Peacekeepers in Peril

By Simon Robinson/Nairobi

What always seems to wreck Africa's hopes is that so few of its strongmen are really interested in peace. Foday Sankoh and his Revolutionary United Front rampaged across Sierra Leone for nearly a decade, hacking the limbs off countless civilians in a blood-soaked quest for power. Sick of the slaughter, members of the international community brokered a peace pact that last July ultimately gave the rebels amnesty, a share in government power and a piece of the country's diamond wealth. It apparently wasn't enough, so violence has erupted again in poor, shattered Sierra Leone. And this time it has engulfed the very U.N. troops sent to monitor the peace. Soldiers from the unrepentant R.U.F. swooped down on U.N. personnel across the tiny country last week. By Friday, four Kenyan peacekeepers lay dead, more than 300 others were held hostage, and brazen rebels were reportedly "on the move" in 13 captured U.N. armored personnel carriers.

The news was bad enough for Sierra Leone. But the untimely resumption of that conflict was a potent warning to the U.N. just as it was about to take on a much larger peacekeeping challenge in the Democratic Republic of Congo. U.S. Ambassador Richard Holbrooke, leading a Security Council delegation, secured reluctant agreement last week from Congo's warring parties to accept peacekeepers. But the spectacle of Secretary-General Kofi Annan scrambling to quell what he called Sankoh's "flagrant violation" of Sierra Leone's peace accord raised doubts about U.N. efforts anywhere in Africa.

Annan's immediate priority was to free the hostages in Sierra Leone. Although the Blue Helmets are empowered to use lethal force to protect themselves, they are not there to go to war. Annan begged a host of African leaders to intercede with Sankoh and called for the deployment of a rapid-reaction force to bolster the 8,400 U.N. troops already there. None of the countries capable of sending one were willing; Britain and the U.S. ruled out their own forces. The mercurial rebel chief variously denied that his men were holding anyone, suggested the U.N. soldiers "may have got lost in the bush" and claimed U.N. peacekeepers were forcibly and illegally disarming R.U.F. fighters. U.N. officials say they have proof that Sankoh has been sending orders to field units to launch the attacks. "The situation is very fluid and very delicate," said a U.N. spokeswoman.

There is nothing delicate about the R.U.F. At least 50,000 people were killed during the country's eight years of civil war. Rebels, some as young as 10, tortured and mutilated an estimated 100,000 more. The peace deal signed by the government and the R.U.F. required Sankoh's 45,000 men to surrender their weapons in exchange for Cabinet seats in a government of national unity. They have dragged their feet, and now, financed by diamond smuggling, they roam unchallenged.

Meanwhile, within weeks of the peace deal's signing, rebel soldiers from another faction kidnapped 30 U.N. officials, journalists and peacekeepers and more than 200 women and children. All were eventually released, but kidnappings and rapes by various rebel groups and occasional clashes with U.N. soldiers have continued ever since.

How will the U.N. do its job if it can't protect its own soldiers? Its peacekeepers entered Sierra Leone determined not to repeat embarrassing failures in Somalia, Rwanda and Angola. Even before last week's crisis, it announced plans to deploy an extra 5,000 troops, which would make the U.N. mission in Sierra Leone, or UNAMSIL, the largest peacekeeping force in the world. Yet last week Holbrooke acknowledged that Sierra Leone cast a "potential shadow" on all U.N. operations as he and a Security Council delegation met with Democratic Republic of Congo President Laurent Kabila in Kinshasa to sign the agreement to send 5,000 U.N. troops to monitor a tottering peace deal there. Holbrooke says the Congo war, which pits Angola- and Zimbabwe-backed government troops against Rwanda- and Uganda-backed rebel groups, is far too complex for the U.N. to do much more than try to negotiate among the warring parties. But as events in Sierra Leone are showing, making peace is a long way from keeping it.

--With reporting by William Dowell/United Nations

With reporting by William Dowell/United Nations