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WAR, PEACE AND SECURITY IN SIERRA LEONE - An Interview with Dr. Francis Kai-Kai, Executive Secretary National Commission for Disarmament, Demobilization and Reintegration
By Ibrahim Abdullah
Ibrahim Abdullah: What is the primary factor fuelling conflict in Africa?
Francis Kai-Kai: Let me start by saying that all civil conflict in Africa is the result of marginalization. Whether it is based on geography or politics at the end of the day, it boils down to marginalization. One group feels marginalized by another group wherever the nature of the groupings. If you take the big conflicts in Southern Africa, it is all about blacks feeling marginalized, left out by the whites who have amassed wealth and power to be able to leave out the majority. If you talk about conflict in the Sudan, it is the same thing: the privileged North vs. the marginalized South. There are many situations where conflict emanates from marginality. If we come home to Sierra Leone, it is all about marginalization again. You have one group feeling aggrieved against another group. Luckily for Sierra Leone, it is not based on ethnicity; it is a case of a social group feeling politically left out.
In the case of Foday Sankoh and others, people like you have analyzed the
situation here, you've pointed out clearly that it is connected with the neglect of the youth as a group, especially the rural youth who in the 1970s became very vociferous and very much aggrieved by marginalization from the center. They only needed a political maverick to galvanize the loose energy in those areas. If you look at the Revolutionary United Front (RUF) most of them are rural youth with very low education. They have been mobilized to fight against what they call the system then, as represented by the All Peoples Congress regime, 1968-1992.
The question of marginality is related to the issue of political leadership. In
general we have experienced weak leadership in Africa especially after independence. Those who replaced the so-called founding fathers could not hold their nations together. African societies are not easy to hold together as one
entity. If you take rural Africans, they don't think in terms of their nation or nationality; they think in terms of their ethnic group, their immediate villages or their communities. If you have leaders who want to come forward to lead nations and don't think in nationalistic terms, the likelihood is that they just might complicate an already complex situation. Here again the question of marginality comes up-a weak leader favoring his/her region or ethnic group. In a nutshell, I think that marginalization and weak political leadership-the two are kind of related-are central to understanding conflicts in Africa. African leaders have failed to build a cohesive nation-state that rises above ethnicity and regionalism. These are my thoughts on the issue of marginality and conflict.
IA: The Sierra Leonean experience has been reduced to greed, in this case
diamonds, as opposed to grievance, which is political. What in your view best
explains the Sierra Leone case?
FK: As a Sierra Leonean, I have looked at the dynamics of the war with respect to resources. If you examine the immediate period from1991-1993, you see a rural war originating from non-diamondiferous districts and most of those who were fighting never really thought of diamonds as a prized factor in the struggle.
Even so, one cannot exclude the diamond question as a factor because the
leadership of the rebel movement within and outside Sierra Leone may have waged this war with a view to financing by taking control of the mines. Now if you want to finance a war obviously you have to look for where you can get the resources to do so. It is therefore possible that they saw diamonds as a means to an end rather than as an end in itself. Clearly they wanted political power; but you cannot crave for political power if you don't have a resource base. So the resource base was the diamond, and the diamond was seen as a means to
achieve that end rather than an end in itself. You can see that even though
they had control over the mines they still moved towards Freetown with much
destruction as it was difficult for them to just hold on to a mining area forever without trying to gain political power which would consolidate their hold on the mines.
It is also possible that their external backers had diamond in mind. The reason
why Charles Taylor was interested in the continuation of the war in Sierra
Leone was to consolidate the RUF's hold on the diamond mines as this would well foster his own ambition in Liberia and his worldly ambition to be a very rich
man. Greed? Yes, to some extent it is there, as people want wealth for themselves and the moment you want wealth to want to make sure such wealth is secured, and your wealth cannot be secured in such circumstances without political power. So one is the means to the other, and some how they reinforce one another.
IA: The Disarmament, Demobilization and Reintegration program was
successfully completed under your direction and supervision. Would you like to
comment on key aspects of the project and why you think it was successful?
FK: On the Disarmament, Demobilization and Reintegration (DDR) program itself I think I would agree thus far we have been relatively successful though that
success has come with a lot of sacrifices and with a lot of history too. There
are clearly some lessons to be learnt especially that have shaped the process
to this point. It's not been all just success because the DDR program has to be
anchored in a very clear peace framework. There has to be a framework for peace and that framework should have a political component. The political component is very important for a successful DDR program like the one we have had in Sierra Leone. Also the shape of such a program would depend very much on the way the crisis ends. If you end on the peace table by negotiations through
dialogue then clearly the political component would influence the way you design your DDR program. If the war ends with the defeat of the rebels with one side capitulating to the other the program will have to be designed differently.
In our case it was through negotiations which turned out to be a very difficult process particularly when unpopular measures not accepted to the civilians had
to be adopted. But we were lucky because the people understood our position
when we say that the peace process has to go on. A DDR program obviously
depends on commitment from all sides and because of the way the war ended we had designed a program that was voluntary. It was voluntary, not forced,
disarmament-this is important. These are some of the key issues we have to
remember about the Sierra Leone crisis. The formation of a national committee
to supervise the whole process was also a key factor. The President of Sierra
Leone headed this committee with representation from the rebel movement and it
had the solid backing and blessing of the international community. A DDR program is an expensive project. In our case it involved the United Nations Mission in Sierra Leone (UNAMSIL) and the donor community though we got more support through bilateral arrangements. I have in mind here the critical role
of the British government through DFID. They provided the seed money for the
initial phase of the project in 1998.
The last point is that such programs have to be linked to a clear reform
package-what is currently referred to as the security sector reform. Sierra
Leone did not have to deal solely with a rebel armed group. It also had to
reorganize its national army. The specificities of the Sierra Leone situation
shaped the kind of program that later evolved.
IA: Experiences from South Africa, Mozambique and Ethiopia suggest that the reintegration aspect is the most problematic in a DDR program. Would you say this is also true of Sierra Leone?
FK: Indeed reintegration is definitely problematic. The central issue here is taking the guns away from combatants because this essentially opens the way to reintegration itself. In taking the guns you must look for some alternative life style for these people and that has often been the mistake so that people emphasize the guns so much and forget about alternative lives for these ex-combatants. It is in this sense that the issue is problematic. You can take a day to remove the guns but you can take a longer period to do reintegration and it has to be done right as well. In this sense also it is problematic and requires intense and very serious action on the part of those who are in charge of the DDR program.
In the case of Sierra Leone it is compounded by the fact that the rebel forces
occupied almost half of the country for a very long period with devastating
consequences. Economic and social life came to a complete standstill while
infrastructures deteriorated or were destroyed. In such a situation disarmament
did not mean a return to normal economic and social life. The challenge was
enormous. You had people with absolutely no formal education-young, uneducated and lacking any form of productive skill-that you want to make useful members of society. We therefore had to be careful not to appear as if we are privileging combatants as opposed to non-combatants. This is an issue that we might discuss later on but reintegration itself for these ex-combatants was a
major challenge and the existence of few opportunities in parts of the country
especially areas they had occupied for a long time posed a special challenge.
For example we disarmed in Kono District-where the major diamond mines are-a long time ago and there has not been an automatic presence of relief agencies there to help with the creation of opportunities that will be accessible to all Sierra Leoneans-combatants and non-combatants alike. This shows that the process of reintegration is very challenging because we have to seek funding
from the various donors for so many things. We are busy trying to invest these
resources on ex-combatants through agencies that support them. We need these agencies that provide support in areas where we have the ex-combatant and they happen to be in areas where these agencies would need considerable investment in their own infrastructure and their own capacity to be able to deliver. All of these constitute special challenges to the process which we are facing right
now but I believe that the approach we are using and our linkages to the rest of the national recovery process we would soon be able to address these problems.
IA: I have on numerous occasions criticized the World Bank-sponsored DDR
projects because it privileges a specific category, ex-combatants. Are there
any plans for marginal youths in general, or if you like, latent combatants-those who did not take up arms?
FK: You are right in posing the question of privileging ex-combatants in the DDR
program. The grim reality is that we experienced a nasty war in this country for ten years with no clear military victory and we managed to end the war through negotiations. The first thing you want to do in such a situation is to disarm the rebels-take the arms away from the combatants-and to do this the government had to negotiate and make some compromise. Support from the
international community and bilateral donors, coupled with experiences elsewhere in Africa and the rest of the world, we were able to offer an alternative to the gun. This does not translate into privileging them. Rather, it was a process of trying to bring back peace and stabilize the society. So the DDR program as it is right now was designed to ensure short-term security, stabilize the security situation whilst government and her partners are trying to bring back overall progress to the rest of the population.
The other thing is that this government conducted a dual/two track approach to
the problem. The government initiated the DDR program to actually focus on the
ex-combatants and their needs. They also set up a National Commission for
Resettlement, Rehabilitation and Reconstruction (RRR) to focus on the victims
of the war-the internally displaced population, refugees, amputees and others.
The RRR Commission and her various partners are actually working assiduously to address the problem of the rest of the population. The DDR program is meant to contribute to government's peace and security objectives and this is what we
are actually doing. We are not really privileging ex-combatants we just recognize that they are a special group that have unleashed war on this country and we need to tell them to stop it by providing them with an alternative way of making a living. This should enable them to contribute meaningfully to their respective society.
Also, we had to design the program in such a way that support to them is short-term as a special target group. So they disarm; they demobilize and for six months we focus on them, give them some life-long skills, which would bring
them back to society. After that they become members of the community and they benefit from whatever is available in the community. One point I would like to make to buttress my argument is that poverty is rampant in Sierra Leone society and the country has become poorer as a result of the war. It has also deepened and touched every household. What this means is that we are reintegrating ex-combatants into that poverty. They cannot be better off than anybody else can. We are providing them with skills in the area of carpentry; they can go back to school like anyone else if they so desire; they can become
auto-electrician or drivers, and more importantly return to the land as farmers. I do not think they are going to be better off than the people they would find in those sectors.
So what we are trying to do is to bring them up to a level where they can become productive citizens again. They are not coming back as heroes; far from that! That's not our objective. So I believe that it is going to be a level playing field for them and hope that there would be long-term programs after the DDR that would address the problems of young people in general and not just a specific target group. Hopefully that would contribute to long-term security and stability for our society.
IA: Children and youth were the main actors in the Sierra Leone civil war. What lessons, in your view, can Africa and the world draw from the Sierra Leone experience?
FK: Indeed, youth and children in general have been major actors in Sierra Leone's civil war. As a matter of fact the Revolutionary United Front used young
people, especially children under eighteen, as part of their war machinery. It was part of the war strategy and other belligerents were also alleged to have used children though not on a huge scale as the rebels. So it has been one of the scars on Sierra Leone and its future. What that means is that we have to ensure that we pay a lot more attention to this category of our citizenry. They are important and its one of the lessons that others are going to learn, namely
that children, if neglected, if not properly cared for, would obviously be part of such carnage. They would destroy their own families, their communities, their country and even their own future as individuals. That's one thing that is an issue in Sierra Leone's civil war and we have to make sure that those traumatized children can relearn how to live again in society. We must focus on them; we must make sure they play around with other children; that other children influence them rather than they influencing other children. These are lessons, which every country has to learn especially those that have gone through similar experiences. Also we have to make sure that children are not marginalized anymore. Children must be encouraged to love their families, their communities and their country. Children must be brought up in a different way now because what we have seen in Sierra Leone suggests that children who have been abandoned by their parents are likely to end up in rebel armies. Those who were not given the attention they deserve, children who had no real family life, children who were not really proud of their communities in a positive sense are the likely candidates for rebel recruitment/conscription. Sierra Leone and the rest of the world have to learn from this experience. We need to care a bit more for our children. We need a long-term program that focuses on them program that would divert their energies in a positive manner that would ensure that they become productive citizens in their communities.
IA: Democratization, development and security have been identified as central to any post-conflict reconstruction. Would you care to comment on this, bearing in mind the regional and continental implications?
FK: Indeed democratization, development and security for me are these are very
important for they are key ingredients in any peace framework that the country
needs to build up. This is true not only for Sierra Leone but also for other
countries in our sub-region and in Africa and the rest of the world.
Security is key because without security you really cannot talk about democratization, you cannot talk about development. If you have security
without democracy, it's going to be very difficult to say you've secured your
future. I think it is going to be very problematic and the issue of marginalization would easily come in if we don't democratize properly. The same is true of development. Lack of progress or development can undermine whatever
democracy or security you have. I see these as part of the key ingredients for
progress in any society. The story of Sierra Leone, the history of the crisis
and the transition we are now undergoing emphasizes the significance of these
of these three factors. They are critical.
We just concluded the disarmament process and we are now talking of democracy and elections. It is a welcome development but unfortunately we are going to have intense political competition immediately after a brutal and nasty war. This is not helpful especially when you examine the kinds of political parties
that want to contest the forthcoming elections. But that is democracy, a very
good experiment to see if that is the right way to go. Development is a long-term on-going project. What we need to emphasize at this point is the resettlement of people in their communities. People have to go back to their communities. We still need to rehabilitate our communities. There has to be massive reconstruction and it has to take place in a context that would lead to long-term development of our various communities.
Development, democracy and security will continue to be key issues the current
post-conflict transition. If we look at the external dimension of the problem in the sub-region, we see the need for security because even though we are in a comfortable transition, it will be very short lived if Liberia is not stabilized quickly or if we do not see peace between Liberia and Guinea. There will be a fallout position for Sierra Leone and I believe we must do something for regional security and we must see democratization taking place. We don't want to see another one-party state and disenfranchisement in Guinea. Otherwise we can't say we have a secure future yet. That is my opinion.
Of course you can extend the argument beyond the immediate Mano River Union of Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea, to include the whole of West Africa. I think ECOMOG has played a major role in West Africa. The fact that we have an ECOWAS, and ECOWAS was able to stand tall when we had the crisis in Liberia and here in Sierra Leone, and they were the forerunners in terms of providing sub-regional security for us, was already a laudable gesture, one that we need to emphasize. We can also extend that to the continent because you need continental solidarity when it comes to the issue of security, democratization and development because you cannot stay in isolation. I think I've made the point before that for a country like Sierra Leone and for that matter any country you really cannot stand all by your self. You need your neighbors and if your neighbor's house is burning you have to be very careful if possible come to their aid to make sure that your house is safe. So you have to stand tall and stand in solidarity with your neighbor all the time to make sure you are secured.
Don't say your compound is secured and you forget about your neighbor. I think
that is a very simple analogy, which applies very well to the situation we find
ourselves in Sierra Leone, in the Mano River Union, and in West Africa/Africa.
I recall Claire Short saying that if Africa is not secure, if Africa does not democratize, if Africa does not develop, if we don't go through that way, it won't just be a scar on the world; it wont just be the last continent in the world but it would have implications for the rest of the world. It might be the breeding ground for the next set of terrorists. Terrorists that would terrorize their own societies in the West. They would be hired as mercenaries to go anywhere in the world because in their own societies there is nothing to look forward to, there be no hope there. So you must create hope and the only way you do that is to make sure you have security as a country, as a sub-region and as a continent. I believe that democratization, security and development are indispensable to any post-conflict transition.
Dr. Francis Kai-Kai is the Executive Secretary of the National Commission for
Disarmament, Demobilization and Reintegration, which was set up by the Sierra Leone government to oversee the disarmament and reintegration of
ex-combatants. The disarmament part of the project was completed this January.
Dr. Ibrahim Abdullah is a GSC Professional Fellow currently researching and training in Sierra Leone for his project entitled, "Subalternity, Insurgency and Post-Conflict Strategy: An Alternative Reading of The Sierra Leonean Conflict." Abdullah is a member of the Scientific Panel of the Council for the Development of Social Science Research in Africa (CODESRIA), and the South African History Project--a ministerial committee of historians tasked with rewriting South African history. He was born and raised in Freetown, Sierra Leone, and studied history at the University of Toronto, Canada.
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