> Subject: Washington post article
>
>
> By Mary McGrory
> Thursday, April 20, 2000; Page A03
>
> Sierra Leone's Hope on Hold
>
> On the face of it, things could not be worse in Sierra
> Leone, the small
> West African country that is a world capital of misery.
> An insane peace
> agreement, signed last July, was supposed to end a
> bloody eight-year
> civil war. It gave blanket amnesty to warlords and put
> one in charge of
> the country's greatest treasure, its diamonds;
> civilians whose hands,
> arms and legs have been hacked off by rebel forces
> number in the
> thousands, as do refugees inside the country.
>
> But a U.S. senator, Judd Gregg (R-N.H.), is doing
> something that could
> make things worse: He has put a hold on funds for U.N.
> peacekeepers, who
> represent Sierra Leone's one slim hope for salvation.
>
> Gregg, a tall, spare, unsmiling Yankee, who is chairman
> of the
> Appropriations subcommittee on commerce, justice, state
> and judiciary,
> gave similar treatment to three other wretched
> countries--Kosovo, the
> Congo and East Timor--but is said to be especially "not
> satisfied" with
> the way our tax money is being spent in Sierra Leone.
> It is easy to see
> why. More than 10,000 civilians have been murdered,
> raped, abducted or
> maimed, and the terrorist commander, Foday Sankoh, who
> should be in the
> dock, is in charge of diamonds.
>
> Sankoh makes no secret of the fact that he seeks a
> political career, and
> the profits from the diamonds could provide funds for
> his campaign for
> the presidency while he continues to pay his troops. He
> has officially
> ordered his men to turn in their weapons, as required
> by the peace
> treaty, and speaks of his commitment to the Lome
> accords, which were
> signed last July.
>
> Against the array of injustice and savagery, U.N.
> officials gamely argue
> that they knew the accords had the seed of further
> calamity, and entered
> formal "reservations" at the time, but that, given the
> overwhelming
> desire of Sierra Leoneans for an end to the fighting,
> there was no other
> choice.
>
> The U.N. says that the peacekeeping troops are
> gradually making their
> way to areas still in rebel control. "Of course there
> are roadblocks,"
> one U.N. official declared, "but our commanders push
> gently and often
> they get through."
>
> Of the 11,000 U.N. troops planned for Sierra Leone,
> 6,000 have arrived.
> The surrender of weapons goes slowly. The
> non-governmental organizations
> are moving in right behind the troops to offer refuge,
> medical care and
> rehabilitation. English-language newspapers and
> television faithfully
> report the stories of child soldiers who have chopped
> off the limbs of
> pregnant women and young women who have been kidnapped,
> gang-raped and
> abandoned in the bush. Such stories could rouse the
> world's conscience
> about conditions that could only be chronicled by
> Joseph Conrad and
> Evelyn Waugh. They also can discourage readers and
> viewers from thinking
> that such depravity is remediable.
>
> Two intrepid House members, Tony Hall (D-Ohio) and
> Frank Wolf (R-Va.),
> who periodically travel to the world's hell holes and
> bring back
> harrowing accounts of outrages their colleagues and the
> country don't
> want to hear about, are proposing a measure to trim the
> warlords' wings.
> They would require certificates of origin on diamonds
> imported to the
> United States. Hall thinks that "conflict diamonds"
> could be made a
> subject of moral revulsion, like fur.
>
> Sankoh launders his blood-covered diamonds through
> friendly merchants in
> neighboring countries such as Liberia, where President
> Charles Taylor, a
> strongman who founded Sankoh's Revolutionary United
> Front, runs the
> show. He cannot seek the political solution he says he
> wants until
> disarmament is complete.
>
> Sen. Gregg declines to say why he stopped the $96
> million earmarked for
> the U.N. in Sierra Leone. After Somalia, President
> Clinton lost all
> appetite for intervening in Africa. Last year, when the
> West could have
> prevented the genocide by supporting West African
> peacekeeping troops
> who needed more help to defeat the RUF, the president
> was preoccupied
> with his impeachment trial, and no one showed the
> political will needed
> for intervention such as in Kosovo. But a recent
> visitor, The Washington
> Post's managing editor, Steve Coll, found the people of
> Sierra Leone
> hungry for democracy--they went on strike when the
> terrorists overcame a
> democratically elected, if weak, government.
>
> One man who is doing all he can to make it impossible
> for Americans to
> say later that they didn't know what was going on in
> Sierra Leone is a
> 45-year-old unemployed business analyst in Minnesota
> who at his own
> expense founded and maintains a Web site with all the
> latest every day.
> Peter Andersen is a returned Peace Corps volunteer who
> spent three years
> teaching farming to Sierra Leoneans. He kept in touch
> and government
> officials and terrorists alike call him to give and
> receive information.
>
>
> The U.N. failed in Angola and didn't try in Rwanda.
> Some people find in
> that history reason enough to do battle with the newest
> and most
> sickening evil in Africa.
>
>
>
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