Africa's man-made pain

U.S. support will be crucial to the United Nations' efforts to restore order and avert a crisis of international leadership in Sierra Leone.

St. Petersburg Times, published May 10, 2000

There seems to be no relief for the pain in Africa. Famine in Ethiopia, floods in Mozambique, AIDS everywhere, violence in Zimbabwe, civil war in Congo, more civil war in Sierra Leone. The acts of God -- too little rain, too much rain -- are somehow easier for us to deal with: It's no one's fault. But the man-made miseries demand a different, more difficult, sort of attention. A reassessment of priorities, perhaps; a time to decide just what the United Nations stands for in the world.

Sierra Leone, despite its vast diamond resources, is one of the poorest nations on earth. A long, debilitating civil war has destroyed any vestiges of civil society. About 3-million people are displaced. There are too many AK-47s and not enough food. Sierra Leonean children are sold into slavery and prostitution by guerilla insurgents to make money for weapons. And now at least 300 U.N. peacekeepers, and more than 200 Zambian soldiers, have been kidnapped. At least four have been killed.

The peacekeepers were unarmed or under-armed, sent to help "enforce" the "peace deal," backed by Europe and the United States, that had been struck last July between the tattered remains of the government and the insurgents of the Revolutionary United Front. But there were never enough of them; the United Nations couldn't get much support -- in personnel or cash -- from Security Council members. Now the situation in Freetown, the nearly ruined capital, is so critical that the United States and European governments are evacuating their nationals. Even Medecins Sans Frontieres (Doctors Without Frontiers) has mostly pulled out.

It's a pity that it took so long for the United States and Britain to notice that Sierra Leone was about to collapse. If the West had been more proactive, not necessarily sending its own troops, but helping fund the personnel from Jordan, India and neighboring African nations, perhaps Foday Sankoh, the leader of the RUF and a genocidal megalomaniac, would not now be the de facto dictator of Sierra Leone. At the moment, the West can only react to Sierra Leone's collapse. The Americans have threatened to send in troops to safeguard U.S. nationals; the British have dispatched several warships and a paratrooper regiment to secure Freetown airport. But neither government wants its soldiers to engage the rebels or to involve themselves directly in the kidnapping.

And then what? If the United Nations has a mission anywhere, it's in places such as Sierra Leone. The civil war here is not a tribal conflict or an ideological or religious dispute: It's about who controls the nation's diamond mines. Sierra Leone need not be in such dire straits economically, but as long as it is in a state of chaos, there is no hope for its people. Western countries pushed Sierra Leone into last summer's deal with the devil; we must take some responsibility and give the United Nations the resources it needs to restore real order. We pay lip service to internationalism and to moral leadership. Let's help the United Nations show some.