PEACE IN SIERRA LEONE WAS TOO FRAGILE FOR UN PEACEBUILDING MISSION TO HAVE BEEN TERMINATED IN 2014 —-AND EVIDENCE IS MANIFESTING NOW
By KABS KANU
It was a fear we expressed. Our fears are being justified now. The peace agreements between contending parties was too fragile and fears that they would be unsustainable are confirmed not only by the onset of this present constitutional crisis but by the bumpy ride of chaos, violence, killings, human rights abuses , stolen elections and governance issues we have been experiencing since 2018.
I discussed with a UN ambassador at the time that I thought the final UN integrated peacebuilding mission in Sierra Leone, known as UNIPSIL, was prematurely being ended when it completed its mandate on March 31, 2014, marking the complete withdrawal of political and peacekeeping field operations from the country. I thought that the mandated should have been extended. But the UN has its own problems with funding .
Full peace did not return to Sierra Leone after our devastating 11 years civil war.
After the bloody civil war officially ended in 2002, Sierra Leone did experience a brief period of peace during the Tejan Kabbah and Ernest Koroma administrations but political tensions, human rights abuses , disputed elections, violence and killings on the streets by security officers since President Maada Bio came to power in 2018 and a failed coup attempt in November 2023 showed that lasting stability was not achieved .
Recent reconciliation efforts by the SLPP Maada Bio – led government , including the dropping of alleged treason charges against former President Ernest Koroma and active regional mediation are commendable but miscues by the same government continue to test the nation’s commitment to real peace .
Relations between the two main political parties- the Sierra Leone People’s Party ( SLPP ) and the All People’s Congress ( APC) -and the feuding Southeast and Northwestern regions are seriously polarized . Evading this truth will not help Sierra Leone because these are the problems that threaten lasting peace in the country. SLPP supporters hate the very mention of the words peace and chaos because they are living their lives in denial . As long as they are in power , any discussion of peace and conflict issues is perceived by the SLPP as an intent to sow chaos in the country. But we will never achieve any progress in Sierra Leone if we keep running away from the truth.
I worked for years in the UN Peacebuilding Sierra Leone Specific Configuration and two of the main problems we identified as contributors to lack of peace in the country were POLITICAL EXTREMISM and POLITICAL INTOLERANCE . Tribalism , fueled by the Bio government, has now added another layer to the conundrum. These three vexing problems are a deadly cocktail that have the country teetering on the edge of renewed conflict.
I will carefully deal with these problems in Part 2.
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