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February 2001 The
Lome Peace Accords: The View From Washington In January 1999, after ECOMOG successfully pushed the RUF out of Freetown, Nigeria, ECOMOG's main troop contributor, announced that it would withdraw its troops from Sierra Leone unless the West contributed some money to fund the operation. Nigeria was spending $1 million a day and could no longer sustain the financial burden. The British government, having already pledged 1 million pounds to ECOMOG troops as well as medical supplies and humanitarian assistance, implored other nations to do the same. The United States not only refused to help, it lobbied the British to abandon the military option and pressured the Sierra Leone government to negotiate with the RUF.
There were two primary reasons behind the U.S .actions. First, the Clinton Administration did not believe that the U.S. Congress would approve funding for ECOMOG troops in Sierra Leone. Second, even if Congress did approve funding, Administration officials did not believe ECOMOG would be capable of defeating the RUF. Without any clear plan on Sierra Leone, New Jersey Congressman Donald Payne and several other State Department officials, stepped in to shape American policy.
Payne, an influential member of the Congressional Black Caucus, was also a close friend of President Charles Taylor of Liberia, the man primarily responsible for arming and training the RUF in exchange for a cut of the Sierra Leone's diamonds. Payne quickly wrote a letter to President Kabbah urging him to pursue negotiations with the RUF and release Sankoh, who had been jailed on charges of treason. At about the same time, Howard Jeter, Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs, set up a phone conversation between Kabbah and Oratie Golley, the RUF's legal representative who was visiting Washington. This conversation let to a commitment on both sides to pursue a negotiated solution. In May 1999, U.S. Special Envoy Jesse Jackson brokered a ceasefire in May. Then, with assistance from U.S. Ambassador to Sierra Leone Joe Melrose, the two sides signed the Lome Accord on July 7. This agreement freed Sankoh unconditionally, granted his fighters amnesty and made him head of a national mining commission, which effectively gave him control of Sierra Leone's diamonds.
From the start, the UN had trouble implementing Lome's Disarmament, Demobilization, and Reintegration program. The RUF repeatedly violated the agreement, continuing its assault on Sierra Leone's civilian population. In March 2000, the President of the Security Council, which was Bangladesh, issued a statement expressing the Council's ėdeep concernî about the RUFîs continued human rights abuses. Pointing to the RUF's continued violations of Lome, Bangladesh tried to persuade the Council to adopt sterner measures towards the RUF, but the United States and other permanent members, downplayed the RUF violations.
It wasn't until June 2000, when the RUF took some 500 UN peackeepers hostage that the Clinton Administration's role in brokering Lome was widely covered in the media. At that time, the U.S. Congress began pushing for a policy shift. New Hampshire Senator Judd Gregg, the powerful chairman of the chair Senate's Appropriations Committee, stated that the Lome Accord was ėa truly appalling settlementî that ėlegitimized barbarities of rare ferocity.î Arguing that American support of an agreement that left Foday Sankoh in power was untenable, he blocked U.S. funding for UN peacekeeping operations until a more equitable alternative could be formulated.
The Congressional Black Caucus, under Payne's leadership, wrote a letter to Clinton calling for ėLome IIî and ėsustained ongoing dialogueî in Sierra Leone, but by then, influential members both in the Administration were already disgusted with U.S. policy in Sierra Leone. In the absence of any clear policy, U.S. ambassador to the United Nations Richard Holbrooke stepped to the plate an introduced a policy shift.
According to several diplomats, Holbrooke viewed Sierra Leone, as well as the Congo, as testing grounds for UN peacekeeping, and suggested that if the UN failed in Africa, it failed in general. After reviewing U.S. policy, Holbrooke decided that a future American policy must support three components: beefing of the UN peacekeeping mission in Sierra Leone, establishing a war crimes court, and creating an embargo on diamonds from Sierra Leone. Holbrooke wrote a letter to Senator Gregg stating that the Administration now believed that Sankoh should play no role in the future political process in Sierra Leone and that ėhe must be held accountable for his actions.î Gregg immediately released UN peacekeeping funds and between June and September 2000, the Security Council adopted three major resolutions on Sierra Leone. Michelle Sieff, a PhD candidate in the Political Science Department at Columbia University, is writing her dissertation on State responses to mass atrocity in Africa.
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