HOMENATION
INDICATORS
Tax Dollars, Child Heath,
Internet Use and More
CAMPAIGN 2000
Pump Up the Volume
Who Gets the 'A'
in Education?
What They Think of
Each Other
WORKSHEET:
The Big Issues:
A Summary
CIVIL RIGHTS
The Ghosts of Alabama
SOCIETY
Aye, Aye, Ma'am
SCIENCE
The Race Is Over
BUSINESS
Grounds For Appeal
WORLD
GLOBAL ECONOMY
The New Radicals
MIDDLE EAST
Arafat's Long Journey
After the Lion
RUSSIA
The Acid-Bath Solution
WORKSHEET:
The Role of the President:
A Comparison
ASIA
The Remaking of
a Dictator
Taiwan Takes a Stand
AFRICA
When the Peace
Cannot Be Kept
LATIN AMERICA
The Bionic Candidate
Can One Boy
Change Policy?
WORKSHEET:
Deciding Elián's Fate
TECHNOLOGY
Attack of the
Love Bug
Current Events in Review
Answers
AFRICA
By JOHANNA McGEARY
The shambles in Sierra Leone—a false peace broken, power-mad rebels endangering a U.N. mission as they reignite a vicious civil war—defies the international community’s good intentions. Many are rushing to tack another “failure” to the list of ill-fated operations from Somalia to Rwanda to Bosnia. The credibility of U.N. peacekeeping is under siege again and so is the wisdom of Secretary-General Kofi Annan’s—and the Clinton Administration’s—doctrine of humanitarian intervention.
Sierra Leone, admitted a top U.N. official last week, “is a perfect model for everything that can go wrong in a peacekeeping operation.” It began when the merciless rebel leader Foday Sankoh adopted a singularly ruthless strategy: if you terrorize enough civilians—raping girls, mutilating children, burning houses—the world will eventually give you just about anything to stop the atrocities. By July 1999 the beastly killing spree had spurred Washington and London into arranging a flawed peace-at-any-price, handing Sankoh and his Revolutionary United Front amnesty, four seats in the government and control over the country’s rich diamond mines. In return, the rebels were supposed to disarm. Instead, they sold smuggled diamonds for fresh weapons; they got ready to grab power.
He didn’t, and the big powers were unwilling to provide men or money to police the pact themselves, calling instead for an “African solution” from nations not up to the job. The U.N. cobbled together a ragtag force from some ill-equipped and ill-trained Third World armies that finally trickled in in January.
The trouble really goes to the basic problems infecting modern-day peacekeeping. The end of the cold war caught Western nations in a double standard—ready to right wrongs in Europe, reluctant to step in in Africa. Then two experiences redefined Western behavior. President George Bush took on Somalia’s anarchy in 1992 to prove the humanitarian impulse could work. Instead, the U.N.-blessed peace mission retreated in humiliation when 18 Americans were killed and one was dragged through Mogadishu’s taunting mobs. Amid the domestic backlash, U.S. politicians vowed never to risk their boys anywhere not vital to national-security interests. The appetite for humanitarian ventures was permanently stunted.
Six months later, the West sat by and let genocide happen in Rwanda, as 800,000 victims fell to madness and machetes. Assessing a tragedy that was eminently preventable, Annan pronounced his dictum: “Never again” would the world stand aside from such violence. Clinton embraced it too.
But Annan does not have the capacity to implement his doctrine, and the countries like the U.S. that do have the capacity lack the political will. Even as they vote for new peace missions, Western nations employ weak proxies to do the dirty work. That’s why they find themselves scrambling to save the crippled Sierra Leone mission.
Time, May 22, 2000
Questions
1. What went wrong on the Sierra Leone peacekeeping mission?
2. How did Somalia and Rwanda change Western policy on intervening in foreign conflicts?