News from the Mano River Union

I wanted to flag some interesting stories from Guinea, Liberia, and Cote d'Ivoire (which along with Sierra Leone, form the Mano River Union).

First, things in Guinea seem to be settling down with the appointment of an opposition Prime Minister and President Camara's agreement to voluntary exile in Burkina Faso. It seems the acting President of Guinea, General Konate successfully worked with Blaise Campaore (the regional mediator) and other regional leaders to convince the wounded Camara to step down. This is a relief for many in the region given fears that Camara's return would spark civil war in Guinea and of course threaten stability in the neighboring countries. The new Prime Minister, Jean-Marie Dore, is an old hand in Guinean politics. This is interesting analysis from BBC on the events unfolding in Guinea.

This brings me my next story. Charles Taylor, after months of providing testimony in his own defense, is undergoing cross examination at his trial in The Hague. The crazy "I'm innocent" stories keep coming but this one was, shall we say, entertaining. Taylor claims he had no part in sending Liberian fighters to Cote d'Ivoire in 2003. I think I need to start reading about the trial more often again because it's a good refresher in Mano River Union history.

This brings me to my final story, this time from Cote d'Ivoire, the last country to join the Union. Most people of course are worried about the elections though I think many forgot about that while they watched the quarter finals of the Africa Cup of Nations yesterday (Algeria beat Cote d'Ivoire). Anyway, back in 2006, the multinational oil company Trafigura brought 500 tons of chemical waste to Abidjan "processing" and disposal. I'm sure you've read about other places where governments and corporations are "working" with developing country governments to "process" and "store" dangerous waste. Anyway, the waste wasn't properly handled at all. In fact, it was simply dumped in the laguna in Abidjan (there are some nice photos here). As you might expect, many people got sick, some died. A lawsuit was filed and damages were awarded. On Friday, an Ivoirian court decided that a local activist, Claude Gohourou, should distribute the 45 $million to the 30,000 victims. Now no one is sure that the people who suffered from the dumping of this stuff will see a payment.

Liberia: security sector reform and the international drug trade

Today's Liberia post started when Gulliver emailed me about this: "The National Guard will add Liberia to its State Partnership Program this year (2009), bringing the number of African nations taking part in the program to eight."

What's so interesting about this you ask? Well, first of all the US funded the recruiting, training, and vetting of the Armed Forces of Liberia. The UN Secretary General, in his report dated 10 August 2009, provides the following update on how that's going:

Development of the new 2,000-strong Armed Forces of Liberia continued to make progress. The first battalion started the United States Army Training and Evaluation Programme, which it will complete in September, while the second battalion will complete the programme in December. At that time, the United States contractors currently training and equipping the force will hand over to the Ministry of Defence, which will assume responsibility for training and standing up the new army. The United States has indicated that it plans to assign as many as 60 United States serving military personnel to continue mentoring the Armed Forces of Liberia, beginning in January 2010.

So it looks like we'll continue to work with the AFL as it builds capacity, an officer corps, etc. To get back to the role of of National Guard units, the article (from the snazzy AFRICOM website) explains:

Dankyan [the Liberia Desk Officer at AFRICOM] evaluated their military exercises to ensure a standard level of proficiency. After finding them ready, he started the process of matching them with a state that meets their needs.

These needs can be very specific. Some countries are recovering from war and request states with high engineering quotients to help rebuild essential structures. Some need help in planning for natural and manmade disasters, and still others want experience in farming...

For Liberia, a coastal state, the ideal partner would have expertise in ports and agriculture, he said. Dankyan said he has yet to choose a state partner because so many have volunteered to work with Liberia.

Let's hope that happens because as far as I know, we haven't done much to build Liberia's capacity to manage its borders. In particular, I don't think we've provided much support to build Liberia's Coast Guard (we're talking four 32 ft and four 28 ft crafts and 350 personnel). This is important because, as the BBC reports, Liberia (or rather the region as a whole) has become a trading platform for drugs moving from South America to western Europe. It's also important because the Liberian conflict was largely funded by trading diamonds, timber, rubber...and other commodities. Finally, it's important because beyond deterring and reducing illegal activity, effective border and customs management serves as the basis for reliable government revenue.

A wider question though: in countries like Liberia, with porous borders, resources, and limited capacity to manage borders, how do you fix that problem over the long run?

Victor Bout Won't Be Extradited

There are several reports out about how suspected Russian arms dealer Victor Bout won his case in Thai court against extradition to the US. Even the Washington Post has an editorial about it. You'll recall that Bout was arrested last year on charges he worked to supply Colombian rebels with weapons. The DEA apparently posed as FARC officials trying to buy all sorts of goodies and then arrested him.

Now, Bout's role in ferrying weapons to Liberia, Sierra Leone, Angola, Congo, Afghanistan, and other places is well known. He's long had a fleet of airplanes and for a price, he's delivered said weapons everywhere anyone can think of. Reporters Doug Farah and Stephen Braun wrote a book about him. Nicolas Cage's character in Lord of War is supposedly based on him. If the book isn't enough (it's really an easy read, almost like a beach novel). The book even has a nice section on how the US hired Bout's company to help ferry supplies to Iraq during the initial phase of the war. If you want to read more about him, I'd also suggest reports of the UN Panels of Experts on Angola, Sierra Leone, Liberia, and DRC--yes they're drier and you'll have to dig a bit more for the "fun" Victor Bout parts but the stories are well worth it.

Bout is also on the Liberia sanctions travel ban and assets freeze list, the list the Security Council maintains for people it views as having contributed to war in Liberia. Still, he continues to deny being an arms dealer and he's now won a motion to not be extradited to the US to be tried here.

Now I don't know if he's going to be tried in Thailand or not. The Russian authorities have expressed their pleasure at the Thai court's decision (of course the US has done the opposite). I also think that we need to focus on more than just one link in the illicit arms trade but let's hope this guy doesn't get off on just a technicality (namely that the US charges don't apply under Thai law) because that would set a really bad precedent. So I guess we'll have to wait and see what happens on appeal. Either that, or we'll have to make sure not to trick bad guys like this in Thailand anymore...that and we'll need to support judicial reform there too.

Charles Taylor's testimony: "Me? I had nothing to do with Sierra Leone!"

If you haven't been following former Liberian President Charles Taylor's defense testimony, you're missing out on some really good (by that I mean anywhere from outright false to merely outlandish) stories. Over the last couple of weeks, Charles Taylor has been testifying in his own defense in the Hague, where he is being tried by the Special Court for Sierra Leone on 11 counts of war crimes, crimes against humanity, and other violations of international humanitarian law.

To start off, the Special Court normally sits in Freetown, in Sierra Leone but has moved to the Hague for Taylor's trial because of concerns over security and of the impact having the trial in Sierra Leone itself could have on peace in the wider region. This is important because it's obviously a bit harder to keep both Sierra Leoneans and Liberians properly informed about far-flung proceedings than it would have been if the trial had occurred in Freetown. It also says a lot about how fragile peace is in both countries if the Liberian authorities in particular were worried that having Taylor in Sierra Leone might lead to increased security threats from his remaining supporters in Liberia.

But to get back to the trial, I've been reading the news stories coming out of the Hague. Allafrica.com has great country by country RSS feeds so I set one up for Liberia. Much of the reporting has come from an Open Society Institute-funded NGO that sent a Sierra Leonean attorney to monitor the proceedings.

With that (undoubtedly insufficient) introduction, I'll move to the Taylor's accounts of events.

One report explained that Taylor claims to anyone who looks will find no evidence that any of his (largely frozen) bank accounts hold any illicit funds or funds obtained from the illegal sale of diamonds. Another tells us that Taylor was too busy with events in Liberia in the early 1990s to have anything to do with events in Sierra Leone.

To be more specific:

Mr. Taylor said that when rebels attacked Sierra Leone in March 1991, he was busy holding discussions with West African leaders in Senegal geared towards the cessation of hostilities in Liberia and therefore could not have been planning an attack on Sierra Leone.

"At the time of the Revolutionary United Front (RUF) invasion of Sierra Leone, I was busy with peace meetings but the prosecution has me busy planning and supporting the RUF in Sierra Leone," Taylor told the judges.

To echo a point one of my colleagues made on this I wonder if I could see his appointment calendar, his phone log, and the travel schedule of his close associates because I'm pretty sure it would be embarrassing for Mr. Taylor.

The same article reports that Taylor claims he had too much going on throughout the 1990s to provide ongoing support to the RUF. Of course, Taylor also says that his 1997 "election" to the Liberian presidency was free and fair (despite the fact that monitors said the election had been marred by "widespread pre-poll intidimidation" of the "if you don't vote for me, I will resume war and you and your family will die" variety).

The third week of Taylor's testimony starts next week and if the reports coming out the last two weeks are any indication, it's worth keeping an eye on because you'll learn a lot about how the Liberian conflict supposedly did or didn't happen and how much Taylor had to do with it. I think the coverage has been pretty good at outlining both the prosecution's case and Taylor's responses. The only thing I haven't yet found is good coverage of reactions to the proceedings but if reactions to to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission's report are any indication,that would provide interesting insight into how populations view these types of efforts.

Really? You don't know who bought weapons in Liberia?? (minor updates)

Foreign Policy has a fascinating interview with Liberian Senator Prince Johnson, a former rebel leader and (early) Charles Taylor acolyte. The Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) in Liberia recently recommended that he be tried--it also recommended that Liberia's President, Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf be barred from running for office again for her initial support to Taylor's regime (but let's leave the latter aside for today).

What I find most surprising about Johnson's interview is this though:

Who supplied the guns to them? Who supplied the finance to buy the weapons? Who provided the training? It's a whole lot of questions that need answers...The first group of people that bear the greatest responsibility is not the fighting man but the people who supplied and bought the weapons. I don't know who planned and bought all the weapons, but the men didn't just come here shooting guns from the sky.

Umm--yeah right. I mean fair enough, the guns didn't just fall out of the sky (though given the flight safety record of some of the companies involved even that is possible). Still, I'm pretty sure A LOT of people know exactly where the guns came from. Why? Because since 2000, the UN has been monitoring the arms embargo--first on Sierra Leone and then on Liberia. And, well, if you watch a very nice Frontline documentary, Gunrunners, it will give you the basics of how the guns were purchased and financed. Global Witness has also done some really nice work on this. The International Crisis Group has also worked on this.

But to cut a long story short, it involves diamonds, timber, stocks of weapons in Eastern Europe, fake end-user certificates, unregistered aircraft, falsified flight plans, and transnational criminal networks. In some the UN reports, it even involves invoices, photos of Taylor associates with known weapons providers, photographs of the weapons on aircraft etc.

To add just one last thing: either Prince Johnson's staff hasn't briefed him, or perhaps he's just clueless (I won't make other assumptions since I know more about weapons trafficking than I do about the details of Liberian history) but really, where the weapons came from is open knowledge and to say that this needs investigation is simply not true and it's a distraction from more important issues. Thanks for the point about Khaddafi SNLII...

And the second thing, the important distraction is this: apparently Johnson is threatening to kill TRC members (which he denies) and is arguing that he has immunity from prosecution because of an amnesty law he says the legislature has passed.