This sounds like we just added a criminal force to the mix.
Rights Activists Worried By African Peacekeepers
By Colum Lynch
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, August 5, 2003; Page A10
UNITED NATIONS, Aug. 4 -- As the first unit of Nigerian peacekeepers touched down in Monrovia today to try to halt Liberia's civil war, human rights advocates are criticizing the legacy of the organization that sent them. These activists have urged the United States, the United Nations and African leaders to ensure that the group -- the Nigerian-led Economic Community of West African States -- is held accountable if its troops commit crimes in Liberia.
During more than 13 years as the region's principal peacekeeper, the organization has helped restore an elected leader to power in Sierra Leone and provided a safe haven in Monrovia for more than 1 million people through the early 1990s. But it has also gained a reputation for ruthlessness and corruption, looting property, arming local militias and conducting summary executions. Human rights organizations have sharply criticized the group, and the United Nations and the State Department have taken notice.
"It's a laudable thing that they are willing to intervene," said Binaifer Nowrojee, a visiting fellow at the Carr Center for Human Rights at Harvard University who has studied the coalition for nearly 10 years. "However, it should be done with checks and balances to make sure rights are respected by the peacekeepers, and that's where the U.N. can play a role."
In the rush to persuade the Nigerians to intervene to avert chaos in Liberia, there has been little public debate in Washington or at the United Nations over ECOWAS's human rights record in West Africa. The Bush administration, which has pledged to provide cash and logistical support for the West African forces, ushered a resolution through the Security Council Friday that grants the peacekeepers broad immunity from prosecution for any crimes committed in Liberia.
"I don't think [the West African human rights performance] was foremost in everybody's mind," said a U.S. official who tracks the issue. "ECOWAS has had some problems, but the situation in Liberia is so bad that people were looking to get a force in to stop them from fighting."
The official said the Nigerian-led force is engaged in a risky effort to restore peace in Liberia and should receive the "benefit of the doubt." The enormous international attention being paid to the operation would ensure that the force stays in check, he said. "They are going to be operating under a microscope."
In Sierra Leone, Human Rights Watch documented 180 cases of summary executions in 1999 by West African forces or by Sierra Leonean militias under their command. U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan and the State Department also cited reports of illegal killings by the Nigerian-led force, including a case in which West African troops killed an 8-year-old boy who was caught with a pistol and given no trial. One West African military officer, dubbed "Captain Evil Spirit" by local residents, oversaw the execution of at least 98 people on a bridge, according to a 1999 Human Rights Watch report.
"Small groups of young men were brought to the entrance to the bridge in trucks and cars, and arrived usually stripped down to their underwear and often with their hands tied," the report said. "They were then marched onto the bridge where they were executed and thrown into the bay."
On Jan. 11, 1999, West African forces executed more than 50 rebels in and around the Connaught Hospital, according to several witnesses interviewed by the New York-based rights organization. "Wounded rebels were dragged from their beds and executed within the hospital grounds, or shot directly in their beds or as they tried to flee on crutches and in wheelchairs," the report said. "Others were executed in the morgue where they were caught trying to hide among the corpses."
Nigeria's chargé d'affaires at the United Nations, Ndekhedehe Effiong Ndekhedehe, said none of the allegations against Nigerian peacekeepers has been "substantiated." "By and large our troops are well disciplined," Ndekhedehe said in an interview today. "They behave themselves. We are governed by the rules of engagement laid down in the Geneva Conventions, so our troops know what to do."
Despite questions raised about some West African peacekeeping units, U.N. officials said the first battalion of ECOWAS troops -- which has completed its tour of duty under U.N. command in Sierra Leone and is being deployed today in Monrovia -- performed with honor in Sierra Leone. "I'm sure that they will serve in Liberia in the same fashion and will also employ the basic principles of human rights to which we are all very much attached," said Hedi Annabi, a senior U.N. peacekeeping official. "As usual, the U.N. will keep an eye on such things and, should there be a problem, we would of course take it up."
Human rights advocates say that internal reports by U.N. human rights officers alleging misconduct by the Nigerian-led force in Liberia rarely made their way into public accounts.
One report involved a raid by Nigerian troops into the Lajoy Gold Mine on May 10, 1997, where several individuals were beaten, one of them fatally. "During interrogations, Ecomog [the Economic Community of West African States Monitoring Group] soldiers beat many people with wooden sticks and electric wire and slashed one man with razor blades," said the confidential report, obtained by Nowrojee.
"In the past, troops that committed violations would be shipped off home, but there would be no sanctions or punishment," Nowrojee said. "The U.N. has been loath to play the appropriate oversight role because it has so much gratitude for [ECOWAS's] willingness to intervene" in West Africa's civil wars. "This is an opportunity for the United Nations to step up to the plate and play a more responsible role."
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