[Congressional Record Volume 142, Number 33 (Tuesday, March 12, 1996)]
[Senate]
[Page S1888]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




           IS WEST SLIGHTING AFRICA'S HOT SPOTS LIKE LIBERIA?

 Mr. SIMON. Mr. President, I am concerned about the 
deterioration in Liberia, Burundi, and a few other nations.
  The pattern in Bosnia is for the United States and other nations to 
wait until the situation deteriorates very, very badly--until hundreds 
of thousands of people are killed--and then the United States and the 
community of nations move in.
  I applaud what we are finally doing in Bosnia.
  In no country in Africa do we have greater responsibility than in 
Liberia, where it was sometimes viewed as an American colony because it 
was founded by former American slaves.
  Their ties to the United States have been long.
  And when there was a dictatorship in Liberia, we did not hesitate to 
cooperate with that dictatorship. An article by Howard W. French 
recently appeared in the New York Times which I ask to be printed in 
the Record.
  Now that the dictatorship is gone and chaos has followed, our 
concerns appear to be minimal.
  The article follows.

                [From the New York Times, Jan. 23, 1996]

           Is West Slighting Africa's Hot Spots Like Liberia?

                         (By Howard W. French)

       Monrovia, Liberia, January 22.--When the American delegate 
     to the United Nations, Madeleine K. Albright, stopped here 
     briefly on Wednesday during a tour of several African 
     countries, there were the predictable pledges of assistance 
     from Washington to war-torn Liberia.
       But along with the promise of helicopters and trucks to 
     help in the disarming of combatants in a devastating six-year 
     civil war, there was also a stern warning that the 
     international community had little patience for crisis-ridden 
     African countries that failed to settle their own problems.
       ``We have no intention of our logistical support being 
     squandered by anyone's failure of political will,'' Mrs. 
     Albright said at an airport news conference, straining at 
     times to be heard over a Nigerian transport plane ferrying in 
     new peacekeepers. ``Delay,'' she said, can ``no longer be in 
     the vocabulary'' of Liberia's political actors.
       But for many African leaders and diplomats, the trip of 
     Mrs. Albright--the highest-ranking American to visit Liberia 
     since Secretary of State George Shultz came here before the 
     war that killed more than 150,000 people--inadvertently 
     underscored another point: by the time African crises receive 
     this level of outside attention, the moment for averting 
     catastrophe or sealing the peace has all too often passed.
       The most critical obstacle to fulfilling the Liberian peace 
     agreement reached last August, these African officials say, 
     has been the delay in getting the kind of international 
     response needed to carry out a disarmament program and remark 
     this country's shattered economy.
       In this regard, African officials argue, the handling of 
     the Liberian crisis by the outside world strongly resembles 
     the ambivalent or tardy international response to past crises 
     in other stops on Mrs. Albright's itinerary: Angola, Rwanda 
     and Burundi.
       In Liberia, despite widespread skepticism about its 
     prospects, a cease-fire has largely held for months. But 
     recent days have seen the first serious signs of an 
     unraveling of the country's settlement, as unruly fighters of 
     one of the country's several armed factions have killed as 
     many as 50 West African peacekeepers.
       Diplomats say the fighting began because of the economic 
     desperation of the militia members, who are often unschooled 
     boys, and add that the conflict nearly flared out of control 
     because of the limited means available to a short-handed and 
     poorly equipped peacekeeping force.
       ``Last fall, the American Government pledged $75 million to 
     help us,'' said Wilton S. Sankawulo, the former schoolteacher 
     who is chairman of Liberia's governing Council of State. 
     ``But they said go home first and prove that you are 
     serious.''
       Liberia has been the first instance in which a regional 
     organization, namely the Economic Community of West African 
     States, or Ecowas, has acted with the official sanction of 
     the United Nations to end a civil war. Nigeria has led this 
     effort from the start, spending an estimated $4 billion. But 
     with major political and economic crises at home, diplomats 
     say Nigeria cannot now carry out Liberia's peace agreement 
     without substantially more outside help.
       Foreign diplomats say the most critical immediate element 
     is giving the 7,500-man Nigerian-led peacekeeping force--
     known as Ecomog, for the Ecowas monitoring group--the means 
     to deploy throughout the country; the trucks and helicopters 
     pledged but not yet delivered by the Americans, and more 
     troops from poor West African countries, which would require 
     financing from the outside world.
       Unlike other crises in which the United Nations send its 
     own peacekeepers and directly assess contributions from 
     members, international fund-raiding for Liberia has been 
     conducted through voluntary donor conferences that have 
     garnered sparse contributions.
       On top of the outside world's reluctance to contribute to 
     an African-led peacekeeping effort, which has embittered many 
     of this region's leaders, there is the additional 
     complication of deeply strained relations between the United 
     States and Nigeria over the latter's human rights situation.
       Rather than being turned over to the Nigerian-led 
     peacekeepers, as is the practice in most international 
     efforts of this sort, the troop trucks promised by the United 
     States are leased vehicles that, at Washington's insistence, 
     will be operated only by private contractors to keep them out 
     of Nigerian hands.
       ``The resources of Ecomog have been stretched to the limit, 
     and it would be wrong and unfair for the international 
     community to expect it to proceed further without getting it 
     more help,'' said Anthony Nyaki, the United Nations special 
     representative to Liberia. ``Because of the unique mandate 
     given by the U.N. to the West Africans whatever happens here 
     will be precedent-setting.
       ``In five days as much is spent in Bosnia as was spent in a 
     whole year on Liberia,'' he said. ``If this is allowed to 
     fail, the question will become more pertinent than ever why 
     the outside world cares so little for Africa.''
       The comparison with Bosnia is one that comes up again and 
     again in conversations with African officials throughout this 
     region, and it is one that inspires cynicism among many.
       The international community was slow to act and committed 
     far too few resources to managing crises like the transition 
     to democracy in war-torn Angola or the prevention of a 
     genocidal civil war in Rwanda, African diplomats say. And in 
     Burundi today, where the signs of a possible Rwanda-style 
     civil war are multiplying, the same reluctance to act seems 
     apparent to many.
       ``Since Somalia ended, I have attended three major 
     conferences on the lessons of that crisis, but these lessons 
     never seem to be learned,'' said Victor Gbeho, a Ghanaian 
     diplomat who represents the West African economic community 
     here and was the United Nations special envoy to Somalia at 
     the height of that country's crisis.
       ``For some reason it still takes far too long to get the 
     international community to react to African crises, to 
     realize their pledges of support and work through their 
     bureaucratic mazes,'' Mr. Gbeho said. ``It took the Americans 
     one week to raise $1.8 billion for Bosnia. If I were 
     paranoid, I would say the delays we always face here are due 
     to the fact that we are dealing with Africa.''

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