Junta Ouster Shows Africa Handling Own Problems

The ouster of a military junta in Sierra Leone by a Nigerian-led peacekeeping force demonstrates that Africans can take care of problems on their own without intervention from outside the continent, analysts say.

Although the mission was accomplished last week with force and not diplomacy, its supporters say the goal of the military campaign was honorable and rare: To restore and not to overthrow an elected African government.

But skeptics are still wary of the role of Nigeria - Africa’s most populous nation, with more than 100 million people - in the peacekeeping operation. They ask if Nigeria really seeks to occupy tiny cash-strapped Sierra Leone and pillage its remaining resources, chiefly its diamonds. There is also concern that Nigeria might get bogged down in Sierra Leone, as it struggles to restore law and order and disarm remnants of rebel factions reportedly scattered throughout that country.

“People have said that Africa should take its matters into its own hands, and it has,” said Ahmed Rajab, editor of Africa Analysis, a London-based publication reporting on the continent’s financial and political trends. “That’s a plus.”

Jean Herskovits, an African history professor at the State University of New York at Purchase and a longtime expert on regional security issues in Africa, agreed, saying of this intervention: “It is a genuine blessing at a time when the West is not going to do anything.”

Indeed, Western nations have shown their reluctance recently to get involved in African conflicts and instead have been promoting the idea of Africans solving their own problems. Last year, the United States launched an initiative to fund and train African troops from several nations for an African Crisis Response Force.

An official in Washington on Tuesday said the United States had supported the Sierra Leone peacekeeping effort and now would work with the government of President Ahmad Tejan Kabbah, who was deposed after barely six months in office in a military coup led last May by Lt. Col Johnny Paul Koroma.

The United Nations and the Organization of African Unity both condemned the coup and the brutal rule that followed and authorized, under the military wing of the Economic Organization of West African States, an effort to restore Kabbah and peace in Sierra Leone.

This African effort was unusual, with the last such, perhaps, comparable kind of intervention being the 1979 move by the Tanzanian Army into Uganda, leading to the overthrow of dictator Idi Amin and later to elections won by former President Milton Obote.

Some analysts say the successes in Sierra Leone will let the Nigerian regime of Gen. Sani Abacha deflect the increasing criticism of its dictatorial policies, poor human rights record and the economic corruption and drug trade.

But J.Z. Gana, a Nigerian diplomat in Nairobi, replied: “We believe not only is this (mission) a success for Nigeria but a success for the entire West African region. We just hope the process of democratization will take place very soon, so that we see Kabbah return to power and we can pull out of there.”

He dismissed critics who claim that Nigeria is interested more in exploiting Sierra Leone than restoring democracy there, saying, “People who did not expect us to succeed, they will look for every excuse to criticize us.”