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Fifteen months after British troops intervened in the Sierra Leone crisis, much has changed for the better. To achieve this, the British, who ruled Sierra Leone as a colony until its independence in 1961, have established what amounts to a de facto trusteeship.

In Sierra Leone, the U.S. Must Tend What Britain Sowed

By Joseph Opala
Sunday, September 2, 2001; Page B04

British officials now occupy key positions in government
ministries, and British troops maintain a large military base in the hills
above the capital, where they are busy retraining Sierra Leonean soldiers
and showing them off in well-staged public parades.

One might think Sierra Leoneans would be resentful of British
neocolonialism, but nothing could be further from the truth. After a decade
of the most horrendous violence, characterized by murder, rape and
mutilation, what they fear most is that their benefactors might pack up and
go home. Fortunately, that almost certainly won't happen: The British seem
to be digging in for the long haul. When I speak with my colleagues in the
country's pro-democracy movement, they tell me of Sierra Leone's newfound
optimism and of the public's excitement over elections planned for next
year.

But if the British have calmed the situation, they also have undermined
their own efforts -- and they are now at the point of squandering the hopes
for a new beginning that they, themselves, have made possible. Rather than
addressing the root causes of Sierra Leone's instability, they appear to be
backing the corrupt political elite that helped create the chaos in the
first place. They even seem to have reverted, perhaps unconsciously, to
colonial policies that favored a small privileged group over the welfare of
most ordinary citizens.

The United States can, and should, try to temper those British actions, and
there is strong historical precedent for it to do so. After the British
declared a protectorate over Sierra Leone's interior in 1896, they limited
educational opportunities there to a narrow group loyal to them; but
American missionaries, who had begun arriving in the 1840s, deliberately
undermined that policy. Without the Americans' egalitarian influence, Sierra
Leone would have had far fewer educated citizens to take the reins of
government at independence. Sierra Leone's first three national leaders
were, in fact, all trained at American mission schools.

Today, the United States has a moral obligation to assert democratic
principles in Sierra Leone once again, this time arising from our bungled
efforts at making peace there two years ago. In July 1999, the Clinton
administration brokered the disastrous Lome agreement under which the rebels
joined a coalition government andwere given amnesty for their crimes. The
rebels took advantage of this faulty peace by kidnapping 500 U.N.
peacekeepers in May 2000 and seizing their weapons. The British rescued
those captives and created the current climate for hope. Now it is time for
the United States to step forward to support broad-based, citizens' efforts
for reform.

Although the international media consistently call the Sierra Leone crisis a
civil war, the country is actually suffering from state collapse brought on
by three decades of official decay. Politicians sold off public assets on a
huge scale, and eventually lost their capacity for organized government.
Citizens grew resentful, but the politicians ignored public opinion. By the
time bandits supported by Charles Taylor, then a faction leader in Liberia's
civil war and now its president, crossed Sierra Leone's southern border in
1991, there was no effective government. The rebels did not create the chaos
in Sierra Leone; they just took advantage of it.

State collapse normally results in civil war between rival ethnic, regional
or religious factions. But in contrast to most other African countries,
Sierra Leone is blessed with remarkably little rivalry of that sort. In an
accident of history, colonial officials drew the country's borders in such a
way that tribes with similar customs and outlooks were brought together. So
when politicians destroyed the state, there were no factions angry or
alienated enough to take advantage of the chaos, except the criminals backed
by Charles Taylor. After 10 years, the rebel war has still not turned
ethnic: Sierra Leoneans of all tribes, regions and religious faiths are
united in their profound hatred of the RUF.

The military situation is still fragile. The Sierra Leonean troops the
British are retraining are undependable, and U.N. forces based in Sierra
Leone lack resolve. But as long as British troops remain in Freetown, Sierra
Leone will have at least the semblance of government and the hope that a
functioning state can be restored. If they remain, the British can squeeze
the RUF into an ever smaller area and, together with other international
players, force Liberia and the rebels' other foreign backers into decreasing
their support. Between the British presence and Sierra Leone's natural
coherence as a nation, there is much cause for optimism.

But a positive outcome depends on the British demonstrating political as
well as military wisdom. President Ahmad Tejan Kabbah and his cabinet all
hail from the corrupt band of politicians and senior civil servants who
deliberately destroyed their own institutions of government. They have not
changed, nor can they change. Yet early this year, when civil-society
activists protested the extension of Kabbah's term for six months under
emergency legislation, and some citizens proposed a government of national
unity or various other interim solutions until an election could be held,
the British high commissioner condemned them, accusing them of promoting
disorder.

With elections approaching (possibly as soon as February), Kabbah and his
allies are desperately seeking to hold on to power. Kabbah is telling a
public terrified of returning to violence that only he can sustain British
support for the peace process. And British officials are doing little to
disavow that notion. They should do so now, in a clear and direct way.
Continuing like this, the British will confront Sierra Leoneans with an ugly
dilemma -- vote for the scoundrels whocreated the chaos in your country, or
return to that chaos.

The British may succeed in crushing the RUF and ending the violence for the
moment -- but if they re-entrench the members of the old elite, it would not
take long beforetheir venality and ineptitude gave rise to civil chaos all
over again, and to a new RUF and a new cycle of violence.

This scenario does not have to happen. Without Britain's implicit support
for Kabbah and his cronies, the civil-society movement would quickly
identify many new and capable candidates untainted by the dirty politics of
the past. And since Sierra Leone's version of state collapse does not entail
factional fighting, people from every region are not just capable of working
together to make a new beginning, but eager to do so. That would be in
Sierra Leone's interest, and in the interest of British efforts to promote
stability there.

This is where the United States can play a constructive role. Our diplomats
should speak out clearly, encouraging the British to open up the political
process and give opportunities to a much wider range of citizens. Sierra
Leoneans have enormous respect for our country, due partly to its historical
role there, and they look to America as an example of democratic government
at its best. If the U.S. government clearly indicates that it expects the
elections to be open, and expects Sierra Leoneans, as citizens, to seek new
and honest leadership for a new future, it would change the entire political
dynamic. The British would not oppose an American call for adherence to
democratic principles, and the corrupt politicians who rely on British
silence and complicity would be undone by the enthusiastic response of their
own people.

The United States should do this not just because it is consistent with
American policy in general, but because we owe it to Sierra Leone. The
coalition government we imposed two years ago inflamed the violence and did
enormous damage. By intervening now, we would live up to our own values and
honor our own proud tradition of good works in this troubled nation -- a
tradition going back more than 150 years.

Joseph Opala is an American anthropologist who lived in Sierra Leone for 17
years. He is co-founder of the Campaign for Good Governance, Sierra Leone's
foremost pro-democracy organization. He now teaches at James Madison
University in Harrisonburg, Va.

© 2001 The Washington Post Company

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