The ECOWAS Security Mechanism: Toward a Pax West Africana

We will begin this paper on the Economic Community of West African States’ (ECOWAS) security mechanism of 1999 by offering some lessons for developing a new security mechanism in West Africa based on the three case studies of Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea-Bissau. Before discussing the ECOWAS security mechanism and offering proposals on how to make it more effective, we will first focus on nine important issues that emerge from our three case studies: first, the role of autocracy in fuelling conflicts in West Africa; second, the disturbing trend of government support for armed factions and rebels from other states; third, the improvised nature of the ECOMOG interventions; fourth, the need for subregional actors to apply lessons from prior peacemaking efforts in undertaking new missions; fifth, the need for Nigeria to learn important lessons from these three cases in pursuing its leadership ambitions in West Africa; sixth, the role of external actors in fuelling and managing conflicts in West Africa; seventh, the role of local civil society actors in managing conflicts; eighth, the potential co-operation between ECOWAS and the UN; and ninth, the importance of developing strategies and sanctions to deal with spoilers who are bent on destroying peace processes.

In all three cases of Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea-Bissau, personalized autocracies played a part in triggering the civil conflicts resulting in the tragic tale of West Africa’s hapless triplets. Doe in Liberia (and Taylor in post-war Liberia), Stevens and Momoh in Sierra Leone, and Vieira in Guinea-Bissau all displayed anti-democratic tendencies and often ethnic favoritism which lost them the support of their people in the process. Placing ethnic kinsmen in senior political positions in states like Liberia, Guinea-Bissau and even C^ te d’Ivoire will only fuel violent confrontations by disaffected groups. This points to the importance of the ECOWAS security mechanism of 1999 (see below) applying democratic principles consistently and sanctioning military and civilian autocrats. Only through such actions will ECOWAS’ security mechanism avoid becoming a defense pact for autocrats to protect their allies.

An alarming trend that is evident in all three cases is the support of dissident factions by subregional leaders to destabilize neighboring regimes. Burkina Faso and C^ te d’Ivoire assisted the NPFL in Liberia; Liberia and Burkina Faso assisted the RUF in Sierra Leone. Nigeria, Sierra Leone and Guinea also backed anti-NPFL factions in Liberia. The ECOWAS security mechanism can not be successful if member states continue to support warring factions. A key lesson for the ECOWAS security mechanism is to learn the lessons from the fact that all three ECOMOG interventions were highly improvised. There was no clear mandate on exactly what the troops would be doing. Peacekeepers were sent into fragile environments without adequate logistical support and funding, and without a political settlement. Unsurprisingly, when things turned difficult, ECOMOG struggled to respond decisively in all three cases and was criticized for using too little or too much force and for compromising its stated neutrality.

Like experimental guinea pigs, ECOWAS states seem to have repeated some of the same mistakes of previous interventions in undertaking new missions. The Sierra Leone intervention in February 1998 clearly revealed that Nigeria did not learn four important lessons from the Liberia experience. First, Nigeria failed to secure a clear mandate for its intervention from both ECOWAS and the UN immediately before the intervention. Second, it failed to act in concert with other important sub-regional states to garner key francophone support for the intervention. Third, its disastrous intelligence failures before the invasion of Monrovia in 1992 was repeated in Freetown in 1999. Fourth, Nigeria’s leaders failed to secure military and logistical equipment and the necessary financial support before undertaking the intervention.

But the Sierra Leone intervention also showed that a few lessons had been learnt from the ECOMOG experience in Liberia. In Sierra Leone, Francophone countries were actively involved in ECOWAS peacemaking efforts from the start, resulting in less hostility and criticism of Nigeria’s intervention in Sierra Leone. With Côte d’Ivoire having negotiated the Abidjan peace agreement in 1996, the most important francophone state in West Africa had a stake in the success of the mission in Sierra Leone. Likewise in LomJ in 1999, francophone Togo took the lead, along with the UN, in peacemaking, while Burkina Faso was actively involved in efforts to reach agreement with the RUF.

The ECOMOG intervention in Guinea-Bissau, however, repeated some of the mistakes of the Liberia and Sierra Leone interventions. The peacekeepers were logistically ill-equipped for their mission; the number of troops was grossly insufficient to maintain security in the country; and the funding for the mission depended entirely on France, an external power which had its own interest in the outcome of the conflict in Guinea-Bissau. This intervention raised serious questions about the soundness of widespread claims by many analysts that Nigeria’s own interventions in Liberia and Sierra Leone were undertaken in a bid to dominate its subregion. Here was Senegal, a middle-size West African power leading an intervention with Guinea in defense of what it saw as its national security interests without an ECOWAS mandate. The contrasting subregional and extra-regional reactions to the Senegalese and Nigerian interventions underlined the continuing fears and suspicions about Nigeria’s domineering ambitions in West Africa, a subject to which we next turn our attention.

The three ECOMOG interventions in Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea-Bissau demonstrated the importance of Nigeria to any peacekeeping mission in West Africa. Despite continuing fears expressed by several ECOWAS states and numerous commentators of a bullying Nigeria clumsily rampaging through West Africa like a bull in a china shop, Nigeria appears to be an indispensable presence to the success of any future subregional peacekeeping initiatives. General Cheikh Diarra, ECOWAS’ Malian Deputy Executive Secretary, expressed the dilemma eloquently: "Nigeria is the problem and the solution to the problem." The absence of the Nigeria Gulliver from the ECOMOG force in Guinea-Bissau was critical to the premature end of the peacekeeping mission in Guinea-Bissau in 1999. In Liberia and Sierra Leone, Nigerian-led ECOMOG forces had been able to overcome their logistical shortcomings to protect Monrovia and Freetown from being overrun by rebels in 1992 and 1999 respectively. The Nigerians had also been able to repel the NPFL from Monrovia in 1990 and restore the Kabbah government to power in Freetown in 1998. This suggests the indispensability of Nigeria’s military and financial muscle to largely subregional peacekeeping efforts.

The conditions in post-cold war West Africa with two Nigerian-led interventions, a declining French military role and increasing Franco-Nigerian diplomatic co-operation, would seem particularly propitious for Nigeria to pursue its historic hegemonic ambitions in the sub-region. But Nigeria faces both opportunities and obstacles. The country’s enormous political and socio-economic problems and the aversion of Nigerian public opinion to such costly interventions in future will prove to be major constraints for the elected government of Olusegun Obasanjo. The Nigerian military is also in a state of decay after sixteen years of corrupt neglect and politicization which has eroded its professionalism. Plans announced in 1999 by Nigerian Defense Minister, General Theophilus Danjuma, to reduce the military from about 94,500 to 50,000 had to be shelved due to concerns about the socio-economic impact of demobilizing 44,500 soldiers. The Nigerian army is also not short of trouble spots to police: nearly one third of the army is being used for international missions in Sierra Leone and the border with Cameroon as well as in the Niger Delta and various parts of the country where religious and ethnic-based conflicts have erupted.

Another key prerequisite to Nigeria fulfilling its leadership ambitions in West Africa requires its leaders learning to treat its neighbors with respect and consult more closely with them. An arrogant unilateralism was evident in Nigerian diplomacy particularly during the time of Foreign Minister, Chief Tom Ikimi, between 1995 and 1998. Ikimi’s brusque style was subsequently dubbed "area boy diplomacy" by his Nigerian critics. As YJ ro Boly, Burkina Faso’s Interior Minister put it: "Nigeria can not do what it wants and then go to ECOWAS for approval." Despite these criticisms, most ECOWAS countries no longer question the need for Nigerian leadership, but rather its penchant for a unilateral diplomatic style that offends the sensibilities of smaller, poorer, and weaker states. Nigeria must learn to speak softly even when it carries a big stick. Sule Lamido, Nigeria’s Foreign Minister, recognized these fears in noting: "It is important that while you are playing the role of Big Brother, you have to recognize that the countries you are dealing with are sovereign nations. You have to know this and recognize that psychological feeling of independence."

There still remains much unease in West Africa about Nigeria’s domination of the ECOMOG military High Commands in Liberia and Sierra Leone. As Liberia’s Defense Minister, Daniel Chea noted: "We all want to learn to respect Nigeria. The problem with Nigeria is that they are roasting too many nuts in the fire. They have a hand in every conspiracy from Liberia to Sierra Leone." Most subregional diplomats and military officers I interviewed during research trips to West Africa between 1999 and 2001 consistently made the point that, regardless of whether one country is disproportionately represented in an ECOMOG peacekeeping force, there has to be equality in the distribution of command posts in order for the force to be politically acceptable to others. As Mamadou SermJ , Director-General in Burkina Faso’s Foreign Ministry noted: "You can not have a security mechanism without equal distribution. Everyone has to be represented."

While it is indisputable that Nigeria has an interest in stabilizing its sub-region in order to promote its economic and political goals in West Africa, its domestic political and economic problems will continue to take up much of its attention. Nigeria’s decisions not to contribute troops to the ECOMOG mission in Guinea-Bissau in 1998 and to reduce significantly Nigerian troops in Sierra Leone in 1999 are clear signs of a growing wariness of the costs and frustrations with subregional peacekeeping, even among the Nigerian leadership. As Obasanjo noted during his address to the United Nations General Assembly in September 1999: "For too long, the burden of preserving international peace and security in West Africa has been left almost entirely to a few states in our sub-region…Nigeria’s continual burden in Sierra Leone is unacceptably draining Nigeria financially. For our economy to take off, this bleeding has to stop." Nigerian casualties in Liberia and Sierra Leone were estimated at nearly one thousand and its treasury released billions of dollars to these two missions. It is unlikely that the civilian government in Nigeria will be able to sustain these casualties and costs without some loss of political support. It is therefore vital that the new ECOWAS security mechanism find a way of using Nigeria’s military and financial muscle, while institutionalizing a mechanism that does not depend entirely on Nigeria to survive.

The role of external actors was important in all three cases. France’s military interventions in support of African despots between 1960 to the early 1990s had already made many West Africans suspicious of the intentions of external actors. In Liberia, American support for Doe during the Cold War fueled these suspicions further and also helped fuel the civil conflict in the 1990s. In Guinea-Bissau, France and Portugal resorted to "gunboat diplomacy" in backing different factions during the civil war.

But external actors have also sometimes played a positive role in peacemaking efforts in West Africa. Washington’s provision of logistical assistance to ECOMOG in Liberia before disarmament and its contributions to elections helped end the war temporarily in 1997. The EU and UN agencies also provided vital financial, logistical and humanitarian support which assisted peacemaking efforts in Liberia In Sierra Leone, Britain led international efforts to mobilize donor support and used its permanent seat on the UN Security Council to increase the size of the UN peacekeeping force and to impose sanctions against Charles Taylor. peacebuilding activities following the cessation of hostilities. In Guinea-Bissau, France provided financial and logistical support to ECOMOG’s preacekeepers, and both France and Portugal contributed to peacebuilding activities following the cessation of hostilities.

But the support of the West for peacebuilding activities in Africa has been derisory compared to similar efforts in the Balkans and East Timor. Even in countries like Liberia and Guinea-Bissau where donors understandably have doubts about political stability and democratic rule, donors must find creative ways of channelling resources to affected communities through the UN and international and local NGOS to disarm fighters, rebuild state institutions, restore judiciaries and police forces, and consolidate democracy.. Such a conflict prevention strategy is crucial to ensuring that conflicts do not erupt again in these countries and that long-suffering populations are not punished for the excesses of their unaccountable leaders.

Civil society actors in Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea-Bissau contributed to manage civil conflicts. In Liberia, the Inter-Faith Mediation Committee (IFMC) crafted the ECOWAS Peace plan of 1990, while ECOMOG supported an interim government in Monrovia between 1990 and 1994 with active civil society participation. In Sierra Leone, a cross-section of women’s organizations pressured the military government to hold democratic elections in February 1996, while the Inter-Religious Council of Sierra Leone (IRCSL) played a crucial role during the negotiation of the LomJ peace agreement of 1999. In Guinea-Bissau, the Bishop of Bissau played an important role in mediating between both sides during the war, while civil society groups have played an important role in post-electoral peacebuilding activities.

But despite the often courageous role of civil society, this role had its limits during civil wars in which armed factions controlled large parts of the country. In the end, ECOWAS, frustrated by military stalemate and the financial burden of protracted peacekeeping, pursued a policy of appeasing warlords and rebels in all three cases, often in the face of vociferous opposition from civil society groups. In Liberia, the warlords were brought into an interim government in 1995 and their allies were given government posts; in Sierra Leone, Sankoh was given the vice-presidency in 1999 and the RUF handed cabinet posts; in Guinea-Bissau, a deal was brokered in 1998 that established an interim government between representatives of Mane and Vieira. These deals proved to be unstable: Mane launched a coup against Vieira; Sankoh attacked UN peacekeepers; and Taylor used his war chest to win elections before continuing his destabilization policies in the subregion. This suggests that neither an exaggerated faith in the ability of civil society to manage uncivil conflicts nor the blatant appeasement of warlords can bring stability to West Africa. ECOWAS leaders will have to work closely with civil society actors in developing their security mechanism, since these actors are often closest to conflicts and can contribute to preventive efforts.

In discussing the lessons of ECOWAS/UN co-operation in our three cases, it is important to emphasize that the UN Security Council has primary responsibility for international peace and security and has simply shifted its responsibilities to ECOWAS due to the reluctance of the Council to sanction UN missions in Africa. The three ECOMOG interventions underlined the importance of an active UN role in subregional peacekeeping efforts. As in Liberia and Sierra Leone, the UN eventually became involved in Guinea-Bissau though it played different roles in all three cases. In Liberia, the UN played a very limited monitoring role to ECOMOG. It helped organize and monitor Liberia’s 1997 election and established a small peacebuilding office in Monrovia following this election. In Sierra Leone, the UN played a similar military monitoring role in support of ECOMOG, as it had done in Liberia, until it took over ECOMOG’s peacekeeping duties and subsumed some of its troops under UN command in 2000. In Guinea-Bissau, the UN played no military role, but was involved in development work through UN agencies like UNDP as well helping to organize and monitor elections in Guinea-Bissau in 1999 and 2000. The UN currently has a peacebuilding office in Bissau.

The creation of UN peacebuilding offices in Liberia and Sierra Leone represents a potentially significant innovation in the UN’s conflict management strategy. The UN peacebuilding office in Liberia, established in 1997, was the first-ever such office established by the UN. If the current progress continues in the disarmament of warring factions in Sierra Leone, the UN will almost certainly have to consider the establishment of a peacebuilding office in that country. These offices have been mandated to perform such tasks as providing electoral assistance, promoting human rights and the rule of law by working through both governments and civil society actors, mobilizing donor support for disarmament, demobilization and the reintegration of ex-combatants into local communities, supporting the rebuilding of administrative capacity, and rehabilitating local infrastructure.

Many of these goals have often not been met in fragile situations in which donors repeatedly fail to deliver on their pledges. The UN office in Liberia was regarded as too close to Charles Taylor’s government. It narrowly interpreted its mandate as mobilizing donor support for peacebuilding and declined working closely with civil society groups and reporting on human rights abuses. But the UN peacebuilding office in Guinea-Bissau (UNOGBIS) interpreted its mandate more flexibly and was able to monitor human rights violations, supported the training of judges and legislators, and worked with civil society groups to pressure the government to observe the rule of law. It is vital that the UN collaborate with ECOWAS in its future peacebuilding tasks.

Following the recommendations of the UN’s Inter-Agency Task Force on West Africa of May 2001, the decisions to establish a UN office in West Africa and to appoint a Special Representative of the UN Secretary-General to head this office both represent positive steps for ECOWAS/UN co-operation. The UN has been asked to help strengthen ECOWAS’ peacekeeping and electoral capacities and to work with civil society groups in West Africa. The UN office in West Africa is perform the following specific tasks: assist the UN and its subregional offices to coordinate strategies in West Africa; monitor and report on political, humanitarian and human rights developments; harmonize UN activities with those of ECOWAS; monitor ECOWAS’ decisions and activities; and support national and subregional peacebuilding efforts. While these are all noble objectives, the curious decision not to locate this office in Abuja, site of the ECOWAS Secretariat, will lessen its effectiveness in fulfilling its mandate particularly in light of the complications of communication and travel within West Africa.

Finally, the three cases of Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea-Bissau underline the importance of developing effective strategies and sanctions to deal with subregional "spoilers"like Taylor, Sankoh, Mane and Vieira. In Guinea-Bissau, General Mane resorted to military means to achieve his political objectives in 1999, resulting in the withdrawal of ECOMOG peacekeepers. In Liberia and Sierra Leone, warring factions killed and kidnapped ECOMOG and UN peacekeepers and stole their weapons and vehicles. At Abuja in 1999, Mane refused to allow Senegal or Guinea to contribute troops to any ECOMOG force. His demands echoed those made by the RUF in Sierra Leone who insisted that Nigerian, Ghanaian and Guinean troops depart as a condition for signing the Abidjan accord of 1996. In Liberia, Charles Taylor consistently demanded the departure of Nigerian troops as a condition for implementing various peace agreements.

In all three cases, ECOMOG sent peacekeepers into countries in which there was no peace to keep and in which certain parties were determined to use violence to force the withdrawal of its peacekeepers. It is difficult to remain neutral under such circumstances, and the economic, political, and legal sanctions of the sort that were applied to the RUF in Sierra Leone and Charles Taylor in Liberia would seem appropriate in such cases. European, North American and Asian commercial firms also played a negative role in supporting Liberian and Sierra Leonean warlords through the illicit export of natural resources and minerals in both countries. In devising sanctions against factions or subregional states, the actions of these firms will also need to be carefully scrutinized and, if necessary, punished.

We will next assess the creation of an ECOWAS security mechanism and suggest ways of improving its effectiveness.

Fresh from the successful Liberian election five months earlier, ECOWAS leaders met in LomJ on 17 December 1997 and approved a Nigerian suggestion to establish a Mechanism for Conflict Prevention, Management, Resolution and Peacekeeping for Regional Security. Francophone C^ te d’Ivoire and Senegal, the host and head of ANAD respectively, were said to have only reluctantly supported the Nigerian proposal. The revised ECOWAS Treaty of 1993 had envisaged such a security mechanism.

ECOWAS Foreign Ministers met in Abidjan in January 1998 to endorse the plan to create a security mechanism based on ECOMOG’s experiences in Liberia and Sierra Leone. At the meeting, Senegal, Togo and Burkina Faso, all three francophone states, insisted on a more restricted ECOMOG force with specially-trained units remaining with their national contingents, rather than joining a permanent, centralized force.

ECOWAS Ministers of Foreign Affairs, Defense, Internal Affairs and Security held their first meeting in Yamoussoukro on 11 and 12 March 1998. The meeting set out guidelines for experts from member states and the Executive Secretariat to prepare a draft report on ECOWAS’ security mechanism. But Yamoussoukro revealed the continuing tensions within ECOWAS, and continued francophone apprehensions about Nigeria’s domineering diplomatic style. This meeting was marked by a clash between Nigerian Foreign Minister, Tom Ikimi, and his Senegalese counterpart, Moustapha Niasse. In a barely veiled criticism of France which a fortnight before had sponsored an all-francophone military training exercise in Senegal, Ikimi criticized "foreign countries working to weaken our inter-African organizations by dividing us along anglophone-francophone lines." Niasse’s riposte was swift and equally undiplomatic: "No one can prevent Senegal or any other state from organizing such military maneuvers as it wishes…nor can anyone prevent states from training their police, gendermarie and army or freely choosing their partners…" C^ te d’Ivoire expressed support for the Senegalese position. These exchanges suggest that the true test of the success of the ECOWAS security mechanism will not be the signing of diplomatic protocols, but the management and overcoming of lingering subregional suspicions.

In May 1998 ECOWAS military Chiefs of Staff weighed in with their ideas on the creation of a security mechanism. A meeting of experts was held in Banjul from 13 to 22 July 1998 to prepare a draft report for the consideration of ECOWAS Ministers. ECOWAS Ministers of Defense, Internal Affairs and Security met in Banjul on 23 and 24 July 1998 to review the proposed mechanism for conflict resolution. The Ministers started their meeting by acknowledging three main problems in deploying ECOMOG in both Liberia and Sierra Leone: the mode of deployment, the composition of the force, and the command and control of the operations, especially the lack of involvement of ECOWAS members and the Secretariat in managing both missions.

One of the main issues of discussion in Banjul was whether prior UN Security Council authorization was needed before launching future ECOMOG interventions. ECOWAS leaders determined in the end that based on the extreme reluctance of western members of the Security Council to sanction UN peacekeping mission in Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea-Bissau, it would be better to retain autonomy over the decision to intervene and not to let the UN Security Council, itself unwilling to intervene, prevent ECOWAS from taking urgent action to maintain subregional stability. After much discussion and refinement of these ideas, ECOWAS Heads of State met in LomJ in December 1999 and signed the Protocol to establish a mechanism for Conflict Prevention, Management, Resolution and Peacekeeping for Security. It is worth assessing this important document in some detail, since it has attempted to draw lessons from ECOMOG’s experience in Liberia and Sierra Leone and, to a lesser extent, Guinea-Bissau.

The ECOWAS Mechanism: Institutions and Actors

There are five major flaws of the three ECOMOG interventions which are particularly relevant to the establishment of a security mechanism. First, ECOMOG peacekeepers were deployed to Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea-Bissau, before detailed logistical and financial arrangements were made. The peacekeepers were ill-equipped and ill-prepared and not all members were informed before full-scale deployment occurred. Second, the ECOMOG forces in Liberia and Sierra Leone were dominated by Nigeria, resulting in a lack of sub-regional unity and depriving the force of important legitimacy in fulfilling its tasks. Third, the ECOMOG force in Guinea-Bissau was deployed without Nigeria, denying the peacekeepers of the logistical and financial muscle of the subregion’s dominant force. Fourth, the ECOMOG missions in Liberia and Sierra Leone were under the operational control of ECOMOG Commanders in the field, rather than the ECOWAS Secretariat. Since these were, with the brief exception of Ghana’s General Arnold Quainoo in 1990, all Nigerian, as were the bulk of the troops, Nigeria’s military leaders were kept closely informed of operations on the ground. This information, however, did not always filter speedily, if at all, to other ECOWAS members and the Secretariat. Finally, the ECOMOG mission in Guinea-Bissau, under a Togolese commander, reported directly to Togolese leader, GanssingbJ EyadJ ma, the ECOWAS Chairman.

The ECOWAS security protocol of 1999 set out to correct these flaws. The protocol called for the establishment of the following organs: a Meditation and Security Council, a Defense Council, a Defense and Security Commission, and a Council of Elders. The Mediation and Security Council has since met to discuss the crises in Sierra Leone, the border area between Liberia and Guinea, and C^ te d’ Ivoire. The ECOWAS protocol of 1999 also called for improved co-operation in early warning, conflict prevention, peacekeeping operations, and cross-border crime and proliferation in the trafficking of small arms and narcotics. Many of these suggestions were based on the Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea-Bissau experiences, with the concern about cross-border crimes and arms trafficking being a direct result of the deleterious effect of civil wars on neighbouring states like C^ te d’ Ivoire, Guinea, Sierra Leone, Liberia and Senegal.

The Mediation and Security Council aims to accelerate decision-making in crisis situations by making decisions on deploying military and political missions and informing the UN and OAU of such decisions on behalf of the ECOWAS Authority of Heads of State. Clearly inspired by the ECOWAS Committee of Nine on the Liberian crisis, the body was to have nine members elected to a two-year term. ECOWAS leaders have since increased the membership of the Committee to ten. A Committee of Ambassadors of the ten countries in Abuja meet once a month, their Foreign, Defense and Internal Affairs Ministers meet quarterly, and their heads of State are mandated to meet at least twice a year. Decisions are to be made by a two-thirds majority of six members.

These decisions represent a clear effort to improve on decision-making and build wider sub-regional support for ECOMOG peacekeepers following the experiences of the five-member Standing Mediation Committee that sent ECOMOG into Liberia, of the Committee of Seven on Sierra Leone, and of the Committee of Nine on Guinea-Bissau. ECOWAS leaders hope that with a more representative and diverse group of members in decision-making, such sub-regional divisions as occurred in Liberia and Sierra Leone, and to a lesser extent in Guinea-Bissau, can be avoided for future peacekeeping missions. But the ECOWAS mechanism does not state what would occur if the Council failed to secure two-thirds support for future peacekeeping missions, a serious omission that will need to be corrected if future sub-regional divisions that hampered the Liberia and Sierra Leone interventions are to be avoided.

The Defense and Security Commission is to advise the Mediation and Security Council on mandates, terms of reference, and the appointment of Force Commanders for future military missions. The Commission, made up of army Chiefs of Staff, Police Chiefs, and experts from Foreign Ministries, heads of immigration, customs, narcotics and border guards, is also to advise the Mediation and Security Council on administration and logistics support for military operations. But, the Commission could end up duplicating rather than complementing the work of domestic ministries and other ECOWAS organs. Existing subregional institutions appear better placed to perform an advisory role without having to create an additional costly layer of bureaucracy that could render decision-making unnecessarily cumbersome.

The Council of Elders consists of eminent personalities from Africa and outside the continent including women, traditional, religious and political leaders appointed on an ad hoc basis. 17 of its 32 members met for the first time in Niamey, Niger, from 2 to 4 July 2001. At the meeting, former Nigerian Head of State, General Yakubu Gowon, was elected as the Council’s Chairman, with Niger’s Ide Oumarou and Burkina Faso’s Alimata Salambere elected as Vice-Chairmen. ECOWAS Chairman, Lansana KouyatJ and his deputy, General Cheick Diarra, briefed the Council of Elders on their mandate and on the progress of the ECOWAS security mechanism. Council members urged the ECOWAS Secretariat to expand its membership to ensure that all members of the subregional body were represented and appealed to members to implement the protocol related to the community levy for financing the work of the mechanism. (See below).

As earlier noted, though traditional leaders and civic groups can and do contribute immensely to the resolution of conflicts at the local level, the three ECOMOG interventions examined in this study offer cautionary tales as to the efficacy of such efforts on a nation-wide basis during a civil war in which warlords control most of the country. Despite various efforts to involve traditional rulers and civic groups in mediation efforts in all three countries, it was clear that the key to the resolution of the war often lay with warlords and rebel groups who were usually unwilling to lay down their arms. Thus, while the involvement of civil society actors in mediation efforts may serve a useful purpose, its efficacy as a method of resolving national conflicts should not be overestimated.

ECOWAS’ security mechanism further proposes that the powers of the ECOWAS Executive Secretary be broadened, giving him (there has yet to be a female Executive Secretary!) the authority to initiate prevention and management of conflict including fact-finding, mediation, facilitation, negotiation and reconciliation of parties. A Deputy Executive Secretary for Political Affairs, Defense and Security, General Cheihk Diarra of Mali, has been appointed to manage field operations in support of cease-fires and/or peace agreements. This position will be important in coordinating activities between the ECOWAS Secretariat and field missions and will hopefully help avoid the experiences of ECOMOG’s three interventions in which Force Commanders often reported directly to their own leaders rather than to the ECOWAS Secretariat.

The three ECOMOG experiences, however, suggest that it might be worth in future considering making the Deputy Executive Secretary a full Executive Secretary with his/her own separate organisation, which can be physically close to, but bureaucratically separate from ECOWAS. This would allow ECOWAS to concentrate on its raison d’L tre of regional integration while recognising the crucial link between security and economic integration. Such an arrangement can be seen in Europe with the European Union (EU) and Western European Union (WEU) playing a complementary but separate role that allows each to concentrate on its own area of specialization. Under the ECOWAS protocol, the Executive Secretary could end up being overburdened with security tasks that prevent his total concentration on economic integration issues. The Liberia experience in particular, but also those in Sierra Leone and Guinea-Bissau, demonstrated how much ECOWAS’ attention can be diverted from its economic goals to focus on security issues.

One error of the three ECOMOG interventions that the 1999 protocol attempts to rectify is the appointment of a Special Representative of the ECOWAS Executive Secretary to peacekeeping operations. This is an attempt to ensure a high-level diplomatic presence on the ground and better coordination and information sharing between the ECOWAS Secretariat and peacekeeping missions in the field. The Special Representative would lead peacemaking efforts and coordinate humanitarian and peacebuilding operations of ECOWAS, international organizations, and non-governmental organizations. This idea seems particularly sensible since in Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea-Bissau, delicate diplomatic tasks were often left in the hands of military commanders who were ill equipped and untrained to handle such matters. These problems also took away from the commanders’ time to focus on purely military and security issues.

As envisaged in the ECOWAS security protocol of 1999, an Observation and Monitoring Center is currently being established within the ECOWAS Secretariat. The EU is funding this project and the Director of the Center, Program Manager and the heads of ECOWAS’ four zonal bureaux have now been recruited. But the EU insisted that recruitment be done according to its own bureaucratic rules, and not those of ECOWAS, again revealing how donors can sometimes act in a heavy-handed manner even as they claim to support "ownership" of subregional mechanisms by local actors.

ECOWAS’ Observation Center is to consist of the two departments of Operations, Peacekeeping, and Humanitarian Affairs (DOPHA) and Political Affairs and Security (DPAS). The first aims to formulate and implement all military, peacekeeping, and humanitarian operations, while the latter is mandated to organize, manage, and provide support for political activities related to conflict prevention as well as to formulate and implement policies on cross-border crime, the circulation of light arms, and drug control.

ECOWAS’ protocol also calls for a peace and security observation mechanism as well as an early-warning system, with information bureaux in four reporting zones based in Banjul (to cover Cape Verde, Gambia, Guinea-Bissau and Senegal), Cotonou (to cover Benin, Nigeria and Togo), Monrovia (to cover Ghana, Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone) and Ouagadougou (to cover Burkina Faso, C^ te d’Ivoire, Mali and Niger). From these four zonal headquarters, officials are expected to assess political (human rights, democracy), economic (food shortages), social, (unemployment), security (arms flows, civil-military relations) and environmental (drought, flooding) indicators on a daily basis. By July 2001, agreements had been signed with the governments of Benin, Burkina Faso, and Gambia to host these bureaux but not yet with the government of Liberia.

One encouraging development of ECOWAS’ early warning system is the involvement of civil society actors in its establishment. The African Strategic and Peace Research Group (AFSTRAG), a small Nigerian-based research institute, is leading a project on developing ECOWAS’ early warning system with a forum of 26 mostly West African NGOs under a West African Network for Peacebuilding (WANEP) which has already met in Abuja on 24 to 27 March 2001 to discuss the potential contributions of civil society groups to ECOWAS’ early warning system by sending reports to the ECOWAS secretariat. AFSTRAG is planning to coordinate activities and civil society groups participating in the four observation zones of ECOWAS’ early warning system. It plans to use satellite networks for this work, after establishing two zonal coordinating offices in Freetown and Dakar.

While the observation system and plans surrounding it are all laudable goals, these tasks will need to be reduced and made more focused to reflect better the political realities in West Africa. Monitoring human rights, press freedom, and civil-military relations would have been politically impossible for the ECOWAS secretariat, for example, under a repressive regime like that of Nigeria’s General Sani Abacha between 1993 and 1998. In a subregion in which twelve of the sixteen leaders in 1998 initially came to power through a military coup, such political tasks seem simply beyond the reach of international civil servants serving at the behest of governments. It would appear more sensible for the observation mechanisms to focus on less politically sensitive issues like economic, social, and environmental indicators, while perhaps leaving some of the more sensitive political analysis to civil society groups to send to the ECOWAS secretariat.

One issue on which a decision has been taken but which is yet to be implemented is the role of the Accord de Non-Aggression et d’Assistance en matiP re de DJ fence (ANAD), the all-francophone West African security organization, within the ECOWAS security mechanism. In 1996, ANAD leaders revived a plan to establish a Force de Paix to serve as a rapid intervention force. (See Chapter One). The force, which was never established, was to have been based on stand-by forces trained in individual countries and funded by ANAD members as well as external subventions. The proposal was discussed at a meeting in Nouakchott, Mauritania, on 18 and 19 April 1996. ANAD chiefs of staff held a further meeting in Niamey, Niger, a week later to discuss the idea of the force which has to be used for conflict prevention and management, humanitarian aid operations and combating illicit arms trafficking and crime. The force could be deployed under the aegis of the OAU and UN, but significantly not ECOWAS.

Since the ANAD proposal clearly reflected the same ideas behind the ECOWAS security mechanism, there is a feeling among many non-francophone West Africans that ANAD remains another tool for France to maintain a "sphere of influence" in West Africa and prevent unity within a Nigerian-led ECOWAS. Senior ANAD staff denied this, asserting that France had not contributed a single franc to ANAD and that the organization was barely known wihin French military and political circles.

In 1999, ANAD had a 45-person Secretariat and a budget of about 350 million CFA Franc. But its members were meeting irregularly, its staff was irregularly paid, and member states did not keep their accounts current. Several ANAD states conducted two military exercises under French funding: Exercise Le Nangbeto in Togo in March 1997 and Exercise Guidimakha in Senegal in February 1998. But the Force de Paix remained an unachieved dream. There were also some cracks within ANAD as Togo was said to have been disappointed not to have secured more support from ANAD in its historical tensions with neighboring Ghana, and LomJ was said to have become lukewarm toward the organization as a result. Togo was one of the strongest supporters of the decision to integrate ANAD into the ECOWAS security mechanism.

At the suggestion of Senegalese President, Abdou Diouf, it was decided that ANAD be integrated into the ECOWAS security mechanism. The option of ANAD becoming a specialized ECOWAS agency to control cross-border crime was rejected. In April 2000, General Ishola Williams, the Acting Director of AFSTRAG, met with staff of the ANAD Secretariat to discuss plans of how to integrate the organization into the ECOWAS security mechanism. While ANAD staff were apparently keen to be integrated into ECOWAS, there was some resistance to this within ECOWAS itself amidst alleged concerns that the arrival of senior ANAD staff (Executive Secretary, Director of Studies and the Legal Adviser) could lead to the demotion of some ECOWAS staff. As General Amadou TourJ , Mali’s former head of state, noted: "ANAD…seems to be searching for a role for itself. Its survival would seem to depend on either expanding or adapting to present times."

Based largely on the experience of ECOMOG in Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea-Bissau, the ECOWAS protocol of 1999 called for the establishment of a stand-by force of brigade-size consisting of specially trained and equipped units of national armies ready to be deployed at short notice. All fifteen ECOWAS states have pledged one battalion each to the proposed new force. It now remains to be seen whether this pledge can be translated into reality.

The force is to be called ECOMOG, and its main tasks will involve: observation and monitoring, peacekeeping, humanitarian intervention, enforcement of sanctions and embargos, preventive deployment, peacebuilding operations, disarmament and demobilization, and policing activities including anti-smuggling and anti-criminal activities. These were among the tasks that ECOMOG attempted to perform in Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea-Bissau. The new subregional force is to embark on periodic training exercises to enhance the cohesion of its troops and compatibility of equipment. ECOMOG’s soldiers will also undertake training exchange programmes in West African military training institutions, as well as external training involving the UN and OAU. 4,000 troops from Benin, Burkina Faso, Chad, Côte d’Ivoire, Niger, Togo and Ghana have already taken part in war games in the BurkinabP town of Kompienga and northern Togo in May 1998, with Nigeria involved in the military planning. Some analysts have proposed that ECOWAS establish a subregional peacekeeping training center to enhance co-operation.

It is important to examine three important issues related to the new ECOMOG force: first, the criteria for mandating military interventions; second, the importance of distinguishing between keeping and enforcing peace; and third, the danger of the force becoming a defense pact for the protection of local autocrats. The proposed ECOMOG force is to be used in fourth cases: first, aggression or conflict within a member state; second, a conflict between two or more member states; third, internal conflicts that threaten to trigger a humanitarian disaster, pose a serious threat to subregional peace and security, result in serious and massive violation of human rights, and/or follow the overthrow or attempted overthrow of a democratically-elected government, and fourth any other situation that the Council deems appropriate.

While the first two scenarios for justifying military interventions were included in the ECOWAS Protocol of Mutual Assistance and Defense of 1981, the third scenario is a conscious attempt to provide legal cover for future interventions, based on ECOMOG’s three interventions. In Liberia and Guinea-Bissau, ECOMOG had intervened by arguing that the situation had threatened a humanitarian disaster and posed a threat to subregional peace and security. In Sierra Leone, ECOMOG had restored a democratically-elected government to power after its overthrow by soldiers. The interventions in Liberia and Sierra Leone were controversial and questioned on legal grounds, even by some ECOWAS members.

. It must also be recognized that decisions to intervene in countries will be political in subregional conflicts where member states often have concrete interests. Unlike the collective security system of the UN whose universal membership often allows it to send peacekeepers from countries that have no direct interest in the conflicts to be settled, ECOWAS does not have this luxury. ECOWAS will have to find a way of excluding countries whose presence is strongly opposed by the parties to the dispute and might sometimes have to borrow troops from outside its own subregion as it did in Liberia with OAU and UN peacekeepers and as it has done with Sierra Leone where ECOMOG was subsumed under a UN peacekeeping mission, while retaining a subregional core of peacekeepers. Such innovative divisions of labor will have to be devised for future interventions. ECOMOG must learn from the Liberia and Sierra Leone experiences the importance of diversifying troop-contributing contingents to include both ECOWAS and non-ECOWAS members to avoid charges of Nigerian or Anglophone domination.

Political discretion will still have to be exercised in decisions to intervene in conflicts even when ECOWAS’ criteria for intervention are met. It is clear that if a military regime took power in Nigeria, for example, with popular support from a democratically elected but politically discredited civilian regime (as occurred in 1983), an ECOMOG intervention force would be practically impossible to deploy. Likewise, if a military coup were to succeed in a francophone state with popular domestic support or tacit French and francophone support, a Nigerian-led ECOMOG intervention would be fraught with political and military risks which could lead to the force being regarded as foreign invaders.

Interventions will always have to be determined on a case-by-case basis. The requirement of a two-thirds majority is an important check that allows for a blocking minority. The experts meeting in Banjul in 1998 to discuss the ECOWAS mechanism did not suggest alternatives to break this possible deadlock for fear of creating negative loopholes that could be exploited by member states. But this still leaves ECOWAS with a dilemma: if the needs of an intervention are so pressing on humanitarian grounds of saving lives and rescuing citizens trapped in fighting, but at least four subregional states on the Mediation and Security Council veto the action because they have an interest in the victory of a domestic party they are supporting, ECOMOG can be blocked by parochial, partisan interests from undertaking action that could benefit the interests of the wider community.

The ECOMOG intervention in Liberia parallels such a scenario with Burkina Faso and Côte d’Ivoire opposing ECOMOG due largely to their own interest in seeing an NPFL victory. Under the ECOWAS protocol of 1999, ECOMOG would probably not have found the six votes necessary to intervene in Liberia. With eight out of fifteen members in ECOWAS, the francophonie possesses the most united, though not monolithic, political bloc in a relationship cemented through co-operation in the institutions of the franc zone often under French leadership. It does not seem difficult to imagine four francophone states saying "non" to a Nigerian-led intervention that they perceive to be against their own interests.

It is also important to establish conceptual clarity in determining the mandate of the proposed ECOMOG force. The ECOWAS protocol talks of peacemaking, peacekeeping and peacebuilding but does not explicitly address the issue of peace-enforcement which occurred in both Liberia and Sierra Leone, suggesting a certain conceptual confusion. It seems that peace-enforcement has simply been subsumed into peacekeeping without differentiating clearly traditional peacekeeping which involves defensive lightly armed troops monitoring an agreed peace and defending themselves only when attacked, from peace-enforcement action involving offensive heavily-armed troops imposing peace against recalcitrant parties. This distinction will need to be more clearly defined for future ECOMOG missions, since such decisions will be crucial in determining the needs and mandate of forces to be dispatched into conflict zones.

Finally, the fourth criterion for intervention which leaves the situation under which military interventions can occur to the discretion of the Mediation and Security Council introduces the possibility, expressed particularly by many African civil society actors, of the abuse of the mechanism. The fear is that autocratic subregional leaders who have lost the support of their citizens could convince their fellow leaders to sanction interventions to protect their regimes. Such an allegation was made against ECOMOG, and particularly Nigeria, in relation to Liberian leader, Samuel Doe, when its peacekeepers entered Liberia in 1990. ECOWAS members are still allowed, under the 1999 protocol to enter into bilateral arrangements that could lead to allies sending troops to help each other.

SJ kou TourJ had sent Guinean troops into Siaka Stevens’ Sierra Leone in 1973 and into William Tolbert’s Liberia in 1979 to help restore internal stability following civil disturbances. More recently, Senegal and Guinea sent troops to assist Vieira’s regime in Guinea-Bissau in 1998, while Nigerian, Guinean and Ghanaian troops were sent to Freetown to assist successive regimes in Sierra Leone between 1991 and 2000. All these interventions were justified on the basis of prior bilateral defense accords. Despite genuine fears about the abuse of an ECOWAS security mechanism to support illegitimate regimes, the fact that six out of ten ECOWAS states have to approve any military interventions could help curb abuses, provided that these regimes are democratically-elected and enjoy domestic and international legitimacy.

Many of the institutions proposed by the 1999 protocol represent an important step to improving ECOWAS’ ability to manage conflicts, but they will also be expensive to staff. Based on the experience of member states in failing to pay their dues to maintain existing ECOWAS institutions, there are genuine grounds for skepticism as to whether these institutions will receive consistent funding. More detailed financial arrangements need to be made to ensure continued funding both from within and outside the sub-region.

All three ECOMOG interventions clearly exposed the logistical weaknesses of West Africa’s armies. It is, however, no secret what is required to improve the effectiveness of such forces: serviceable weapons, good communications equipment, tactical mobility and logistical support, knowledge of basic doctrine, individual skills training, and realistic exercises involving whole units. Convoy escort operations through hostile territory during military interventions are best undertaken with the support of scout and attack helicopters. West African peacekeepers do not have such assets in significant quantities. Attacks against resisting forces in urban areas are difficult without access to precise-fire weaponry such as attack helicopters, gun-ships, and night-vision equipment.

For operations to establish order in even relatively small countries, over 10,000 troops are likely to be needed. ECOMOG had roughly this number at the height of its peacekeeping missions in Liberia and Sierra Leone, while it had only 712 peacekeepers in Guinea-Bissau. 10,000 soldiers would usually be enough to maintain security for several hundred thousand people located over tens or hundreds of square kilometres, and for policing and monitoring borders. In 1996, ECOMOG’s military planners calculated that they would need at least 18,000 troops to fulfill their peacekeeping and disarmament tasks satisfactorily in Liberia. In the end, they had to settle for 10,500. External support in the form of weaponry, transportation and communication equipment, will still need to be provided by external actors for ECOMOG’s peacekeepers for the foreseeable future, and there is a continuing need for logistical support in the form of trucks, transport helicopters, water purification equipment, tents, uniforms, and boots. Associated costs for such equipment could reach $1 billion for a total force of 30,000 to 50,000, but this would be the only way of ensuring that the force could operate autonomously once it was deployed.

Several subregional military analysts have suggested that ECOWAS establish strategic reserves of equipment which can be used for peacekeeping missions, much like the UN’s central depot in Italy. But this issue was discussed in Banjul in 1998 by the experts who drafted the ECOWAS security mechanism and they decided that it would be too risky to establish military reserves that could be stolen and used if conflict broke out in the country where they were stored. General Maxwell Khobe, the late Nigerian ECOMOG Task Force Commander in Sierra Leone, offered some sensible ideas for overcoming ECOWAS’ logistical deficiencies. Khobe suggested among other things: the standardisation of the equipment, arms, ammunition, training standards and doctrine of ECOMOG’s stand-by forces; the establishment of an ECOMOG standing command staff to harmonize military policies; and the creation of an ECOMOG support command with ships and airlift capability. As noted above, the implementation of these ideas will require both finance and political will.

The issue of financing is particularly important to the building of ECOMOG’s proposed force. The ECOWAS protocol of 1999 foresees troop-contributing countries bearing financial costs for the first three months of military operations before the ECOWAS secretariat takes over the costs of the mission. The initial agreement for the ECOMOG mission in Liberia was for each contingent to fund its own troops for the first month of the mission after which time all ECOWAS members would assume responsibility for ECOMOG. But Nigeria ended up footing about 90 percent of the costs and francophone countries opposed to ECOMOG were unwilling to contribute to a mission they did not support. Similarly in Sierra Leone, Nigeria shouldered much of the financial burden for the mission. In Guinea-Bissau, France underwrote the financial costs of the mission, providing stipends, transportation and some communication equipment to the subregional peacekeepers. Under the ECOWAS protocol, funds for the mechanism are to be raised from the annual budget until a community levy comes into existence. Funding is also expected to be provided by the UN, international agencies, the OAU, and voluntary contributions and grants from bilateral and multilateral sources.

This is an unsatisfactory system that does not correct a critical flaw in ECOMOG’s peacekeeping experiences. All three ECOMOG missions clearly demonstrated the importance of securing financial support before embarking on a military intervention. The ECOMOG missions in Liberia and Sierra Leone cost the Nigerian treasury billions of dollars (though large portions of these funds were embezzled by corrupt military leaders in Nigeria). Such costs can prove a disincentive to future interventions in a subregion saddled with a crippling external debt. Tanzania and Uganda withdrew from ECOMOG in large part because their financial and logistical needs were not being met. Other ECOWAS states declined to contribute troops to ECOMOG due to the costs of maintaining peacekeepers in Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea-Bissau.

The Nigerian-led OAU intervention in Chad between 1979 and 1981 was forced to withdraw largely because it lacked the funding and logistical support to sustain it. In 1997, only Nigeria, Benin and Côte d’Ivoire had paid their ECOWAS dues in full, and since 1975 only these three countries and Togo have contributed regularly to the ECOWAS budget. By July 1992, the arrears to the ECOWAS budget was equivalent to three years of its operating budget, while unpaid arrears stood at $38.1 million in December 1999. The ECOWAS Secretariat’s move from Lagos to Abuja in 1998 was delayed by seven years due to lack of funds, and its staff is irregularly paid with the Nigerian government having to loan ECOWAS money to pay its personnel in September 1998. This hardly appears to be a promising basis for securing financial support for a future ECOMOG force. A sounder financial base must be built through the acceleration of the community levy in order for ECOWAS’ security mechanism to be successful.

In concluding this section, we briefly assess efforts by three external actors, France, Britain and America, to contribute to building ECOWAS’ security capacity. France has invited non-francophone states to participate in its Renforcement des CapacitJ s Africaines de maintien de la Paix (RECAMP) and established a peacekeeping training centre in Abidjan. The changing French role coincides with increasing but limited American and British security roles in West Africa. Britain currently has a small military contingent in Sierra Leone which is training a new national army and has supported the larger but poorly equipped UN force. The British government has established an African Peacekeeping Training Support Program involving officer training projects in Ghana, South Africa and Zimbabwe. The US has provided military assistance to Benin, Ghana, Mali, and Senegal, as part of its 1996 African Crisis Response Initiative (ACRI) to strengthen the military capabilities of African states for regional peacekeeping. But with a total annual contribution of only about $25 million to selected African states, ACRI is unlikely to contribute substantially to ECOWAS’ logistical deficiencies. Washington has also trained three Nigerian, one Ghanaian and one Senegalese battalion for participation in the UN mission in Sierra Leone.

But critical voices in Africa have argued that external security initiatives have not been coordinated, that Africans have not been adequately consulted on these initiatives, and that emphasis on training is misplaced since logistical and financial support are more essential for African peacekeepers. ECOWAS also must not be over-dependent on external funding for its operations, since this could not only compromise its independence of action but can also lead to funding short-falls as a result of the changing political interests of unpredictable external donors. As ECOWAS Executive Secretary, Lansana KouyatJ , recognized: "If we depend 100 percent on donors, all the good ideas mentioned may never be realized."

The ECOWAS security mechanism has so far received funding from the Organisation of African Unity (OAU) and several donor governments. The OAU gave ECOWAS $300,000 for its deployment in Sierra Leone and Liberia. The European Union (EU) (2million euros), the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) ($250,000), and the governments of the United Kingdom, Japan ($100,000) and Germany have made contributions in support of the ECOWAS mechanism. Canada has contributed $300,000 for the establishment of an ECOWAS Child Protection Unit. The governments of the Netherlands and Canada have also expressed an interest in funding the mechanism.

Armed Humanitarianism

The ECOWAS security mechanism foresees humanitarian and logistical support being provided by ECOWAS. Based on the three ECOMOG experiences, however, it is obvious that such resources are in short supply within the sub-region. ECOMOG did play a role in revitalizing ports, electricity stations, and communication facilities in Liberia and Sierra Leone and its engineers rebuilt some roads and bridges. This experience should be built on for future missions. But, in the humanitarian field, ECOWAS simply lacks the resources and experience provided by UN agencies and the NGO community, while in the area of logistics, such basic equipment as radios, tents, medical equipment, boots and uniforms as well as trucks and helicopters had to be provided by the US, France and the EU.

It would seem sensible for future ECOMOG missions to emulate the division of labor established in Liberia, where ECOMOG concentrated on disarmament and providing security for humanitarian convoys, while leaving the bulk of humanitarian tasks in the hands of the UN and NGOS. Although the ECOWAS protocol of 1999 foresees a role in peacebuilding for ECOMOG, a division of labor between ECOWAS and international actors would appear to be more realistic. ECOWAS could take the lead in elections, supported by the UN and other groups, while ECOMOG, or UN peacekeepers, provides security after completing its disarmament tasks. But the reintegration of fighters and food-for-work projects are better left to the UN, World Bank and EU, which have both the experience and resources, though sometimes not the political will, to undertake these tasks.

TOWARD A PAX WEST AFRICANA

West Africa remains today among the world’s poorest and most conflict-prone subregions .Four ECOWAS states, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Liberia and Sierra Leone, all of them significantly involved in recent conflicts, are among the ten poorest countries in the world.. Despite these difficulties, there are some rays of hope in West Africa’s bleak security prospects. ECOWAS has survived for 26 years despite its members’ political and cultural divisions and economic disparities. Following three unprecedented military interventions in the 1990s, the organization has managed to overcome these obstacles to establish one of the world’s first subregional security mechanisms. Mali and Niger have imaginatively used civil society groups and government mediation to manage their long-running Tuareg problems. ECOWAS’ citizens travel visa-free and work throughout its 15 countries. Highways have been built linking Lagos to Nouakchott and Dakar to Ndjamena. A West African Gas Pipeline has been built. A semblance of democratic rule appears to be emerging in Benin, Cape Verde, Ghana, Nigeria and Senegal. There are plans afoot to create a common currency, an ECOWAS Court of Justice and a 120-member subregional parliament.

ECOWAS has also won praise for taking steps to control the proliferation of light weapons and small arms within its subregion. An estimated seven million such weapons are currently circulating in West Africa. On 31 October 1998, ECOWAS Heads of State signed a three-year Moratorium on the importation, exportation and manufacture of light weapons from November 1998 until November 2001.Technical assistance to support implementation of the Moratorium is being provided through the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) and the UN regional disarmament center in Lomé. Much work remains to be done to ensure the effectiveness of efforts to halt the spread of these lethal weapons across West Africa’s porous borders.

There is a glimmer of hope in the birth of a new security mechanism in West Africa. ECOWAS has finally started to fulfil the ambition of establishing what Kenyan political scientist, Ali Mazrui, described as a Pax Africana in its own subregion by creating an indigenous system for managing its own conflicts. Usually, theory and conceptualization precedes practice in the establishment of security structures. In ECOWAS’ case, however, practice of three subregional interventions has preceded theory. This gives ECOWAS a golden opportunity to draw from its experiences in Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea-Bissau in building its security mechanism. The lessons of these three cases must be properly applied if West Africa, arguably the world’s most troubled subregion, is to build peace and achieve prosperity in a new millennium.

See Adekeye Adebajo, Building Peace in West Africa: Liberia, Sierra Leone, and Guinea-Bissau (Boulder and London: Lynne Rienner, 2002). This paper is based on this study.

This section draws heavily from Adekeye Adebajo, "Nigeria: Africa’s New Gendarme?", Security Dialogue, vol.31 no.2, June 2000, pp.185-199.