiers and huge finances, to bring the situation under control, the US failed woefully on a similar mission in war-torn Somalia, resulting in a hasty withdrawal and a phobia for African conflicts. Among the consequences, Clinton has since acknowledged, was a slow response to the deteriorating situation in the Great Lakes region of East Africa and the genocide that followed in Rwanda in 1994, in which 500,000 to a million Tutsis and moderate Hutus were killed by Hutu extremists. Since then there appears to have been a rethink of US policy on African conflicts, drawing on the accomplishments of Nigeria and its ECOMOG partners in Liberia and Sierra Leone. A strategy has now emerged, at least in the case of West Africa, to help regional countries to intervene in conflicts in which it would be neither politically nor militarily convenient for the major powers to become directly involved. The new aid to Nigeria appears to be part of this strategy. But while Obasanjo appears to be having things his way on the matter, the intensifying military relations with the United States seem to be creating unease in some quarters in Nigeria. Some analysts have pointed out that it could lead to the establishment of an elite squad - those who have gained from US military training - in the Nigerian armed forces, with the capacity to spark jealousies which could have an unsalutary effect on the cohesion of the armed forces. However, many Nigerian officers have received training in the United States and other Western countries over the years. Others point to recent reports that the United States had donated fast-attack boats to the Nigerian navy for operations in the troubled Niger Delta in the southeast. Impoverished host communities in the oil-rich region that resent the partnership between the government and oil multinationals (including US firms) have become more vocal in their demands for a share of the wealth and more militant and disruptive of oil operations. Nigeria is the fifth largest supplier of crude oil to the United States, providing at least one-eighth of the energy that keeps the world’s biggest economy running. "From the donation of those naval vessels to Nigeria, one gets the impression that both Obasanjo’s government and the US have opted for a military solution to the problems of the Niger Delta," oil region activist Ebiegberi Owonaru told IRIN. "If so it would be an unfortunate and costly error."