US urges Union intervention in Sierra Leone

Date: 18/06/1998

By Mark Turner

THE US is calling on the European Union to wake up to the spiralling humanitarian and political crisis in Sierra Leone, comparing atrocities by the ousted military junta and the Revolutionary United Front regime with the brutality in the Great Lakes region in 1994.

"This is the most macabre, brutal series of attacks on innocent civilians we have seen since the genocide in Rwanda," US Assistant Secretary of State Julia Taft told European Voice. "You can't even imagine what is happening."

As the EU prepares to overhaul its relations with its former colonies in Africa, the Caribbean and the Pacific, Washington is warning that current events in Sierra Leone and neighbouring Liberia and Guinea could determine the entire region's long-term future.

More than half a million Sierra Leonean refugees have escaped to neighbouring countries, with some 200,000 people fleeing the fighting in the last month alone, as the ex-junta struggles to retain control in the wake of elected President Ahmad Kabbah's return to power in February.

According to Taft, the RUF is operating a "no living thing" campaign, running a "ballot for your life" to decide the fate of victims.

Rebels carry pieces of paper marked with instructions such as "cut foot", "cut two hands", "scalp the head" or "kill the person".

According to one amputee, "you are usually taken to a machete point [chopping block] where you are asked to pick one of these papers ... What is written on it is your fate."

US Special Envoy to Liberia Howard Jeter believes that if the international community does not intervene in time, groups like the RUF could grow in power, with "a tremendously destabilising influence".

He is urging European governments to complement US support for the west African peacekeeping force ECOMOG, and to pay serious attention to developments.

But there is one silver lining to these events, he says. The western African community ECOWAS is at last taking regional responsibility for the crisis, hoping to build on its successes in Liberia last year, without waiting for international assistance.

Ironically, Nigeria, which recently replaced dead military dictator Sani Abacha with another general Abdulsalam Abubakar, has proved a highly positive force for stability and is likely to continue to lead west African peacekeeping efforts.

Taft, Jeter and others left for Sierra Leone last week alongside experts from the UK, the Netherlands and the European Community Humanitarian Office (ECHO). At the end of this month, a contact group of interested international powers is expected to forge a strategy for the region.

ECHO recently approved a 1-million-ecu humanitarian aid package for Sierra Leone, and the European Commission says it "intends to provide financial support for refugees in due course".