ECOMOG – Condensing Successes and Failures

Introduction

In August 1990 a regional security arrangement set up by the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) came into being, it was named ECOMOG after ECOWAS Monitoring Group. Its task was to bring stability to one of the most volatile and coup-ridden regions in the world – West Africa. Its creation was triggered not by the pre-emptive wishes of the statesmen of a well-integrated region but by the implementation of drastic measures that tried to cope with a serious regional emergency that was the Liberian civil war (Howe 1997: 151).

After going through a brief synopsis of ECOMOG’s three major engagements, these will be assessed firstly in terms of their tactical-military innovations and difficulties and then in terms of the geopolitical challenges they faced as well as their role in working towards the stabilization of the region. Lastly, the strengths and weaknesses of regional arrangements for security will be assessed against the background of the United Nations’s (UN) and the African Union’s (AU) frameworks in terms of the challenges and innovations that ECOMOG poses to the current debates surrounding the architecture of peacebuilding in Africa.

ECOMOG’s interventions and cheer existence as an institution represents a very interesting and rather unique experiment with regional integration. Peace-building that uses regional arrangements as platforms or primary motors can in fact be a desirable route for a variety of reasons but its future is still in the open due to major institutional and political shortcomings. In Africa in particular, after the Somalia and Rwandan debacle, the international community has been invariably reluctant to intervene and tended to stay away from the continent’s perceived “barbaric” wars (Kaplan 1994; Khobe 2000;Hutchful 1999:61). It is in this context that the ECOMOG model remains a viable, if still uncertain, alternative.

Liberian intervention – “Gulliver” runs out of oxygen

“If efforts by the West African peace-keeping force failed it would be a big disaster for Africa”
Prince Johnson (Inter Press Service 1992)


Liberia was in tatters in 1990. After the scuffles between Doe and Tolbert in the late 1970s and beginnings of the 1980s, Charles Taylor, a renegade officer within Samuel Doe’s ranks that had fled to the United States, returned to his “homeland” with intentions that combined, governing, trafficking and looting with a hint of pan-Africanism. After his mainstream American education, Charles Taylor together with Foday Sankoh, had become one of Ghaddaffi’s Libya most infamous Green Book students and was able to efficiently set up his National Patriotic Front of Liberia (NPFL) thanks to his ability to move within the dark political networks of West Africa as few were able to and thanks to the consent of Coute D’Ivoire and Burkina Faso (Adeleke 1995: 569, Howe 1997: 153). To Doe and Taylor one must add Prince Johnson, an ex-officer in Taylor’s ranks which set up his parallel armed group, once again a dangerous warlord born out of the instability in Liberia. It is against this backdrop that ECOMOG is set to intervene, paired on the side of Samuel Doe. Doe, Liberia’s incumbent president by then, was a close friend of Nigeria’s Ibrahim Bahbangida. The political altercations prior to the Liberian intervention reflected the existing geopolitical tensions within the region between Francophone and Anglophone countries.

At the end of the day ECOMOG , despite claiming that democratization and humanitarianism brought it to Liberia, ended up taking sides and compromising its neutrality, breaking with what Tharoor sees as the “the oxygen of peacekeeping” – impartiality. According to Tharoor (Tharoor in Malan 1997:19)., “the moment they are seen by one side as the ‘enemy’, they become part of the problem they were sent to solve”, a view that is shared by Hutchful (1999:67) when he argues that ECOMOG took sides, in this case when pairing with Prince Johnson, and compromised neutrality.

Sierra Leone – Lingering Animosities

“We should not rush…after all we are keeping the peace”
Foday Sankoh (SLNA 1999)

Kabbah, the president of Sierra Leone and Abacha’s personal friend, was struggling in 1997 with an unholy alliance between the Revolutionary United Front and the lower ranks of the national army (AFRC) that even ended up assuming power over Freetown. The regime led by Paul Koroma had Foday Sankoh as number two and brought together “two different groups of alienated youth in arms” (Abdullah 1998: 230-234). John Paul Koroma’s AFRC and Foday Sankoh together took power over Freetown temporarily until the Nigerian-led ECOMOG troops drove them out of the capital and put Kabbah back in power. It had not been just the case that the defeat of Guinean and Nigerian troops in Sierra Leone previous to the intervention that were on Kabbah’s side had hurt the pride of the regional hegemon but most importantly that the stability of the region was once again seriously under strain.

The initial fiasco of the intervention was illustrated by the capture of 300 Nigerian troops by the rebels and a follow-up disproportionate and revengeful naval bombing by ECOMOG. The high numbers of civilian collateral damage of this bombardment “forced” Nigeria back to the regional negotiation room for a diplomatic embargo that was settled together with the regional rivals of Guinea and Coute d’Ivoire. This embargo was unfortunately ineffective leaving Nigeria and ECOMOG not choice but give it another shot at a military solution. Only after the ECOMOG force more than tripled in numbers (from 3 000 to 10 000) was it able to oust the twisted rebels that were Paul Koroma and Foday Sankoh, forcing them back into the bush. The story was not however over since ECOMOG’s forces faced a last humiliation in January 1999. ECOMOG had to be rescued by British paratroopers in 1999 from a reinvigorated rebel counter-attack that had damaged ECOMOG’s military to the extent of it being on the verge of complete collapse (Berman 2003: 46).

Guinea Bissau – ECOMOG goes on holiday

“ECOMOG is having a nice holiday in Guinea-Bissau”
Frequent comment on the streets of Bissau in 1999 (Drift 1999:12)



In Guinea-Bissau, the last of ECOMOG’s interventions, the ending of the eleven month conflict in April 1999 also had a regional dimension to it. Negotiations were done under the auspices of both the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) as well as the CPLP (Community of the Portuguese Speaking Countries). A truce was developed into a ceasefire, and foreign troops were allowed to enter the country in order to supervise the ceasefire. However, when negotiations for a peace agreement started, the rebels under Ansumane Mane demanded that all foreign troops had to be withdrawn, and Nino Vieira’s government wanted a buffer zone to be established by Senegal at the border. These two preconditions led to the breakdown of the negotiations. On the first of November a peace agreement was finally signed involving the deployment of ECOMOG, which later turned out to be rather unsuccessful (Adebajo 2002; Uppsala 2006). ECOMOG had put together for the first time a team that was Nigerian-free in a clear attempt to free the organization from its Nigerian chains and its aggressive tactics (Ero 2000). It was a mainly Francophone composed force but its partiality overtly leaning towards Nino Vieira and once again its military ineffectiveness and feebleness deemed it another failure as the troops, although they were asked to do so, did not actually manage to stay until elections were held. ECOMOG’s credibility was once again undermined.

The “blessing” and “curse” of flexibility

The Love of Liberty brought us here - Liberian National motto

Analysing ECOMOG’s interventions on purely tactical-military terms one acknowledges that first and foremost the force lacked military expertise. Difficulties comprised soldiers’ inexperience together with constant disputes within the force that caused a succession of military commanders being deposed and replaced apparently due to incompetence (Howe 1997: 161). According to Maxwell Khobe, an ECOMOG officer, there was “no common or central logistic administration system” as well as a lack of standardisation of equipment, arms and ammunition, poor sea and air lift capabilities and poor coordination and liaison with international relief agencies (Khobe 2000). The lack of military know-how was in turn not compensated with adequate military logistics, it was not just the case that the military equipment was old, outdated, terribly maintained and unreliable but more gravely that the soldiers were not being paid regularly or fairly. The ECOMOG mission in Liberia was terribly under-funded. In addition, Liberia saw a mission that was planned to last for no more than a few months dragging on for eight long years.

Similarly, in Sierra Leone, the 3000 ECOMOG soldiers were part of a tactical disaster on how not to engage Revolutionary United Front rebel troops that were arguably more experienced, motivated and vastly outnumbering the peace-enforcing force. The lack of training of Nigerian troops in counter-insurgency seemed to be a major liability as was the controversial decision to bring the Private Military Company Sandline International into the scene for privatised “peacekeeping”.(Geberie 2003: 150,154; Ero 2000)

Both missions were also plagued by language difficulties. The diversity and inadequate coordination of different sets of multi-lingual captaincies strained the communication process and interoperability between the units. This added up to ECOMOG’s somewhat anarchical and decentralized organization both in its lateral (within national contingents) and horizontal (between contingents) capabilities (Howe 1997:168). Inadequate payment to the soldiers of ECOMOG brought about the temptation, and sometimes necessity, of illicit mining, looting, thieving, smuggling and other corrupted practices, particularly in the Liberian case (Berman 2003: 46). The result was, in a way, a gradual blurry of the boundaries between the official and warlord armies whereby “ECOMOG cultivates its own warlords and mercenaries” in the form of the Kamajors and Sandline Internatinal (Hutchful 1999:72; Ero 2000).

ECOMOG’s tactics were delivered on a “deal-with-it-as-you-go” ad-hoc manner. This was so due to the problems with communication and decision-making channels between ECOWAS political committee and its military branches and with the much decentralized structure of an army that had been quickly and artificially “bolted” together. This in turn meant that officers on the ground held a high level of flexibility in their mandate which came both as a “curse” and a “blessing”. A “curse” in that rushed and bad decisions were often taken that simply worsened tensions and problems on the ground, intentionally and unintentionally displacing, bombing people and infrastructure and increasing the levels of ethnic tension. Questions of legitimacy arose. A “blessing” because flexibility and improvisation meant that ECOMOG’s mandate did not suffer from the traditional delays and lengthy political diplomatic scuffles that have traditionally plagued United Nations missions. ECOMOG was further able to recognize its own limitations and seek help from the AU, the UN and other international partners (such as the United Kingdom) as its “initiatives flagged” (Hutchful 1999:62).While on the ground, it held a strong mandate whereby peace-keeping and peace-maintenance gave way to pro-active peace-enforcement with its moral and political dilemmas that frequently brand “peace-enforcement” as a contradiction in its own conceptualization.

Between Gulliver’s army and West Africa’s Security Guardian

“Nigeria is the true African Super Power”

Charles Taylor’s sarcastic remarks on Nigeria for deluding itself as Africa’s big brother (Okoroafor 2003)


The politics of ECOMOG are indissociable from the regional politics of its Gulliver– Nigeria(Adebajo 2002). Nigeria is by far the main contributor to ECOMOG, its provision of US$12 billion (Bah 2005: 78) makes it the indisputable backbone of the organization. This, together with the previously observed “intimacies” between those in office in Nigeria - Bahbangida and Abacha- and those chiefs of state that ECOMOG came to rescue - Samuel Doe and Kabbah -brings about the further question of the genuine intentions of Nigeria. Is it advancing a truly regional security arrangement or has it been using it to disguise under the appearance of multilateralism what is in fact the self-help foreign policy of a regional hegemon mixing with regional patronage politics. The answer to this question is hardly clear-cut, since the “breakdown of sovereignty” (Hutchful 1999:66) in the region that ECOMOG tried to reverse was a threat to the region as a whole but particularly to Nigeria as the balance of power that had been tilting in its favour could dramatically be reversed.

On the one hand the interventions were not insulated from regional rivalries and power-politics but on the other hand they did not lack the authority and strength of the presence of the regional power -Nigeria- and was proud to contain a fair amount of local knowledge and cultural savoir faire that was nonetheless double-edged and in practice very questionable (Howe 1997:163). ECOMOG’s proximity and obvious interest in their regional surroundings brings about questions of impartiality and neutrality of the intervention that were always marred by the sense that those interventions were realpolitik actions of a threatened hegemon. These fears were attempted to be controlled by the advent of UN-ECOMOG joint initiatives such as the incorporation of two US-financed Tanzanian and Ugandan battalions in Liberia in 1994 (Howe 1997:158). There was nevertheless certain degree of hypocrisy in the announced ambitions of bringing “democratisation” and peace to the countries in which ECOMOG was intervening while at home repressive governments such as Abacha’s Nigeria did not give much leeway to such ideals. In addition, despite their inexcusable violence and degeneration, many of the rebellions had started as reactions to what were undoubtedly oppressive and autocratic regimes. Interestingly enough, the autocratic nature of some of the regimes that are were active participants in ECOMOG apparently helped smoothen the decision-making process in the conduct of the war (Hutchful 1999:81).

These dilemmas are also illustrated in the inherent technical difficulties that the requirement of a two-thirds majority for deployment brings about. This provides space for the unresolved political questions between Francophone and Anglophone Africa to potentially undermine the institution, particularly in the case of an eventual intervention in a Francophone state (Gberie 2003:152). Furthermore, ECOMOG’s reliance on Nigeria for military, economic and political support also means that any eventual crisis in this country will also bring unpredictable consequences to the organism.

The Monitoring Group’s place within the architecture of Peace Regimes

“Current efforts are praiseworthy but inadequate”
Report of Security Council Mission to Sierra Leone (SCMSL 2000:15)


ECOMOG has been operating in what constitutes a Regional Security Complex, “a group of states whose primary security concerns link together sufficiently closely that their national securities cannot realistically be considered apart from each other” (Bah 2005:78). Its essence as a security organization represents a model that is novel in its goals and that constitutes an innovation, particularly in the African continent, that I will now try and situate within the wider UN peace regime architecture.

When looking at the UN charter, Article 51 of the charter protecting the right of individual and collective self-defence precedes Chapter VIII, the chapter concerning Regional arrangements. Article 52 recognizes regional arrangements as viable to deal with matters related to international peace and security as long as they comply with the “purposes and principles of the United Nations”. These regional arrangements are encouraged to try and solve disputes by peaceful means before they refer them to the Security Council.

Although enforcement actions still legally require a “go-ahead” from the Security Council, the United Nations welcomes security arrangements such as ECOMOG as long as they represent an extension of its principles and purposes (Malan 1997: 16). The perils of UN peacekeeping, strained by the realpolitik chains of the Cold War, determined that a permanent military force was an impossibility right from 1947. Regional security arrangements offer in this instance a further alternative for the UN when organizing the means for its activities in addition to the traditional case-by-case ad hoc arrangements.

The provision of this chapter however does not offer immunity or full autonomy for the regional arrangement to do as it pleases as there is an allusion to articles 34 and 35 that safeguards the primacy of the Security Council to investigate any disputes and the right of any Member of the United Nations to bring any dispute or grave situation to the attention of the Security Council for further scrutiny. This attempt to devise a system of checks and balances between the regional and international spheres of the peace architecture has been put under strain, particularly in the UN-ECOWAS co-deployment in Liberia and Sierra Leone. The UN conceded with some unorthodox and uncharacteristically aggressive methods of ECOMOG on what was at times clearly a chapter VII intervention – peace-enforcement. This can, to some extent, damage the perception of the United Nations as a unbiased and rightful player in the peace architecture scheme as was reported by Francis et al (2005).Nonetheless, in the case of ECOMOG, its interventions marked a clear break with any form of classical peacekeeping. The Liberia and Sierra Leone interventions were of a clearly interventionist nature where coercive action was used for peace-enforcement objectives. ECOMOG interventions can arguably be classified as third generation as they are examples of situations whereby political authority collapsed or was at least severely undermined and the intervention sought to, at least rhetorically, to bring a political solution to a humanitarian disaster. These contrast to second generation interventions traditionally associated with negotiated settlements of proxy Cold War conflicts (Malan 1997:23; Hutchful 1999:68).

The prospects for an African Standby Force integrated under the scope of the African Peace and Security Council are still feeble. Only “baby steps” have been taken but ECOMOG has undoubtedly been seen as an important precedent from which lessons can and should be learned and whose progress has been attentively monitored and debated within the organs of the AU (Ero 2000). This wish comes not only in the context of international reluctance to intervene in “African problems” but also in the African wish to “break the dependence on outside military assistance in responding to African conflicts” (Ero 2000). At the end of the day, the success of the PSC and the sought after African Standby Force will very much depend on the will and success of sub-regional organizations such as ECOWAS (in the form of ECOMOG), SADC and IGAD (Murithi:2005).

Conclusion

The lengthy and strenuous ECOMOG engagement in Liberia and the volatility of its actions in Sierra Leone were determining features that any balanced assessment of the institution cannot escape from. One can also be positive and look at the wider perspective of ECOMOG as a unique experimentation in peacebuilding. ECOMOG holds a viable and possibly a necessary alternative to the more traditional forms of peacebuilding but there is still a lot to be done concerning internal political scuffles as well as issues concerning the technicalities and practical military capacity of its intervening force.

In terms of the architecture of peacebuilding the unfolding of the ECOMOG saga has posed both great dilemmas and opportunities for the international community at large and for the African continent in particular. Its model of intervention is surely innovative but its methods were unorthodox and its efforts at best, very “clumsy”. Its interventions provide a picture whereby ECOMOG’s decentralized nature gave it an edge of autonomy but also of anarchy where little progress was witnessed from intervention to intervention even in the case of Guinea-Bissau where the biggest improvement seemed to be “submitting periodic reports to the UN security Council concerning its activities in Guinea-Bissau” (Sams & Berman 2000:48). The unsatisfactory learning curve of the organization, which repeatedly committed the same mistakes, was reflected on how its actions were constantly questioned in matters of ethics in the rules of engagement and the professionalism of its soldiers as well as the underlying Nigerian politics of self-help

In his African Affairs article Gberie (2003) portraits ECOMOG’s interventions as heroic failures. Conversely, Hutchful (1999) claimed the Liberian intervention as a success, even if a tainted one. Perhaps his claim as a successful operation would have been different had he witnessed how badly “Liberia’s lessons” had be learned in the proceeding re-intervention in Sierra Leone and in Guinea-Bissau. It must be against a criterion of evolution that ECOMOG’s performance must be evaluated. Were lessons actually learned or were the same mistakes repeated again and again? If so, are these mistakes likely to be once again committed in the future? Although ECOMOG’s and Nigeria’s rhetoric was often unconvincing in the true humanitarianism of its cause and in the sustained legitimacy of its mandate, ultimately ECOMOG’s final judge will be the future direction of the African Peace regime and its faith. If the regional alternative proves to be, not just the soundest option but a viable one as well, ECOMOG’s critics will ultimately have to concede that, despite all its misdemeanours, the project in its vision and ambition represented a turning point in the history of peacebuilding. If instead, regional integration in Africa halts and it never spills over to the political and security dimensions, Africa will either be fully dependent on a continental AU for any endeavour or fully rely on external help. In this latter case, even praises of ECOMOG for just “trying” (Howe 1997:176) will be destined to belong to the footnotes of the books of conflict studies.

References

Abdullah, I., 1998. Bush path to destruction: the origin and character of the Revolutionary United Front/Sierra Leone. The journal of modern African affairs. Vol. 36, No. 2. 203-23
Adebajo, A. 2002. Building Peace in West Africa. Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea-Bissau. Boulder, London: Lynne Rienner Publishers.
Adeleke, A., 1995. ‘The Politics and Diplomacy of Peacekeeping in West Africa: The Ecowas Operation in Liberia’. The Journal of Modern African Studies, Vol. 33, No. 4
Bah, A. M. S. 2005. ‘From a security complex to a security community’ African Security Review Vol.14, No.2
Berman, E.G. & K.E. Sams, 2003. ‘The peacekeeping potential of the African regional organizations’, in J. Boulden, ed., Dealing with conflict in Africa. The United Nations and regional organizations. New York and Hampshire: Palgrave Macmillan (35-78).
Drift, R. 1999 “Democracy: Legitimate Warfare in Guinea-Bissau” Lusotopie pp.225-240
Ero, C., 2000. ‘ECOMOG: A model for Africa?’ Published in Monograph 46, Building stability in Africa: Challenges for the new millennium, February 2000
Francis, D.; Faal, M.; Kabia, J.; Ramsbotham, A. 2005 Dangers of Co-Deployment: UN co-operative peacekeeping in Africa UK: Ashgate
Gberie, L. 2003. ‘ECOMOG: The story of a heroic failure’. African affairs, Vol. 102
Howe, H. 1997. ‘Lessons of Liberia: ECOMOG and Regional Peacekeeping’. International Security, Vol. 21, No. 3
Hutchful, E., 1999. ‘The ECOMOG Experience with Peacekeeping in West Africa’. Published in Monograph No 36: Whither Peacekeeping in Africa? April 1999
Inter Press Service 1992 “Prince Yedou Johnson now wants peace in Liberia” http://209.85.135.104/search?q=cache:7BOCC2dYTfwJ:groups.google.com/group/soc.culture.african/tree/browse_frm/month/1992-12%3F_done%3D%252Fgroup%252Fsoc.culture.african%252Fbrowse_frm%252Fmonth%252F1992-12%253F%26+%22ecomog+failed%22&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=19&gl=za [16 May 2007]
Kaplan, R. 1994 “The coming anarchy” The Atlantic monthly http://dieoff.org/page67.htm [16 May 2007]
Khobe, M. M., 2000. ‘The Evolution and Conduct of ECOMOG Operations in West Africa’. Published in Monograph No 44: Boundaries of Peace Support Operations, February 2000
Malan, M. 1997 “A concise conceptual history of UN Peace Operations”, African Security Review,Vol.6 (1)
Murithi, T. 2005 The African Union: Pan-Africanism, peacebuilding and development United Kingdom : Ashgate
Okoroafor, O. 2003 “A red carpet for a bloodied warrior” http://209.85.135.104/search?q=cache:XzJ3C3Jr6EcJ:www.nigeriansinamerica.com/articles/332/1/A-Red-Carpet-For-A-Bloodied-Warrior/Page1.html+ecomog+humorous&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=10&gl=za [16 May 2007]
Sams, K. & Berman, E. 2000 Peacekeeping in Africa: Capabilities and Culpabilities New York:United Nations Publications
Security Council Mission to Sierra Leone 2000 Report S/2000/992, 16 October http://www.un.org/Depts/dpko/missions/unamsil/docs.html [16 May 2007]
SLNA (Sierra Leone News Archive) 1999 http://www.sierra-leone.org/slnews1099.html%20[16 May 2007]
Uppsala 2006. Uppsala Conflict Database. http://www.pcr.uu.se/database/conflictSummary.php?bcID=37 (15 November 2006).

Jonas Malheiro Savimbi and Foday Saybana Sankoh - A comparative study

INDEX

INTRODUCTION
JONAS MALHEIRO SAVIMBI - THE FAILED STATESMAN
Savimbi’s enduring facet: balancing the hunter with the blacksmith king
The black cockerel’s shift from nationalism to warlordism
FODAY SAYBANA SANKOH - THE LUMPEN REVOLUTIONARY
Populism without people – the story of Sankoh’s civil war
Sankoh’s children – the “meritocracy of atrocity”
SANKOH VS SAVIMBI
Between the office and the bush
Two models of warlordism: fluidity of roles and the ‘ethos’ behind the men
CONCLUSION
REFERENCES


Introduction

“Men make their own history, but they do not make it just as they please; they do not make it under circumstances chosen by themselves, but under circumstances directly encountered, given and transmitted from the past”
Karl Marx, The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Napoleon (1852).
The study of the role of leadership and elites in political life has seen little consensus within its ranks. There are the theories that regard individuals and leaders as units, firmly locked into the overpowering contingencies of the structural environment in which they operate. Marxist and liberal meta-theory read historical events as moments of a wider systemic evolution, which single individuals cannot significantly affect. Alternatively, proponents of individual agency celebrate the potential of a great character in vastly affecting political outcomes. The process of power, punctured with access points, is accessible to be directed and moulded by leaders or influential individuals. The latter understanding of the role of leaders underpins this study that will simultaneously account for the systemic environment in which these leaders operated.
Assuming that leadership is taken as significant, particularly in the African case whereby the individualization of politics (Chabal & Daloz 1999) has been subject to much writing in the field of conflict studies, this comparative exercise focuses on the worlds of two of those big men – Foday Sankoh and Jonas Savimbi. In the case of Sankoh his life as the RUF (Revolutionary United Front) leader with a rise and demise will be narrated and analysed while in Savimbi’s case, I will be focusing on contrasting his late period as a warlord with the bulk of the life that he lead as a rebel. The models that the two warlords put into practice will then be compared through their similarities and differences, concluding with a constant re-conceptualizing and contextualising of warlordism as an activity that should be pursued in order to smoothly engage with the changing nature of the actors taking part in conflict.




Jonas Malheiro Savimbi - the failed statesman

‘If you are a drowning man in a crocodile-filled river and you’ve just gone under the third time, you don’t question who is pulling you to the bank until you’re safely on it’

Jonas Savimbi, 14 November 1975 (Bridgland 1986:137)

Savimbi’s enduring facet: balancing the hunter with the blacksmith king

Understanding Savimbi as a sub-product of the Cold War and of the post-Cold War era falls short in offering the entire picture of whom the “doctor from Munhango” exactly was and why he did what he did. Born in 1934, close to the central Angolan plateau, Savimbi was brought up by a father with anxious expectation for his son to move upward in the circle of life. A hardworking, dancing and football-loving young man, the son of Luth Savimbi was able to breakthrough the stringent educational boundaries given to blacks under Portuguese colonial rule. Young Jonas completed his basic studies at an American Protestant Missionary school and eventually found his way to Lausanne, Switzerland to fulfil his life-long dream. He pursued this after leaving his studies in medicine, to finally complete a degree in law and International Politics instead. By then, young Savimbi was already deeply involved in the anti-colonial struggle and had developed an impressive array of influential contacts ranging from African Nationalists, to Cold War brokers (both on the American and Soviet side), to Chinese Maoists. The latter’s methods and training camps extremely influenced Savimbi’s views on how to wage guerrilla warfare and the politico-military strategy of his UNITA (National Union for the Total Independence of Angola), both in its early times and every time conventional war failed and they returned to the bush..
Savimbi initially saw, on the land-based peasant revolution a closer reflection of his own views of Angolan nationalism than in the ideas of western liberalism or Marxism-Leninism. Despite all his travelling Savimbi perceived himself, above all, as a man of his land. He spoke seven different languages but in none of them was he more rhetorically articulate than in the traditional form of Umbundu, the language of the Ovimbundu – his ethnic group and the largest in Angola constituting around 35 % of the population (EON 2007). His close intimacy with the practice of witchcraft is also well-documented in Linda Heywood’s exploration of ideology in Africa. The bizarre occasions where Savimbi consented to live burials and witch burning, opens the doors to a realm of politics that accompanied him until his last days. It is essential and necessary therefore to understand this outside the rational of classic western political science models. Savimbi’s actions, both pre and post-Cold War times, have to be understood in the context of an environment whereby, among many followers, he was regarded as having a supernatural status believed to even “fly and perform other feats” (Heywood 1998:164). This demonstrates some of the levels of perception about his intimacy with the traditional pre-colonial forces of his homeland. Savimbi built a reputation around him and so managed a balance between the hunter king (autocratic rule) and the blacksmith king (provider, consensus-generating rule) (Heywood 1998: 152). This reliance on ancestral forces and political traditions go a long way to explain the duress of political support from the core Ovimbundo constituencies and his unexpected survival through successive political crises. Although most of the events surrounding Savimbi’s and UNITA’s endurance have focused on external geo-strategic explanations in a first phase (such as South African and American support during the late seventies) and on the modern literature warlord political economy after 1992, the dynamics of the strongly knitted cohesion of his peers still played throughout this period as an important role. Understanding this relationship, between the leader and his constituency, avoids decontextualised “demonisation” of individuals (Cramer open democracy) when understanding conflict in Africa.

The black cockerel’s shift from nationalism to warlordism

Savimbi who was once heralded as a peacemaker, benign negotiator and consensus-bringing broker during the process of independence, went through dramatic personal transformations. His son’s death in 1975 coincided with his greatest moment of popularity as he toured Luanda and called for fair elections to be held. His participation in the provisional government and his first-hand experience of witnessing the early violent FNLA and MPLA scuffles in the Luandan Musseques were the events Savimbi critically pointed to when he dissociated himself from the government. The stage was set for the Angolan arena of the Cold War. Savimbi was to remain a Cold War warrior until 1992 supported by American and South African drive against Soviet Communism and in the case of South Africa avenge Luanda’s support of SWAPO in Namibia. Although his attitude of a government-seeking rhetoric did not change much, his financing did suddenly shift from American and South African geopolitical support to having greater reliance on the diamond and ivory trade (Le Billon 2001). From being connected to the state-based international geopolitical struggle of the Cold War, Savimbi began instead to rely solely upon the stateless international political economy of illicit trade to fight an MPLA that was now recognized as a legitimate government by the Americans. Savimbi’s last grasps at legitimacy on an international level were doomed. A legitimacy that Savimbi still genuinely kept at the level of his local constituency, “possibly developed only for opportunistic reasons but nonetheless real” (Giustozzi 2005: 7). Encompassed in his support constituency his followers had diverse demographic characteristics, ranging from child soldiers (particularly on the latter phases of Savimbi as an insurgent with over 2000 kids) to adults (PANGAE 1997).
The ending of the Cold War brought expectations for a favourable climate towards peace. This was yet again a notion flawed by its over-reliance on a geopolitical analysis of the situation in Angola. In 1994 it was thought by both sides that an end to the conflict would always be political and never military (Simpson, Chris A. report 1994). This was drastically proven wrong eight years later. MPLA virtually won the war, set the terms of peace and has been centrally governing Angola since.
Closely observing the nuances of the narrative of Savimbi’s relationship with his support-base avoids the recurrent fallacy of considering war and violence as irrational. This was the case even after 1992 when Savimbi gave up de facto ambitions for assuming office in Luanda and became a full-time manager of his wealthy Ovimbundo lands fighting the MPLA troops. Zollman and DE Decker were two of the companies that helped Savimbi take what was since the 1970s a traditional low-budget exploration of Angola’s natural riches and make it into a profitable industry. Exploration, particularly in the Cuango valley was centralized and very profitable In late 1997 as MPLA gained terrain Savimbi began decentralising his industry and focused on the northern regions of Angola sometimes even stretching all the way into southern Congo (Dietrich 2000: 5). Sets of sanctions that started in 1998 started making Savimbi’s profits more difficult but did not prevent UNITA from having sales reports of up to $800 000 in 1999 (Dietrich 2000: 16). UNITA’s weapons came mainly from supplies from the independence days, Cold War sponsors and appropriations from the MPLA. The US provided approximately $250 million in covert weapons shipments to Jonas Savimbi between 1986 and 1991, supplying weapons such as 106 mm recoilless rifles that were then mounted on four-wheel-drive vehicles for greater effectiveness (Hartung 1995). After 1992 most of the supplies came from the international black market Savimbi was so well connected to in his non-sanctioned diamond dealings.
Fifteen bullets engraved in the head of Savimbi in 2002 brought the war in Angola to an end. It ended as so few do nowadays, with a clear Clausewitzian victor: in this case MPLA beating Savimbi. Post-Savimbi Angola is now a wounded country with both great potential as well as many contradictions. Looking back at the conflict, fact remains that, if always dramatic and regrettable, violence is rarely irrational and never unfounded. Savimbi should therefore be understood rather as under the umbrella of a more nuanced notion of warlordism. Taking Giustozzi’s typology of contemporary military political actors, Savimbi can be seen on an initial phase as a hybrid of the nationalistic non-clan based political entrepreneur (someone who seizes control of political groups or ideologies to mobilise support) and of the traditional local ruler (a leader who mobilizes support from within their own clan or tribe) who thereafter began practising de-facto warlordism after the Cold War and then governing the state became a practical impossibility after losing the 1992 legislative elections (Giustozzi 2005 12).


Foday Saybana Sankoh - The lumpen revolutionary

“I don’t trust anybody except God, but I am prepared to negotiate with the devil if only that will bring peace to the people of Sierra Leone”

Foday Sankoh (Godwin 2003: 37)

Populism without people – the story of Sankoh’s civil war

Sankoh’s initial one hundred men constituted of a “populist movement without popular support” (Richards 2005:120). Their brutal tactics and their military and social success in recruiting revolutionaries, indoctrinating and profanely empowering them engrossed Sankoh’s ranks and made them a force to be reckoned with. The conflict saw some fifteen thousand civilians murdered and many of them internally displaced during the five years of the war (Richards 1996: 19). Sadly, witnessing the RUF’s military success, the government’s RSLMF (Revolutionary Sierra Leone Military Forces) and to some extent the Kamajor militias too, started copying the recruitment and fear-instilling methods of the RUF and the cycle of violence simply cemented itself on both sides as the natural modus operandi (Richard & Peters 1998: 184). Early in 1995 the most famous meddling of a Private Military Company in conflict occurred. Executive Outcomes effectively won the war for the government, billing the Sierra Leonean state $35 million but, together with the Kamajor militias, secured key diamond fields and pushed Sankoh to opt for the option of negotiations and elections in 1996. This was notably something that $260 million from the UN mission was unable to do (Schulhofer-Wohl 2000). A common culture of violence saw a bizarre unholy alliance between the RUF and the lower ranks of the national army (AFRC) assuming power over Freetown in 1997. The regime led by Paul Koroma had Foday Sankoh as number two and brought together “two different groups of alienated youth in arms” (Abdullah 1998: 230-234). John Paul Koroma’s AFRC and Foday Sankoh together took power over Freetown temporarily until Nigerian-led ECOMOG troops drove them out of the capital and put Kabbalah back in power. When Sankoh was arrested from 1997 to 1999 and eventually sentenced to death in Nigeria, his “siblings” in the RUF led by Sam Brockarie took over Freetown in an act that was more of an enraged and passionate cry of anger than a carefully thought through strategic operation. They kept together and oriented themselves even without the physical presence of their leader. RUF members were tightly knit together in savage meritocratic and egalitarian ways of relating to one another (Boas 2004) in a manner that sometimes resembled the twisted group rationality shown in the film “Lord of the flies”. Conflict continued until the Lome Peace Accords of 1999 remarkably saw Sankoh as the proposed head of a commission responsible for marketing the country's diamonds. Sankoh’s promise to have RUF disarmed never happened, thus the war and diamond looting resumed and Sankoh even took some five hundred UN peacekeepers hostage.
It was not until Britain sent an aggressive and well-equipped force to intervene that the RUF was defeated. In 2000 Sankoh was captured by an infuriated mob and handed over to the British. It was an ignoble capture of a man that forced and brainwashed his followers in a manner that they loved him through fear, rhetorical vigour and the superstition that he had semi-divine powers - believing he could vanish and was also immune to bullets (Economist 2003). With Sankoh’s second imprisonment peace finally came to Sierra. In custody his usual twisted eloquence disappeared and he apparently began to lose his mind until 2003 saw the quiet death of Foday Sankoh while awaiting his trial.

Sankoh’s children – the “meritocracy of atrocity”

Sankoh grew up setting traps and wrestling friends in the jungles of Sierra Leone. He was an ex-corporeal of the British army in Sierra Leone and of the failed United Nations mission in the Congo during the early 1960s. He was a photographer and cameraman, trained in Scotland, and jailed for seven years in 1971 for expressing his discontent towards the corrupt ruling elites of Joseph Saidu Momoh (Richards 1996: 18). After his release, Green Book training in Ghaddaffi’s Libya followed and a temporary detour to help his good friend, Charles Taylor in Liberia, preceded the formation of his RUF. Charles Taylor was instrumental in aiding Sankoh with strategic and military support especially in terms of supplying weapons and helping out with diamond smuggling. The RUF’s chaotic and dispersed promenading in and around Freetown was backboned by a firm grip on strategic alluvial diamond mining sites in the eastern part of the country. Foday Sankoh was, like Savimbi, a man of the bush and of great charisma, mysticism and adaptability. Unlike Savimbi, he was the instead a leader of a sect not an army commander (Richards 1999). A sect under the motto: “No More Slaves, No More Masters. Power and Wealth to the People" (RUF 1995). Although a man of the bush himself, his structure of communication meant that he rarely stepped out of his well-protected command centre, the Zagoda, and that he was frequently a “disembodied radio presence but a persistent” (Richards 2005: 130), attentive and inspiring one. After effectively purging his organization of Kanu and Masaray in 1992, two co-founders of the organization and the only real potential competitors threatening his leadership, Sankoh found himself organizationally-wise with all the time and room to indulge in revolution and in nurturing his “children”.
The presence of Ghaddaffi’s famous Green Book in the Conflict of Sierra Leone is a controversial one. Authors such as Abdullah (1998:213) see it as a background cacophony of propaganda to what was actually a social environment characterized by violence inherent to the characteristics of the “lumpen proletariat” – a disembodied and dehumanized youth. The book was taken light-heartedly and awfully manipulated to suit the circumstances. Richards (2005) on the other hand gives great precedence to the impact of the book, particularly on the leading cadre with their training in Libya. Richards assigns Sankoh’s young RUF rebels as ideologically sound individuals with, if not well carved motivations for their actions, well founded reasons or motives for behaving the way they do – at least strategically and circumstantially. Sankoh was the head of a hydra-like organization to which he attended and cared for in his fatherly fashion. His collectivist leadership meant that comrades-in-arms became a substitute to the family, whose murdering was frequently a pre-requisite for adhering to the movement, and village family structures where youths were usually violently ripped away from (Richards and peters). Although the influence of the Green Book and the actual force of ideology in the ranks of Sankoh’s RUF is avidly discussed, the fact remains that both authors have a point. Richards is right in pinpointing that there was a twisted rational about the actions of the RUF’s youth; and Abdullah’s parsimonious “lumpen proletariat” conveys the telling idea that many of them were caught within a systemic rollercoaster of violence. Both of these studies put together a grim picture where the meritocracy of atrocity became the modus operandi of everyday life.

Sankoh vs Savimbi

“The first resource that is squandered in a revolution is rationality and the last thing that returns is rationality. If it ever returns.”

Abdolkarim Soroush, On Reason (http://www.drsoroush.com/English/By_DrSoroush/On_reason.html )

Between the office and the bush

Assuming that there are two kinds of rebels in Africa - insurgents and warlords (Breytenbach 2003: 6), if the claims in the voices of Sankoh and Savimbi are taken at face-value they are to be considered insurgents since political control was always a central feature of their rhetoric discourse. Further scrutiny of their behaviour however shows that the last years of Savimbi saw him steadily lean back on his selected Angolan territories for diamond and ivory plundering. After support waned from both the United States and South Africa, UNITA no longer had any significant allies. Thus the fragile welfare structures that had been put in place in UNITA-controlled territory quickly started to fade. Savimbi’s transformation into a full-blown warlord was then complete. In taking a deeper look into Sankoh’s actions it shows that he was more comfortable in the bush fighting and plundering than he ever was in his brief passage through government in 1997. Sankoh fits well in Giustozzi’s more nuanced conceptualization of contemporary military-political actors – because he was the non-clan based military-political entrepreneur by excellence. Green Book ideology rhetorically adapted to the generational “powder keg” in Sierra Leone mixed together with a meritocratic egalitarian system designed by Sankoh. This mobilised support and resources with a mix of fear and revolutionary bravado. It was the youth that had been disembodied from their families and villages that followed Foday Sankoh. An understanding of Sankoh’s RUF as a “lumpen insurgency” sheds more light on Sankoh’s specific mode of organization than just applying to it a label of an illegitimate warlord.
Accepting the definition of a warlord as one who “acts financially and politically in the international system without interference from the state in which he is based” (Duffield 1997) one can argue that this “character” in contemporary conflict studies retains characteristics from politicians, soldiers and businesspersons. As non-office seeking politicians, they attempt to retain their power by carefully “juggling” their rhetoric and their relations with important political actors of the environment in which they operate. This is evident in Sankoh, accusing the Kamajors of having started with the real atrocities, or Savimbi’s rhetoric against MPLA even after the elections. As soldiers they primarily care about the survival of their organization, and their own – the strategy of war is always on top of their agenda. Additionally as warlords, this dimension is usually their identifying facet. This is the case for both Sankoh and Savimbi. What they do not have as office-seeking politicians, as warlords it makes up with a connection to the illegal economy. Through illicit business they finance and feed their war machines and cast a web of business relations in the profitable parallel markets such as diamond, ivory, drugs and human trafficking. Savimbi and Sankoh were cases in hand of these three roles coming together in the same persona. The three facets became more salient at different times in their lives. Sankoh was more of a politician when he spoke about giving free education and health initially in his operations. Savimbi became increasingly a businessman when he lost American support and came to rely even more on diamond, ivory and hardwood trade as a financial resource. Similarly despite the traditional label of Sankoh as a warlord, on the initial and final periods of the conflict where he practiced populism without popular support, one can see him as a conflict entrepreneur. This concept is consequently more suited to his persona as he was “more a sort of manipulator who had limited autonomous power and therefore tended to fade away more easily” (Giustozzi 2005:17). This contrasts to the localized yet reliable support-base that Savimbi managed to maintain even after the 1992 elections and his warlord policies.
The Sierra Leonean state was always a quasi-state. There was never a situation whereby the state established one overarching network of power, this was a fact that Sankoh cleverly exploited in the early stages with his anti-patronage rhetoric. With 75 % of the budget given to the army at a bad time with a collapsing economy, that was fast becoming dependant on taxes from foreign trade, the Sierra Leonean government in 1995 was the reflection of a weak governance with a history of patronage and was taking its toll (Reno 1998: 115). The case of Angola was slightly different. MPLA set up a strongly centralized system in the areas that it operated and Angola was firmly divided into the MPLA state and its army (financed mainly by oil revenues) and into Savimbi’s UNITA financed by its strategic regions of diamond and ivory rich areas. There were therefore two dimensions to the Angolan state after the 1992 elections. On the one hand the network of influence allowed the MPLA to try very hard to centralize its power and was to a great degree successful, on the other hand its influence outside Luanda was sometimes limited and its de facto governance of the territory was never quite a reality (today the Cabinda enclave question remains for example unresolved).

Two models of warlordism: fluidity of roles and the ‘ethos’ behind the men

In conflict situations there are indeed “many answers to the question of “who benefits” (Breytenbach 2003: 9). However I feel it is safe to say that in this case few actors in the war benefited from the conflict in absolute terms, except perhaps for the enriched coffers of Executive Outcomes and Sandline that participated on the side of the Sierra Leonean government and the Ukrainian PMC contracted by Sankoh. Also, at times, the elites did benefit: Sankoh with his entourage and Savimbi with the top cadres of UNITA. It was more often the case than not that actors partaking in the conflict benefited in absolute terms. Rather, they benefited in relative terms. In the case of the RUF in particular the meritocratic system gave youngsters that participated in the cause, the possibility of ascending the social ladder rapidly through the use of violence – this illusory sense of power permeates the ambiguity and the layers of attempting to answer the question: who benefits? The case of warlord Savimbi fighting against MPLA and his defeat meant that those on the side of the MPLA did benefit from the war ultimately, in relative terms that is, vis-à-vis the old entourage Savimbi left behind after his death. Of course in absolute terms however, despite the opportunity that dos Santos cleverly seized to hold onto power and centralize revenues and mechanisms, very few people in Angola benefited from the war.
The main difference between the two warlord “ethos” can summarily be understood if one looks at the nature of their child-soldiering. In both cases the use of child soldiers is a dramatic and terrible act. However in the case of Sankoh, child soldiers and their characteristics defined the essence of RUF’s relations which was in fact a sect underpinned by a generational revolt. Savimbi’s use of child soldiers on the other hand was more utilitarian and circumstantial. Both MPLA and UNITA made use of child soldiers but these did not define the essence of the relations between the members of the organization per se.
Reno’s breakdown of the processes of conflict in Africa that Breytenbach conceptualizes into the triangle of conflict, leading to the tripartite divide between rulers, rebels and mercantilists, is an interesting framework for the analysis of the two leaders. Notably Foday Sankoh was at different times and to a different extent both a rebel and a ruler simultaneously (number two in Paulo Koroma’s 1997 office). Savimbi was also momentarily part-ruler in the period of transition to independence. A clearer example is however the one of Charles Taylor. He was a rebel and a mercantilist (when he manpowered RUF ranks for the 1991 offensive) at different times. My point is how these three categories should be understood as fluid, interchangeable and overlapping and also how they should not aim at “boxing” leaders of factions into cemented roles. To understand who Savimbi was as a warlord, is essential to first understand how he became one when initially stemming from as an insurgent and why thus why he changed his modus operandi. Just like the Chinese warlords of the early 20th century, Savimbi’s and Sankoh’s actions should be seen for the most part, as “reactive” ones (Mackinlay 2000: 126).

Conclusion

This synopsis of Savimbi and Sankoh’s lives, of the interaction of these men with their surroundings and of their sets of responses to both internal and external changes in their political environment, concludes overall about one-dimensional approaches. It does so either by focusing just on their geo-political positioning or on the empirical violent output of their actions. Both of these are insufficient to paint a comprehensive picture of their actions.
A comparative historical approach is necessary in particular, when understanding Savimbi as a warlord, since he changed from an insurgent to a warlord but retained important characteristics of his years as a rebel. Sankoh’s horror story from beginning to end when observed from the perspective of a young Sierra Leonean, whose life was turned upside down as he was tossed into the violent world of the RUF, turns out to be even more tragic. As one immerses yourself under the ethos and the rationality of Sankoh and the RUF one becomes aware just how unnecessary and avoidable it was. The roles of Savimbi’s and Sankoh’s leadership cannot be underestimated. Savimbi was the glue that held his organization together and Sankoh the storyteller and hero that mischievously “liberated” all those following him, either willingly or not. Behind closed bunkers and bush refuges, both men, at the peak of their rule as warlords, broke dozens of deals with illicit traders and established comprehensive business networks. This was their way to reach out into the developed world and successfully feed their war machine as well as their private coffers, while resisting sanctions, UN interventions and lack of internal support.
A great part of their lives remains shrewd in mystery but the practical consequences of their actions in the form of atrocities, conflict and destruction were and still remain very much a reality. Both Sankoh’s and Savimbi deaths have now given their birthplaces a unique window of opportunity to enjoy peace and focus on development and constructive politics. Their stories and their lives, though tragic, should not be left in dark archives of death toll statistics or be limited to Hollywood blockbusters. This because the study and reflection about the lives and desires of leaders like Savimbi and Sankoh is crucial. Moreover contextualizing should offer no excuse for the violent actions they carried out but it can nonetheless allow for us to better understand it more clearly. Clarifying this will hopefully in the future be used to better tackle and handle individuals showing similar behaviour and threatening a re-occurrence of such tragedies.

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