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DEMOCRACY AND GOVERNANCE - West Africa

2005 – STABILITY SEE-SAWS IN THE SUB-REGION

West Africa, the world's poorest region, chalked up successes in 2005, with war-battered Liberia and Sierra Leone edging closer to lasting peace. But perennial problems such as corruption and unemployment could still scupper progress, and elsewhere in the region prospects remained bleak.

Liberia, Africa's oldest republic, became the first country on the continent to elect a female president, when Harvard-educated economist Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf won the second-round run-off vote last November.

Liberians prayed the polls would close the book on 14 years of brutal civil conflict, while Johnson-Sirleaf said she was "humbled by the awesome challenges" that lay ahead.

She certainly has plenty to do. Monrovia, the steamy seafront capital that bristled with economic development in the 1970s, is today a blackened, bullet-riddled ruin, with no mains electricity or running water.

As the 15,000-strong UN peacekeeping mission oversaw the landmark polls in Liberia, residents in neighbouring   Sierra Leone were starting to wave goodbye to their blue berets.

The last contingent of UN peacekeepers left in December 2005, after six years which saw them wrest control of a wild jungle terrain from rebel and militia fighters, restore government authority and supervise elections.

The UNAMSIL mission -- which at one time was the biggest in the world with 17,500 troops -- leaves behind newly built and repaired roads, bridges and even schools and hospitals.

A UN-trained police force has taken over responsibility for security and government revenues are on the up, now that 50 percent of alluvial diamond mining is under state control. The other half of Sierra Leone's potential diamond earnings seeps over the country's porous borders, disappearing without trace.

But corruption permeates all levels of society, with some aid workers saying that civil servants typically demand a 20 percent 'fee' for awarding government contracts, and donor funds get siphoned off into private accounts.

And analysts say corruption and unemployment could yet be the undoing of peace in Sierra Leone.

 SMALL ARMS READILY AVAILABLE

Although two UN missions -- UNAMSIL in Sierra Leone and UNMIL in Liberia -- have demobilised some 125,000 fighters and taken 60,000 weapons out of circulation, small arms remain readily available in West Africa.

Sidiki Konate, spokesman for the rebels holding northern Cote d'Ivoire, told IRIN - Integrated Regional Information Network - this year that buying a gun in West Africa was "like needing a pair of Levi jeans -- if you want them you can get them."

And just as easy to find are the young men -- and women -- ready to bear those weapons, according to a 2005 UN report. In the arc of conflict-ridden West African nations that runs from Guinea-Bissau to Cote d'Ivoire, unemployment and a lack of prospects continue to push youths into the ranks of militias, some of whom roam across borders to get to the next fight.

Liberia's Johnson-Sirleaf, a 67-year-old grandmother, will be leading a youthful country where more than half of the population is too young to remember peace, has never had the opportunity to go to school, and is faced with an unemployment rate of more than 80 percent.

"Our time has been wasted," Mohamed Dukuly told IRIN in October. "I can't even spell my own name," said the 22-year-old, who was whipped out of school and sent to the frontline to fight, still wearing his school uniform.

If Johnson-Sirleaf's new government can't create prospects for young men like Dukuly, there is a real risk that they will continue their fighter lifestyle’s elsewhere and sign up as regional warriors.

Anyone wanting to join a troop of rag-tag mercenaries wouldn't have far to go. While the security situation in Sierra Leone and Liberia has improved, peace remains elusive in neighbouring Cote d'Ivoire. And Liberian ex-combatants were already hiring out their services there in 2005, according to a report by Human Rights Watch.

Cote d'Ivoire should, like Liberia, have held its own post-conflict elections in 2005, but three years after an initial peace deal, the world's top cocoa producing country looks no closer to peace.

ELECTIONS POSTPONED

With only weeks to go before scheduled elections on 30 October 2005, electoral registers had not been updated, militiamen and rebels still had a tight grip on their weapons and the nation remained split between a government-controlled south and a rebel-held north.

A South African mediation effort was quickly bogged down, and eventually the United Nations declared the poll impossible, blaming the intransigence of the warring parties.

An African Union plan to leave President Laurent Gbagbo in power for up to one more year was rubber-stamped by the UN, much to the annoyance of the rebels and the political opposition, who wanted a transitional government to shepherd the country to the polls.

In the closing months of the year, a new prime minister was appointed to try to untangle the deadlock and get the peace process back on track. Charles Konan Banny, Governor of the West Africa Central Bank, took on the role, his powers bolstered under UN resolution 1633.

Ethnic violence flared sporadically throughout the year, mainly in the cocoa-rich Wild West. In April and May, scores of people were killed and thousands of others fled their homes after a series of tit-for-tat killings between immigrant farmers and indigenous landowners.

As the year closed, analysts predicted more trouble in the tinderbox region. They doubted whether the squabbling sides would disarm, reach consensus on nationality issues at the heart of the crisis, unify the country and organise polls, all before the new October 2006 deadline.

No elections means no end to Cote d'Ivoire's no-war no-peace standoff and the country will likely remain a considerable threat to the stability of West Africa and an economic drain in a region that has half of the world's 26 least developed countries.

Landlocked Mali, Niger and Burkina Faso continue to be directly impacted by the Ivorian crisis, not least because the war has created a new barrier between their borders and the largest port in Francophone West Africa - Abidjan.     [back]

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