What Rebels Want: Resources and Supply Networks in Wartime 9780801467578

Table of contents :
Contents
Preface
Abbreviations
Introduction
1. Never-Ending Wars: Explaining Conflict Duration
2. Resources, Options, and Preferences in War
3. Sierra Leone Rebels: The Revolutionary United Front
4. Liberia’s Rebels: LURD and MODEL
5. Côte d’Ivoire: From the MPCI to the Forces Nouvelles
Conclusion
Index

Citation preview

WHAT REBELS WANT

WHAT REBELS WANT Resources and Supply Networks in Wartime Jennifer M. Hazen

CORNELL UNIVERSITY PRESS

ITHACA AND LONDON

Copyright © 2013 by Cornell University All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in a review, this book, or parts thereof, must not be reproduced in any form without permission in writing from the publisher. For information, address Cornell University Press, Sage House, 512 East State Street, Ithaca, New York 14850. First published 2013 by Cornell University Press Printed in the United States of America Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Hazen, Jennifer M., 1973– What rebels want : resources and supply networks in wartime / Jennifer M. Hazen. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-0-8014-5166-9 (cloth: alk. paper) 1. Sierra Leone—History—Civil War, 1991–2002—Finance. 2. Sierra Leone—History—Civil War, 1991–2002—Equipment and supplies. 3. Liberia— History—Civil War, 1999–2003—Finance. 4. Liberia—History—Civil War, 1999–2003—Equipment and supplies. 5. Côte d’Ivoire—History— Civil War, 2002–2007—Finance. 6. Côte d’Ivoire—History—Civil War, 2002–2007—Equipment and supplies. I. Title. DT516.826.H39 2013 355.02'180966—dc23 2012038566 Cornell University Press strives to use environmentally responsible suppliers and materials to the fullest extent possible in the publishing of its books. Such materials include vegetable-based, low-VOC inks and acid-free papers that are recycled, totally chlorine-free, or partly composed of nonwood fibers. For further information, visit our website at www.cornellpress.cornell.edu. Cloth printing

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

To my grandmother Joyce, who began a tradition in my family of strong and adventurous women who travel the world. To my mom, Melanie, who taught me to be a resilient, independent woman, capable of traveling the globe and crazy enough to pursue my dreams, no matter where they took me. And to my niece, Sami. May you follow in our footsteps and have your own adventures.

Whatsoever therefore is consequent to a time of war, where every man is enemy to every man, the same consequent to the time wherein men live without other security than what their own strength and their own invention shall furnish them withal. In such condition there is no place for industry, because the fruit thereof is uncertain; and consequently no culture of the earth; no navigation, nor use of the commodities that may be imported by sea; no commodious building; no instruments of moving and removing such things as require much force; no knowledge of the face of the earth; no account of time; no arts; no letters; no society; and which is worst of all, continual fear, and danger of violent death; and the life of man, solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short. —Hobbes, Leviathan, 1651

Contents

Preface Abbreviations

xiii

Introduction

1

ix

1.

Never-Ending Wars: Explaining Conflict Duration

25

2.

Resources, Options, and Preferences in War

49

3.

Sierra Leone Rebels: The Revolutionary United Front

73

4.

Liberia’s Rebels: LURD and MODEL

105

5.

Côte d’Ivoire: From the MPCI to the Forces Nouvelles

139

Conclusion

171

Index

191

Preface

Wars are complex. They change over time, as do the actors that fight them. The point is common sense, but it rarely comes to the fore in discussions of civil war. Most studies of civil war are static. They approach wars based on a set of assumptions about the actors, their goals, and their capacities. I approach the study of civil war from a different angle. In this book, I assume that wars are dynamic and that the groups fighting them transform and adapt over time. A group’s capacity to fight does not remain constant over time, and because of this the opportunities for war and peace change as well. These insights come from several years spent living and working in Africa. I first arrived on the continent in 2002. My intent was to study rebel groups in West Africa and to understand why it was so difficult for international actors to help end civil wars. I lived and worked in Sierra Leone from early 2002 through 2005. During this time I worked for the International Crisis Group, a nongovernmental organization well known for its research and analysis in crisis zones, and for the United Nations peacekeeping mission in Sierra Leone. I traveled throughout Sierra Leone, speaking to many individuals from all walks of life— civilian, government, humanitarian, military, and rebel—about the war and the postconflict peace-building process. I also had the opportunity to conduct morelimited research visits to Liberia, Guinea, and Côte d’Ivoire. These visits provided a unique view from the field of the dynamics of war, the conditions on the ground, and the challenges that everyone faced to survive. From 2006 to 2010, I worked as a senior researcher with the Small Arms Survey, a nongovernmental research organization based in Geneva. I spent a great deal of time in Liberia, Côte d’Ivoire, and Nigeria. These experiences enhanced my understanding of what drives conflict and the incentives that exist for war and for peace. At the heart of understanding a group’s capacity for war is the measurement of the group’s access to resources. I use this term broadly, to encompass all resources, not just valuable gemstones, that are needed to sustain a war. Access to resources fluctuates over time, suggesting not only changes in group capacity but also new opportunities for conflict management. It is by studying these fluctuations that we come to understand why access to resources cannot be taken as static and certain across time. A story from a 2003 trip to Guinea illustrates this crucial point.

ix

x

PREFACE

I was sitting on an old wooden chair on the porch of a run-down house in the small town of Macenta, speaking to women about war. What struck me most was the normality of the situation. These women were neatly dressed, with their nails painted bright colors, hair perfectly coiffed, and gold jewelry shining in the sun. They had returned only the day before from the front lines of the civil war in Liberia. It was January 2003, just months before the onslaught on Monrovia would begin, an offensive that would end the war several months later. The women I spoke with were soldiers in the rebel movement based in the north of Liberia, the Liberians United for Reconciliation and Democracy (LURD). Yet I was speaking with them not in Liberia but just across the border in Guinea, where LURD maintained a safe haven. There its combatants could rest and recuperate before returning to the front lines. This unit, an all-female unit, was taking a break from the fighting. These women, with noms de guerre like Black Diamond, were not shy about the fact that they currently sat in Guinea, where their families lived, and where fellow combatants sought short respites from the ongoing fighting in Liberia. They were not refugees. They were guests of the Guinean government. No ceremony heralded their entry into the country, and no aid agency provided them with food or medicine, but there could be no mistake that the Guinean government allowed them to live in this border region, to move freely back and forth across the border, and to operate militarily, at times, within the borders of the Guinean state. Such hospitality did not always extend to active support. When international pressure increased for the Guinean government to stop supporting the rebels, LURD combatants were forced to return to Liberia and supplies from Guinea waned. The female combatants told me how the Guinean government had recently cracked down on LURD operations in southeast Guinea. Under international diplomatic pressure, and sensing LURD combatants had become too visible along the border and too bold in their activities, the Guinean government pressured LURD to reduce its numbers and to operate under the radar of international humanitarian organizations and human rights groups. This pressure may have constrained the most brazen actions of LURD on Guinean soil, such as the forced recruitment of local Guinean residents to serve as porters to carry goods into Liberia, but it did not completely eliminate LURD access to Guinea or its operations. In fact, it could be argued that the actions taken by the Guinean government served more to placate international actors than to radically change the situation on the ground. However, the reduction in Guinean support proved a sore point with LURD fighters, suggesting that support was both expected and needed to sustain the war effort.

PREFACE

xi

The female fighters facilitated a meeting with their commander and the leader of the military wing of LURD, Sekou Conneh. We agreed to meet on the border. The Guinean military facilitated our journey by escorting our team there. We passed quickly through the border, which was guarded by a few Guinean soldiers, and ended up in that gray zone that exists between formal state frontiers, inside neither Liberia nor Guinea. Despite the well-known porosity of borders in West Africa, the Guineans clearly controlled this gateway into Liberia. We would later learn that the Guinean military also actively guarded the area in order to prevent reporting on the movements of civilians and rebels alike. The Guinean government, claiming security reasons, prevented humanitarian groups, such as Doctors without Borders, from operating in the towns closest to the border. Others argued such measures aimed to protect the “secret” that people and goods moved back and forth daily. Without a doubt the Guinean government supported LURD, but it wanted to keep that support quiet. Over a dozen LURD combatants waited for us at the meeting point. They were standing next to a makeshift camp, decked out in fatigues, some sporting assault rifles. The flow of military goods from Guinea to LURD stood in open display: piles of guns and other military equipment, as well as all-terrain vehicles clearly visible in the distance. Whether Guinea had given these materials to LURD or simply facilitated their transit for a fee was unclear. Regardless, it was an impressive display of military equipment and served as a clear reminder of LURD’s ability to access military goods through its northern patron. The visit to Macenta and the Liberian border region underscored the need to reconsider the conceptualization of civil wars as events contained within the borders of a given state. It demonstrated the importance of the external assistance LURD received from Guinea, and the fact that civil wars often encompass actors from neighboring states and further afield. Yet an assessment of LURD’s ability to access military goods based on this one visit would have presented a skewed reality. This was a good day for LURD. Not every day was so conducive to advancing the rebel campaign. Our visit to Macenta suggested that the rebel group was strong, able to access military equipment, and benefited from Guinean support and safe haven. It was not an illusion created for outside visitors to witness— there would have been no time to arrange such a display. LURD, at this point in time, was in fact doing well. Yet a review of the war suggests that LURD was not always so successful. Guinea did not always provide support when requested; nor did support come free of constraints. Guinea had its own political agenda, which included the removal of Liberian president Charles Taylor but did not extend to putting LURD into power in Monrovia. Our visit with LURD raised several questions about the rebel group. How did LURD manage to access large quantities of weapons? Did Guinea pay for them

xii

PREFACE

or simply facilitate their delivery? If the latter, how did LURD pay for weapons? What did LURD do when Guinea was less generous with its support? What effect did Guinea’s conditional support have on the rebel group’s capacity to continue the war? Much has been written about civil wars and the armed groups fighting them, but these questions about resources and the capacity to continue fighting are often missing from the analysis. In this book I tell the story of three civil wars in West Africa and, more specifically, the seven rebel groups that fought them. I trace the evolution of these groups over the course of the wars in an effort to assess both their difficulty in accessing resources and support and how fluctuations in access affected their capacity to continue fighting. I present a messy picture of war—one filled with ups and downs, victories and defeats, times of feast and famine—but a picture that fits more closely the reality of these groups and their wars. My purpose is simple: to emphasize the fallacy of plenty and the importance of change in any study of civil war; to highlight the vital role played by external actors in fueling conflicts; and to demonstrate how changes in rebel group capacity can alter the course of a war and the prospects for peace.

Abbreviations

The country of reference appears in parentheses where necessary. CdI: Côte d’Ivoire, L: Liberia, SL: Sierra Leone. AFL Armed Forces of Liberia AFRC Armed Forces Revolutionary Council (SL) APC All People’s Congress party (SL) ATU Anti-Terrorist Unit (L) CDF Civil Defense Forces (SL) CDI Côte d’Ivoire (Ivory Coast) DDR Disarmament, Demobilization, and Reintegration (Program) ECOFORCE ECOWAS Mission in Côte d’Ivoire (French name: MICECI) ECOMIL ECOWAS Mission in Liberia ECOMOG ECOWAS Monitoring Group ECOWAS Economic Community of West African States EO Executive Outcomes (SL) FANCI Forces Armées Nationales de Côte d’Ivoire/National Armed Forces of Côte d’Ivoire FESCI Fédération Estudiantine et Scolaire de Côte d’Ivoire/Federation of Students and Schools of Côte d’Ivoire FPI Front Populaire Ivoirien/Ivorian Popular Front (CdI) JCL Justice Coalition of Liberia LUDF Liberian United Defense Force LURD Liberians United for Reconciliation and Democracy MICECI ECOWAS Mission in Côte d’Ivoire (English name: ECOFORCE) MINUCI United Nations Mission in Côte d’Ivoire MJP Mouvement pour la Justice et la Paix/Movement for Justice and Peace (CdI) MODEL Movement for Democracy in Liberia MPCI Mouvement Patriotique de la Côte d’Ivoire/Patriotic Movement of Côte d’Ivoire MPIGO Mouvement Populaire du Grand Ouest/Popular Movement of the Ivorian Great West (CdI) NPFL National Patriotic Front of Liberia NPRC National Provisional Ruling Council (SL) xiii

xiv

ABBREVIATIONS

OAU ODL PDCI RDR RSLAF RUF SLA SLPP UDL UDPCI ULIMO UNAMSIL UNMIL UNSCR

Organization of African Unity; now the African Union (AU) Organization of Displaced Liberians Democratic Party of Côte d’Ivoire Rassemblement des Républicains/Rally of Republicans (CdI) Republic of Sierra Leone Armed Forces Revolutionary United Front (SL) Sierra Leone Army Sierra Leone People’s Party Union of Democratic Forces of Liberia Union for Democracy and Peace in Côte d’Ivoire United Liberation Movement for Democracy in Liberia United Nations Mission in Sierra Leone United Nations Mission in Liberia United Nations Security Council resolution

Introduction

No civil war today is ever wholly internal. —Charles King, Ending Civil Wars, 1997

Intrastate conflicts are rarely purely intrastate in nature; most involve transnational dimensions of some kind.1 The transnational dimensions of civil wars include the trade of goods, the sale of natural resources, the movement of refugees and combatants, the intervention of external mediators, the provision of safe haven, and the patronage of neighboring states. The United Nations has intervened in Cambodia, Liberia, the Congo, Cyprus, and East Timor. NATO has engaged in operations in the Balkans and Afghanistan. The African Union has deployed peacekeepers in Darfur and Somalia. African governments have hired mercenaries to aid their war efforts in Liberia, Sierra Leone, the Congo, and Libya. Armed factions, fighting both for governments and against them, have engaged in numerous transborder activities, from selling natural resources to importing arms to fighting in neighboring wars. Although the extent of transnational activity varies across cases, from very limited in Nepal to the so-called African World War centered on the Democratic Republic of Congo, every civil war exhibits some form of connection to the world outside its borders.

1. There has been much debate about the definition of civil war. Most often the definition hinges on a count of battle-related deaths, with “civil war” reserved for those wars that reach one thousand or more battle deaths per year. I use the terms civil war and intrastate conflict interchangeably; where a distinction is important, it is noted. The definition used by the Uppsala Conflict Data Program states: “An armed conflict is a contested incompatibility that concerns government and/or territory where the use of armed force between two parties, of which at least one is the government of a state, results in at least 25 battle-related deaths in one calendar year” (http://www.pcr.uu.se/research/ucdp/ definitions). 1

2

INTRODUCTION

In many cases these transnational connections prolong wars by providing the resources—whether arms, cash, or other goods—necessary for factions to continue fighting. Rebel groups from Latin America, Africa, and Asia have utilized transnational connections to develop support systems during wartime—systems that provide access to resources and thereby structure a group’s options on the battlefield. Access to necessary resources is never guaranteed, however, and rarely is it uninterrupted. Rebel groups face shortages and losses, just as they experience windfalls and victories. An understanding of these fluctuations provides insight into why a rebel group chooses between continuing a war and pursuing a peace. In this book I focus on assessing the role that transnational dimensions play in civil wars, and in particular how they enable rebel groups to continue fighting, when and why they may in fact limit such options, and how terminating access to transnational support systems can turn off the taps that fuel rebel groups and their war machines.

Support Systems in War The transnational dimensions of civil wars have grown with the globalization of the international system and the end of the cold war. The loss of foreign patronage, common throughout the cold war, forced warring factions to look elsewhere for support. In Angola, the rebels turned to diamonds while the government focused on oil revenues. In Colombia, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) have profited from the taxation, production, and sale of drugs, just as the Taliban has done in Afghanistan. In Sri Lanka, the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) created a system by which the Tamil diaspora contributed monthly donations. Rebellions that emerged after the 1990s could no longer rely on the former superpowers to be their patrons. Instead, warring parties had to develop new systems of support—what some have referred to as the self-financing of intrastate conflict.2 Conflict financing has included a range of activities from domestic (e.g., kidnapping, extortion, taxation) to transnational (e.g., trade, investments, diaspora remittances).3 Numerous rebel groups have harvested, sold, or simply taxed natural resources to fund their operations, including diamonds (Sierra Leone), timber (Burma), gold (Democratic Republic of Congo), and cocoa (Côte d’Ivoire). The expansion of

2. Karen Ballentine and Jake Sherman, introduction to The Political Economy of Armed Conflict: Beyond Greed and Grievance, ed. Ballentine and Sherman (Boulder: Lynne Rienner, 2003), 1. 3. Discussions of conflict financing often center on natural resources, such as diamonds and drugs, yet armed groups have used a wide range of methods to finance military operations. See Achim Wennmann, “Conflict Financing and the Recurrence of Intra-State Conflict,” International Studies Association Conference paper, Chicago, 2007, 6.

INTRODUCTION

3

global trade and the proliferation of links between developing countries and international markets have provided important avenues of access to resources previously unavailable, or at least not easily available, to nonstate actors such as rebel groups.4 Estimates vary widely, but by many accounts rebel groups have made millions from these endeavors. Conflicts require more than just financial resources. Transnational dimensions of civil war also include the trade in weapons; the use of neighboring states as safe haven; the manipulation of political ties to facilitate trade or impede international actions against a rebel group; and the reliance on common links of ethnicity or religion to provide political, if not economic and military, support for a group’s cause. Highlighting the ways in which fighting factions are connected to the external world underscores the point that any characterization of a rebel group as a self-contained, localized entity fails to recognize the ways in which a group is embedded in relationships both at home and through transnational linkages. These relationships can both enable and constrain a group’s actions and its options during conflict. Support that rebels in Sierra Leone received from Liberia at certain times during the war enabled them to go on the offensive, but that support faded when fighting increased in Liberia and interdicted supply routes, leaving the Sierra Leone rebels on the defensive and poorly resourced for continuing the war. The level of access to economic profits, military resources, and political support underlies the capacity of rebel forces to wage war. Fighting factions with limited access to support will fare poorly on the battlefield, while those that are able to establish effective networks of support will prove difficult to defeat. Transborder linkages can provide necessary resources, but there is no guarantee of continuous support. Changes in the levels of external financial, military, and logistic support shape the expectations of the relative costs and benefits of conflict—particularly over time—and can alter the course of conflict.5 Rebel groups need to develop support systems because they begin wars at a disadvantage to the state. States often possess more numerous options for generating revenues and supplying troops than rebel groups because they enjoy the benefits of existing state structures—administrative, financial, and military— that offer sources of command and control, funding, resources, and access to military equipment and personnel.6 Initially, a rebel group has no equivalent bureaucratic structure, state treasury, or military force. A rebel group must build

4. Ballentine and Sherman, 2003, 1–3. In this book, rebel groups are organized, armed, nonstate actors seeking to overthrow a government or secede from a state. 5. Christopher J. Coyne and Adam J. Pellillo, “The Political Economy of War and Peace,” SSRN Working Paper Series, January 7, 2011. 6. King, 1997, 45, makes a similar argument.

4

INTRODUCTION

an army, create an organizational structure, and fund its war venture in order to engage a government on the battlefield, or its effort will be short-lived. Internal resources are unlikely to provide sufficient sources of support, depending on the nature of the conflict and the level of resources required. The Maoist rebellion in Nepal sustained itself for nearly a decade with limited external support.7 Rebel groups can loot food and tax the local population, provided there is sufficient renewal of resources to avoid depletion, as a means of generating income. However, rebel groups are usually unable to access weapons and ammunition in this way because local populations rarely possess more than limited numbers of handguns and hunting rifles, which are of limited use against larger state arsenals.8 A rebel group will find it difficult, if not impossible, to sustain a military campaign through the simple looting of existing resources, especially during intrastate conflicts that last years or even decades. The average civil war lasts more than a decade, suggesting any rebel group engaged in such a battle must develop access to external sources of support and trade to survive. Transnational links therefore play an important role in the survival of a rebel group. A rebel group must develop some form of support system because without resources, the group has to stop fighting. This statement is common sense: no resources, no war. Yet it is striking how often in the literature on civil wars access to resources is presumed, not investigated. The authors of these studies presume rebels know what they need, can get what they want, can pay for military and civilian goods, can ensure their constant resupply, and know how to use what they obtain. The rebellion in Libya in 2011 challenged all these assumptions as stories emerged of the lack of command and control among the rebel forces, their inability to use weapons confiscated from Libyan military stocks, their need for financial resources, and their requests for military equipment.9 Similar challenges have beset other rebel groups: the Angolan rebels lost diamond revenues due to international sanctions, the Liberian rebels often wasted ammunition shooting in the air and had logistical difficulties moving new ammunition far from the border with Guinea, the Sri Lankan rebels lost diaspora support after they were labeled terrorists, and the Colombian rebels sought training from other successful rebel groups. Rebel groups clearly seek external sources of support but are constrained when avenues of support are unavailable or eliminated.

7. Many agree with the assessment that the Maoists’ military supply was mainly domestic, with limited material purchased in India. The purely domestic nature of funding is questionable as the authors admit that remittances, arguably international support, provided at least half the Maoists’ income. John Bray, Leiv Lunde, and S. Mansoob Murshed, “Nepal: Economic Drivers of the Maoist Insurgency,” in Ballentine and Sherman, Political Economy of Armed Conflict, 2003, 121–123. 8. Nicholas Marsh, “Conflict Specific Capital: The Role of Weapons Acquisition in Civil War,” International Studies Perspectives 8 (2007): 58. 9. C. J. Chivers, “Inferior Arms Hobble Rebels in Libya War,” New York Times, 20 April 2011.

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Studies tend to portray access to resources as a constant, rather than analyzing the fluctuations in access.10 Numerous statements drawn from studies of civil wars reveal such assumptions: “all three sides in the conflict have ample financial resources to continue fighting”; they have a “continuous stream of money and weapons,” and “purchase weapons through international criminal networks”;11 “rebel groups more than cover their costs during conflict”;12 and regions or countries are “awash with small arms and light weapons.”13 Yet the authors of these studies usually fail to provide concrete systematic evidence to support such assessments. Instead, they offer one or two anecdotes: “The arms trade in the region also continues to be maintained through the complex regional and global networks that are the mainstay of the shadow arms economy. An example of one arms shipment to Liberia neatly illustrates this point.”14 Does one example support such a vast generalization? Furthermore, the authors go on to state that the second arms shipment was impounded, suggesting that perhaps arms purchases are not always so easy. The facade of ease and abundance is further promulgated by estimates of wealth: the rebels in Sierra Leone earned $25–$125 million per year;15 Charles Taylor in Liberia grossed $75–$400 million per year;16 Colombian rebel revenues reached $3.2 billion in the 1990s;17 the rebels in Angola accrued $150–$800 million from diamond sales in one year; and the Kosovo rebel army received $600 million in the late 1990s through taxation.18 The numbers sound impressive, yet they are just rough estimates that are at best good guesses and at worst politically expedient fabrications.19 These numbers seem to gain legitimacy through repetition rather than research into their validity. There is little hard evidence of how much any rebel group has actually received from such practices or whether such funds have translated into military effectiveness. The point here is not to criticize past scholarship but to highlight potentially faulty assumptions that underlie common beliefs about rebel groups and the wars they fight, and to suggest the need for more investigation into the support networks rebel groups develop.

10. One notable exception is Achim Wennmann, The Political Economy of Peacemaking (London: Routledge, 2011), 29. Wennmann highlights several instances where changes in fortune appeared to change the prospects for peace and notes the need for further research into the relationship between financial and military analysis. 11. Alexandra Guaqueta, “The Colombian Conflict: Political and Economic Dimensions,” in Ballentine and Sherman, Political Economy of Armed Conflict, 2003, 74. 12. Paul Collier, Conflict, Political Accountability and Aid (New York: Routledge, 2011), 3. 13. Michael Pugh and Neil Cooper, War Economies in a Regional Context: Challenges of Transformation (Boulder: Lynne Rienner, 2004), 124. 14. Ibid., 125. 15. Ibid., 108. 16. Ibid., 108, 104. 17. Guaqueta, 2003, 81. 18. Wennmann, 2011, 109. 19. Ibid., 28.

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INTRODUCTION

Challenging Common Assumptions “Blood diamonds” are the natural resource most notorious for fueling conflict. Since the coining of the term during the Sierra Leone war, various other natural resources have played a role in the financing of conflict: oil in Angola, Sudan, and Nigeria; gold and coltan in the Democratic Republic of Congo; drugs in Colombia, Peru, and Afghanistan; and precious gems in Cambodia, Burma, and Afghanistan. Yet such simple assumptions about the role of resources in conflicts hide the more complicated, and less flashy, reality on the ground. Early quantitative studies demonstrated a correlation between the presence of natural resources and the onset and long duration of civil wars.20 The resulting greed thesis suggested that rebel wars were fought over access to and control of natural resources. Subsequent studies have challenged the greed premise, attempting to discern more accurately what role resources play in civil wars.21 Yet the indicators used in these largely quantitative studies are poor measures of whether the groups fighting can control and harvest these resources, profit from their sale, easily turn cash sales into military goods, and maintain a steady output of goods and input of military necessities.22 There is little probing into whether these conditions in fact apply. Scratching below the surface in many cases suggests that none of these assumptions holds true throughout the course of a war, and in fact the fortunes and capacity of a rebel group can fluctuate greatly over time. The approach taken in this book focuses on what a rebel group can access, how and when it accesses resources, and both how this access changes over time and why it changes. Such assessments lead to a better understanding of rebel group capacity and options for war, but they also challenge assumptions common in the conflict literature about natural resources, their value and use in war, and their fungibility into military goods. I also confront the predominantly static approach

20. See, for example, Collier, 2011; Paul Collier and Anke Hoeffler, “Greed and Grievance in Civil War,” World Bank Policy Research working paper 2355 (Washington, DC: World Bank, 2001); Mats Berdal and David Malone, eds., Greed and Grievance: Economic Agendas in Civil Wars (Boulder: Lynne Rienner, 2000). 21. James D. Fearon, “Why Do Some Civil Wars Last So Much Longer than Others?” Journal of Peace Research 41, no. 3 (2004): 275–301; Macartan Humphreys, “Natural Resources, Conflict, and Conflict Resolution: Uncovering the Mechanisms,” Journal of Conflict Resolution 49, no. 4 (2005): 508–537; Nicholas Sambanis, “Using Case Studies to Expand Economic Models of Civil War,” Perspectives on Politics 2, no. 2 (2004): 259–279. 22. Lujala provides good examples of the quantitative research on civil wars and natural resources. The analysis, however, never demonstrates that groups actually accessed resources or used them in war. Paivi Lujala, “Deadly Combat over Natural Resources: Gems, Petroleum, Drugs, and the Severity of Armed Civil Conflict,” Journal of Conflict Resolution 53, no. 1 (2009): 50–71; Lujala, “The Spoils of Nature: Armed Civil Conflict and Rebel Access to Natural Resources,” Journal of Peace Research 47, no. 1 (2010): 15–28.

INTRODUCTION

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to civil wars, suggesting the need to understand how rebel groups and the civil wars they fight evolve over time. In particular, I do not presume that (a) wars are costly to the rebel group, (b) war is always an option for a rebel group, (c) a rebel group always has easy access to the resources it needs, or (d) the rebel group can easily convert one resource into another (e.g., diamonds for weapons). Such implicit assumptions common in the literature should not be taken for granted in the study of civil wars.

Wars Are Costly Most studies of the costs of civil wars look at the impacts these wars have on populations, infrastructure, and national treasure. The presumption is that wars are costly and are therefore undertaken in a rational manner only when the potential rewards outweigh the costs.23 The costs can be estimated using several measures: economic (e.g., suspension of foreign direct investment, loss of working population); human (e.g., death, injury of combatants); damage imposed by wars (e.g., lost infrastructure); and development delayed (e.g., lost education opportunities, suspension of foreign aid, and diversion of government attention to the war).24 Estimates of the overall costs of war tend to run in the hundreds of millions to billions of dollars—a wide range, but clearly a significant cost. Yet it remains unclear who exactly bears these costs and to what degree. This is important for assessing the impact of a war on the fighting factions and what a rebel group requires to continue fighting. Another way of viewing the costs of war is to ask how much a rebel group has to invest to be able to fight and what it costs to sustain a war. For my purposes, the latter is of greater interest, though consideration of the initial investment is certainly important for understanding a potential barrier to war onset. Estimates of how much it costs to fight a civil war are few and far between, and none exists for estimating the costs imposed on a rebel group to conduct a civil war. It can be argued that starting a rebellion is potentially inexpensive if it entails no more than a few hundred combatants, as was the case in Sierra Leone. Certainly paying for a few hundred soldiers rather than several hundred or thousand is cheaper. But if a war is not quickly won, what does it cost to continue fighting? There are simply no good estimates of what a rebel group requires to sustain a war. Proxy variables used in quantitative studies

23. Paul Collier, “Rebellion as a Quasi-Criminal Activity,” Journal of Conflict Resolution 44, no. 6 (2000): 839–853; Sambanis, 2004, 261. 24. Paul Collier et al., Breaking the Conflict Trap: Civil War and Development Policy (Washington, DC: World Bank and Oxford University Press, 2003), chapter 1.

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INTRODUCTION

do not capture what groups actually use—for example, the ratio of primary export commodities to gross domestic product.25 Estimates do exist for what rebel groups are presumed to earn through the sale of natural resources, as mentioned earlier, but these estimates are of questionable accuracy, and no studies indicate how much revenue earned through such sales is actually spent on the war. The costs of sustaining a war depend on certain factors. These include the size of the group; the military tactics used (e.g., guerrilla warfare and hit-and-run tactics are less costly than facing off on a traditional battlefield); the number and intensity of clashes with government (or other rebel) forces; the desire to hold territory or not (it is arguably more costly to defend territory); and whether the brunt of the war is borne by the rebel group or by the civilian population. Evidence suggests that in post–cold war civil wars the population bears the brunt of the costs of war. In the Democratic Republic of the Congo, between 1998 and 2001 an estimated 2.5 million people died as a result of the war, but only 350,000 died because of violence, and of this number only 145,000 died directly from combat.26 This does not mean that rebel groups have an easy time conducting wars, but that they may not be the ones paying the highest costs. Many civil wars occur in countries with weak governments and poor militaries. This reduces the costs to a rebel group in two ways. First, if the opponent is weak, the rebel group will not need to develop as strong a military, and may not need to be concerned with conventional warfare, a more costly endeavor. Second, if the government is weak, it may not have much presence outside major cities, thereby reducing the costs for a rebel group to operate in and hold territory. It may be that rebel groups actually need less than is commonly thought. Although wars are costly, and impose costs that would not exist without the war, these costs may be far lower than assumed for the rebel groups, and the requirements for sustaining a rebellion therefore lower as well. In some cases it could be relatively easy for rebel groups to sustain their war efforts.

Fighting Is Always an Option A second fallacy is that war is always an option. Rebel groups do not possess unlimited resources or unlimited options for continuing a war. Despite widespread agreement that factions must have a reason to come to the negotiation table—and most often this reason is that the faction cannot at the time win

25. Sambanis, 2004, 265. 26. Bethany Lacina and Nils Petter Gleditsch, “Monitoring Trends in Global Combat: A New Dataset of Battle Deaths,” European Journal of Population 21 (2005): 159.

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9

through military victory—there is often an underlying presumption that the group could simply return to the battlefield if it finds the negotiations unprofitable or if it fears implementing the peace agreement.27 While defection from negotiations occurs frequently, scholars rarely assess how groups are able to return to the battlefield. If a lack of military capacity forced a group to negotiate, how then does the group easily return to war? In some cases it may be that the group was never seriously negotiating to begin with and was not at a point of military weakness. Former fighters have claimed the LTTE leadership never seriously entered into negotiations, despite having participated in numerous rounds of negotiation. In other cases a group may enter negotiations from a position of strength to see what it can achieve at the bargaining table. In many cases, negotiations provide time to rebuild military capacity, thus explaining why weakened groups enter negotiations but later defect and return to war. The Sierra Leone rebels did precisely this at least three times during the civil war, in 1993, 1996, and 1999. In all three cases the rebels used the time of the cease-fire (1993) and the negotiated peace agreements to reestablish supply links and return to war. Widespread criticisms of the FARC and LTTE suggest the groups used multiyear cease-fires, in the late 1990s and early 2000s respectively, to rebuild their armies rather than negotiate an end to the civil wars. The level of resources required by the group to continue fighting depends on the nature of the opponent, the ability of the opponent to bring force to bear on the rebel group, and the nature of the group’s goals (e.g., raids on civilian villages, hit-and-run guerrilla tactics, or conventional warfare). The stronger the opponent, the more resources the group will need to continue fighting. Likewise, the greater the goals of the group, the higher the investment needed to achieve those goals. The balance of forces and the costs entailed in fighting suggest that war may not always be an option for a rebel group. This is especially true when a group is depleted of its resources; at this point it has few options for continuing a war. Low-intensity insurgency warfare, especially limited hit-andrun tactics or roadside bombings, often remain possible under such conditions, but the ability of the group to engage in warfare that could result in the achievement of its goals is extremely circumscribed. The group can continue to pose a limited threat to the government and inflict damage on the population, but it cannot truly continue fighting the war. Sendero Luminoso was largely believed to have disintegrated following the arrests of the leadership in 1992 and 1999, but a militant faction persists and has allegedly rebuilt its strength largely based on drug revenues. Although it has not returned to the battlefield, the group has

27. In chapter 1 I discuss these theories of failed negotiations.

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INTRODUCTION

proven resistant to government efforts to eliminate it. A rebel group may be able to rebuild its capacity over time, thereby expanding its options for continuing the war, but this requires an influx of resources and the ability to avoid annihilation first. Options in war often relate to a group’s military capacity. Yet military capacity and the ability to continue fighting cannot be simply equated with the presence of natural resources in a conflict country. Rebel groups do not always control the areas where the resources exist. In Sierra Leone the rebels gained and lost control of the mining areas several times during the war. Rebel groups do not always choose to use natural resources that exist, nor are they always able to control these resources. Oil exists in the Republic of Congo, yet the rebel war there was short-lived, largely as a result of the location and expense of oil production and the ability of the government to buy off discontent.28 While many armed groups have undoubtedly benefited from the sale of natural resources, it remains difficult to assess how groups benefit from this trade, when they are able to benefit, and how trade ebbs and flows over the course of a conflict. Current estimates of economic gains are woefully inadequate. The use of rough indicators, such as available acreage and high market prices that rebel groups are unlikely to obtain, results in questionable estimates.29 In some cases, such as Nigeria, armed militant groups reportedly swap oil for guns, but no one can report how much these groups gain from such practices.30 Is it one gun or one hundred? And how often do such trades take place? Such questions are rarely answered. Instead, it is far more common to see such practices interpreted as unfettered access to economic and military resources that results in enhanced military capacity. Even a cursory investigation into civil wars and more localized insurgencies suggests the fallacy of such assumptions. Some rebel groups are better at surviving than others. The LTTE and the FARC became well known for establishing a “state within a state” administrative structure, whereas the RUF never established any real form of administration. Some groups have proven more capable on the battlefield than others. Some wars last longer than others. Understanding these differences and what makes some groups more successful than others requires a detailed look at how rebel groups sustain themselves during war.

28. For discussion, see Pierre Englebert and James Ron, “Primary Commodities and War: CongoBrazzaville’s Ambivalent Resource Curse,” Comparative Politics 37, no. 1 (2004): 61–81. 29. See, for example, Global Witness, Hot Chocolate: How Cocoa Fuelled the Conflict in Côte d’Ivoire (London: Global Witness, June 2007). 30. Jennifer M. Hazen, “Small Arms, Armed Groups, and Insecurity in Nigeria,” occasional paper 20 (Geneva: Small Arms Survey, December 2007), 26, 27–38.

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Resources Are Easily Accessible In studies of civil wars there is often the implicit assumption that rebel groups can access what they need when they need it, as seen in the passages quoted previously. Such statements presume two important conditions: first, that rebel groups have the means (e.g., through purchase, theft, or donation) to obtain the resources they need; and, second, that those resources are easily available. The issue of financing has already been discussed, with evidence suggesting rebel groups do not always have the means to purchase what they need, despite impressive estimates of rebel wealth. The assessments of rebel groups in this book suggest that access is not always so simple either. Rebel groups can access resources through various means: supportive patrons, the market, local trade, theft, and collaboration with the opposition, but very rarely do rebel groups face an unconstrained and continuous flow of whatever resources they need or want. Instead, most rebel groups face numerous challenges in accessing the resources they need, whether firearms, ammunition, or currency. This is especially true in wars of long duration. Instead, access to needed resources varies over time, with important implications for a group’s ability to continue fighting a war. The presence of natural resources in a conflict zone has often been equated with easy access to these resources and a simple exchange of natural resources for necessary goods (e.g., cash, weapons). However, quantitative studies of the role of natural resources in wars never actually measure whether a rebel group controls the resource in question or how, if at all, the group profits from its sale. The ease of access to natural resources depends on the resource itself, and goods are often categorized as “lootable” or “non-lootable.”31 While it is true that certain types of resources (e.g., oil, timber, kimberlite diamonds) can be more difficult to harvest due to the technical nature of the extraction process than others (e.g., drug crops, alluvial diamonds), the simplicity of obtaining the latter should not be overstated. Digging for alluvial diamonds, as the RUF did, is neither easy nor necessarily profitable. Digging in muddy pits to sieve through mud one pan at a time is hard manual labor, labor intensive, and time-consuming. In addition, there is no guarantee that any given alluvial pit will produce diamonds of any worth. This does not mean that extraction does not occur, it does, but it requires a leap in logic to conclude that natural resources are easily looted goods and that the rebel groups operating in natural resource zones harvest these resources with ease and for large profits.

31. Michael L. Ross, “Oil, Drugs, and Diamonds: The Varying Roles of Natural Resources in Civil War,” in Ballentine and Sherman, Political Economy of Armed Conflict, 2003, 47–70.

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INTRODUCTION

The ability to use any given resource depends on certain conditions. First, the group must be able to control the territory in which the resource lies (or at least be able to operate within the territory with little risk of encountering government resistance—e.g., oil tapping by the militants in the Niger Delta). Second, the group must be able to harvest the resource. This often requires intensive manual labor, and unless civilians are recruited for the labor, it requires diverting combatants away from their war duties. Groups often pursue resources that are more easily lootable because of the lower technical and knowledge requirements of harvesting them. Third, the group must be able to move the resource to the market, and a market for the good must be readily accessible. Too often the simple presence of a rebel group in a resource-rich area is deemed sufficient reason to proclaim the group uses that particular resource to fund its war. Rarely are questions asked about whether the group can actually harvest the resource, get it to market, or get a good price at the market, nor are questions posed about changes in access to the good, the declining production of a good (e.g., diamond mines will eventually be exhausted), or the actual sale price of the good. Even though international and regional financial, trade, and arms networks exist, a rebel group must still find a way to access these networks. This requires having the financing to purchase military goods or the natural resources to sell or trade, and the contacts necessary to establish a business relationship for these exchanges. The Bosnian government, for example, faced great difficulty in accessing arms on the international black market due to its poor financial resources and geography (both landlocked and surrounded by enemies).32 In many cases, access to regional and international networks has been granted by external political sponsors, particularly neighboring governments, or diaspora members who have assisted the rebel group for financial gain or in order to achieve a political goal. The Bosnians worked through criminal gangs, the Angolan rebels moved diamonds through traders from the Congo, and Liberian rebels relied on Guinea to provide access to arms. Access to these networks often falters when the political sponsor withdraws its support of the rebel group. The Liberian rebels frequently suffered from Guinea’s changing stance on providing support and even safe haven to the group. Diaspora may be unable to continue providing support owing to national and international restrictions on funding, as happened when the Tamil diaspora faced both rising international condemnation as well as their own apprehensions about Tamil rebel tactics. Groups must also pay the transaction costs of sales, which can include high fees for brokers. In the case of the RUF,

32. Peter Andreas, “The Clandestine Political Economy of War and Peace in Bosnia,” International Studies Quarterly 48 (2004): 34.

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13

intermediaries in Liberia and further afield took significant shares of the profits from diamond sales. Although estimates of amounts earned by rebel groups can be quite large, it remains unclear how much of this actually returns to the rebel group and how much is absorbed in the transaction process by various intermediaries. It is certainly tempting to conclude that the existence of a lucrative natural resource provides a ready means for a rebel group to sustain its war, but evidence in the case studies in this book does not bear this out. Finally, rebel groups must be able to access the goods they need, whether through barter or the use of funding from natural resource sales. For example, guns are often believed to be plentiful in many war-affected countries, and especially in West Africa. However, there are no good estimates of the actual numbers of weapons in circulation, nor is there sufficient evidence to map the illicit arms trade in the area.33 It remains extremely difficult to assess the “ease” with which any rebel group can access needed quantities of arms and ammunition, or develop a reliable source of both. Even the FARC, known for manufacturing some of its own military equipment, faced problems providing new soldiers with sufficient firearms and ammunition.34 Ammunition and heavy weapons are some of the most difficult resources to move. Ammunition is both bulky and heavy to transport, and requires constant resupply on active fronts to sustain a war. Heavy weapons—such as tanks, artillery, and antiaircraft missiles—may be difficult to acquire on the black market, too technical for untrained combatants to use, or too heavy and large to move easily. The Bosnians, despite being able to access arms, could access only certain types of weapons owing to the routes being used, and could not access the heavy weapons needed to break the Serb siege.35 Price can also play an important role. Despite widespread references to the ability to buy assault rifles on the cheap in many places, sometimes for the cost of a chicken, research into prices of weapons tells of a fluctuating market. For example, a single assault rifle cost anywhere between $300 and $2,500 in Nigeria between 2003 and 2007.36 Another study estimated the costs of assault rifles to range anywhere between $12 and $6,000 per rifle.37 Yet surprisingly little attention is paid to the acquisition of arms and ammunition or, perhaps more importantly, the times when groups are unable to acquire these goods.

33. See Hazen, 2007, for a discussion of estimates of small arms in circulation in West Africa (25–26); a first cut at mapping small arms flows in Nigeria (34); and a general discussion of small arms circulation in the region (chapter 3). 34. Marsh, 2007, 59. 35. Andreas, 2004, 39. 36. Hazen, 2007, 43. 37. Phillip Killicoat, “Weaponomics: The Global Market for Assault Rifles,” World Bank Policy research working paper 4202 (Washington, DC: World Bank, April 2007).

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INTRODUCTION

Resources Are Fungible A fourth common assumption in the literature is that resources are easily fungible from one type into another. This can happen through the direct swapping of natural resources for guns, as in the Niger Delta where militants have allegedly traded bunkered oil directly for small shipments of assault weapons, or from the sale of resources and the use of profits to purchase weapons. However, fungibility is rarely demonstrated in studies. More commonly, if a rebel group controls natural resources and profits from their trade, then the group is presumed to earn sufficient revenue from that trade to make needed military purchases. Such assumptions can be seen in references made to the RUF funding its war with diamonds, or the FARC financing its conflict through the drug trade. Yet for fungibility to be possible the group must have the logistical capacity, resources, and contacts to translate economic power into military power or vice versa. Fungibility may be easy or difficult, depending on the resource in question and the connections of the group. For example, a group may be able to export a particular resource in exchange for weapons. Nigerian militants have traded oil directly for guns in the Niger Delta. Another path entails using a middleman to facilitate the export and sale of a particular resource and then using the financial gains to procure weapons, which are then sent back to the group, which was the case with the RUF. The Liberian warlord-turned-president Charles Taylor facilitated transactions for the RUF to sell Sierra Leone diamonds and then used the profits to purchase arms, which were sent back to the RUF. The RUF did not have sufficient international connections to make these deals on its own, and instead relied on Taylor and his existing network to access weapons. In other cases, the process is more complex and involves different brokers for different goods. A rebel group may need to find a way to sell natural resources through one mediator and then find a different pathway for purchasing and importing weapons. In Burma, rebel groups have continued to conduct various economic activities; however, the reestablishment of control of the borders by the Burmese military has meant that most rebel groups, despite being in cease-fires that allow for economic trade, are unable to access new military supplies.38 Trading activities are commonplace during wartime, especially across borders, but they cannot be taken for granted because there is no guarantee of access to exchange routes, nor can the possession of one type of resource be necessarily equated with the ability to obtain other resources. Logistical capacity and location also play a role in determining the ease with which a group can convert access to one good into access to other goods. First,

38. Jake Sherman, “Burma: Lessons from the Cease-Fires,” in Ballentine and Sherman, Political Economy of Armed Conflict, 2003, 233.

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15

a group must also be able to harvest sufficient resources for sale and to move these resources to a viable export point (if not export them as well). For example, the high value to low weight ratio of diamonds makes them easier to hide, transport, and move across borders, but alluvial mining may not be consistently productive. Timber, on the other hand, has the opposite profile; it is far easier to locate but more difficult to hide and transport. In some cases, external actors interested in a particular good may approach the rebel group to ensure continued access to extraction, as Taylor often did to obtain Sierra Leone diamonds. Second, the group must control viable points of export and import. Porous borders can aid rebel trade activities, but only if the rebels control the border areas. Several times the RUF lost access to border transit points due to the activities of the Liberian rebels on the other side of the border. Burmese militant groups have forfeited control of borders to the government, thereby cutting off access to military goods. Third, a group needs sufficient logistics capacity to move goods to where they are needed, whether it is natural resources for export or the import of military goods to the front lines. Liberian rebel offensives often suffered from the inability of the group to move supplies from rear bases near Guinea’s border to the front lines. Even if a rebel group can translate natural resource sales into profits, it should not be presumed that a rebel group utilizes the money gained for military purposes. The case studies in this book indicate that rebel groups spend their revenues on a variety of goods, not all of which are related to their military effort. Rebel groups use generated income to ensure the loyalty of their combatants, through the provision of food, salaries, and other goods. Rebel group members, especially leaders, have been known to provide support to their families, including their extended families. There is evidence of rebel groups in Sierra Leone, Liberia, and Côte d’Ivoire being frivolous with their funds, including spending money on drugs, women, stereos, and other items irrelevant to war. In Côte d’Ivoire rebel soldiers crossed into Burkina Faso to swap their weapons for stereos, suggesting that at the time money was not easy to come by for the foot soldier and that the soldier was not concerned about needing his weapon. Resources can be fungible, but not all exchanges are directed at military purposes.

Civil Wars and War Termination Civil wars are common, costly, and long. They have been the most common form of war since World War II, with an average length of five to ten years; many have lasted decades. Civil wars, which entail widespread devastation, thousands of killed and injured, and far-reaching social and economic effects, are estimated to

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INTRODUCTION

cost billions of dollars. Yet despite such devastating costs, they are extremely difficult to end. Most civil wars involve numerous efforts at negotiations, including cease-fires and peace agreements that are negotiated and signed only to be later broken. Peace agreements have a poor success rate and entail a high probability of a return to war, and yet they remain the preferred option for settling intrastate conflicts. Civil wars have affected one-third of all nations since 1960, while armed conflicts have affected more than half.39 Intrastate war has been the predominant form of war in the international system since 1945 (see figure 0.1).40 Despite this fact, civil wars rose to prominence on the international agenda only after the cold war had ended. Several factors contribute to explaining the lack of widespread attention to civil wars prior to the 1990s: the focus of international studies on states, the primacy of sovereignty in interstate relations, the overwhelming shadow of the cold war and the bipolar nature of the international system, and the utility of the cold war for explaining intrastate conflict. During the cold war conflicts within states were often depicted in terms of superpower rivalries rather than their own internal dynamics. The cold war rivalry between the United States and the Soviet Union fueled numerous internal conflicts, with the two superpowers providing support to opposing factions in civil wars in Afghanistan, Angola, Cuba, El Salvador, Guatemala, Mozambique, and Vietnam. The number of intrastate conflicts peaked in 1992, a point at which interstate conflicts neared zero, and then declined through the early 2000s, indicating an optimistic trend. Since 2003 the number of intrastate conflicts has crept slowly upward and the number of peace agreements per year has dwindled. While not a prediction of gloom and doom, the reversal douses any hopes that the end of intrastate conflicts was near at hand. Civil wars impose widespread and devastating effects on affected countries, their neighbors, and even those much further away. Depending on the measure of costs, estimates have ranged from $18 billion per year for African civil wars to at least $64 billion for the average cost of a civil war over time.41 Civil wars impose obvious costs on the states in which they are fought. These costs include human 39. Christopher Blattman and Edward Miguel, “Civil War,” working paper 166, Center for Global Development, March 2009, 1. 40. Lotta Harbom and Peter Wallensteen, “Armed Conflicts, 1946–2009,” Journal of Peace Research 47, no. 4 (2010): 503; Meredith Reid Sarkees, Franck Whelon Wayman, and J. David Singer, “Inter-State, Intra-State, and Extra-State Wars: A Comprehensive Look at Their Distribution over Time, 1816–1997,” International Studies Quarterly 47 (2003): 61. 41. Oxfam, IANSA, and Saferworld, “Africa’s Missing Billions,” briefing paper, October 2007, 9; Paul Collier, “Economic Causes of Civil Conflict and Their Implications for Policy,” April 2006, 16, http://users.ox.ac.uk/~econpco/research/pdfs/EconomicCausesofCivilConflict-Implicationsfor Policy.pdf.

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60 Extrasystemic Interstate Internationalized intrastate Intrastate

50 40 30 20 10

2009

2006

2003

2000

1997

1994

1991

1988

1985

1982

1979

1976

1973

1970

1967

1964

1961

1958

1955

1952

1949

1946

0

FIGURE 0.1. Number of armed conflicts by type, 1946–2009. Lotta Harbom and Peter Wallensteen, “Armed Conflicts, 1946–2009,” Journal of Peace Research 47, no. 4 (2010): 503. Original data set in Nils Petter Gleditsch, Nils Petter, Peter Wallensteen, Mikael Eriksson, Margareta Sollenberg, and Håvard Strand, “Armed Conflict 1946–2001: A New Dataset,” Journal of Peace Research 39, no. 5 (2002): 615–637.

losses, in terms of the number of persons directly injured and killed during war and killed indirectly through lack of food, widespread disease, and lack of services in conflict settings.42 Since the early 1990s civil wars have killed tens of thousands and injured hundreds of thousands more.43 They have displaced millions either as internally displaced persons within their own countries or as refugees in neighboring and host countries. The war in Sudan killed an estimated 2 million persons and displaced 4 million.44 Wars have imposed significant economic and development losses. The financial burdens of conflict have been estimated in the hundreds 42. Kelly M. Greenhill, “Counting the Cost: The Politics of Numbers in Armed Conflict,” in Sex, Drugs, and Body Counts: The Politics of Numbers in Global Crime and Conflict, ed. Peter Andreas and Kelly M. Greenhill (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2010), 127–158. 43. There is no agreed upon count of battle-related (direct) or conflict-related (indirect) deaths. Toft provides counts of battle deaths in several civil wars (Monica Duffy Toft, Securing the Peace: The Durable Settlement of Civil Wars [Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2010], appendix 1). The Geneva Declaration Secretariat attempted to count direct and indirect conflict deaths in its Global Burden of Armed Violence, 2008, chapters 1 and 2. 44. Benjamin R. Maitre, “What Sustains ‘Internal Wars’? The Dynamics of Violent Conflict and State Weakness in Sudan,” Third World Quarterly 30, no. 1 (2009): 54.

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INTRODUCTION

of millions. These costs include destruction of housing and infrastructure, destruction of social services (e.g., health care, education facilities), the displacement of persons, the reduction in economic activity, the loss of foreign direct investment, and the time and money lost to development efforts delayed or destroyed by the war.45 Civil wars also impose costs on neighboring countries and the international community. These costs can be counted any number of ways: from the quantities of lives lost and land destroyed, to trade disrupted and livelihoods diminished, to flows of refugees and contributions of humanitarian assistance, to governments rebuilt, peacekeeping operations funded, and peace agreements implemented. UN peacekeeping in 2009–2010 alone cost $7.83 billion. Although external intervention may not be forthcoming early in a civil war, most civil wars receive some form of external intervention during the course of the conflict, and the later this comes, the more costly the intervention tends to be.46 Measurements of the average length of a civil war range from five years to over a decade in length, as in Angola, Colombia, Cyprus, Sierra Leone, Sri Lanka, and Sudan.47 Unless a rebellion swiftly succeeds or the government quickly defeats the uprising, civil wars tend to settle into a pattern of protracted conflict in which neither side can win outright. While many studies focus on the number of wars ended through victory or negotiation, assessing conflict data by year actually suggests that the most common “outcome” for intrastate conflict is perpetuation. Groups more often choose to continue a conflict than to end it. Civil wars that involve negotiations tend to last much longer than wars ended through victory by one side—up to three times longer.48 A closer look at duration reveals another striking feature: civil wars are rarely settled by a single peace agreement. More often than not war termination involves several rounds of negotiations, numerous cease-fires, and various peace agreements, as well as the breaching of all of these. Despite these difficulties and the many stops and starts of peace processes, the international community has demonstrated a clear preference for negotiated solutions to civil wars.

45. For a discussion of these costs, see Macartan Humphreys, “Economics and Violent Conflict,” working paper, Harvard University, February 2003, 9–11; Kosuke Imai and Jeremy M. Weinstein, “Measuring the Economic Impact of Civil War,” Center for International Development working paper 51, Harvard University, June 2000. 46. Humphreys, 2003, 8. 47. Measurements of the average length of intrastate conflicts include five years (Roy Licklider, “The Consequences of Negotiated Settlements in Civil Wars, 1945–1993,” American Political Science Review 89, no. 3 [1995]: 681–690); roughly eleven years (Fearon, 2004, 275–301); and, for wars in the 1990s, just over one hundred months (“The Global Menace of Local Strife,” Economist, 24 May 2003, 23–25). 48. Centre for Humanitarian Dialogue, Charting the Roads to Peace: Facts, Figures and Trends in Conflict Resolution (Geneva: Centre for Humanitarian Dialogue, 2007), 13.

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Until the 1990s most civil wars ended through victory by one side. Negotiated settlements have become more common since the 1990s, and there appears to be a widely accepted norm that negotiated settlements are a better solution (than use of force) to end conflicts.49 Two factors contributed to the growing frequency of negotiated settlements: the end of the cold war and the expansion of United Nations (UN) interventions and other third party efforts to end civil wars.50 The end of the cold war resulted in two important changes. First, it meant a reduction in superpower support to factions involved in civil wars, thereby raising the prospects for resolution. Second, it loosened the constraints on the UN to act on peace and security matters in the international system.51 The expansion of third-party efforts to end conflicts can be seen in the copious mediation efforts and peacekeeping operations conducted by the United Nations, the Economic Community of West African States, the African Union, and others. However, while the end of the cold war enabled international and regional organizations to act more often, this had no obvious patterned effect (either positive or negative) on the onset of new conflicts or the resolution of those already under way. While some wars ended, others erupted, and some have persisted for decades.52 Despite positive news in many conflicts, the track record on negotiating ends to civil wars remains uneven (see figure 0.2). Looking at the statistics alone of how many negotiated settlements have ended civil wars fails to provide a complete picture of war termination. Two points stand out in particular: statistics can be misleading in terms of the number of conflicts that have ended, and negotiated solutions appear to be less stable than victories over time. Data sets on conflict termination tend to rely on battle death counts to determine when wars end; when high thresholds are used, conflicts that do not meet these (e.g., one thousand battle deaths per year) are not included, and therefore counted as terminated. Many wars

49. Toft, 2010, 191. 50. See Hugh Miall, The Peacemakers: Peaceful Settlement of Disputes since 1945 (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1992); Barbara F. Walter, “The Critical Barrier to Civil War Settlement,” International Organization 51 (Summer 1997): 335–364; Barbara F. Walter and Jack Snyder, Civil Wars, Insecurity, and Intervention (New York: Columbia University Press, 1999). 51. The inability of the United Nations to significantly affect security matters throughout the cold war has been well documented. For a discussion of the evolution of UN peacekeeping, see Paul F. Diehl, International Peacekeeping (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1994), chapter 1; William J. Durch, ed., UN Peacekeeping, American Policy, and the Uncivil Wars of the 1990s (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1996); Stephen M. Malik and Shahin P. Malik, Peacekeeping and the United Nations (Brookfield, VT: Dartmouth, 1996), particularly chapters 1 and 2. 52. See Taisier M. Ali and Robert O. Matthews, eds., Civil Wars in Africa: Roots and Resolution (Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1999); Mohammed Ayoob, The Third World Security Predicament: State Making, Regional Conflict, and the International System (Boulder: Lynne Rienner, 1995); Stathis N. Kalyvas and Laia Balcells, “International System and Technologies of Rebellion: How the End of the Cold War Shaped Internal Conflict,” American Political Science Review 104, no. 3 (2010): 415–429.

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Victory by either side Negotiated settlement Cease-fire/stalemate

100

80

60

40

20

0

1940s

1950s

1960s

1970s

1980s

1990s

FIGURE 0.2. Percentage of civil wars ended, by termination type, 1940–2000. Based on data provided in Monica Duffy Toft, Securing the Peace: The Durable Settlement of Civil Wars (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2010), appendix 1.

simply fade from the headlines because they decline in intensity to the point where modern data sets no longer capture them.53 In Burma, armed factions have agreed to cease-fires with the government in order to pursue economic interests, but such agreements have done little to address underlying grievances and are likely to last only so long as all parties continue to profit.54 Despite not being counted, lowintensity civil wars do continue and should not be considered terminated.55 The second point is that many negotiated solutions do not succeed in permanently terminating a war. In many cases factions return to the battlefield. Evidence suggests that more than 40 percent of civil wars terminated through negotiations relapse into war within five years of the initial agreement.56 Negotiated settlements do not provide the most stable or enduring resolution to war. Military victories are more tenable than negotiated settlements, and rebel victories may in fact produce better results in terms of durable war termination and democracy.57

53. Centre for Humanitarian Dialogue, 2007, 13. 54. Sherman, 2003, 233–235. 55. Wennmann, 2007, 7, and table 6, argues that more than half of the armed conflicts assessed in the study “recurred after a period of no activity.” 56. Centre for Humanitarian Dialogue, 2007, 13. 57. Patrick M. Regan, “Third-Party Interventions and the Duration of Intrastate Conflicts,” Journal of Conflict Resolution 46, no. 1 (2002): 55–73; Toft, 2010, 9.

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Despite evidence that negotiated solutions may not provide the most stable outcome and external interventions have poor track records, the preference for negotiated solutions within the international community has been noted by several scholars.58 An estimated “80 per cent of armed conflicts in 2007 and 2008 involved some form of dialogue or formal negotiations.”59 In this book I do not address the question of whether external actors should intervene in civil wars. Nor do I take up the question of whether interventions should aim to end wars through force or end them through negotiations. Although some studies are based on the assumption that war is risky and costly and therefore a suboptimal outcome, I do not make this assumption. I do not presume that negotiated solutions should be preferred over continued fighting; nor do I consider war to be necessarily an irrational course of action. Instead I seek to identify the options available to rebel groups during war and why continued warfare may be the preferred option over seeking a negotiated settlement, and therefore explain why wars are difficult to end through negotiations. Numerous theories have been put forward for why negotiations fail.60 Some of these theories rest on the motivations of the groups, including greed, grievances, and indivisible preferences. Some focus on factors that hinder better calculations of chances of success (e.g., misperceptions, lack of information) and lead to the belief that victory is still possible. Others identify difficulties in the peace process: the lack of good faith in negotiations; the use of negotiations for respite and rearming; the existence of spoilers; the presence of a security dilemma; the poor implementation of agreements (e.g., foot dragging, lack of capacity); or simply a poor outcome (e.g., the failure to win postwar elections, resulting in a return to conflict). Still others look at the peace agreements themselves and how they are designed, whether they offer too much or too little, and whether they omit critical points of contestation (e.g., economics, disarmament). Each of these theories has some applicability to the cases of civil wars that have taken place over the past century, thereby offering some understanding of the overall puzzle of war termination. Yet none explains the persistence of all civil wars or why termination efforts often fail, and no overarching theory pulls these pieces together. Gaps remain in the understanding of rebel groups and their capacity for continued warfare. I aim to add this important piece to the puzzle and to challenge some of the current assumptions and remedy the simple omissions in the literature.

58. King, 1997, 24–25; Toft, 2010, 51–52; Wennmann, 2011, 8. 59. Wennmann, 2011, 8. 60. See chapter 1 for a full discussion.

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Turning Off the Taps: Rebel Resources, Options, and Preferences in War The options available to rebel groups during conflict are based on the group’s capacity to continue fighting, and this capacity is based on the group’s access to resources. Resources entail more than just cash; they include various economic, military, and political goods, such as currency, natural resources (e.g., diamonds, gold), arms and ammunition, safe haven, and diplomatic support. However, rebel groups rarely enjoy constant access to resources throughout a conflict. The large dollar signs and sweeping statements referenced above fail to capture the ebb and flow of rebel group fortunes. At times they may be doing quite well in war, such as when the Sierra Leone rebels controlled the diamond fields and were able to export diamonds through Liberia. But the rebel group maintained control of the diamond fields only after 1997. Prior to this time the rebels could control the fields only for a few months at a time, and had at times in 1992 and 1995 been on the verge of defeat with few options for diamond mining or resupply. Such fluctuations in fortune suggest that estimated annual diamond revenues are poor indicators of rebel capacity; what is needed is a better understanding of flows of resources over time. When large changes in access to support occur, they affect the capacity of a group to continue fighting. Understanding these dynamics is central to identifying the options available to rebel groups and the reasons why a rebel group chooses to pursue war or peace. Over the course of a war, the capacity of a rebel group to fight will fluctuate. When access to resources is high, rebel group capacity to continue fighting will be elevated. When access to resources declines, rebel group capacity to continue fighting will be affected and the group will experience a reduction in the options it has to continue the war. There is no simple calculation of how a decline in resources will decrease capacity. In most cases it is unlikely to be instantaneous unless the shift in resources is extreme, which sometimes happens when a group is completely cut off from its supply routes. Instead, rebel groups are likely to adapt to declining resources by adjusting their war tactics toward a less costly strategy. The Sierra Leone rebels turned to hit-and-run tactics when resources ran low. Rebel groups in Burma agreed to cease-fires to ensure they could continue their profitable economic ventures with limited fighting. Angolan rebels at times focused on diamond mining rather than active engagements with government forces, “resulting in enclaves of relative peace.”61 The Ivorian rebels

61. Charles Cater, “The Political Economy of Conflict and UN Intervention: Rethinking the Critical Cases of Africa,” in Ballentine and Sherman, Political Economy of Armed Conflict, 2003, 31.

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proved content to wait out a stalemate that divided the country in half for nearly a decade, engaging in limited military confrontation with the government. As resources continue to decline, however, a rebel group holds fewer options for continued warfare. At the point when the costs of the war are unsustainable the group will be forced to negotiate or risk defeat. Rebel groups have accepted negotiations at times of weakness due to the constraint on financing and resupply: Angola in 1994, for example, Sierra Leone in 1996, Sri Lanka in 2001, and Sudan in 2002. Such a situation forms one half of the basis for a mutually hurting stalemate. Mutually hurting stalemates, wherein all parties to the conflict are suffering beyond their capacity to pay and therefore seek a way out of the situation, offer the best opportunity for negotiated settlements because the parties have few, or no, alternatives. While mutually hurting stalemates can arise naturally over the course of a war, they have also resulted from actions taken by domestic and external actors to restrict a rebel group’s access to resources, raise the costs of war, and reduce the group’s capacity to fight. In Angola, the sanctions regime reduced the flow of gasoline to the rebels, hindering its military capacity, and lowered the price the rebels could obtain for embargoed diamonds, thereby reducing available war funds.62 These actions, if effective in constraining access to resources, can eliminate war as a possible option and bring the rebels to the negotiating table. It is insufficient to bring the rebels to the table if they end up simply turning around and returning to the battlefield. Groups will continue to negotiate and sign peace agreements, for various reasons, but what is of most interest is whether the agreement sticks. An agreement that does not can have devastating consequences, such as the genocide in Rwanda after the failure of the 1993 Arusha Accords. An agreement is most likely to succeed when a rebel group does not maintain any viable alternatives to negotiation. This happens when resources are cinched, the taps turned off, and the rebel group can no longer field the necessary resources to return to war. The challenge during negotiations is that the rebel group is likely to continue to seek to rebuild its capacity and therefore expand its options to continue the war throughout the negotiation period. This is especially true in situations in which the rebel group does not perceive it is getting its fair share out of a peace agreement. As long as a rebel group maintains the option to continue fighting, negotiations will be unattractive and implementation of peace agreements difficult to achieve. Maintaining effective constraints on a rebel group during negotiations increases the likelihood of successful negotiations by

62. Ibid., 39.

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ensuring the rebel group cannot reestablish its support network, reconstitute its access to resources, rebuild its capacity, and renew the option for war. The simple premise of this book is that rebel groups will not commit to peace agreements as long as they retain the option to continue fighting. In simple terms, negotiations involve compromises over preferred choices. Thus no party to negotiations will gain everything it wants in full through negotiations, but only some part of a preferred outcome. If a group still holds out the possibility of gaining what it desires in full through fighting, then it will reject what is on offer at the negotiation table. The argument here is not that rebel groups will never negotiate. There are plenty of reasons to enter into negotiations: diplomatic pressure, testing the waters, and respite and resupply, among others. However, negotiations are likely to fail if rebel groups have other options for achieving their goals in full. There is no presumption that rebel groups can always continue fighting, but rather that certain conditions enable groups to maintain this option. These conditions are the focus of this book, and they are determined largely by the underlying capacity of the group to sustain its war-fighting machine. The stronger the group’s capacity, the more options it possesses with respect to fighting the war. By contrast, the chances for successful negotiations and the implementation of a peace agreement increase as the options of the rebel group narrow. Negotiated solutions are most likely when a rebel group views negotiations not as one of the solutions for obtaining what it wants but as the only solution.

1 NEVER-ENDING WARS Explaining Conflict Duration

One notable characteristic of civil wars is their duration. The length of civil wars steadily increased in the post–cold war period, reaching an average of sixteen years in 1999.1 Despite the decline in the number of active civil wars since the mid-1990s, duration has not decreased. Instead, many of the ongoing conflicts in 2009 were “unusually protracted.”2 Several civil wars have lasted more than a decade. Some of these wars ended after years of fighting, most often through some form of a negotiated solution; others, such as those in Colombia and Burma, continue today with no end in sight. In most civil wars, the balance of power fluctuates between the fighting factions, with victories gained and losses suffered by all sides. Most conflicts experience some form of external intervention aimed at reaching a peace settlement and, in most cases, numerous attempts to negotiate a peace. The persistence of civil wars in the face of perceived high costs and numerous efforts at negotiation raises important questions about the intractable nature of civil wars and whether external parties can play a successful role in ending them peacefully. There are primarily two outcomes in conflict: military and political. The former tends to involve the military victory of one party; the latter is a compromise

1. James D. Fearon, “Why Do Some Civil Wars Last So Much Longer than Others?” Journal of Peace Research 41, no. 3 (2004): 275–276. Fearon notes that depending on the data set used, estimates of the average length of civil wars ranges from 5.5 to 12.9 years (280). 2. Lotta Harbom and Peter Wallensteen, “Armed Conflicts, 1946–2009,” Journal of Peace Research 47, no. 4 (2010): 503. 25

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solution negotiated between parties. The continuation of fighting is also a possibility, though not one that would normally be described as an outcome. In fact, if we assess conflicts on a yearly basis, the continuation of conflict does appear more common than the termination of conflict through either military victory or political compromise. Part of the explanation is that conflicts often get trapped between the polar ends of onset and termination. Although conflicts have often been described as passing through stages, from onset to escalation to termination to peace building, such a linear progression is rare. Instead, conflicts involve numerous attempts at negotiations, cease-fires, and signed peace agreements, as well as frequent returns to active fighting. Negotiations and peace talks took place over the years during wars in Sudan, Liberia, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Sri Lanka, Nepal, and Colombia. Sierra Leone parties agreed to three different peace agreements during the war, as well as several cease-fires. Despite these various efforts at resolution, the wars persisted.3 Explanations for the intractability of civil war abound, each pointing to particular obstacles to peace.4 There are those that emphasize group goals and balances of power, explaining war through irreconcilable preferences, indivisible goals, asymmetries of power, and security dilemmas. Other explanations focus on perceptions and motivations, focusing on greed, uncertainty, fear, misperception, and the belief that victory is possible. There is limited agreement on which of these factors is important, under which circumstances, and whether such factors should be weighted more heavily than others. Other explanations stress the role of spoilers, the contents of the peace agreement, the enforceability of a peace agreement, and so on. There is no clear, single answer in the literature why a rebel group chooses to continue fighting a war rather than seek a negotiated end. Each of these explanations finds supporting evidence in the case study literature and therefore cannot be easily dismissed, though generalizability can be questioned and utility in explaining particular cases may be limited. The following discussion highlights the most common explanations for conflict duration.

3. The wars in Sudan, Liberia, the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), Nepal, and Sierra Leone did eventually end through negotiated agreements. In 2011, however, Nepal remains in a political deadlock, high levels of violence persist in the eastern DRC, and the relationship between Sudan and South Sudan remains volatile. The Sri Lankan war ended through victory by the government, though the victory was condemned by many for the level of violence used, in particular on the civilian population. Colombia remains at war. 4. For a brief overview of several of these obstacles, see Timothy D. Sisk, “Peacemaking in Civil Wars: Obstacles, Options and Opportunities,” occasional paper 20 of the Joan B. Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies, University of Notre Dame, 2001.

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Irreconcilable Differences The existence of incompatible goals among fighting factions can limit the options available for negotiation. Such incompatibilities are often depicted as indivisible and inherent characteristics of particular groups, such as ethnicity, religion, and identity.5 Common examples include the wars in Rwanda and Burundi between Hutu and Tutsi and the Balkan wars between Muslims, Serbs, and Croats. The characteristics of these populations are considered set identities that are neither negotiable nor easily divisible. In such situations, conflict can appear to be zerosum in nature with any victory by one side perceived as a defeat by the other. Negotiations can threaten the survival of a particular group if they center on defining a state based on criteria that do not include the threatened group or that force the group to assimilate to the defined state culture, as is the fear, for instance, of those involved in the Muslim insurgency in southern Thailand. The threatened group is unlikely to agree to negotiations when political discussions offer no possibility of maintaining the group’s identity. Under such conditions the conflict will continue until one side wins or a solution acceptable to all sides can be found. Despite being labeled deep-rooted or irreconcilable, identity conflicts are not immune to negotiated settlements. The notion of ancient hatreds between groups that can never be resolved suggests the only option is to let groups resolve their differences through violence. Another option is to enable the secession of a particular ethnic group. Secession is rare and not largely supported by the international community, but it has happened.6 Examples include the 2011 referendum for the independence of south Sudan, the independence of East Timor from Indonesia, and the dissolution of larger composite states into their component parts, as happened in Yugoslavia, the Soviet Union, and Czechoslovakia. Unless protections are put in place, however, secession does not guarantee an end to conflict. Secession can simply replace an internal border that keeps groups apart with an international one, without resolving the underlying grievances and thereby risking the evolution of an intrastate conflict into an interstate one, as in the cases of Ethiopia and Eritrea, and Sudan and the newly created Republic of South Sudan. Secession often leads to members of the minority group being left behind in the original state while members of the majority group are subsumed, as minorities, under the breakaway state, as was the case for Serbs living in the Krajina region 5. An often-cited example is Robert D. Kaplan, Balkan Ghosts: A Journey through History (New York: Vintage Books, 1994). For a more detailed discussion of “ancient hatreds,” see Stuart J. Kaufman, Modern Hatreds: The Symbolic Politics of Ethnic War (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2001), 3–5. 6. Chaim Kaufmann, “Possible and Impossible Solutions to Ethnic Civil Wars,” International Security 20, no. 4 (1996): 136–175.

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of Croatia and in Kosovo. This provides constant fodder for conflict between the groups, even if an international border separates them. It may prove difficult to convince minority populations to move their lives from one area of a country to another, even if this means remaining with their group. Separating groups based on their claimed identity certainly poses logistical challenges and raises moral questions about what to do with those who do not move or who are forced to move. Another possible solution suggests that negotiated settlements can provide clear measures that explicitly protect the threatened group(s). Commonly this entails offering some form of autonomy, minority protection, and/or a minority veto to protect the minority group. In Papua New Guinea, autonomy for Bougainville contributed to ending the conflict there. In other cases, autonomy has not been explicitly granted through negotiation but through recognition of areas as autonomous by the central government as a way of reducing tensions, though not resolving the underlying crisis, as in Abkhazia in Georgia and TransDniester in the Republic of Moldova. Ruling governments are not always willing to acknowledge the rights of minority groups or fighting factions. In many cases they are portrayed as criminals, insurgents, or terrorists in an effort to discredit the group’s grievances and rule out the possibility of negotiations. Few governments publicly agree to negotiate with criminals or terrorists. The labeling of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) as first narcotraffickers and then terrorists has created stumbling blocks to negotiations. Getting beyond the labels, which are often applied by the ruling power but not necessarily accepted by the opposition group, requires an acceptance of the legitimacy of the group’s demands, or at least the grievances claimed.7 Few governments are willing to accept such groups as legitimate political actors, refusing to negotiate at what is perceived to be the barrel of a gun. In Côte d’Ivoire the international mediators agreed that the rebels had legitimate grievances but refused to grant them political status to negotiate. This presents moral, and sometimes legal, challenges to external actors seeking negotiated solutions. Certainly the same standard is not always applied, with the international community bestowing legitimacy on some rebel groups through encouraging negotiations, while denying political status for others by continuing to support military campaigns to annihilate them. Such a comparison is readily seen in the international support for the Libyan rebel group in 2011, which entailed purchasing oil and providing military goods in contravention to UN sanctions, versus the United States’ support for the Ugandan military in its efforts to eliminate the Lord’s Resistance Army. Often the international community 7. See Michael V. Bhatia, “Fighting Words: Naming Terrorists, Bandits, Rebels and Other Violent Actors,” Third World Quarterly 26, no. 1 (2005): 5–22.

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does not act with one voice, and member states take different stances toward the fighting factions, thereby creating a balance of power among the fighting factions or simply reducing the external pressure for resolution. Neither situation is conducive to negotiations. Even conflicts over political power and economic wealth can seem intractable. These situations are not inherently intractable—political and economic power can be divided—but when such power is perceived in zero-sum terms, rather than as divisible goods, parties to the conflict will resist resolution unless the settlement favors their position. Solutions are possible but difficult to achieve. They require groups to agree to some model for sharing power and wealth.8 If a group is negotiating from a strong position, it is unlikely to be interested in a deal that provides only a fraction of the total, especially if the group believes victory is still possible and that winning entails access to power and wealth without compromise.

Asymmetry A mutually hurting military stalemate—a situation in which parties to the conflict cannot afford to continue a stalemate and must seek an end to active fighting—is widely believed to be the best context for negotiations. The situation forces both sides to the bargaining table because they no longer have the option of continued fighting. Yet mutually hurting stalemates are rare. Civil wars are rarely characterized by symmetry of power between the government and the rebel group(s).9 Instead, asymmetry, reflected in differences in capacity, interests, and resources, is far more common.10 Asymmetry between a rebel group and the government can take a variety of forms: balance of power, level of commitment, scale of organization, and degree of legitimacy.11 There are commonly imbalances in information as well, 8. See Timothy D. Sisk, Power Sharing and International Mediation in Ethnic Conflicts (Washington, DC: U.S. Institute of Peace, 1996). 9. This was especially true during the cold war. In the post–cold war era, with the prevalence of weak states, there is some question as to whether civil wars face more symmetric and conventional conditions. See Stathis N. Kalyvas and Laia Balcells, “International System and Technologies of Rebellion: How the End of the Cold War Shaped Internal Conflict,” American Political Science Review 104, no. 3 (2010): 415–429. It should be noted that the results of this study may vary depending on how civil war is defined and the weight of certain wars. For example, the study includes only those conflicts reaching the one-thousand-battle-deaths threshold, and the wars in the Balkans skew the results toward conventional warfare. 10. Charles King, Ending Civil Wars, Adelphi Paper 308 (London: IISS, 1997); I. William Zartman, ed., The Elusive Peace (Washington, DC: Brookings Institution, 1995). 11. For a discussion of types of asymmetry, see King, 1997.

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contributing to misperception about the other side’s capacity. These asymmetries often result in different levels of engagement in the war by the factions. For example, governments that view rebellions as nuisances rather than threats to the state might pay less attention and contribute fewer resources to the war effort. The Sierra Leone government initially viewed the Revolutionary United Front (RUF) as a localized rebellion that would be easily put down by the military, not as a serious threat to the state. Rebel groups who see war as the only way to achieve their goals, especially ideological victory, might be far more committed to the fight than the government, despite lacking sufficient resources to wage large-scale war. The persistence of Sendero Luminoso in Peru and the Muslim insurgency in Thailand attests to the willingness of factions to continue fighting, albeit often at lower levels of intensity, despite overwhelming odds. Given the different types of asymmetry and the difficulty in measuring factors such as commitment and legitimacy, it remains unclear how to measure the advantages that asymmetries provide to any one faction. This is especially true when trying to make an assessment in real time; hindsight provides both better information and perspective. What is clear, however, is that asymmetry is common, symmetry is not, and asymmetry is widely believed to be less conducive to negotiations. Several problems arise in attempting to pursue negotiations in asymmetric contexts. The side with the advantage may see no reason to negotiate because it has the upper hand and would prefer to seek victory than compromise. The stronger side may make demands the other side cannot or will not meet. Asymmetries can provide advantages to a faction, which reinforce the belief that victory is possible, thereby decreasing a group’s preference for negotiations. The weaker side may still see negotiations as the worse option if it is likely to achieve little through negotiations, and may in fact anticipate severe consequences after an agreement. Since asymmetry fluctuates during a war, the disadvantaged group is likely to await a change in fortune on the battlefield rather than negotiate a costly peace agreement. This is especially true when the weaker side still maintains the capacity to continue the war effort, even if it is at a lower intensity or requires a change in tactics. Despite these challenges, Zartman and Rubin argue that while asymmetry may provide one side with the advantage, it does not necessarily prevent negotiations.12 Negotiations are still possible during conditions of asymmetry if at least one side seeks to negotiate and this side can convince the

12. See I. William Zartman and Jeffrey Z. Rubin, “The Study of Power and the Practice of Negotiation,” in Power and Negotiation, ed. I. William Zartman and Jeffrey Z. Rubin (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2000), chapter 1. The edited volume also provides several case studies of negotiations under asymmetric conditions.

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other side to do so as well. However, this says little about the prospects for the negotiations being successful. Symmetry does occur during civil wars, but this does not ensure that factions will agree to negotiations. A military stalemate between government and rebel forces can produce two sets of conditions: those that favor a continuation of the stalemate and those that favor negotiations. The former situation results when the stalemate does not impose great costs on the rebel faction or the government, while the latter prevails when the costs of maintaining the stalemate rise beyond what the fighting factions can easily afford. The Sudan People’s Liberation Movement/Army (SPLM/A) recognized the impact of such a stalemate on its prospects for war. Although at the time of negotiations the SPLA could have continued fighting, the group recognized the situation was not sustainable. The availability of oil reserves generated significant funding for the government and the rebels faced diminishing options for sustaining their battle. This recognition led the SPLM/A leader, John Garang, to declare the costs of the war were outweighing the costs of peace.13 A distinction must therefore be made between two types of stalemate: a comfortable impasse and a mutually hurting stalemate. A comfortable impasse is insufficient to produce negotiations, while a mutually hurting stalemate is more conducive to negotiations. Nazih Richani developed the concept of a “comfortable impasse” during which fighting factions are capable of sustaining the conflict at little cost to themselves because there is limited active fighting between the factions, though there may be attacks on civilians, and this time enables the parties to consolidate their positions, build local and/or international support, and develop their supply network.14 In other words, factions use the stalemate as a time for building their capacity and hopefully shifting the balance in their favor. Since during a comfortable impasse no faction suffers greatly from the war effort and both factions can afford to continue the stalemate, there are few incentives for negotiation. This is especially true if a faction believes it can gain the advantage through rest and resupply and if the impasse allows the faction to focus on lucrative economic activities, as happened with the rebel forces in Colombia and Côte d’Ivoire. This is not the same as arguing that greed is the sole motivating factor. A faction may do well in war through various economic activities that enable the sustenance of the impasse, which is preferred to compromise, and provide the means to improve the group’s capacity on the battlefield. Under these circumstances, factions are more likely to choose to continue the conflict rather than accept a negotiated settlement.

13. Achim Wennmann, The Political Economy of Peacemaking (London: Routledge, 2011), 26. 14. See Nazih Richani, Systems of Violence: The Political Economy of War and Peace in Colombia (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2002).

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If no side can gain an advantage, however, and the situation shifts to a point where the stalemate is costly to both factions, this could produce a mutually hurting stalemate, which presents better opportunity for negotiations. The arrival at a mutually hurting stalemate has been called a “ripe moment” for negotiations.15 A mutually hurting stalemate indicates a time when victory is impossible for any one side and both sides face difficulty in sustaining the war effort because of the high costs of the war. This situation is more conducive to negotiations: factions have a greater incentive to stop fighting because they can no longer absorb the costs of the conflict. However, a mutually hurting stalemate does not guarantee successful negotiations and an end to the war. It only provides the opportunity for negotiations, and as such is a necessary but insufficient condition for ending civil war.16 Fighting factions can still use the time of negotiations to rest, regroup, and rearm, and thereby rebuild their capacity to continue fighting and shift the balance once again. The FARC benefited from the large demilitarized zone from 1998–2001. The Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) enjoyed a four-year cease-fire before conflict reignited in 2006. Groups are most likely to use negotiations strategically when they view the potential outcomes of any negotiations as less beneficial than continued warfare, when they have the relationships necessary to access additional resources, and when the costs of reneging on negotiations and peace agreement provisions are minimal.17 Studying stalemates provides two important insights for understanding civil war duration: comfortable impasses appear to be the norm in civil wars, and mutually hurting stalemates are a necessary but insufficient condition for successful negotiations. Thus factions are able to ride out comfortable impasses and can survive negotiations during mutually hurting stalemates provided they are able to rebuild their military strength. This analysis also highlights the factors that contribute to the capacity and incentives of rebel groups to continue fighting—low costs of comfortable impasses—as well as pointing 15. See Zartman, 1995, which builds on his earlier works: Ripe for Resolution (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1985) and “The Unfinished Agenda: Negotiating Internal Conflicts,” in Stopping the Killing, ed. Roy Licklider (New York: New York University Press, 1993), chapter 1. Also see Stephen John Stedman, Peacemaking in Civil War: International Mediation in Zimbabwe, 1974–1980 (Boulder: Lynne Rienner, 1991); Jeffrey Z. Rubin, “The Timing of Ripeness and the Ripeness of Timing,” in Timing the De-Escalation of International Conflicts, ed. Louis Kriesberg and Stuart J. Thorson (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 1991), 237–246. 16. Zartman acknowledges this point in “The Timing of Peace Initiatives: Hurting Stalemates and Ripe Moments,” Global Review of Ethnopolitics 1, no. 1 (September 2001): 8–18. 17. Toft argues that the principle of “mutual benefit, mutual harm” must underlie negotiations, whereby parties benefit from committing to the peace process and incur guaranteed punishment if they defect. Monica Duffy Toft, Securing the Peace: The Durable Settlement of Civil Wars (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2010).

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out key factors that could contribute to a preference for negotiations—raising the costs of war and reducing the group’s ability to rebuild military capacity during negotiations. What is still needed is a better understanding of which conditions produce comfortable impasses versus mutually hurting stalemates, how rebel groups are able to sustain military stalemates, how rebel groups rebuild their capacity, and how fighting parties perceive the power of their opponents. In addition, it is important to point out that whether a mutually hurting stalemate or a comfortable impasse exists is largely dependent on the perceptions of the fighting factions.18 The factions may not view the situation in the same way. Poor information about an opponent’s capability is common during war, making informed judgments about the prospects of victory difficult. Misperceptions about an opponent’s capacity can lead to miscalculations that result in poor decision making. These mistaken choices appear clearly only in hindsight. Estimates of strength, capacity, and willingness to fight are extremely difficult to make under the best conditions, and are perhaps impossible during times of war. This can lead factions to opt for war when they should choose to negotiate or choose to enter into negotiations when they are near victory.

Economic Dimensions Much of the early work on civil war duration focused on military and political factors, and economic factors were not analyzed in detail except to determine whether a faction could afford to fight a conflict or to count the costs of war. Even then, it was often assumed that the war was affordable and the cost was a consequence of war rather than a determinant. In the late 1990s, attention shifted from a focus on the political and military aspects of civil wars to the relationship between economics and civil wars, producing numerous studies on the economic causes of war, the role of natural resources, war economies, and the economic agendas of actors during wartime.19 While this research pulled the economic dimension into the equation, the pendulum often swung too far to the economic side, leading to a focus on economic explanations to the exclusion

18. Matthew Preston, “Stalemate and the Termination of Civil War: Rhodesia Reassessed,” Journal of Peace Research 41, no. 1 (2004): 66. 19. For good reviews of the literature, see Macartan Humphreys, “Economics and Violent Conflict,” working paper, Harvard University, February 2003; David M. Malone and Heiko Nitzschke, “Economic Agendas in Civil Wars,” discussion paper 2005/07, UNU-WIDER, 2005; Michael L. Ross, “What Do We Know about Natural Resources and Civil War?” Journal of Peace Research 41, no. 3 (2004): 337–356.

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of military, political, and social factors, producing the greed versus grievance debate.20 This debate pitted economic explanations against political ones. The political economy of war became a cottage industry. While the literature is too large to cover in detail here, it is worth mentioning some of the key themes. Since the early 2000s the debate has waned to some extent as research has indicated the need to understand the complexity of civil war dynamics and the intricate relationship between the motivating factors of both greed and grievance. War can be economically profitable to groups engaged in hostilities, thereby contributing to the perpetuation of conflict.21 In such cases the economic gains made during war can outweigh, or at least mitigate, the costs of fighting the war and therefore enable a continuation of the conflict. There are a number of explanations for this situation. First, goods available during wartime may not be available to rebel factions during peacetime. These goods may include food, money, material goods such as clothes and radios, and jobs. Combatants may face limited options for securing these goods through legitimate means; violence may be the best or only means of accessing them. Second, at least some members of rebel factions profit from wartime activities and want to protect their wealth. Jonas Savimbi, leader of the Angolan rebel group UNITA, reportedly maintained various business ties and bank accounts overseas.22 These individuals can serve as spoilers to peace processes that threaten their business ventures. Third, the circumstances of war often offer new economic opportunities and can lead to the generation of new economic systems (e.g., sales of arms, looted goods, and natural resources; patronage systems).23 These systems create incentives for continued conflict, especially when conflict resolution would require the termination of these activities and the forfeiture of the profits from related economic endeavors. Contrary to the belief that all civil wars are costly and therefore it is irrational to pursue them, evidence suggests that many wars are not extremely costly for

20. See Mats Berdal and David Malone, eds., Greed and Grievance: Economic Agendas in Civil Wars (Boulder: Lynne Rienner, 2000); Karen Ballentine and Jake Sherman, eds., The Political Economy of Armed Conflict: Beyond Greed and Grievance (Boulder: Lynne Rienner, 2003); Paul Collier and Anke Hoeffler, “Greed and Grievance in Civil War,” World Bank Policy research working paper 2355 (Washington, DC: World Bank, 2001). 21. See Tony Addison, Philippe Le Billon, and S. Mansoob Murshed, “On the Economic Motivation for Conflict in Africa,” paper presented at the Annual Bank Conference on Development Economics, Paris, June 2000; Paul Collier, “Doing Well Out of War: An Economic Perspective,” in Berdal and Malone, Greed and Grievance, 2000, 91–111; David Keen, The Economic Functions of Violence in Civil Wars, Adelphi Paper 320 (Oxford: Oxford University Press for the International Institute for Strategic Studies, 1998). 22. Wennmann, 2011, 106. 23. David Keen’s work on economic functions of violence (1998) and William Reno’s work on warlords and shadow states provide detailed discussions of economic systems of war. Reno, Warlord Politics and African States (Boulder: Lynne Rienner, 1998).

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the fighting factions but rather for the civilian population. Furthermore, there are spoils of war that can outweigh (though perhaps not permanently) the costs of fighting. This does not mean that wars make everyone rich; this is rarely the case in fact, especially for the foot soldiers fighting on the front lines. It is usually only a handful of leaders or entrepreneurs who make money in war. However, the standard of “rich” is relative when many civil wars are fought in extremely impoverished countries. The prospects of looting local villages or earning a few hundred dollars as a mercenary—the commonly heard rate in West Africa in the 1990s and early 2000s—become extremely attractive options when the alternative is unemployment and hunger. In addition, many young men and women join fighting factions because membership offers a way out of poverty and the prospect of gaining prestige and power in what is often a powerless society. This can be seen in the ranks adopted by rebels, consisting of many more generals than most armies. The Sierra Leone rebels scrawled their ranks on wooden doors of dilapidated buildings in the countryside to indicate not just an individual’s “office” but also his stature. To outsiders these may seem like frivolous reasons, but in a society where only a few have power and prestige, and those who do also have wealth, decision-making power, and security, these are high-value items. The legacy of war economies introduces another obstacle to war termination.24 War economies include a range of established systems for barter, trade, and exchange of necessary and desirable goods. Some of these black (or gray) markets are transnational and include regional and international linkages to outside markets. The diamond trade in Angola and Sierra Leone provides good examples. Traders from the neighboring Democratic Republic of Congo would purchase diamonds from Angolan rebels, which would then be exported through the DRC, Rwanda, and Uganda, and sold in Belgium.25 Trade can also be more local and based on limited economic opportunities during wartime. Small-scale cross-border trade was common in Sierra Leone and Côte d’Ivoire. Depending on the duration of the conflict, economies of war can develop into the primary opportunity for obtaining livelihoods in communities. Ending a conflict often entails the dismantling of these war economies in favor of a return to a normalized legal market system. Those who benefit from controlling the war economy are unlikely to readily surrender access to this market in exchange for the potential of a regulated market. Often these markets are not explicitly addressed in peace agreements or in postconflict interventions, enabling these informal

24. Heiko Nitzchke and Kaysie Studdard, “The Legacies of War Economies: Challenges and Options for Peacemaking and Peacebuilding,” International Peacekeeping 12, no. 2 (2005): 222–239. 25. Michael Pugh and Neil Cooper, War Economies in a Regional Context: Challenges of Transformation (Boulder: Lynne Rienner, 2004), 26.

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markets to flourish in the instability of postwar settlements. The maintenance of these markets can provide the necessary resources for rebel groups, or other spoilers to the peace process, to return to war if the peace process falters, if they lose elections, or if their economic positions are threatened. Studies have revealed numerous methods for financing conflicts.26 Although “blood diamonds” remain the most recognized source of conflict finance, other sources range from predation and bank robberies to taxation and regular donations. The methods of finance vary widely in terms of their level of sophistication, the level of violence used to turn a profit, and the legality of the method. The role of natural resources in financing conflicts has received particular attention, especially in the cases of Sierra Leone and Liberia (diamonds), Angola and Nigeria (oil), the Democratic Republic of Congo (coltan), Burma (gems), Côte d’Ivoire (cocoa), and Afghanistan and Colombia (illicit drugs). These studies have ranged from a focus on specific goods, such as diamonds, to a broader consideration of types of resources (i.e., lootable or not) and the physical location of resources. It is increasingly clear that rebel groups have used a range of means to finance their wars. What is less clear is why groups choose certain means, how they are able to establish reliable systems of legal and illegal transactions, and how much they gain from their efforts. Estimates of profits remain suspect, though whether they are too high or too low is hard to judge. This uncertainty largely results from the notorious difficulties involved in detailing illicit activities and documenting actions during war. Despite the contributions studies of economic factors have made to the understanding of civil wars, they have left certain questions unanswered. Studies have largely ignored how groups gain access to economic goods, how they harvest them or utilize them to their benefit, and how having economic goods leads to enhanced military capacity.27 The omission of these considerations calls into question two important underlying assumptions in these studies: that a group can easily gain access to existing economic resources and that economic wealth equals military power—in other words, that economic resources are necessarily and easily fungible into military resources. Current studies provide little explanation for whether this is the case, how groups exchange one good for another, and what factors influence group capacity for exchange. While statistical studies

26. For an overview of various methods of financing, see Achim Wennmann, “Conflict Financing and the Recurrence of Intra-State Conflict: Implications for Peacebuilding,” paper presented at the International Studies Association conference in Chicago, 2007, 6. 27. Researchers have started to look at how natural resources vary in what they provide to rebel groups in terms of income, capacity, and incentive to continue fighting. See Michael L. Ross, “Oil, Drugs, and Diamonds: The Varying Roles of Natural Resources in Civil War,” in Ballentine and Sherman, Political Economy of Armed Conflict, 2003, 47–70.

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suggest that a relationship exists between the presence of economic goods and the predisposition to civil war and wars of long duration, this relationship varies across studies, depending on the civil wars included and the proxy indicators used in the analysis. The role of natural resources in civil war initiation and duration remains underspecified.28 Many explanations offer reasons for this relationship, and there is little evidence to indicate which, if any, of these explanations is accurate, or whether the explanations for initiation and duration depend on various other factors.29 There remains a strong presumption that economic factors are important to decisions to initiate civil wars, and that they contribute to perpetuation, but there is little agreement among scholars on how and why this is the case.30

Leaders and Spoilers Studies of civil wars tend to take three approaches to understanding rebel groups, focusing on either the rebel group as a black box, the group’s leadership, or the internal dynamics of a group. The first approach views rebel groups as though they are unitary actors, or as maintaining one preference, rather than as groups of individuals with competing preferences. These studies, largely quantitative, tend to focus on identifying factors that contribute to conflict onset, conflict termination, group behavior, and preferences. The second approach emphasizes the role of leadership, focusing on the decision makers rather than the rest of the group members. The third approach emphasizes the importance of the internal dynamics of groups, such as the use of violence in conflict and the mechanisms of mobilization.31 Two sets of studies are important to discuss here: those that focus on the roles of faction leaders in conflict perpetuation and termination, and those that highlight the unitary actor assumption and challenge it with an assessment of the dynamics of groups and the splits that often occur during negotiations.

28. Malone and Nitzschke, 2005, 4–5; Ross, 2004, 337. 29. S. Mansoob Murshed and Mohammad Sulfan Tadjoeddin, “Reappraising the Greed and Grievance Explanations for Violent Internal Conflict,” MICROCON research working paper 2, Institute of Development Studies, Sussex University, Brighton, September 2007. The authors argue that there is little agreement on the role of greed versus grievance, and instead argue that both greed and grievance factors are necessary but insufficient explanatory factors, and that a greater emphasis should be placed on the social contract between the government and society. 30. Ross, 2004, 338. 31. See, for example, Stathis N. Kalyvas, The Logic of Violence in Civil War (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003); Jeremy Weinstein, Inside Rebellion: The Politics of Insurgent Violence (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007).

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Leaders of rebel groups face a number of incentives for continuing a war, even when victory appears out of reach.32 A faction leader’s position of power often depends on one of two conditions: winning the war or continuing the fight. Losing the war clearly entails the group losing power, but negotiations pose risks as well. The decision to enter into negotiations can place a leader at risk of being deposed internally by those opposed to negotiations. Negotiations can signify the leader’s weakness to group members, which can contribute to a loss of legitimacy within the group and the forced removal from power of a leader by other group members or the splintering of the group into factions. Negotiations may offer the possibility of elections, but elections provide no guarantee of winning and therefore remain a risky option to leaders with limited popular support. In Angola, the rebel leader, Jonas Savimbi, reneged on the peace agreement when he failed to win the election. If electoral victory is impossible, then continuing the war is one way a leader can ensure he remains in power.33 Faction leaders often achieve their positions of power through their ability to ensure their combatants receive benefits through fighting. These benefits can include salaries, food, and security. Access to such benefits creates an incentive for individuals to join the rebel group and to remain with it. If the leader cannot continue to provide such benefits, either through direct provision or by allowing combatants to loot for their payment, as Charles Taylor did by sending forces to western Côte d’Ivoire, then the leader risks defection by his combatants and supporters. This suggests that maintaining the ranks requires continuing the war, unless the leader can ensure a negotiated settlement enables the continued provision of goods to key supporters and the maintenance of the leader’s power base. The rhetoric used by a leader to rally the troops and maintain and build popular support can in fact reduce the options available to the leader in terms of conflict resolution. When such rhetoric defines a set of goals that are achievable only by winning the war, this entrenches the leader in a position of continued fighting because to back down in such a situation would reveal weakness and put the leader at risk of an internal coup.34 The leader of the LTTE, Vellupillai Prabhakaran, could not retract his demands for a Tamil homeland after basing the recruitment and sacrifice of LTTE soldiers on such a goal. Trapped in

32. See King, 1997, 30–35. 33. See Michael E. Brown, “The Causes of Internal Conflict: An Overview,” in Nationalism and Ethnic Conflict, ed. Michael E. Brown (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1997), 3–25; Stuart Kaufman, “Spiraling to Ethnic War,” International Security 21, no. 2 (1996): 108–138. 34. See Jack Snyder and Karen Ballentine, “Nationalism and the Marketplace of Ideas,” International Security 21, no. 2 (1996): 5–40; Renee de Nevers, “Democratization and Ethnic Conflict,” in Ethnic Conflict and International Security, ed. Michael E. Brown (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1993), 61–78.

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war rhetoric, the leader often sits in a position of escalating the conflict toward victory rather than ending it in compromise. This heightening of war rhetoric leads to further community polarization and restricts negotiating options.35 War rhetoric places restrictions on a leader’s capacity to act given the networks the leader has created around him and the platform on which the war is being fought. When wars are defined in zero-sum terms, negotiating with the enemy can be seen as treason. Finally, leaders who believe they can win are unlikely to seek a negotiated compromise. Instead they are likely to pursue the conflict to the end in the belief that they will be successful. This belief may be based on a poor calculation of the group’s capacity or miscalculation of the strength of the enemy. Or it may be based on a lack of information about the enemy, common to situations of war. The belief that victory is possible reinforces the incentive to continue fighting, especially if this belief is reinforced by economic gains and the military capacity to continue the war.36 The result is a rational preference for war over negotiations. Conflicts and conflict termination, however, rarely depend on a single leader. Viewing rebel groups as unitary actors or as dependent solely on the actions or fate of a single leader fails to acknowledge the diversity within rebel groups as well as the role of other individuals in leading the group or units within the larger group.37 There is almost always another commander ready to take the place of a leader who dies or a leader who is perceived as selling out the movement during peace negotiations. There are always spoilers—those who believe they will gain more from war than peace—who will act to undermine negotiations and prevent the implementation of a peace agreement in order to protect their positions of power. Augustine Gbao, a commander in the RUF rebel group, is widely believed to have been the mastermind behind the rebels taking several hundred UN peacekeepers hostage in 2000 to prevent the further disarmament of the rebels. These spoilers are usually high-ranking members of the rebel group who 35. See Edward Azar, The Management of Protracted Social Conflict (Aldershot: Gower, 1990); Ronald J. Fisher, The Social Psychology of Intergroup and International Conflict Resolution (New York: Springer-Verlag, 1990); Caroline A. Hartzell, “Explaining the Stability of Negotiated Settlements to Intrastate Wars,” Journal of Conflict Resolution 43, no. 1 (1999): 3–22; Herbert C. Kelman, “SocialPsychological Dimensions of International Conflict,” in Peacemaking in International Conflict: Methods and Techniques, ed. I. William Zartman and J. Lewis Rasmussen (Washington, DC: U.S. Institute of Peace, 1997), 191–238. 36. For a discussion of misperceptions in war, see James D. Fearon, “Rationalist Explanations for War,” International Organization 49, no. 3 (1995): 379–414; Robert Jervis, “Hypotheses on Misperception,” World Politics 20 (April 1968): 454–479; Jack Levy, “Misperception and the Causes of War: Theoretical Linkages and Analytical Problems,” World Politics 36, no. 1 (1983): 76–99. 37. See Wendy Pearlman, “Spoiling Inside and Out: Internal Political Contestation and the Middle East Peace Process,” International Security 33, no. 3 (2008/2009): 79–109.

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have the most to lose from settlement.38 Understanding these dynamics, and the preferences of different subgroups within the rebel group, aids in identifying the pressures on leaders to avoid negotiations and the incentives of group members to defect from peace processes. Parties to a conflict may indeed desire an end to the war through negotiated settlement but fail to reach a settlement that is in their favor. In such cases, the continuation of the war may offer greater opportunities and benefits than agreeing to an unfavorable peace agreement. While some may quickly point to the role of greedy leaders or greedy spoilers, greed may not be the only factor influencing decision making in this case.39 Some leaders may want more from a peace deal, such as continued access to natural resource exploitation or specific highlevel posts in a power-sharing government. These leaders seek to create the best opportunity structure in the postwar context. It is this opportunity structure that most influences the course of negotiations, and it must favor peace in order for leaders to negotiate an end to the conflict.40 Other concerns that affect a leader’s willingness to negotiate include preservation of perceived social status, the presence of economic opportunities outside of war, and the possibility of elections displacing a faction from politics. If peace agreements fail to provide some guarantee of a good life after war, factions may opt to renew the war as a means of maintaining a status quo that is better than the postpeace options. Alternatively, new factions that arise after the war and are unhappy with the postconflict situation may find new incentives for participating in a return to war.41 These various explanations highlight the role of the faction leader in perpetuating conflict for self-aggrandizement as well as survival. They also point to the importance of understanding the nature of rebel groups, avoiding the fallacy of the unitary actor assumption, and identifying the capacity of splintering factions to threaten negotiations. While pointing out key concerns during negotiations, these explanations fail to address why leaders choose to negotiate, and why splintering factions think they will have a better chance on the battlefield than at the negotiating table. Answering these questions requires understanding what leaders bring to the rebel group, what kind of support network they build, and how easily transferable this network is to a new faction leader. It also requires

38. See Stephen John Stedman, “Spoiler Problems in Peace Processes,” International Security 22, no. 2 (1997): 5–23; King, 1997, 30–31. 39. Monica Heupel, “Shadow Trade War Economies and Their Challenge to Peacebuilding,” Journal of International Relations and Development 9 (2006): 140–169. 40. Kelly M. Greenhill and Solomon Major, “The Perils of Profiling: Civil War Spoilers and the Collapse of Intrastate Peace Accords,” International Security 31, no. 3 (2006/2007): 7–40. 41. Barbara F. Walter, “Does Conflict Beget Conflict? Explaining Recurring Civil War,” Journal of Peace Research 41, no. 3 (2004): 371–388.

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an understanding of the capacity and incentives of leaders to engage in negotiations, the reasons why part of a group participates in negotiations while the other pursues war, and how the faction preferring war is able to sustain its war effort. What a study of negotiations reveals is that rebel group leaders must be able to command their troops not only during wartime but also during negotiations. This often requires the leader to bargain with other high-ranking members of the group to gain agreement on a settlement, or even on entering negotiations.42 Leaders must also possess the capacity to convince their foot soldiers to implement peace agreements and disarm. This process of internal negotiation can lead to splits in the group with the defection of high-ranking members and other hard-liners, the rise of spoilers with significant enough support to make implementation of a peace agreement difficult, or the rejection of the peace process by the leaders involved in the negotiations.43 In Darfur, a faction of the Justice and Equality Movement (JEM) refused to sign the 2004 cease-fire and instead escalated the conflict.44 The Liberian rebels (LURD) splintered over the strategy for fighting the war, leading to the emergence of a second rebel group (MODEL). This suggests that the more unified the group and the more powerful and capable the leader, the easier it will be to negotiate and implement a peace agreement. In situations where these conditions do not exist, negotiations become far more difficult, contributing to the prolongation of the war.

Security Dilemmas and Credible Commitments Another difficulty in terminating civil wars is that fighting factions face a security dilemma in trying to commit to the implementation of a peace agreement. A security dilemma, a concept drawn from the study of interstate conflict, arises from both a lack of trust between parties and concerns about cheating.45 The concept is often used in international relations to describe the difficulty in achieving cooperation among international actors. In the context of civil war termination, the

42. Stedman, 1991, 16, 27; Robert D. Putnam, “Diplomacy and Domestic Politics: The Logic of Two-Level Games,” International Organization 42, no. 3 (1988): 427–460. 43. See Stedman, 1991, 1997. 44. Benjamin R. Maitre, “What Sustains ‘Internal Wars’? The Dynamics of Violent Conflict and State Weakness in Sudan,” Third World Quarterly 30, no. 1 (2009): 58. 45. See James D. Fearon, “Commitment Problems and the Spread of Ethnic Conflict,” in The International Spread of Ethnic Conflict: Fear, Diffusion and Escalation, ed. David Lake and Donald Rothchild (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1998), 107–126; Jack Snyder and Robert Jervis, “Civil War and the Security Dilemma,” in Civil Wars, Insecurity, and Intervention, ed. Barbara F. Walter and Jack Snyder (New York: Columbia University Press, 1999), 15–38; Barbara F. Walter, “The Critical Barrier to Civil War Settlement,” International Organization 51 (Summer 1997): 335–364.

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security dilemma represents a situation in which any move by one party to decrease hostilities may be seen as an opportunity by the opposing party to take advantage of the situation to its benefit and to the disadvantage of the initiating party. This produces a situation in which neither side is willing to initiate such a move because it fears the negative consequences. In this situation, even if warring factions can agree on a peace agreement, they cannot commit to implementing it without some form of external guarantee or institutional constraint that prevents one side from taking advantage of the other side during times of vulnerability. This is especially true during the disarmament process when the factions who are giving up their weapons are particularly vulnerable.46 Under these circumstances, both sides will prefer war to peace if there is no guarantee of security once they lay down their arms. Two common solutions for abating the security dilemma in civil wars and convincing the parties to commit to a peace agreement are credible security guarantees from a third party, such as a UN peacekeeping mission, and domestic institutional guarantees, such as power-sharing arrangement and protections for minorities through veto powers. According to the credible security guarantee argument, the inability of the parties to guarantee their security during the implementation of the peace agreement and the fear of the other side cheating prevent implementation unless an external third party can provide the necessary security guarantees to make the parties feel secure enough to implement the agreement.47 In order for these security guarantees to be effective, however, they must be “credible,” which means the third party must demonstrate its commitment to enforcing the provisions of the peace agreement. “Material support or manpower that creates a balance-of-power and thus encourages the combatants to begin negotiations” is also often necessary from the third-party intervener.48 This suggests a need for a mutually hurting stalemate to occur first in order to make negotiations possible. Ultimately the argument rests on the fact that an external military force must provide a convincing threat of punishment for defection from a peace agreement for parties to feel secure in implementing the agreement. A second solution to the security dilemma is the creation of domestic institutional arrangements that reduce insecurities by guaranteeing political access and group protection.49 This argument suggests that it is

46. See Mats Berdal, Disarmament and Demobilisation after Civil Wars, Adelphi Paper 303 (Oxford: Oxford University Press for the International Institute for Strategic Studies, 1996). 47. See Barbara F. Walter, “The Resolution of Civil Wars: Why Negotiations Fail” (PhD diss., University of Chicago, 1994); Walter, 1997. 48. Walter, 1994, 4. 49. Hartzell, 1999; Caroline Hartzell, Matthew Hoddie, and Donald Rothchild, “Stabilizing the Peace after Civil War: An Investigation of Some Key Variables,” International Organization 55, no. 1 (2001): 183–208.

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not external parties that can guarantee peace but rather domestic institutional arrangements. The key elements of effective domestic security guarantees include power-sharing arrangements, the protection of political rights, the elimination of discriminatory policies, and periodic opportunities to vote ineffective leaders out of power.50 Both of these solutions—the provision of either internal or external security guarantees—presume factions are interested in negotiating an end to the war. The focus then becomes how to address the insecurities that negotiations and the implementation of peace agreements present. The focus on the existence of a security dilemma during negotiations and the implementation of peace agreements is useful in pointing out a particularly challenging obstacle to peace agreement implementation. Mistrust and fear are likely to be high between warring parties. However, while it is important to acknowledge the potential for such a dynamic, the presumption that parties would commit to peace agreements save for their concerns over security suggests that this framework applies to a limited number of cases. There are many instances in which such conditions do not apply. First, there may be no security dilemma. There are two main reasons a group will approach the bargaining table other than wanting to end the war: the group cannot continue fighting because the status quo is too difficult to sustain and thus it is seeking a better alternative, or the group is seeking a period of respite during which it can rest and rearm and then return to the battlefield. In the former case, the group’s decision to participate or defect will depend on the alternative offered, as well as the group’s ability to return to the battlefield, which rests on its capacity to acquire the necessary economic and military goods to do so. In the latter case, successful negotiations are unlikely because the group has no intention to stop fighting. Neither results from concerns about security. Second, the presence of a security dilemma rests on the assumption that both sides can continue fighting as before and that breaking peace agreements is easy to accomplish. This is not necessarily the case. If a group seeks negotiations out of desperation, it is unlikely that the group possesses the capability to return easily to war. This capability may return over time if the group is able to gain access to sources of resupply. However, this possibility depends on the strength of the group’s supply network and the group’s ability to access needed resources and rebuild its capacity, not on the existence of a security dilemma. Third, this analysis simplifies the situation to a problem of reliability— whether the two sides can trust each other—with this information being provided by either an external guarantor or a domestic institution. It is therefore 50. T. David Mason and Patrick J. Fett, “How Civil Wars End: A Rational Choice Approach,” Journal of Conflict Resolution 40, no. 4 (1996): 546–568; Hartzell, 1999.

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applicable only in cases where the fighting factions seek a solution and can agree on the solution but fear implementing it. This situation of mutual desire and agreement is uncommon in civil wars. For this to happen, both sides must reach the point at which they are no longer able to continue the war and they can agree on a solution. If both sides concur on the solution and are committed to implementing it, one wonders whether an external guarantor is in fact necessary, or whether the parties could not find a staged process with checks and balances to ensure safety for all sides. The research on security dilemmas is important, but in its current formulation has limited application. In other words, security dilemmas are relevant only when both parties want peace and agree on the settlement terms, but neither side trusts the other enough to commit. This explanation assumes a security dilemma exists, without indicating how common this situation arises during negotiations and the implementation of peace agreements. There is insufficient evidence to suggest that the security dilemma is the norm in civil war negotiations and that all that is needed is reassurance for civil wars to end.51 Furthermore, the narrow focus on reliability denies the common presence of multiple motives for returning to war, including a desire to continue fighting for victory, the role of economic incentives, and the content of peace agreements themselves.

External Support Given the large number of civil wars and numerous third-party interventions, many scholars have tried to determine the effectiveness of third-party interventions in ending civil wars and whether external intervention helps or hinders conflict termination efforts. Stedman correctly argues that it is “much too simple to assume that combatants in civil wars are putty in the hands of larger [external] actors.”52 However, to completely dismiss the role of external actors would be equally simplistic. International actors play a number of roles in internal conflicts ranging from mediation at one end of the spectrum to military intervention at the other. External interventions can take a variety of forms. They may be diplomatic, military, or economic in nature, or some combination of the three strategies. They can be implemented by one or multiple parties. They may target a specific group or all factions engaged in the conflict. Interventions include diaspora support for a rebel group, as with the LTTE in Sri Lanka; UN sanctions on certain natural resources, such as diamonds out of Sierra Leone; and the hiring of 51. Toft, 2010, 31. 52. Stedman, 1991, 10.

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mercenaries, which countries such as Côte d’Ivoire and the Democratic Republic of Congo have done to improve their military capacity. Most important, interventions are not necessarily neutral or aimed at negotiating a solution to a war. On average, interventions prolong rather than end civil wars.53 The determining factor appears to be the strategy chosen by the intervening party. Neutral interventions, aimed at negotiating a political settlement, are most likely to extend conflicts because they freeze fighting and offer the rebel faction legitimacy, time to rest, and the opportunity to rearm. UN interventions are often considered neutral missions to keep parties apart in order to provide time for the development of political solutions. However, such interventions may actually reduce the incentives for resolution, as can be seen in the Western Sahara and Cyprus, where UN missions in place for over a decade have created de facto twostate entities. Biased interventions that support one side of the conflict are more likely to end conflicts by providing resources to shift the balance of power in favor of the preferred faction.54 Furthermore, victory is never guaranteed. Biased interventions in support of one faction often provoke counterinterventions supporting the opposing faction. Thus, external support for both fighting factions tends to lead to stalemate and the prolongation of the conflict rather than resolution. Counterintervention can also lead to the escalation of the conflict due to the influx of resources from patrons unwilling to see their side lose. Overall, interventions, regardless of type, tend to prolong rather than resolve conflicts because they decrease the active fighting, allowing the factions to rest, rearm, and regroup, and they increase the resources available to the fighting factions to return to war. This is true of interventions aimed at seeing one side triumph over the other as well as “neutral” interventions that seek political solutions to end the civil war. Two conditions enable interventions to contribute to ending civil wars: if they provide overwhelming advantage to one side to win the war, or if they make the conflict so costly for all involved as to force the fighting factions to choose negotiations over continued fighting. To date, relatively few external patrons have chosen to provide such overwhelming support to enable a

53. See Ibrahim A. Elbadawi and Nicholas Sambanis, “External Interventions and the Duration of Civil Wars,” World Bank working paper (Washington, DC: World Bank, 18–19 March 2000); Patrick M. Regan, “Conditions of Successful Third-Party Intervention in Intrastate Conflicts,” Journal of Conflict Resolution 40, no. 2 (1996): 336–359; Patrick M. Regan, “Third Party Interventions and the Duration of Intrastate Conflicts,” Journal of Conflict Resolution 46, no. 1 (2002): 55–73. Regan reconfirmed his findings in 2010, “Interventions into Civil Wars: A Retrospective Study with Prospective Ideas,” Civil Wars 12, no. 4 (2010): 461, arguing that external intervention contributes to both longer and more violent civil wars (467). Paul Pillar is one scholar who argues the opposite. See Pillar, Negotiating Peace: War Termination as a Bargaining Process (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1983). 54. Regan, 2002.

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faction to win and there is no consensus on how best to achieve the conditions of a mutually hurting stalemate or how to maintain this stalemate long enough to hold negotiations and implement a peace agreement. An understanding of the role of external actors should encompass not only those who choose to intervene actively in a country’s civil war but also other external dimensions of conflicts. External safe havens provide important spaces for rebel groups to mobilize, access resources, and organize attacks against their home government. The location of these safe havens across international borders means they sit outside the reach of the embattled government, thereby removing the rebel group from the scope of government coercion and reducing the costs of conflict.55 However, this occurs only in situations where safe haven either is freely given by the host government (which presumably has its own coercive capacity to use on the rebel group) or lies in border areas that are not controlled by the host state. In either case, simply sitting across the border does not provide complete security since embattled governments have made forays into neighboring countries to chase down rebel groups. This has happened with Uganda entering Sudan after the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA), Liberia shelling the southeastern border of Guinea where LURD maintained a rear base, and Rwanda conducting operations in eastern Congo. External involvement, irrespective of what form it takes, alters the dynamics of a civil war by changing the resources available to the warring factions. In most cases of civil war, all fighting factions receive some form of external support, whether in the form of financial assistance, military arms, or safe haven. One study of armed conflicts between 1946 and 2004 suggests that while overt external support to a warring faction by the supply of foreign troops remained relatively limited, less overt external support has been quite common. In 80 of 111 intrastate conflicts, the warring factions received some form of external support short of the overt supply of foreign troops.56 Support included the facilitation of access to weapons or to the sale of natural resources, the provision of military goods, the granting of safe haven within border regions, and the supply of financial assistance, logistical support, and intelligence. This type of assistance, what might be termed “limited external assistance,” is by nature often secretive, and patrons make efforts to conceal their support.57 Yet such support is often integral to and significant for the capacity of a rebel group to continue fighting a 55. See Idean Salehyan, Rebels without Borders: Transnational Insurgencies in World Politics (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2010). 56. Lotta Harbom and Peter Wallensteen, “Armed Conflict and Its International Dimensions, 1946–2004,” Journal of Peace Research 42, no. 5 (2005): 629. 57. This has also been called “indirect support.” See Kristian Skrede Gleditsch, “Transnational Dimensions of Civil War,” Journal of Peace Research 44, no. 3 (2007): 296.

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civil war. Consequently, identifying these linkages and the sources and extent of such limited external support is essential to understanding the capacity of rebel groups to continue fighting. These various explanations for civil war duration are important for understanding the dynamics of civil wars and the challenges to ending them. Yet they do not sufficiently explain how rebel groups gain the necessary capacity to fight a war or whether they maintain this capacity over the course of the war. It is perhaps both obvious and banal to claim that rebel groups need resources to maintain their capacity to fight and sustain a war, but this capacity is often an underlying assumption in the literature rather than a topic for investigation. There is a common presumption that rebel groups can always continue fighting, despite a lack of concrete evidence to support this. War termination is thus depicted as a choice between war and negotiations, as though both options are equally viable from the standpoint of what a rebel group can choose, and thus the key to a negotiated solution is to make negotiations attractive. While this is certainly an important element of a negotiated solution to civil war, negotiated settlements are inherently compromises on the desired goals of all fighting factions. Therefore, this conceptualization of the situation ignores the possibility that continuing a war is actually a more attractive option if the war effort is sustainable and the benefits of winning the war, or even continuing to fight, outweigh the benefits of what is on offer at the negotiating table. In this book I build on previous research in several ways. I recognize the problem of asymmetry common to civil wars and that the balance of power often shifts over time. I acknowledge the economic incentives that exist for continued warfare, as well as the various economic methods of financing war. I also clearly identify the external dimensions of conflict as key factors in prolonging conflict by providing the fuel, support, and safe haven necessary for rebel groups to maintain their capacity, avoid defeat, and continue fighting. Rebel groups can rarely sustain a war effort through domestic means alone. This is particularly true of groups fighting high-intensity conflicts. The growth of the global economy, advances in technology, and the increased ease with which one can move people, goods, and money across borders have all contributed to providing opportunities for rebel groups to develop networks of supply that rely heavily on external actors. What is important to understanding rebel group capacity is identifying this supply network. What enables a rebel group to sustain its war-fighting capacity and what happens when it cannot continue fighting? There has been limited exploration of the basis of rebel group capacity and whether fighting capacity should be presumed to exist. Likewise there has been little investigation into how rebel group capacity

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may fluctuate over the course of a war and what contributes to such oscillations. These changes are important to the preference of the rebel group to continue fighting. If rebel group capacity is high, especially relative to the government, negotiations may be possible if they offer an exceptional deal to the rebel group, but they are also likely to be far less attractive than the possibility of victory. If rebel capacity is low and the group is suffering high and unsustainable costs from the war, continuing the war may not be a possibility and negotiations become far more attractive under such conditions. The capacity of a rebel group to continue fighting shapes the options available to the group and influences the preference for which option to pursue. Negotiated settlements are most likely when a peace agreement offers an attractive deal (a carrot) and the rebel group has few options to pursue other than to negotiate a settlement to the war. The limited options result from a truncation of the rebel group’s supply network and access to resources necessary for sustaining fighting capacity. Thus war termination requires the “carrot” of the peace agreement and a heavy “stick” that prevents the rebel group from renewing its capacity to fight and returning to the battlefield.

2 RESOURCES, OPTIONS, AND PREFERENCES IN WAR

The Nepal Maoist rebels relied heavily on an internal network of taxation and popular support and the seizure of weapons from government forces, whereas the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) in Sri Lanka developed a transnational financial system through the Tamil diaspora and a “worldwide arms procurement network.”1 These differences in support systems provided options to the LTTE that were unavailable to the Maoists. Many groups start small and are poorly resourced. In Colombia and Aceh rebel groups started wars with only a few dozen men, in Georgia and Sierra Leone it was a few hundred, and in Côte d’Ivoire and Azerbaijan it was less than one thousand.2 Regardless of its size at the beginning of the war, a rebel group must develop some form of support system to access necessary resources in order to sustain its participation. Rebel groups need three main types of resources: military, economic, and political. Military resources include arms and ammunition, communications equipment, training, and manpower. Economic resources consist of financial means to purchase military goods and pay soldiers, opportunities for looting, opportunities for trade and barter, opportunities for agricultural production (often through forced labor of communities), and the profits made through the sale of natural

1. Nicholas Marsh, “Conflict Specific Capital: The Role of Weapons Acquisition in Civil War,” International Studies Perspectives 8 (2007): 64, 67. 2. Nicholas Sambanis, “Using Case Studies to Expand Economic Models of Civil War,” Perspectives on Politics 2, no. 2 (2004): 267. Estimates on Sierra Leone and Côte d’Ivoire are based on author’s research; see chapters 3 and 5. 49

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resources. Political resources are less tangible and quantifiable. They include access to information,3 diplomatic support, safe haven in a neighboring country, and, sometimes, legitimacy. The capacity of a rebel group to access resources varies across time and depends on a group’s ability to establish an organized and sustainable network of support. Access to resources is central to defining the options available to a rebel group for continuing a war. As such it is important to pose explicit questions about resources. What does a rebel group need for war? How does a rebel group access resources? How does access determine the options available to a group? How does access change over time? And how do various changes in access expand or constrict possible options for a group to continue fighting? The central argument of this book is that a rebel group’s options for continuing a war depend on the group’s access to resources, and as this access changes, so too do the available options. The more resources, the more options, and vice versa. These dynamics help explain the conditions under which a rebel group engaged in a civil war would opt to continue the war rather than negotiate a peace. As resources decline, a rebel group faces more-limited options and finds it more difficult to sustain a war. Rebel revenues for the Sri Lankan LTTE declined in 2001 leading to four years of a cease-fire. The Sierra Leone Revolutionary United Front (RUF) entered the Abidjan negotiations in 1995 because of heavy military pressure and rising losses on the battlefield. These points in time—periods of extreme military weakness—offer the best opportunities for ending a war through negotiations. War termination is not guaranteed, however. This may be the best opportunity for negotiations, but a rebel group is also likely to seek to change its options and through access to additional resources renew its option to return to the battlefield, as both the RUF and LTTE did, leading to the renewal of the wars. The elimination of the war option provides the best opportunity for successful negotiations and the implementation of a peace agreement.

Determining Need How much does a rebel group need to continue fighting? The resource needs of rebel groups will vary across contexts. There is no easy way to calculate resource needs, nor is there an agreed-on established prerequisite for a rebel group to be a viable group. In other words, there exists no dollar amount against which one can measure a group’s ability to meet its resource needs or to fight a war. For example, the “insurgents” in southern Thailand have caused great insecurity and a significant 3. “Information” could be considered both a political good and a military good (e.g., intelligence).

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number of deaths since 2005 using roadside bombs and drive-by shootings, even though estimates of their numbers and military arsenal are quite low. By contrast, the militants in the Niger Delta region appear to be well armed with significant firepower purchased with stolen oil, yet while they do on occasion clash with the Nigerian military, they appear more interested in pursuing economic profits and power through oil revenues than in waging a civil war. Many factors shape the resource needs of a rebel group, including the group’s initial resource base, the nature of the group’s opponent, and the goals the group seeks to achieve. Most rebel groups begin as small, poorly resourced groups.4 Some never develop further and simply maintain a small presence and impose limited costs on the population and pose a limited threat to the state, such as the Basque separatist group ETA in Spain, while others simply fail in their coup attempts and fade away. Some groups develop into economic actors with their own militias, largely aimed at guarding their territory and income rather than trying to depose the government. Localized militias are common in Burma (e.g., United Wa State Army), Nigeria (e.g., Oodua People’s Congress, Bakassi Boys), and the Democratic Republic of Congo (e.g., Mai Mai), and in many other countries. Some groups develop sufficient military capacity and access to economic resources to challenge the state and direct their efforts toward achieving this goal. These are the groups that often surface in international news reports, the groups that make it into the conflict databases. These are commonly referred to as rebel groups and insurgents, and include a range of by now well-known acronyms such as the LTTE, FARC, RUF, and SPLA, to name a few.5 The development of military capacity and a substantial economic base could take months or in some cases years. The Forces Nouvelles in Côte d’Ivoire, for example, faced disarray and potential disintegration after the initial rebellion in 2002 until the leadership developed a taxation system in 2004 in the rebel-held territory that produced a reliable source of income. The ability to maintain a military force and sustain economic activities can also decline over time, leading to a reduction in the capacity to continue the war. The choice of economic activities can influence access to resources, with sustainable and nonsustainable practices offering different levels of access over longer or shorter periods of time, respectively. For example, trade in natural resources that are plentiful is likely to be sustainable over several years, whereas accumulating wealth from looting probably is not, especially in areas that have no opportunities for acquiring new goods.

4. Charles King, Ending Civil Wars, Adelphi Paper 308 (London: IISS, 1997), 36; Sambanis, 2004, 267. 5. These acronyms refer to the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) in Sri Lanka; the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC); the Revolutionary United Front (RUF) in Sierra Leone; and the Sudan People’s Liberation Army (SPLA).

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The goals of a group shape its resource needs. A group intent on overthrowing a government and taking control of a country will require higher levels of resources than a group aimed at securing a particular territory or specific resource. The goal of deposing a government is more costly, and resource intensive, than the goal of destabilizing a government through increasing the insecurity of a population (i.e., through roadside bombs or terrorist attacks). Desired goals often influence the tactics and strategies employed by the group. A group planning a coup will require fewer resources than a group planning a liberation war, and these resources will be different from those needed by a group aiming to make an area difficult to govern. Likewise the choice of how to engage the government, and the tactics used by the group, determine the associated costs. A full-scale war with military engagement on the battlefield requires significant resources, manpower, and lines of resupply, whereas hit-and-run attacks and terror tactics (e.g., roadside bombs, improvised explosive devices, and drive-by shootings) require lower levels of inputs, relatively, to conduct and sustain. The strength of the government, its choice of tactics, and its level of engagement also play a role in determining the needs of a rebel group. Governments possess varying capacities to field a military and respond to the threats posed by a rebel group. Some state militaries are well trained and resourced, while others perform a more ceremonial role and are less capable on the battlefield. The Sierra Leone Army, after years of neglect, could not respond quickly or effectively to the 1991 rebel invasion.6 Governments also possess different incentives and levels of interest in responding to a rebel threat. In some cases governments see a rebel group as a direct threat to their survival and respond with greater force. In other cases governments are less concerned about events at the periphery of the country, have numerous priorities to address in governing the country, and simply dedicate less attention and fewer resources to the rebel threat, which may be viewed as simply a localized rebellion, as was the initial perception of the rebel incursion in Sierra Leone. There are few incentives to negotiate with small and relatively weak rebel groups.7 In general, the greater the amount of force brought to bear on a rebel group directly, the more resources the rebel group

6. In the post–cold war era, with the decline in financing and military support by the superpowers, many governments in Africa witnessed a decline in military capacity, bringing about a more symmetrical, albeit nonconventional, match between government forces and rebel groups. See Stathis N. Kalyvas and Laia Balcells, “International System and Technologies of Rebellion: How the End of the Cold War Shaped Internal Conflict,” American Political Science Review 104, no. 3 (2010): 415–429. 7. Navin A. Bapat, “Insurgency and the Opening of Peace Processes,” Journal of Peace Research 42, no. 6 (2005): 701; David E. Cunningham, Kristian Skrede Gleditsch, and Idean Salehyan, “It Takes Two: A Dyadic Analysis of Civil War Duration and Outcome,” Journal of Conflict Resolution 53, no. 4 (2009): 574.

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will need to maintain its options on the battlefield. By contrast, the less engaged the government is, or the less able it is to bring force to bear on the group, the less military pressure on the group, and the fewer resources required to respond to the government’s attacks and absorb their costs. The less direct engagement and the lower the level of resources brought to bear by the government in the conflict, the more options available to the rebel group and the more time it has to build a support system. By contrast, if the level of pressure by the government rises beyond the ability of the rebel group to pay the costs of response, the group will need to revise its tactics and seek alternate response options in order to sustain the conflict. In sum, needs assessments can only be made on a case-by-case basis taking into consideration the specific circumstances of a given rebel group. These assessments also need to be adjusted over time. Rebel group needs are likely to evolve over time as goals evolve and tactics change, as resource bases expand and contract, as the government response waxes and wanes, and as groups themselves transform through mergers, splits, and attrition. Initial assessments of rebel groups at the start of a war are unlikely to prove useful at later points in time. Capacity assessments are time sensitive, and recent assessments will provide the most useful data, alongside time series analysis, to understand the capacity of a group to continue fighting, what feeds this capacity, and what has weakened the group’s capacity. If the international community wants to intervene to end a conflict, this information can indicate where to target intervention efforts and what the most appropriate conflict management strategies are to reduce the group’s ability to sustain the war.

Resources and Sources The first premise of the argument in this book is that a group needs resources to fight a war. When considering the kinds of resources a rebel group needs, or those that may be helpful but not vital to the group’s war effort, it is necessary to think beyond lucrative natural resources. Diamonds may be important in some cases, but there exists a wide range of resources that can aid rebel groups in fighting a war and numerous ways in which groups can access these resources. The primary resources of interest can be grouped into three main categories: military, economic, and political (see table 2.1). The first two are essential to war-fighting capacity—a group requires military goods to engage in war and financial resources to replenish depleted military stocks—while the third can be an added benefit. Sources of these goods are likely to be a mixture of internal activities, such as barter and looting, as

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TABLE 2.1

Resources and sources

CATEGORY

Military

RESOURCES

Arms, ammunition, logistics, training, manpower

SOURCES

Black market, legal market, neighboring states, patrons, third-party states, peacekeepers, government forces, other rebel groups, individuals

Economic

Cash, natural resources, food, material goods

Diaspora remittances, tax systems, donations, theft/looting, barter, trade/sales, bank robberies

Political

Diplomatic avenues, legitimacy, infor-

Patrons, neighboring states, third-party

mation, links to patron’s network,

states, regional or international orga-

safe haven

nizations, diaspora

well as international exchanges involving trade, barter, and donations. External actors can often increase the value of local resources. For example, natural resources such as gold, diamonds, and cocoa are relatively useless for a rebel group in war unless the group can find a way to either sell these goods through export or tax the exportation of these goods by local traders. The external dimension is extremely important to rebel groups; without access to external markets, traders, and patrons, a rebel group would be unlikely to access the resources necessary to continue fighting.

Military Resources First, any rebel group fighting a war will need access to military goods. These include arms, ammunition, logistics, training, and manpower. What the group needs specifically will depend on the type of war being fought and the strategies employed by the group. Low-intensity wars require fewer resources, while high-intensity wars quickly consume resources and require higher rates of replacement. Sources of military resources include international arms dealers, national importers and manufacturers of weapons, national militaries and police forces, mercenaries, and even international corporations. For example, in Liberia former president Charles Taylor required the timber companies operating in government-controlled territory to maintain, train, and arm militias, which Taylor could call on for the defense of the country if necessary. In this way, the timber companies became conduits for arms and trained manpower. Arms and ammunition can be purchased on the black market, across borders, and even from opponents. They can be bartered for food, consumer goods, or drugs. They can also be seized during military clashes, retreats by opponents, or raids on government depots.

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Arms and ammunition are a necessity in war. The level of access to arms and the type of arms accessed define the possibilities on the battlefield. As a result, access “influences the form, intensity, and duration of civil war.”8 It would be hard to fight a conventional war with only assault rifles; likewise conventional weapons have limited efficiency in urban environments or jungle terrain. Rebel groups do not necessarily need a lot of weapons to initiate a war, especially in contexts of limited government presence and low military strength.9 Rebel groups can maintain low-intensity conflicts through the use of small arms alone. However, decisive military victories are likely to be difficult without heavier weapon systems.10 Small arms are easier to obtain than heavier weapons systems; they are also cheaper and less sophisticated, enabling ease of acquisition and use. General availability, however, does not directly translate into access and military capacity. A rebel group still needs to establish access to an arms network and possess the finances to purchase weapons and ammunition. The availability of small arms remains contested and largely dependent on the perspective of the observer. Armed groups tend to view the situation as one of scarcity given the challenges of procuring arms; those concerned with reducing warfare (governments, humanitarian organizations) often see the problem as one of abundance given the available supply of arms.11 Armed groups face a number of challenges in obtaining weapons: establishing access to markets, obtaining the right weapons (e.g., hunting rifles may be widely available but relatively useless against better-armed forces), and affording the costs of the weapons. Prices and supply are rarely stagnant in conflict zones. As demand increases or supply dwindles, prices will climb, and vice versa. As transportation of arms and ammunition to buyers becomes more difficult—due to roadblocks, border controls, or sanctions, for example—prices of these goods will increase. Estimates of the cost of an assault rifle range from $12 to $6,000, with the average being several hundred dollars.12 Simply put, access cannot be assumed. While a decline in the price of weapons or ammunition can make war relatively cheaper, it does not eliminate the need for a group to have access to a source of arms and the financial means to purchase them. Even when there are willing buyers and sellers, a group still needs a strong logistics capacity to facilitate sales and move the goods where they are needed.

8. Marsh, 2007, 54. 9. For a discussion of this point, see Macartan Humphreys, “Economics and Violent Conflict,” working paper, Harvard University, February 2003, 11–12. 10. Marsh, 2007, 56. 11. For a discussion of availability, see ibid., 58–60. 12. For a discussion of prices and the factors influencing price, see Phillip Killicoat, “Weaponomics: The Global Market for Assault Rifles,” World Bank Policy research working paper 4202 (Washington, DC: World Bank, April 2007).

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Economic Resources The second resource rebel groups need is economic: the financial means to sustain war efforts. The type of warfare determines the cost of war. Conventional warfare, although an uncommon type of civil war today,13 is costly in terms of arms, ammunition, soldiers, and equipment. Conventional wars involve trained, uniformed, and equipped troops fighting across established battle lines, and often with a wide range of military arms and munitions. The Balkan wars in the 1990s provide a good example of modern conventional civil war. Low-intensity wars, on the other hand, are far more common and far less costly due to the nature of the fighting forces and the tactics used in battle. In these wars, fighting takes place on irregular battlefields, sometimes in towns and cities. These wars often consist of lower levels of actual fighting between opposing forces, with large military battles being rare. Despite the fact that many civil wars are low in intensity, rebel groups still require ongoing access to financial resources. Financial resources play a dual role in war: they provide the financial capacity to purchase necessary resources (e.g., buy military equipment, pay salaries) and they provide an economic incentive to continue fighting (e.g., creating income opportunities in war economies). The former is essential to sustaining a war; the latter can introduce incentives for war perpetuation. Access to finances can come through a range of actors and activities. Key financiers may include members of the rebel group, community leaders and populations, multinational corporations, foreign governments, diaspora, natural resource brokers, drug cartels, and money launderers. Some may be enthusiastic supporters, while others may find themselves coerced into providing support, and business deals may be simply that—financial transactions without any stake in the conflict. Numerous activities provide opportunities for economic gain, including looting, bartering, receiving remittances, selling natural resources, taxing citizens or trade, selling protection services, and producing and selling drugs. Generating revenue is essential to ensuring groups can purchase what they need, whether it is arms and other military goods, or allegiance, intelligence, and basic necessities. Many factors influence the ability of a group to raise funds.14 A group may have limited options. The Abu Sayyaf, after the death of its leader eliminated

13. Kalyvas and Balcells (2010) argue that conventional warfare is common in the post–cold war era (423). This conclusion is skewed, however, by the inclusion of civil wars in the former communist states. When these conflicts are removed, the percentage of conventional wars drops considerably, and unconventional symmetrical wars are the most common (426). 14. For discussion, see Michael Freeman, “The Sources of Terrorist Financing: Theory and Typology,” Studies in Conflict and Terrorism 34 (2011): 463–471.

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access to international supporters, resorted to kidnapping as its only means of finance. A group may have more or less control over the funding source. The LTTE relied on nationalistic rhetoric to generate sympathy from the diaspora, but also extended significant coercive capacity to scare diaspora into donating. Control over natural resources can fluctuate based on battle victories and losses. The RUF seized and lost control over the diamond fields in Sierra Leone several times during the first half of the war. Control of the revenue stream can also pose challenges. The RUF had difficulty ensuring diamond miners and brokers did not steal diamonds. The Forces Nouvelles requested contributions from their zone commanders of zone revenues but could not enforce any particular level of donation. The broader the scope of financial activities, the greater the ease with which groups can engage in these activities (e.g., kidnapping is dangerous and revenue uncertain, crops are labor-intensive and seasonal); and the more reliable the source of financing, the greater the chances are that a group can generate significant levels of funding. Higher financial gains can translate into more options in terms of how those funds are used and what can be purchased in support of the war effort.

Political Resources Third, rebel groups may benefit from access to political resources. Many rebel groups have political patrons who provide important support through facilitating access to military goods, giving financial support, granting political support that reduces external pressure on the rebel group, or providing safe haven. The Guinean government provided all of these political resources to the Liberian rebels, LURD, at points throughout the Liberian civil war. Numerous groups have benefited from safe haven in neighboring countries: Burundi and Rwandan rebels in the Democratic Republic of Congo; Congolese rebels in Rwanda and Uganda; the Sudan People’s Liberation Army in Uganda, Eritrea, and Ethiopia; and Ugandan rebels in Sudan and the Congo.15 Political patrons include foreign governments, diaspora, and leaders of other rebel groups (either regional or international). A group’s political ties to major regional or international powers can clearly boost the legitimacy of the group as well as its access to necessary military and economic goods; however, these ties may also limit the group’s ability to act independently of its political supporters, whose support often rests on the group acting to the benefit of the supporter.

15. For more examples and a discussion of safe havens, see Idean Salehyan, Rebels without Borders: Transnational Insurgencies in World Politics (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2009), 93–95.

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Political support is more often indirect, by providing resources, than direct, by providing troops. Political patrons rarely engage their own national forces in battle. The fighting is usually left to the rebel group. But this is not always the case. In some instances, the political patron is the one to provide the logistics capacity to ensure that a rebel group can use the resources it receives. Guinea, at times, provided significant logistical support to assist LURD in moving military supplies to the front lines. Political patrons have also, on rare occasions, engaged their own forces in battles on a limited basis. This internationalization of civil wars has been seen in the Rwandan troops’ engagement in the eastern Congo and support of rebel groups there, the Guinean shelling of Liberian government forces to support the Liberian rebels, and the war of words between Eritrea and Sudan over alleged support of rebel groups in one another’s countries. In negotiations, political support by a patron could be important for leveraging the rebel group’s position, or even getting the group a place at the negotiating table. Political support can also constrain the actions of the international community—especially when the patron has influence within the United Nations Security Council or a strong voice as a regional power—deter or encourage the use of international force against a particular group, or limit the actions of other factions on the ground. Political patronage, however, does not come free of costs or constraints. Political benefactors support rebel groups for a reason and a purpose. Patrons may wish to see the rebel group overthrow the government. Rwanda supported the rebellion that deposed Congolese president Mobutu Sese Seko. They may want a change in policies, or they may want to place pressure on the ruling government in order to gain concessions. Burkina Faso’s support of the Forces Nouvelles aimed to end discriminatory government policies, which threatened Burkinabé citizens in Côte d’Ivoire and could have led to massive repatriations and a significant reduction in remittances. Political support, while clearly offering a positive value to the rebel group when it exists, is not given altruistically. Political benefactors always seek to gain something by helping a rebel group. While neither the reason nor the purpose may match the rebel groups’ own motivations and goals, provided they coincide and do not conflict, the two parties can work together. This relationship hinges on each party getting what it wants from the deal. If this fails to occur, either party may defect from the arrangement. Having a political benefactor does not necessarily give the group free reign to do as it chooses, and thus it is necessary to assess the benefits accrued through a relationship with a patron and the constraints imposed on the rebel group by having such a relationship. Owing to the volatility of this relationship, the reliability of patrons can be far less than the reliability of those who provide economic or military goods on the basis of economic transactions that clearly offer

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mutually beneficial exchanges. Ultimately, the patron will remain committed to supporting the rebel group as long as doing so fits with the needs and goals of the patron. Support is likely to decline when the group is of little use to the patron, or when the group is undertaking actions contrary to the patron’s interests. When a group is dependent on a single patron such a decline in support can be detrimental to the group’s military capacity. The negative impact of reduced support from a patron can be lessened when the group possesses robust access to military and economic goods from other sources. The construct of a rebel group’s support network affects the level of access to resources and the reliability of that access. The larger the number of actors who can provide access to resources, the more likely the group is to easily access necessary materials and to replenish any diminishing stocks. The smaller the number of actors that can provide these resources, the more constrained the rebel group will be in terms of accessing what it needs. The smaller the supply network, the more likely the group is to be susceptible to shortfalls in supply and vulnerable to external efforts (e.g., sanctions, border closures) to interrupt supply lines. A large support network increases the flexibility of the armed group in choosing its suppliers and trade partners. However, not all rebel groups are able to develop diverse networks such as those developed by the FARC and the LTTE. Rebel groups such as the RUF, LURD, and the Forces Nouvelles relied on a small support network that depended heavily on a single patron, which placed these groups in a weak and dependent position. The Forces Nouvelles proved capable of developing a stronger domestic support network over time, but the RUF and LURD did not.

Options and Preferences The second premise of this book’s argument is that access to resources shapes the capacity of the rebel group to continue fighting a war by defining the options available to the group. Rebel groups face two main options during wartime: continuing to fight or entering into negotiations.16 Which option the group prefers depends on the group’s capacity to continue fighting, which in turn rests on the level of resources the group has at its disposal.17 As resources increase, capacity

16. Defeat (or capitulation) is not considered here because it is not an option that a group selects but one that is imposed by an opponent, and thus rather than being a preferred option, it is considered a possible outcome. 17. Access to resources is used as a proxy for measuring capacity. It is not a perfect proxy as intervening factors can reduce its accuracy. First, a group may choose to use its income (from the sale of resources or donations, etc.) for goods other than military goods, and thus the income is not being used to improve military capacity. Second, access to military goods does not always equate to

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to fight a war improves and groups face more options for continuing it; when available resources decline, capacity to continue fighting weakens, the options available to the group are more limited, and the group is likely to face significant difficulty in continuing the war. While the preference for war over peace will depend on the capacity of the group, preference here is not about desired outcome—winning the war—but instead it represents a group’s preference based on the possible actions available to the group.18 For example, a group may want to continue fighting but simply lacks the means to do so and therefore must choose an option that is possible. In this case the group is likely to prefer to seek negotiations in order to reduce the costs of war and have the time to rebuild its military capacity. Under these conditions entering into negotiations is the preferred choice based on available options; it is not necessarily indicative of a preference to end the war.19 There is no presumption in this book that opting for negotiations indicates a willingness to end the war. I do argue, however, that a group will seek negotiations when it is weak and that these times of weakness provide the best opportunity for negotiating an end to the war because the group faces limited options to continue fighting. As table 2.2 indicates, there are several options a group can pursue depending on its access to resources. The level of access to resources also indicates the expected preference of the group to continue the war or seek negotiations. For example, at times of strength a group would be expected to escalate a war and take advantage of its position of power relative to the government. On the other hand, during times of weakness a group would be expected to seek ways to reduce the costs of war by shifting to less costly military tactics or seeking respite through negotiations. In general, the actions of groups should provide a good indication of the group’s preference for war or negotiations. In some cases, however, actions

an increase in military capacity. The level of training, discipline, leadership, and logistics capacity also influence how well a group can utilize military resources and how well it will perform on the battlefield. Thus while military capacity can increase with the influx of goods, this does not always translate into effectiveness during war. Third, what a group needs to access is relative to what it aims to do and the level of force it faces from the government. Thus, even if the rebel group is successful in accessing some resources, these may be insufficient to respond to the government threat. Despite these challenges, resource access is used as the basis for determining group capacity. 18. King (1997, 36–37) notes that rebel groups can have difficulty planning for the long term and therefore are more likely to make decisions based on calculations of the short term. This would support the notion that groups respond to increases and decreases in capabilities, adjusting to them, within a relatively short time period. 19. Regan makes the valuable point that it is possible that rebels do not respond to capabilities alone but also can be driven by grievances, which exist regardless of capability (472). He questions the utility of focusing on capabilities alone, as groups with grievances are likely to seek ways to continue the war even if they must enter into negotiations as a form of respite. Patrick M. Regan, “Interventions into Civil Wars: A Retrospective Survey with Prospective Ideas,” Civil Wars 12, no. 4 (2010).

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Table 2.2

61

Options and preferences

RESOURCE ACCESS

OPTIONS AVAILABLE FOR CONTINUING WAR

EXPECTED PREFERENCE

Increasing

Numerous:

Continue war

• Escalate war • Decrease war intensity to focus on economic gains • Enter into negotiations from a point of strength Constant

Somewhat limited:

Continue war

• Cannot escalate war • Change tactics to reduce costs • Seek additional resources to improve options Decreasing

Limited:

Seek negotiations

• Change tactics to reduce costs • Seek cease-fire to provide respite • Enter into negotiations to reduce war costs • Seek additional resources to increase options

may diverge from expectations. For example, a rebel group may enter into negotiations during times of strength to pursue economic activities or under diplomatic pressure—a common explanation for the RUF agreeing to the 1999 peace accord. Alternatively, a weakened group could forego negotiations, preferring to reduce the level of fighting or retreat to a safe haven, while seeking to rebuild its war capacity and return to the battlefield. Table 2.2 is not a forecasting tool to predict a group’s choice during a war, but instead it highlights the options available to a group based on the group’s access to resources and indicates the expected preference of the group under these circumstances. The changes indicated in table 2.2 represent changes that happen at various points over the course of a war; they do not represent a characterization of a rebel group throughout the war as a whole. In other words, the table is based on the premise that resource access changes over time and aims to highlight those points of change, and therefore does not aim to provide a comprehensive assessment of a rebel group over time. When changes in access do occur, as is likely during war, they affect the options available to the group; large changes in either direction lead to a preference for either war (when resources increase) or negotiations (when resources decrease). Identifying when this tipping point occurs in terms of when a group is likely to change its preferred strategy (war or negotiations) can be difficult. However, important qualitative changes can be measured and trends in

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access identified. In general, groups face more numerous options as their resource access increases and more circumscribed options as their resources decrease. An increase in resources can have a number of positive effects on a rebel group, all of which are likely to contribute to the preference for continuing war. Access to military equipment can lead to heavier firepower. Access to military training can improve the efficiency and effectiveness of troops. Access to intelligence can enable a group to avoid large confrontations, evade ambushes, and outflank other factions. For example, the RUF learned the West African peacekeeping force (ECOMOG) planned to engage them in the east of Sierra Leone and took measures to move around the ECOMOG forces, which placed the rebels in a position to lay siege to the capital city in 1999. Increased military capacity can also encourage a more offensive stance on the battlefield. The ability of the Kosovar Albanian militants (the Kosovo Liberation Army, or KLA) to access cheap assault rifles after 1997 provided the means for the group to escalate violence and engage Serb forces.20 Rather than relying on hit-and-run tactics or urban warfare, armed groups can use enhanced military capacity to employ offensive tactics, including direct attacks on government forces. This can lead to an increase in raids of government troops and armories, an increase in clashes between the rebel group and opposing factions, and efforts by the rebel group to seize key towns and hold territory. Provided the government’s capacity does not change, a situation in which a rebel group maintains a constant level of access to resources is likely to produce a balance of power and a comfortable impasse. Under such conditions the war will continue because there is little incentive for either side to end the conflict. This holds true until the costs of maintaining the impasse become too high. However, the costs will increase to an unsustainable level only if there is a decline in the financial resources available to a group, such that the group can no longer finance the military efforts, or if there is a disruption of military supplies or significant defeats on the battlefield leading to a loss of balance of power. In either situation, the conditions have changed and the rebel group faces a decrease in access to resources and declining capacity to continue the war. Burmese militant groups face such challenges after years of cease-fires with the government and government troops retaking territory and control of the borders, thereby cutting off military supplies to the groups and weakening their capacity to sustain their insurgencies.21 What began as a comfortable impasse for the Burmese rebels has turned into an unsustainable stalemate.

20. Michael Pugh and Neil Cooper, War Economies in a Regional Context: Challenges of Transformation (Boulder: Lynne Rienner, 2004), 32. 21. Jake Sherman, “Burma: Lessons from the Cease-Fires,” in The Political Economy of Armed Conflict: Beyond Greed and Grievance, ed. Karen Ballentine and Jake Sherman (Boulder: Lynne Rienner, 2003), 245.

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A decrease in access to resources can produce a number of deleterious effects on a rebel group, including a reduction in capacity, the constriction of available options, a shift in the group’s posture from offensive to defensive, and in the worst case scenario challenges to its survival. As military resources decline, a rebel group is more likely to change its military tactics toward defensive operations. This change may involve the group shifting from fighting a full-scale war to opting for hit-and-run tactics, attacks on civilians, or, if possible, the capture of strategic towns in order to place pressure on the government and reverse the losses incurred. The RUF changed its military strategy to guerrilla tactics in 1994 in response to its lack of success, and near defeat, making it more difficult for the Sierra Leone Army to counter them successfully. If the military capacity of the group declines to the point where the group has difficulty defending itself against its opponent, the group will be forced to seek respite from the war through retreat. Respite from war often includes agreeing to a cease-fire or entering into peace negotiations, and may even include signing a peace agreement, but these actions could also be merely an attempt to rest, regroup, and rearm or a response to external pressure for negotiations rather than actual moves toward peace. The numerous negotiations between the parties to the wars in Sri Lanka, Colombia, and Sierra Leone, and the subsequent breakdown of cease-fires and peace agreements, illustrate such resistance by the rebel groups to negotiated solutions. There is no guarantee of successful negotiations even when a rebel group is severely weakened. The expectation is that a group will continue to seek to renew its access to resources during the negotiations. If these efforts are successful, the group may be able to rebuild its capacity for war and return to the battlefield. However, even if these efforts are less than successful in generating another opportunity to seek victory, they can still demonstrate sufficient capacity for the group to get a better deal during negotiations, as the rebel group MODEL demonstrated in Liberia in 2003. As such it always makes sense for a group to attempt to access additional resources and rebuild its capacity during negotiations. Changes in resource access can be difficult to observe and hard to measure. It can also be difficult to quantify precisely what qualifies as a change large enough to be significant to a group’s capacity and options. This depends on the status of the group at the time of the change. While it is easy to imagine that a few guns or dollars lost or gained will not have a large impact, it is more difficult to determine what impact a few hundred or a few thousand may have. For a group that is scraping for survival, a few hundred guns and a few thousand dollars may make the difference between capitulation and going another round. For a group that is well resourced, the same inputs (or losses) may do little to alter the balance of power. Small changes are unlikely to have

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significant impact on either options or preferences, and large changes are unlikely to occur frequently, thus change could take place over time as small changes accumulate. A small increase (or decrease) in access to resources will not produce an instantaneous change in the group’s military or financial capacity. In other words, there is no simple one-to-one change calculation, such as one less box of ammunition equals a 10 percent decline in capacity and one step toward negotiations. The dynamics are not that easily quantifiable. It can take time for increases and decreases in access to resources to manifest in changes in the group’s capacity, especially if the shift is small, if the group possesses significant stores of the affected resource, or if the group can substitute another resource for the lost one. It is important to acknowledge the interdependent (but not interchangeable) nature of resources. Access to certain resources can influence access to other resources. For example, changes in the financial position of a group (economic resources) can reverberate into impacts on the group’s access to military resources; having less cash can mean lower purchasing power and thus fewer guns. Similarly, a reduction in military capacity can weaken the ability of a group to control territory. This can result in lost looting opportunities. It can also interrupt trade in lucrative natural resources, potentially bringing the trade to a halt if the group cedes the territory in battle, as happened for the RUF each time it lost control of the Kono diamond fields. Such military losses could have significant impacts on the financial resources available to the group. While access to resources can be interdependent, resources themselves are not necessarily interchangeable; for instance, the group cannot substitute economic resources for military resources and have the same impact on the battlefield. A group needs both military resources and economic resources. The only time these goods could be considered interchangeable is when there are direct swaps of goods, such as the oil-for-guns exchanges by the Nigerian militants in the Niger Delta whereby increased access to oil could mean increased access to guns. But even in this case, what is important is the exchange of goods: oil cannot be used to fight a war; a group must still trade the oil for the arms needed to fight.

Sources of Changing Access The third premise of this book’s argument is that resource access will fluctuate over the course of the war. This means that rebel groups will face incentives to prefer fighting over negotiations, and vice versa, at various points during the war, suggesting that some points in time are better suited to negotiations than

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others.22 There are two main sources of change in a group’s access to resources: unintentional and intentional. The former refers to changes in access that occur not as the result of intentional actions by government or external actors to reduce a group’s access to resources but rather as a result of events outside the control of the fighting factions. The latter refers to actions that are taken intentionally by government or external actors to affect a particular group. These measures can have a positive impact on the group—for example, providing military goods to a group. Or they can be measures taken against a rebel group with the intent of circumscribing, or even eliminating, the group’s access to resources. Changes in access that occur as a result of battlefield wins and losses can be characterized as either intentional or unintentional depending on the intent of the opponent; intentional changes occur when the support network or supply lines of a group are specifically targeted. While the two types of changes can result in the same outcomes—an increase or reduction in a group’s access to resources—they reach these outcomes through different causal pathways, having different implications for conflict management efforts. Unintentional changes occur over the course of the war irrespective of, or even despite, actions taken by the rebel group or other actors engaged in the conflict. For example, a change in market prices that makes certain goods (e.g., gold, coltan) unprofitable can eliminate a source of conflict financing for a rebel group. The opposite can happen too, as with the rise in the price of coltan and gold, making mining by armed groups in the eastern Congo much more profitable. Such changes arise not from actions undertaken with the intention of affecting the conflict outcome but rather through existing market mechanisms. The declining availability of a certain resource—as when a diamond mine runs dry or a seasonal harvest is poor—can also negatively affect a group. Or there could be a windfall harvest or the discovery of new resources in rebel-held territory that provide new economic opportunities. Ultimately unintentional changes are difficult to predict, but they can be identified and measured when they occur. When the changes increase rebel access to goods, this provides fuel for the war and can indicate times that are less conducive to negotiations while also highlighting resources that could be targeted to alter the rebel group’s capacity. When negative changes occur, government and external parties can use these occasions as fortuitous opportunities for seeking negotiations or otherwise influencing the dynamics of the war and possibly its outcome.

22. This is similar to Zartman’s “ripe moment” argument. See I. William Zartman, “The Timing of Peace Initiatives: Hurting Stalemates and Ripe Moments,” Global Review of Ethnopolitics 1, no. 1 (2001): 8–18.

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Intentional changes result from specific actions targeting a rebel group’s access to resources. These might be taken by the government or by external actors and can contribute to either increasing or decreasing access to resources. They can include efforts to provide additional resources to a group, thereby improving its capacity. For example, the Ivorian government provided support to the Liberian rebels (MODEL) to initiate their war in 2003; Liberian president Charles Taylor supported the rebels in Sierra Leone and in Côte d’Ivoire at various times. However, actions may also aim to limit access to resources, such as through the imposition of embargoes, sanctions, and travel bans, and the use of border patrols. Sanctions were placed on diamonds in Angola, Sierra Leone, and Liberia, with the intention of cutting off the financing of the rebel groups operating there. These measures, if they reduce access to needed resources, can create opportunities for negotiations. Analysis of the impacts of intentional and unintentional changes in support networks, as demonstrated in the case studies of the book, reinforces the finding that cutting off access to resources has important deleterious effects on rebel group capacity.23 These effects are compounded when more than one resource and more than one source of necessary resources are affected.

Victory by the Government It is worthwhile to digress for a moment to highlight an important point in the framing of this discussion. This book focuses on rebel groups, not the government, and their access to resources and related options for war. A group’s possible options are related to the government’s resource base, level of engagement, and capacity on the battlefield. The government’s position needs to be taken into consideration in assessing a rebel group’s options. However, the focus in this book is not on assessing the government’s options. This is particularly important with respect to cases in which a rebel group possesses limited resources. At the point when a rebel group has limited options and is far more likely to seek a deal to end the war or at the very least to have a respite from fighting, the government has two main options: pursue a negotiated settlement or seek to defeat the rebel group when it is at its weakest. The latter is a real possibility, but

23. A number of authors have argued that cutting off resources will have a negative impact on rebel groups. See, for example, Kristian Skrede Gleditsch, “Transnational Dimensions of Civil War,” Journal of Peace Research 44, no. 3 (2007): 305–306; King, 1997, 67–68; Marsh, 2007, 68; Achim Wennmann, The Political Economy of Peacemaking (London: Routledge, 2011), 29.

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one the international community seems reluctant to support.24 The preference of the international community, often conveyed through diplomatic pressure, places embattled governments in a delicate political situation. It does not completely constrain the government—as Sri Lanka demonstrated in May 2009 when it eliminated the LTTE during a military drive condemned by the international community—but it does make pursuing a military victory through the use of force a difficult, and often unpopular, choice. The international community has often placed pressure on governments to negotiate with rebel groups, though such pressure may be “sweetened” by the offer of potential benefits during negotiations and the implementation of a peace agreement, such as economic assistance, development aid, and military reconstruction. Given the preference for negotiated settlements in the international community, this study focuses on when (and why) a rebel group is most likely to opt for negotiations, and not whether the government should accept those negotiations. The issue of the government ending the war through military victory will be raised again in the conclusion. An interesting finding in the case studies is that in a number of instances the government could have ended the conflict by defeating (and eliminating) the rebel group, but international pressure to avoid civilian casualties and further fighting led the government to opt for negotiations. This happened at least twice during the war in Sierra Leone when external actors pushed the government to negotiate rather than annihilate the RUF rebels. In many such instances the choice for negotiations—without maintaining pressure on the rebel group and ensuring it could not rearm and resupply during the negotiations—led to a renewal of the war. One lesson that could be drawn from this finding is that governments should be allowed to end wars through decisive victory, a form of war termination that statistics suggest is more sustainable than negotiated solutions over time.25 At the very least, the finding suggests international pressure to negotiate should not actively constrain governments from maintaining military pressure on rebel forces and preventing them from rebuilding their capacity. Another lesson is that if negotiations are preferred, then the international community and the government need to engage not only in the negotiation process but also in ensuring the rebel group does not, and cannot, use the opportunity to rebuild its military capacity, which provides the group with the option to return to the battlefield. However, the tendency in past

24. Herbst, however, has argued that the imposition of sanctions could be seen as an implicit call for the military defeat of rebel forces. See Jeffrey Herbst, “Economic Incentives, Natural Resources and Conflict in Africa,” Journal of African Economies 9, no. 3 (2000): 271. 25. Monica Duffy Toft, Securing the Peace: The Durable Settlement of Civil Wars (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2010), 9.

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intervention by the international community is to focus on negotiations and not on constraining rebel groups, which has been evidenced through poor enforcement of sanctions and in some cases outright support for breaking embargoes.

Methodology In the following chapters I provide an analysis of seven rebel groups from three civil wars in West Africa: Sierra Leone (1991–2002), Liberia (1999–2003) and Côte d’Ivoire (2002–2011).26 I map the supply networks of the rebel groups, assessing their access to resources at the beginning of the war and analyzing the evolution of this access over the course of the war. Particular attention is paid to who provides access to resources, what they provide, and when. The analysis emphasizes identifying key turning points during these wars, fluctuations in the balance of power, the success and failures of rebel groups, and the splitting of one group (LURD) and the consolidation of another (Forces Nouvelles). I identify changes in access to resources and assess the impact of these changes on the group’s capacity to continue the war. The analysis highlights how these groups fared over the course of their wars and how their fortunes figured into their war strategies. The arguments and evidence in this book are based on dozens of interviews conducted in West Africa from 2002 through 2005, and in subsequent shorter visits to the region in 2006, 2007, and 2008. The case studies are all structured similarly. After the initial analysis of each group’s support network at the commencement of the war, the case studies trace changes in access to resources over the course of the war. This includes an analysis of the conflict, the activities of the group, and key events during the conflict. Changes are identified by increases or decreases in the group’s access to necessary resources, the addition or elimination (or defection) of actors in the support network, and changes in what the actors can provide. Indications of a strong support network include evidence of the import of military goods and export of economic goods; indicators of a weakening support network include shortfalls in military equipment, evidence of financial shortages (e.g., sudden bouts of looting, bank robberies), and declines in exports from rebel areas. These situations indicate changes in the type and amount of resources available to the group and the level of access the group has to what it needs through its support network. After identifying changes in access to goods, the analysis focuses on determining whether these changes had any impact on group strategy, tactics, or 26. The analysis of the war in Côte d’Ivoire focuses on the time period 2002–2005, with less detailed coverage of events from 2005–2011.

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preference for continuing the war or seeking negotiations. Process tracing was used in the case studies to highlight within-case variation. Process tracing provided evidence of how changes in access did influence the decisions made by the group about continuing the war,27 demonstrating that increases in resources led to continued fighting, while decreases in resources led more frequently to cease-fires or negotiations. Using process-tracing to analyze the data enabled a focus on the role of access to resources, but it also opened the way for the detection of additional explanatory factors that may influence a group’s behavior.28 This proved useful in explaining the handful of within-case variations where the actual outcome was different from the expected outcome predicted by the analytical framework. The cross-case comparison of the seven rebel groups enabled the identification of patterns and commonalities that offer initial generalizations about rebel groups, their support networks, and their preferences in civil wars.

Case Selection The pool of possible cases included all rebel groups engaged in intrastate conflicts after 1990. Out of the dozens of possible cases for study, I selected the Revolutionary United Front (RUF) in Sierra Leone and the Liberians United for Reconciliation and Democracy (LURD) and the Movement for Democracy in Liberia (MODEL) in Liberia. In Côte d’Ivoire, I initially chose the three rebel groups active in the conflict, the Patriotic Movement of Côte d’Ivoire (MPCI), the Movement for Justice and Peace (MJP), and the Popular Movement of the Ivorian Great West (MPIGO); when these three Ivorian groups merged into the Forces Nouvelles, the early years of this umbrella group were also included. The cases were selected based on a variety of considerations. First, it was evident that each group possessed some form of support network and that the network had external links. This was also true for all rebel groups under consideration. Second, it was also evident that the support networks varied across the groups and over time, enabling a study of changes in the groups’ access to resources. Third, there were clear similarities in the contexts of the wars and in the groups studied. Although the cases share a number of similarities, these in no way indicate that the extant conditions were exactly the same in all respects,

27. For a discussion of process tracing, see Alexander L. George and Andrew Bennett, Case Studies and Theory Development in the Social Sciences (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2004), chapter 10. 28. The benefit of process tracing is that it can identify different causal paths to the same outcome, reveal variables that may otherwise be left out of explanations, check for spuriousness, and enable causal inferences with a small number of cases. George and Bennett, 2004, 214–215.

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or that the groups were identical in their composition, goals, or resources.29 The cases are not so similar as to be a unique set of cases. Although some research has highlighted the existence of a West Africa dynamic, something that is somehow special to the region and ties these cases together, the study of the groups underscores how overstated this “dynamic” is in existing studies. The wars in West Africa have not “spilled over” into one another. There are connections between the wars, but these are distinct, identifiable, and deliberate. These connections are specific to particular actors who made conscious decisions to engage in the war of a neighboring state. This is not a situation unique to West Africa. Interventions by external actors, for both benign and selfish reasons, are common across the civil wars. These similarities are such that cross-case comparisons can be performed and that such comparisons are helpful for deriving cautious generalizations about rebel groups that are applicable to other rebel groups. The contexts in which the wars took place exhibited several similar characteristics: weak governments, porous borders, lootable natural resources, popular grievances against the government, little actual fighting between the rebels and the government forces, and some form of third-party intervention. All three governments faced a degree of state weakness. All three countries had extremely porous borders and were unable to fully control the entrance and exit of goods and people. Each country had natural resources that could be looted and sold for profit. None of the three governments had widespread popular support. In all three countries, the groups fought to oust the ruling regime and, at least initially, this generated popular support for the group. In all three wars, there was limited direct fighting between the warring factions, and the costs of the war were borne largely by the civilian population. Finally, in all three conflicts there was at least some form of external intervention. The rebel groups studied shared a number of characteristics: they were all small in size, organized abroad, lacked any real political agenda, and were dependent on external support to survive. When the wars started, the small rebel groups grew relatively quickly to number in the thousands. These groups initially organized themselves abroad, with the support of regional and international actors, and then entered the country to initiate the war. In the initial stages of the wars, the groups and their goals were relatively unknown. Over the course of the wars key leaders appeared as spokespersons who identified the goals of the groups. In all cases, the groups offered ill-defined political programs. While they

29. The case study method offers enough flexibility to the researcher to be able to identify similarities or reject similarities that prove through case study analysis to be either dissimilar in reality or irrelevant to the outcome. Charles C. Ragin, The Comparative Method: Moving beyond Qualitative and Quantitative Strategies (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1989), 49.

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all advocated a change in government, and proclaimed that change was necessary for the return of democracy, none of them had a clear plan for how to achieve this. Finally, each group had links to external supporters who provided a variety of resources to the group to achieve its goal of overthrowing the government. Although all the wars officially ended in a negotiated settlement, the actual status of the conflicts on the ground and the capacity of the groups varied across the cases. At the time of case selection in 2002, only the war in Sierra Leone had ended.30 By 2003, at the end of the primary data-collection period, peace agreements had been signed in all three countries, and the wars had been declared officially over, but in reality the situation on the ground looked very different in each country. In Sierra Leone, the end of the war was officially announced in January 2002, which brought about elections and the dissolution of the RUF. In Liberia, an August 2003 peace agreement brought a transitional government into power. Despite several months of insecurity and concerns about a renewal of war, the rebel groups entered the political process and this led to elections and the incorporation of some rebel leaders into government. In Côte d’Ivoire, the war was officially declared over with the Linas-Marcoussis agreement in February 2003. This agreement had little impact, however. The country remained divided between north and south, rebels and government. A 2007 agreement brought another end to the war and served as the basis for ongoing efforts to reunite the country and hold national elections but made little progress in ending the military stalemate or the division of the country into north and south. Elections in October 2010 brought the country once again to the precipice of war until international intervention removed the former president, Laurent Gbagbo, from power and installed the newly elected president, Alassane Ouattara.

Sources The core of the data used in this book comes from dozens of interviews conducted in several West African countries from April 2002 through July 2005, September 2006, August 2007, and August 2008. The interviews were not standardized across interviewees. Instead, a semistructured interview format was used, with the opportunity for interviewees to provide additional information. Interviews were conducted with a wide variety of individuals from several West African countries and international organizations. These individuals include citizens of

30. Cases were not selected based on the outcome of the war. At the time of selection only the Sierra Leone war had ended. For a discussion of case selection criteria, see David Collier and James Mahoney, “Insights and Pitfalls: Selection Bias in Qualitative Research,” World Politics 49 (October 1996): 56–91.

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these countries, government officials, civil society representatives, representatives of the rebel groups, United Nations officials, humanitarian workers, other nongovernmental organization representatives, journalists, diplomats, and military officers. In order to maintain the confidential nature of the conversations, interviewees are not identified by name in this book. Instead, only the location and date of the interview and, if possible, the occupation of the interviewee (e.g., diplomat, scholar, journalist) are provided. A second important source of information for the case study of Liberia in particular, and to some extent Côte d’Ivoire, is the interviews of a West Africa scholar conducting research in the region who gave permission for their use. In the text, these interviews are clearly identified as “WA scholar interview.” Again, to maintain confidentiality, neither the interviewer’s nor the interviewee’s name is provided. As with my own interviews, I indicate the location and date of the interviews and, when possible, include the occupation of the interviewee.

3 SIERRA LEONE REBELS The Revolutionary United Front

In the 1980s, just prior to the war, the Sierra Leone government faced an increasingly disgruntled and vocal population that protested against government corruption and lack of transparency, the failing economy, and the continuation of a one-party state system. Once possessed of a thriving economy, Sierra Leone faced rising debt, unemployment, and cost of living, as well as declining exports of its main staple, rice.1 The civil war began in 1991 and lasted nearly eleven years, officially ending in January 2002. The years of war imposed additional costs on the population: an estimated thirty to fifty thousand people killed, thousands maimed and injured, over two hundred thousand internally displaced persons, and nearly a half million who became refugees in neighboring countries. The war weakened the government further, destroyed existing basic health and education services, and diminished access to public social services and basic needs, such as food, clean water, and housing. Under these circumstances, one wonders how a rebel army could sustain itself for more than a decade. The Revolutionary United Front (RUF), named shortly before the start of the war, initiated its rebellion with only a hundred men, many of whom were

1. See, for example, Ian Smilie, Lansana Gberie, and Ralph Hazleton, The Heart of the Matter: Sierra Leone, Diamonds and Human Security (Ottawa: Partnership Africa Canada, 2000); Louis Goreux, “Conflict Diamonds,” Africa Region working paper series 13 (Washington, DC: World Bank, 2001); Greg Campbell, Blood Diamonds: Tracing the Deadly Path of the World’s Most Precious Stones (Boulder: Westview Press, 2002). 73

0

Miles 60

15 30

GUINEA Kabala Kamakwie

Forécariah

SIERRA LEONE Kambia

Kissidougou

Bumbuna

GUINEA

Makeni Magburaka

Lungi

Port Loko Masiaka Waterloo

Freetown

Koidu

Guéckédou Koindu

Mile 91

Foya Kailahun

Moyamba

Daru

Bo Kenema Bonthe Pujehun

Atlan

ti c O

cean

Zimmi

Kongo

Sulima

LIBERIA

Civil Defense Forces Government and UNAMSIL forces Revolutionary United Front (RUF) Sierra Leone Army

MAP 3.1.

Sierra Leone: Status of armed forces, November 2000

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Burkinabé and Liberian mercenaries, and with minimal external support.2 The RUF leadership believed the fight would be quick and easy and that Freetown would fall within months, leaving them no incentive to build a more complex structure of support and supply. The RUF’s failure to quickly overthrow the government meant the group had to find pathways to the military and economic resources needed to sustain the rebellion or face defeat. Despite the need for external support, the RUF failed to develop an expansive support network, and this ultimately led to its demise. The RUF possessed a limited supply network throughout the war. The group remained heavily dependent on Charles Taylor for access to needed resources. This support proved inadequate, waxing and waning over the decade. However, since the Sierra Leone government did not command a strong military force, the RUF did not need to be overwhelmingly powerful. The RUF’s shift to guerrilla tactics in the mid-1990s reduced the frequency of direct clashes with government forces and reduced the military needs of the group. The inability of the government to field an effective military contributed greatly to the persistence of the RUF and the continuation of the war. At no time during the war did the RUF negotiate sincerely. The RUF rejected cease-fires when it was strong and used negotiations as opportunities to rebuild when it was weak. International pressure for a negotiated solution rather than support for a government victory saved the RUF from annihilation a number of times. Although peace agreements did occur at times of rebel weakness, heavy military pressure was never sustained during negotiations, providing the RUF time and space to rest and rearm. The end of the war came only when military pressure on the RUF on three fronts eliminated all access to resupply. Facing no other options but defeat, the RUF leadership finally agreed to implement the Lomé agreement two years after its signing. In this chapter I assess the resources, options, and preferences of the RUF during the 1991–2002 civil war. I begin with a brief discussion of the beginning of the war and the expectations of the RUF for a short battle to victory, which are important for understanding the starting point of the RUF. The RUF never attempted to build a network of support prior to initiating the conflict because the group anticipated an easy victory and did not anticipate needing additional resources. When the RUF failed to quickly win the war, it faced the main challenge of every

2. Ibrahim Abdullah, “Bush Path to Destruction: The Origin and Character of the Revolutionary United Front/Sierra Leone,” Journal of Modern African Studies 36, no. 2 (1998): 225; author’s interview with former SLA soldier, Freetown, Sierra Leone, 29 July 2002. Author’s interviews and numerous published sources confirm the presence of Liberian and Burkinabe mercenaries during the initial incursion.

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rebel group: how to access the resources needed to fight a war. In the second section of the chapter I focus on the support network the RUF had at its disposal, in particular the military, economic, and political resources of the group. This analysis identifies the main supporters and suppliers of the RUF, the resources the RUF could access, how strong this access was, and where it was deficient. The main argument in this book is that access to resources shapes options for a rebel group, and therefore it is essential to understand the type of resources the group could access and how reliable this access was. The analysis of the RUF reveals the relatively quick narrowing of options for the group in the early years of the war due to the inability of the group to access resources freely. Limited access to resources forced the RUF to fight a guerrilla war, and even then fighting was not always an option. In the third section I analyze how changes in resource access influenced the trajectory of the war and the decisions of the RUF to continue fighting or seek negotiations. The analysis focuses on four key time periods during the war when large changes in resource access led to visible shifts in the pattern of fighting. The RUF’s pursuit of the war largely follows the pattern predicted by the book’s analytical framework (see table 3.1): the RUF maintained an aggressive stance and continued fighting when it had access to resources, and sought respite, often through negotiations, when it could not resupply. There is one exception to the predicted dynamics: the RUF’s agreement to negotiate the 1999 Lomé agreement. At the time, observers believed the RUF held the upper hand. The events that followed the agreement revealed, however, that the RUF had negotiated from an extremely weakened position, and these details suggest that the decision to negotiate did fall in line with the predicted dynamics. But the status of the rebel group emerged after the agreement, making assessment easy in hindsight, but difficult to accomplish at the time of the negotiations.

Start of the War The RUF entered Sierra Leone in March 1991. This early entrance reportedly resulted from a cross-border trade deal gone sour.3 Trade is typical across the borders between Sierra Leone and Liberia, even during wartime, but in this particular exchange, a dispute arose over the payment for goods. Soldiers from the Sierra 3. This was reportedly several months ahead of the original schedule. The initial incursion was to be a two-pronged attack, but the first attack took place at Bomaru, in the southeast, and the second attack, in the southwest, did not occur until several days later. Testimony by a former RUF combatant at the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) hearings in Kono, July 2003, attended by author; author’s interview with current RSLAF soldier, Makeni, Sierra Leone, 7 May 2002; author’s interview with former SLA soldier, Freetown, Sierra Leone, 29 July 2002.

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Leone Army posted in the border region refused to pay for goods from Taylor’s National Patriotic Front of Liberia (NPFL) combatants. The NPFL soldiers responded with gunfire.4 This, according to one former RUF member, led Taylor to give the go-ahead to Foday Sankoh, leader of the RUF, to begin his war. Taylor and Sankoh feared that waiting to begin the war after this incident would only enable the Sierra Leone Army time to prepare a defense.5 There are reports that the government of Sierra Leone had intelligence of the invasion, but it is unclear whether it had forewarning of an actual invasion or had simply received information about the trade dispute.6 Despite the concerns of Taylor and Sankoh that the Sierra Leone government knew of the planned invasion and would take measures to protect the borders, the government did not act on the information, leaving the country vulnerable to the attack. The initial attack was successful and the RUF quickly made headway into the countryside for four reasons. First, the Sierra Leone Army (SLA) was a poorly trained, poorly equipped, mostly ceremonial force incapable of responding to the attack or defending Sierra Leone. Second, the government of Sierra Leone paid relatively little attention to the initial incursion, seeing it as a rebellion in the countryside that would not affect Freetown and would eventually be put down by the troops, much like the 1983 Ndogboyosoi rebellion in Pujehun District. This sentiment was later reinforced by the belief held by the National Provisional Ruling Council (NPRC) government that it could crush the rebellion rather than be forced to share power with it.7 Even a resident of Kailahun, who was coerced to join the RUF, admitted that he did not think anything of the reports of rebel attacks.8 Third, the population initially supported the RUF, rather than supporting government efforts to repel the invasion. The fourth factor was the decision in May 1991 by the British to refuse a request by the government of Sierra Leone for military assistance. This left the government helpless to fight a war against the RUF. Within a few months of the invasion the RUF began facing problems. The war was lasting longer than expected. The RUF had estimated the war would last no longer than six months, and Sankoh reportedly told his combatants that “the Sierra Leone colonial masters [the British] would step in and be on their [the

4. Author’s interview with former RUF member, Freetown, Sierra Leone, 2 August 2002. 5. Author’s interview with former RUF member, Freetown, Sierra Leone, 2 August 2002. 6. Ibrahim Abdullah and Patrick Muana, “The Revolutionary United Front,” in African Guerrillas, ed. Christopher Clapham (Oxford: James Currey, 1998), 178. 7. Lansana Gberie, “First Stages on the Road to Peace: The Abidjan Process (1995–96),” in Paying the Price: The Sierra Leone Peace Process, Accord 9, ed. David Lord (Ottawa: Conciliation Resources, September 2000), 18–25. 8. Author’s interview with former RUF abductee turned RUF member and spokesperson, Freetown, Sierra Leone, 2 August 2002.

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RUF] side to change the political system.”9 The RUF overestimated both its ability to easily overthrow the government and the sentiments of the British government, which stood behind the ruling government and did not back the rebels. The RUF also failed to capitalize on the initial popular support for the movement. Rather than build on this support, the RUF’s brutal attacks on the civilian population soon turned the population against them.10 The government of Sierra Leone began recruiting Liberian refugees to assist in its military campaign as well as some of the West African peacekeeping forces (ECOMOG) stationed in Sierra Leone for their Liberian mission.11 With this assistance, the government was able to resist the RUF onslaught. It quickly became clear the RUF was not prepared for a long fight and lacked the military strength, organizational capacity, and support structure to sustain a long war.

The RUF Support Network When the RUF initiated the war it did not have a support network to ensure access to financial means and military resources to fight a long war because the group expected a quick victory. Despite growing evidence that victory would not be quick and a longer war would ensue, the RUF did not make significant efforts to develop a sustainable and reliable supply network. This meant that military capacity depended largely on what the RUF could confiscate on the battlefield or barter from opponents, occasional sales across the Guinean border, and supplies it could access through Taylor. The RUF obtained basic goods and financing, initially, through looting the local population and confiscating and bartering agricultural goods. These opportunities for gain declined over time, but were eventually replaced by diamonds. However, diamonds did not provide a source of consistent income until after 1997, and even after this point turning raw diamonds into useable war resources was not always easy.12 Access to diamonds depended on the RUF controlling the diamond fields, and sales relied heavily on

9. Author’s interview with former RUF combatant, Freetown, Sierra Leone, 17 July 2002; Abdullah and Muana, 1998, 181. 10. Author’s interview with former SLA soldier, Freetown, Sierra Leone, 29 July 2002. A number of interviewees mentioned this during interviews in Freetown, Sierra Leone, April 2002–August 2003. 11. For discussion, see Abdullah and Muana, 1998, 180–181; Abdul K. Koroma, The Agony of a Nation (Freetown, Sierra Leone: Andromeda Publications, 1996), 150–153. 12. For a more detailed discussion of the conditions and events from the 1960s through the 1980s that contributed to the deeply felt popular grievances and the opportunity for war, see Abdullah, 1998, 203–235; Koroma, 1996; William Reno, Corruption and State Politics in Sierra Leone (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995).

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conduits through Liberia.13 The RUF also lacked political resources. Individual governments supported certain negotiation initiatives—Côte d’Ivoire in 1996, Guinea in 1997, and the United States in 1999—but none of these governments could be considered political supporters of the rebel group. Taylor served as the RUF’s political godfather in many ways, but his support proved inconsistent and unreliable. Overall the RUF possessed a weak support network.

Military Capacity of the RUF In the early years of the war, the RUF had limited access to military goods. The RUF relied on captured weapons to supply its troops with arms, such as those seized in a 1994 raid on an army depot in the Kenema area. This trend would continue throughout the war, with the RUF seizing weapons from the SLA, the Civil Defense Forces (CDF), ECOMOG, and United Nations peacekeeping forces (UNAMSIL) during clashes with these troops.14 One RUF combatant claimed this was the only way they could obtain arms since the RUF did not have money to purchase weapons.15 While seizure on the battlefield, especially by fighters on the front lines, provided some portion of the RUF’s weapons, especially during the period prior to substantial diamond mining by the RUF in the late 1990s, the RUF could not have sustained itself on these weapons and ammunition alone, or staged the number of returns from near defeat that it did in 1994, without external assistance.16 Shortly after the start of the war the RUF faced challenges in accessing military resources. Given the emerging splits between the Liberian and Sierra Leonean factions of the RUF and the struggle for leadership over the RUF between Taylor and Sankoh, Taylor’s support of the movement declined. Taylor’s own problems at home with his war led him to recall his troops serving with the RUF in 1993. Two important changes altered the situation for the RUF and enabled a positive turnaround in the war for the group. In 1993 the NPRC began a large and fast recruitment drive to increase the size of the national army. This

13. Some sales were also conducted through Lebanese merchants. See Jimmy D. Kandeh, “The Criminalization of the RUF Insurgency in Sierra Leone,” in Rethinking the Economics of War: The Intersection of Need, Creed and Greed, ed. Cynthia Arnson and I. William Zartman (Washington, DC: Woodrow Wilson Center Press, 2005), 103. 14. UN Security Council, Panel of Experts report, UN document S/2000/1195, 20 December 2000, 10. 15. Author’s interview with former RUF member, Freetown, Sierra Leone, 2 August 2002. This is an observation made by many combatants, both in the Sierra Leone war and the Liberian war. Author’s interviews with former RUF combatant, former RUF member, SLA soldiers, and a Sierra Leonean working with ex-combatants, Freetown, Sierra Leone, May–August 2002. 16. Author’s interview with former NPRC official, Freetown, Sierra Leone, 12 June 2002.

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brought in thousands of ill-prepared and poorly trained soldiers who would barter with the RUF, providing a source of military and nonmilitary goods to the rebel forces. In 1994 the RUF also changed its position on diamond mining and incorporated the seizure of diamond fields into its military strategy. This shift would bring the group not only financial resources but also a return of Taylor’s support. The 1997 coup brought several positive changes to the RUF’s support system. Joining the Armed Forces Revolutionary Council (AFRC) in government gave the RUF access, albeit relatively brief, to national military stocks. The coup also enabled the RUF to solidify its control over diamond mining in the east. Following the 1997 coup, the RUF pursued exchanges with Taylor of diamonds for guns. By 1997, Taylor, elected president of Liberia, would have been freer to move weapons to the RUF without the encumbrance of his own war. The transfer of arms for diamonds would become even easier after 1998 with Sankoh in prison, Sam Bockarie at the head of the RUF, and the increased harvesting of diamonds by the RUF. In addition, the increased mining production of the RUF provided a significant economic incentive for Taylor to engage in the diamond trade and thereby maintain his support of the RUF. There is substantial evidence that Charles Taylor served as the main conduit for arms to the RUF.17 Taylor’s ability to access military resources with relative ease and in abundance came from his historical ties in the region and the support network he created during the civil war in Liberia.18 Weapons sold to the RUF were often weapons sent to Liberia that Taylor then sold to the RUF. Third parties selling weapons to Taylor often ended up, unintentionally, supplying the RUF. The UN Panel of Experts in 2000 attempted to trace arms flows to the RUF and found evidence of supply routes from Niger, Burkina Faso, and Liberia, with the vast majority of the weapons transiting through Liberia before arriving in Sierra Leone.19 The two most common routes for arms were by air to Monrovia or via land from Burkina Faso to Côte d’Ivoire and then into Liberia. Taylor’s historical connections with the presidents

17. An assessment of the United Nations arms embargo concluded that Taylor was the primary conduit for arms for the RUF. See Paul Holtom, United Nations Arms Embargoes: Their Impact on Arms Flows and Target Behaviour; Case Study: Sierra Leone, 1997–Present (Stockholm: SIPRI, 2007). 18. See Reno, 1995, chapter 8; Global Witness, Logging Off: How the Liberian Timber Industry Fuels Liberia’s Humanitarian Disaster and Threatens Sierra Leone, September 2002, http://www. globalwitness.org/library/logging; UN document S/2000/1195; UN Security Council, Panel of Experts report, UN document S/2001/1015, 26 October 2001; UN Security Council, Panel of Experts report, UN document S/2002/470, 19 April 2002; UN Security Council, Panel of Experts report, UN document S/2002/1115, 25 October 2002; UN Security Council, Panel of Experts report, UN document S/2003/937, 28 October 2003. 19. UN document S/2000/1195, 31–34.

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of Burkina Faso and Côte d’Ivoire provided Taylor with easy transit routes through these countries.20 While Liberia provided a convenient conduit for arms, it also produced dependence on a single supplier. Although the RUF sometimes bought arms across the border in Guinea, or from the army and ECOMOG forces it fought, these were in limited quantities and the sources were not necessarily dependable in the long term.21 Sankoh tried to break the dependence on Liberia at least once during a failed attempt to purchase arms in Nigeria, resulting in his arrest and the rise of Sam Bockarie as the interim leader of the RUF. Once Bockarie took power, there is little evidence of efforts to alter the supply lines of the RUF. Instead, evidence suggests not only an increased military dependence of the RUF on Liberia but also a rise in joint commercial economic ventures through the sale of diamonds. The RUF had connections with the Sierra Leone Army from the start of the war. Foday Sankoh had been a corporal in the SLA and reportedly maintained his military contacts and utilized them during the war. In addition, with the rise of the NPRC, and especially following the recruitment process of 1993, the RUF found SLA soldiers willing to supply ammunition, uniforms, and other military resources in exchange for food or money. These activities appear to have been motivated by financial need, not by any clear desire to support the RUF politically or militarily.22 However, the relationship between the RUF and the Sierra Leone Army should not be overstated. The RUF and SLA did have interlocutors, but these were often individual commanders or soldiers on the front lines rather than a concerted effort at collaboration between the two forces.23 It was not until the 1997 coup that a faction within the army would join ranks with the RUF in a ruling coalition, which proved both temporary and superficial. The RUF’s access to military resources often depended on its access to economic resources. Changes in the military capacity of the RUF affected its economic position, and vice versa. The RUF’s military supply remained heavily dependent on Liberian support throughout the war. When this support was not forthcoming or when supply lines were cut off by fighting in Liberia, the RUF suffered a number of defeats. Military weakness affected the RUF’s ability to sustain its economic fortunes because these revenues resulted mainly from looting and diamond mining, both of which required military force to extract goods and maintain control of the diamond fields. When the RUF weakened militarily, it was forced

20. Author’s interview with Sierra Leone journalist, Freetown, Sierra Leone, 27 July 2002. 21. UN document S/2000/1195, 18, 42. 22. See William Reno, Warlord Politics and African States (Boulder: Lynne Rienner, 1998), chapter 4. 23. For discussion of the relationship between the Sierra Leone Army and the RUF, see David Keen, Conflict and Collusion in Sierra Leone (London: James Currey, 2005).

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to flee the diamond fields, as happened during the Executive Outcomes offensive in 1995 and the ECOMOG offensive in 1997. Likewise, when the RUF received military reinforcements, it was able to take (in 1995) and recapture (in 1998) the diamond-producing areas, once again enabling the RUF to take advantage of the economic opportunities available through the sale of diamonds. By late 2000 the dynamics of the conflict had eliminated most sources of weapons for the RUF. The RUF, although it had seized a number of weapons in the May 2000 hostage taking and the lead-up to this crisis, was on the defensive by late 2000 with the entrance of the British military in the war. The British presence limited the RUF’s capacity to purchase military resources from the Sierra Leone Army. The reduced military capacity of the RUF also decreased its ability to capture weapons during military confrontations. Guinea’s entrance into the war at the end of 2000 further compounded the RUF’s problems. The Guinean military proved stronger than the RUF, thus forcing the RUF to fight on another front while also eliminating Guinea as a source of weapons. Although the Guinean government had never provided the RUF with weapons, the RUF had been able to procure weapons in small numbers in exchanges with traders just across the border in Guinea. As 2001 progressed, and more and more RUF combatants disarmed, the military stocks and personnel levels of the RUF continued to decline. While the RUF maintained its connections with Taylor, Taylor came under increased pressure from a rebellion at home. A Liberian rebel group (LURD) operated in the main transit area for delivering assistance to the RUF, interrupting supply routes into Sierra Leone. By mid-2001, it appears the RUF was largely cut off from most supplies.

Economic Opportunities of the RUF The RUF faced limited economic opportunities during the war. Contrary to claims by some RUF members, the RUF did not grow and harvest its own crops.24 Instead, they utilized forced labor of civilians to farm the lands, looted villages, raided farms, and stole or confiscated village crops.25 The sale and barter of agricultural crops served as the main source of income for the RUF in the early years. Bartering across the Guinean border provided the RUF with

24. Author’s interview with RUF commander, Freetown, Sierra Leone, 17 July 2002; author’s interview with former RUF combatant, 17 July 2002; author’s interview with Sierra Leone journalist, 27 July 2002; author’s interview with RUF combatant, Makeni, Sierra Leone, 6 May 2002. 25. Author’s interview with RUF combatants, Freetown, 17 July 2002; author’s interview with RUF combatants, Makeni, Sierra Leone, 7 May 2002; author’s interview with Sierra Leone academic, Freetown, Sierra Leone, 31 July 2002; author’s interview with Sierra Leone journalist, Freetown, Sierra Leone, 27 July 2002.

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a dependable exchange route. The RUF traded cocoa, coffee, and agricultural produce for money and food, and sometimes arms with Guinean and Ivorian merchant traders.26 However, this trade depended on seasonal harvests and the ability to transport these goods to the borders, as well as the availability of local farmers. The RUF also depended on the benevolence of the Guinean government to allow cross-border trade to take place. After late 2000, when the RUF assisted Taylor’s forces in attacking southeastern Guinea, bartering across the border became extremely difficult if not impossible, especially after Guinea began its military counteroffensive, pushing the RUF back across the Sierra Leone border. A second source of income came from looting the local population. Looting provided an important source of income and resources during the early years when there were a substantial number of goods to seize. Initial seizures of goods were either used by the rebel group or sold in markets in Côte d’Ivoire and Liberia.27 After initial attacks, however, there was often little left in the villages to loot.28 While looting certainly provided resources at certain times during the war, due to the unorganized, unreliable and unsustainable nature of looting, it could not provide the RUF with a sustainable source of income over years of war. Libya provided minimal financing to the RUF, but did so in order to support the RUF in converting itself into a political party, not to finance the war. Libya provided cash to the RUF in 1996 to implement the Abidjan Accords and transform itself into a political party, in 1998 for Sankoh’s court defense, and in 1999 for implementation of the Lomé Accord.29 The RUF never used this money for its designated purpose. Instead, reports suggest Sankoh used the funding to purchase material goods and services unassociated with the war effort. There is no evidence to suggest that Libya ever directly backed the RUF war, and reports suggest that requests for assistance by the RUF went unheeded. Instead, the RUF was told to rely on Taylor for support.30 Reportedly, boxes of ammunition seized from

26. Author’s interview with Western diplomat, Freetown, Sierra Leone, 1 May 2002; author’s interview with RUF combatant, Freetown, Sierra Leone, 25 April 2002; Reno, 1998, 124. 27. Lansana Gberie, “War and Peace in Sierra Leone: Diamonds, Corruption and the Lebanese Connection,” occasional paper 6 (Ottawa: Partnership Africa Canada, 2002), 3. 28. The perception of looting as a “common activity in war” was supported by interviews conducted by the author with Liberian and Ivorian refugees in Guinea (Macenta and Nzerekore, February 2003) and by a West Africa scholar who had interviewed individuals in Liberia and Côte d’Ivoire (Freetown, Sierra Leone, July 2003). 29. Libya reportedly gave Sankoh $500,000 as incentive to convert the RUF into a political party and $50,000 for Sankoh’s trial in Freetown. Author’s interview with TRC official, Freetown, Sierra Leone, 25 July 2003; author’s interview with former RUF member, Freetown, Sierra Leone, 2 August 2002; author’s interview with Sierra Leone journalist, Freetown, Sierra Leone, 27 July 2002. 30. A former RUF member claimed Libya had not been a main benefactor, stating that during a 1995 visit to Libya to request assistance, he was not given any money and was told to rely on Taylor for assistance. Author’s interview with former RUF member, Freetown, Sierra Leone, 2 August 2002.

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the RUF during the war bore the Libyan flag, but this was likely the result of Libya providing arms to Taylor via Burkina Faso, not direct support for the RUF.31 Initially, the main focus of the RUF was not diamonds. Evidence suggests the RUF did not attack the diamond fields until 1992, and it was mainly the Liberian elements of the RUF that pursued this course, following commands issued by Taylor. After the RUF revival from near defeat in 1994, the RUF did target the mines in a change in strategy aimed at capturing natural resources. The RUF managed to capture and organize mining in Kono only for a limited time in 1995. Until 1997, the RUF could not maintain control of the diamond fields in the east but could capture the fields only for a few months at a time before being expelled. This left the RUF on the run and in desperate need of supplies. Without diamonds the RUF could not purchase new arms, and without arms it could not recapture the diamond fields. The RUF retook the mines again in late 1998, leading to a dramatic increase in diamond mining by the RUF through the end of the war. The increase in mining after 1998 largely resulted from the ascension of Bockarie to a leadership role—the detainment of Sankoh in prison thereby limiting his control of the group—increased RUF access to the diamond mines, and Bockarie’s relationship with Taylor that provided the conduit for selling the diamonds and purchasing weapons.32 This discussion underscores an important point about the role of natural resources in conflicts: gaining access to the diamond mines was not the only stumbling block; the RUF also had to find an avenue for selling the diamonds or trading them for weapons. Taylor provided the primary avenue for this exchange. However, Taylor’s assistance proved inconsistent until after his election to the Liberian presidency in 1997. Assistance became sporadic once again after 2000 when Taylor faced his own domestic insurgency, which often operated in the territory it controlled in northern Liberia along the border of Sierra Leone. Guinea offered another exchange route for diamonds, and the RUF could easily pass over the border. This trade route appeared small, with evidence suggesting trade was localized to specific commanders in the Guinean army, rather than being a state-supported activity.33 The Guinean offensive in 2000 would have eliminated this supply route as well. By 2000 RUF mining accounted for nearly 90 percent of the diamonds mined in Sierra Leone at an estimated $70 million.34 It remains unclear how much of this

31. Author’s interview with former SLA soldier, Freetown, Sierra Leone, 29 July 2002. 32. Author’s interview with former RUF member, Freetown, Sierra Leone, 2 August 2002; UN document S/2000/1195. 33. Author’s interview with former government of Sierra Leone minister, Freetown, Sierra Leone, 30 July 2002. 34. UN Chronicle, online edition, Department of Public Information, vol. 37, no. 3, 2000; UN document S/2000/1195.

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money actually ended up in RUF hands. While likely providing enough income for the RUF to continue the war, this trade was not free of problems. Liberians, representatives for Taylor, acted as overseers of the diamond mining in Kono and carried the diamonds from Sierra Leone to Liberia. RUF commanders also served as carriers for these diamonds. On many occasions, however, “accidents” occurred during which the diamonds disappeared.35 This resulted in accusations of disloyalty among RUF commanders and led to splits within the RUF movement.36 These splits bore out Sankoh’s early concerns about RUF participation in mining and the negative impact it would have on the cohesion of the movement. By mid-2001 the RUF had no reliable source of income. Most of their sources of income had been eliminated due to the declining military position of the RUF and the military pressure of the British and the UN on the western front and the Guinean military on the eastern front. The declining strength of the RUF meant it faced great difficulty holding territory, including the diamond mines. As the UN peacekeeping mission deployed throughout the country, reestablishing control of rebel areas, opportunities for looting disappeared. Guinea’s entrance into the war eliminated a source of both the trade in goods and the trade in arms. In addition, there is little evidence of support from Taylor, who faced his own battles in Liberia. By this time, LURD had captured parts of Lofa County in northern Liberia, thereby impinging on a major supply route for the RUF. Taylor faced such a difficult situation at home in his own fight with the Liberian rebels that he reportedly sent for RUF reinforcements in Sierra Leone to assist him in fighting LURD in Liberia, making it unlikely he would send resources north to the RUF. It became clear in the months following the dissolution of the RUF that the war did not make many of them rich. A large number of ex-combatants eked out a living from disarmament benefits, though most spent this money quickly and frivolously on radios and similar goods, while others turned to petty crime to earn a living.37 A few commanders had nice houses in Makeni when the war ended. While not lavish by Western standards, these homes were far above the conditions of the majority of ex-combatants.38 Although estimates indicate the RUF earned at least $25 million per year from the sale of diamonds once it began mining in the mid- to late 1990s, there is little evidence the RUF as a whole became rich from these sales. Reports suggest the “RUF receive[d] less than 10 percent of market value for the diamonds it [sold], paid mostly in the form of

35. 36. 37. 38.

Douglas Farah, “Al Qaeda Cash Tied to Diamond Trade,” Washington Post, 2 November 2001. UN document S/2000/1195, 16–19. Author’s interviews in Makeni, Sierra Leone, May 2002. Author’s visit to the home of top RUF commander, Makeni, Sierra Leone, April 2002.

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weapons, food and medicine. Taylor . . . receive[d] a commission on each transaction in Monrovia, and [Ibrahim] Bah and the other brokers share[d] the rest.”39

The RUF’s Political Patrons The RUF made its largest mistake by failing to capitalize on the initial popular support for the movement. Instead, following numerous acts of violence against civilians, public support quickly and permanently turned against the RUF. The RUF made few attempts to regain this public support. Unlike other rebel movements, such as LURD in Liberia and the Patriotic Movement of Côte d’Ivoire (MPCI), the RUF did not cultivate international opinion or seek international backing for its “democratic” cause. Instead, the RUF committed a number of heinous acts that ensured it would remain a pariah movement. In 1994, the RUF did send emissaries to neighboring Guinea and Côte d’Ivoire to provide information on the rebel movement to the international community and the Sierra Leone diaspora; however, this failed to garner outside support.40 Sankoh reportedly wanted an image as “Mr. Clean” and did not want to be seen as pillaging the diamond fields, but this decision appears to be based more on fear (that his combatants would defect for the mines) than on true concern for public opinion.41 Ultimately, the RUF was a military movement that demonstrated little awareness of the need for political and popular support. Instead, the RUF placed its hopes on being militarily strong enough to seize power through the barrel of the gun—a status it could never attain. The RUF had limited political support when it entered Sierra Leone in 1991. By the end of 1989, the network of students, radicals, and intellectuals that gave rise to the precursor to the RUF had left the movement.42 The RUF remained isolated, and in many respects unknown, until the appearance of Sankoh at the Abidjan negotiations in early 1996. The RUF made limited efforts to develop a positive media image and to raise support in the international community and the Sierra Leone diaspora, but these efforts largely failed. The RUF did receive some political support from Côte d’Ivoire and Burkina Faso during the Abidjan negotiations and from the United States during the Lomé negotiations, but support from these countries waned shortly after the signing of the agreements as a result of the defection of the RUF and its refusal to implement the agreements. 39. Farah, 2001. 40. Author’s interview with an RUF member sent to conduct these public relations campaigns, Freetown, Sierra Leone, 2 August 2002. 41. Author’s interview with former RUF member, Freetown, Sierra Leone, 2 August 2002. 42. Author’s interviews with Sierra Leone scholars, Freetown, Sierra Leone, 15 July and 26 July 2002.

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Political connections with the outside world largely depended on Foday Sankoh and Sam Bockarie, and with them both out of the picture by mid-2000, the RUF lost any political links it had with the outside world as sources of support. In the 1980s, Libya provided support for a number of revolutionary groups in Africa under a broader plan to carry out a revolution.43 As part of this strategy, Libya provided funding for Sierra Leonean students to travel to Libya in addition to military and ideological training for some who would later become members of the RUF. Once the Sierra Leone war began, however, there is little evidence that Libya maintained any support for the RUF rebels. In the late 1980s, Libya allegedly shifted more support to Taylor and his impending war, seeing Taylor as ready for revolution and the rebel leaders in Sierra Leone as still wavering over whether to utilize military force for political change.44 Thus it is more likely that any support the RUF received from Libya was actually support provided by Libya to Taylor, who then sold any excess to the RUF. There was never overt Libyan political support for the movement. In many ways Taylor acted as a political patron to the RUF, but Taylor’s support appears to have been more strategic than sympathetic. Taylor supported the RUF to punish Sierra Leone for providing a base for the ECOMOG operations in Liberia and to relieve the military pressure on his own rebellion in Liberia, not to support the RUF’s political aims. At times, Taylor played the role of moderator between the RUF and the international community, but these efforts served to increase Taylor’s international profile; they were not attempts to publicly defend the RUF.45 Indeed, Taylor’s patronage of the RUF fluctuated depending on his own needs, which were calculated based on his military and political situation in Liberia. While many refer to Taylor as the godfather of the RUF, he seems to have had more of a commercial and strategic interest in the RUF than anything else. Côte d’Ivoire played a large role in organizing the 1996 peace negotiations. The foreign minister traveled to Kailahun to meet with Sankoh in February 1996, urging him to travel to Côte d’Ivoire for the talks and to build a better public image for the group rather than allowing them to be seen as “the butchers” of West Africa.46 Sankoh initially followed this advice and traveled to Abidjan in March 1996 for negotiations. The factions signed the Abidjan Accord in November 1996, but the defection of the RUF from the agreement soon after did little to win the group international support. Instead, images emerging of the RUF’s hand-chopping campaign during the February 1996 elections to prevent citizens

43. 44. 45. 46.

Abdullah (1998, 213–222) discusses these early links between rebel groups and Libya. Author’s interview with former Sierra Leone activist, Freetown, Sierra Leone, 1 August 2002. Author’s interview with Sierra Leone scholar, Freetown, Sierra Leone, 15 July 2002. Gberie, 2000.

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from voting served to further tarnish the group’s image and give it pariah status. The Ivorian government made no other overt attempts to assist the RUF. The United States provided assistance and support to the 1999 Lomé negotiations. This resulted in poor public relations not only for the RUF but for the United States as well. In 1998 and 1999, U.S. diplomats played a significant role in politically propping up the RUF by assisting in the negotiation process and pressuring the government of Sierra Leone to sign a cease-fire with the RUF. While the United States undoubtedly understood the violent nature of the RUF, a number of diplomats argued for negotiations over military action, from both a belief that the RUF could not be defeated militarily and an unwillingness to contribute more than diplomatic support for peace. These officials provided advice and a gentle nudge to the RUF leadership, while at the same time placing significant pressure on the Sierra Leone government to agree to the peace accord. The Lomé Accord brought the RUF considerable economic, political, and military gains. Sankoh’s position in government contributed to the political legitimacy of the RUF and provided him with the means to funnel economic resources to himself and to the RUF, enabling the purchase of additional weapons. The RUF’s good fortune did not last long after the RUF failed to implement the accord. While there were some strong supporters of a negotiated solution and a power-sharing government with the RUF, most U.S. diplomats perceived Lomé as a chance for peace that came with a bitter pill to swallow in that it rewarded a rebel group well known for atrocities. By mid-2000, the RUF lost its political support from the United States and with this support went the political and economic gains accrued through the accord. Following the failure of Lomé, the United States quickly backed away from supporting the RUF in negotiations, and on 20 June 2000, following the hostage crisis involving UN peacekeepers, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, Richard Holbrooke, called for the establishment of a special tribunal to try the RUF for war crimes. This indicated a significant change in the position of the U.S. government, which shifted its support away from negotiations in favor of a military solution to defeat the RUF.

Evolution of the War: Explaining Key Changes The entire war is too long to cover in detail in this chapter. Instead this section provides accounts of four important time periods: the early survival of the RUF (1992–1994), the Abidjan Accord (1995–1996), the Lomé Accord (1999–2000), and the end of the war (2000–2002). The analysis of the RUF during these periods illustrates the shifting balance of power during the war, the fluctuations in the RUF’s access to resources, and the choices available to and made by the RUF.

Political (↓)

RUF is cut off from Liberian assistance.

RUF faces three military fronts.

Economic (↓)

International opinion shifts against RUF.

RUF faces weakening position.

a solution. Military (↓)

Political (↑)

Heavy international pressure pushes parties to negotiate

Economic (↑)

Nigeria leaves ECOMOG force.

Military (↑)

Government is weak.

RUF holds a strong military position.

Continue war (*)

Seek negotiations

Continue war

Continue war

Seek negotiations

EXPECTED OUTCOME

RUF cannot sustain war.

RUF fails to rebuild.

RUF agrees to cease-fire.

agreement.

RUF rebuilds and soon breaks

RUF refuses to disarm.

RUF signs agreement.

RUF agrees to negotiations.

RUF rebuilds and breaks agreement.

EO leaves.

RUF signs peace agreement.

RUF seeks ouster of EO.

RUF seeks negotiations.

RUF rejects offer.

NPRC offers cease-fire.

RUF rejects plan.

NPRC offers peace plan.

RUF rebuilds.

NPRC offers unilateral cease-fire.

ACTUAL OUTCOME

Note: Change in group position is indicated by (↓) for decreasing, (↑) for increasing. An asterisk (*) indicates actual outcome differed from expected outcome.

(2000–2002)

End of war

(1999–2000)

Lomé Accord

Economic (↓)

EO pushes RUF out of diamond mines.

Military (↓)

EO places heavy military pressure on RUF.

RUF begins organized mining.

(1995–1996)

Economic (↑)

Military (↑)

EO enters war and regains territory.

RUF captures mines.

RUF makes military gains.

peace in Abidjan

Negotiating

Economic (↑)

SLA and RUF soldiers cooperate in economic exchanges.

Military (↑)

SLA recruitment drive weakens military.

Military (↓)

CHANGES IN REBEL RESOURCES

RUF changes strategy; need for resources decreases.

RUF is cut off from resupply from Liberia.

RUF suffers from splits in leadership.

NPRC conducts offensive against RUF.

KEY CHANGES

Key changes during the war in Sierra Leone, 1992–2002

(1992–1994)

Early survival

TIME PERIOD

TABLE 3.1

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A more detailed look at the RUF reveals the rebel group did not have easy or consistent access to needed resources over the course of the war and reductions in access constrained the options available to the group, limiting its ability to continue fighting. The RUF rejected government offers of cease-fires when the government was weak and not able to pressure the RUF, but it accepted cease-fires and negotiations when it had been weakened through military pressure and was unable to resupply its forces. Peace agreements did not come at surprising times, but at times that would have been expected given the position of the rebel group versus the government. What was surprising were the numerous episodes when the RUF seemed to resurrect itself from defeat. Resurgence proved possible during negotiation and postnegotiation phases when military pressure on the RUF eased and the RUF could access new supplies. The end of the war became possible only when the RUF faced ongoing military pressure and extremely limited access to resources. Table 3.1 provides an overview of the analysis in this section. The table indicates the main changes in the parties to the conflict in terms of resources and position. The change in the RUF’s position is indicated (↑/↓), as is the expected outcome. The expected outcome is based on the analytical framework of the book: an increase in resources will lead to a preference for continuing the war; a decrease in resources will lead to a preference for negotiations or some form of respite. The final column in the table indicates the actual outcome. The actual outcomes mirror the expected outcomes in all cases except one: the negotiations of the Lomé Accord (indicated by * in the table). The following sections provide additional context for understanding these time periods and the analysis presented in table 3.1, the fit of the predicted expected outcome, and in the one case of deviation from the model, an explanation for why the RUF did not act as expected.

Survival in the Early Years of War (1992–1994) This time period can be split into two distinct patterns (see table 3.1). In the first part of the period the RUF suffered from splits within its leadership and a lack of resources; its main source of resupply from Liberia had been interrupted by the activities of the Liberian rebel force. During this time, the expected outcome is that the RUF would seek a form of respite. This came not through any initiative of the RUF but through the government’s offer of a unilateral cease-fire, which was accepted by the RUF and used as an opportunity to rebuild. During the second part of the period the tables turned. The RUF held the upper hand due to its change in military strategy and the reduction in the government’s military pressure resulting from the poorly planned recruitment drive of the Sierra Leone Army. During this time, the expected outcome is that the RUF would continue the war, which it did despite an offer of a peace plan from the government.

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The Sierra Leone Army proved more capable than the RUF anticipated. This was especially true following the April 1992 coup that brought to power the National Provisional Ruling Council (NPRC), a military government made up of junior officers.47 The NPRC immediately called for a cease-fire and offered the RUF amnesty, but this offer was rejected by the RUF. Three factors contributed to the failed cease-fire. First, the RUF made demands the NPRC could not accept. Second, Taylor reportedly told the RUF not to negotiate. Taylor’s own rebel forces, the NPFL, were under heavy attack at the time in Liberia by the Sierra Leone–supported anti-Taylor forces (ULIMO); a reduction in fighting in Sierra Leone would have freed these forces to focus on Liberia, further hurting Taylor’s rebellion.48 Third, given the problems in the government’s initial response to the rebel invasion and the ensuing coup, the RUF still believed it had the upper hand on the battlefield. The RUF misjudged its position. The balance of power quickly shifted. In response to the RUF’s rebuff, the NPRC began a military offensive in late 1992. The NPRC quickly swept across the country dislodging the RUF from the diamond areas and pushing the rebel group to the border areas with Liberia. This offensive was greatly assisted by the Sierra Leone Civil Defense Forces (CDF). The CDF, an umbrella organization, consisted of small groups of local hunters, formed as self-defense militias to protect their communities, located throughout the south and east. The government recruited these forces because it considered them loyal to the government’s cause and they increased both the number and quality of the government forces. A deep split between the Liberian and Sierra Leone forces of the RUF further impaired the RUF’s military capacity. The Liberian combatants’ desire to move into the diamond fields resulted in a violent struggle for power between the two factions. Many of the Sierra Leoneans who had trained in Liberia resented the Liberian presence in the upper echelons of the group given the training the Sierra Leoneans had undergone in Liberia prior to the 1991 invasion.49 By the end of November 1992, the Sierra Leone leadership of the RUF had evicted most of the Liberian fighters from the rebel movement.50 The infighting had produced a number of setbacks for the RUF at the hands of the Sierra Leone Army, revealing the military weakness of the RUF and its inability to handle this internal division and fight a war at the same time. A combination of the fractional splits in the RUF, the inability of the RUF to fight a conventional war, and the enhanced capacity of the government forces on

47. Abdullah and Muana, 1998, 181. 48. In 1993 Taylor recalled the remaining Liberian fighters in Sierra Leone to return to his aid in Liberia. Abdullah, 1998, 225. 49. Author’s interview with former RUF member, Freetown, Sierra Leone, 2 August 2002. 50. Author’s interview with former RUF member, Freetown, Sierra Leone, 2 August 2002.

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the battlefield put the RUF on the run throughout 1993. The capacity of the RUF to rearm and regroup was further limited during this time because of the presence of Liberian anti-Taylor forces along the border. ULIMO controlled these border areas from 1992 to 1993.51 The ULIMO forces, fighting against Taylor’s rebel group and supported by the Sierra Leone government, would not have allowed the RUF easy access to cross into Liberia for reinforcements and arms, effectively cutting off the RUF’s main supply channel and eliminating the possibility of safe haven. The RUF’s salvation came in the form of a unilateral cease-fire offered by the NPRC government in December 1993. The NPRC, under international pressure to offer such a concession to the rebels and under pressure by the international community and groups such as the International Committee of the Red Cross to uphold the Geneva Conventions, offered the RUF a way to escape defeat.52 While it was perhaps surprising that the government would offer such a concession, most evidence indicates that at this point in time the government, the Sierra Leone population, and the international community believed the war was over, the RUF had been largely defeated, and any remaining elements had been pushed back into Liberia. Thus the NPRC was able to appear noble in offering what the international community wanted at no cost to the Sierra Leone government. Unfortunately, this assessment of the situation proved inaccurate and the RUF spent the time provided by the cease-fire regrouping for another attack. Three factors contributed to the RUF’s resurgence: a change in the RUF strategy, an increase in assistance from Taylor,53 and the NPRC recruitment drive of 1993. The RUF returned to the war with not only new supplies but also a new strategy for fighting.54 Understanding that it could not win a conventional war, the RUF began pursuing a guerrilla-style war.55 The RUF adopted the use of hitand-run tactics and conducted most of these raids against civilian, not military, targets. Ambushes and raids on government troops did occur, but they were far less frequent than civilian attacks and looting raids of villages.56 The RUF 51. Author’s interview with former RUF member, Freetown, Sierra Leone, 2 August 2002. 52. Author’s interview with former SLA soldier during NPRC regime, Freetown, Sierra Leone, 29 July 2002. 53. Allegedly Taylor told the RUF to focus on diamonds as a source of money for arms, advice the RUF took. Author’s interview with Sierra Leone scholar, Freetown, Sierra Leone, 31 July 2002. 54. Abdullah and Muana, 1998, 183–190. 55. Many interviewees mentioned this conversion from conventional to guerrilla warfare. Author’s interview with Sierra Leone journalist, Freetown, Sierra Leone, 27 July 2002; author’s interview with former SLA soldier, Freetown, Sierra Leone, 29 July 2002; author’s interview with Sierra Leone scholar, Freetown, Sierra Leone, 15 July 2002; author’s interview with ECOMOG soldier, Freetown, Sierra Leone, 11 June 2002; author’s interview with NPRC official, Freetown, Sierra Leone, 12 June 2002; author’s interview with former RUF member, Freetown, Sierra Leone, 2 August 2002. 56. Abdullah and Muana, 1998, 182–184.

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also ceased residing in easily accessible villages and moved deeper into the difficult-to-penetrate hinterland. Rather than trying to secure and hold territory, the RUF only visited villages for looting purposes or for ideological recruitment drives by the RUF leader, Foday Sankoh.57 The shift to guerrilla warfare decreased the military needs of the RUF, enabling it to survive on smaller quantities of supplies, thereby temporarily countering the negative effects of having an inefficient and small supply network. This change in tactics also made it extremely difficult for the Sierra Leone military to restrain the RUF.58 Ill trained for guerrilla warfare and suddenly facing its own internal divisions and defections, the Sierra Leone military soon found itself on the retreat. The military problems of the NPRC were compounded by the poorly planned recruitment drive of 1993. The SLA recruitment drive sought to quickly enlarge the size of the army to six thousand soldiers, and then later increase it to nearly fifteen thousand. The quick pace of the recruitment process prevented incoming soldiers from receiving any significant military training. One former NPRC official referred to these new recruits as having “no loyalty,” being “ill equipped . . . and taken from the streets” and prone to “[run] away when fired upon” by the RUF.59 The impact of this illplanned and poorly executed recruitment drive would prove devastating to the NPRC regime and its future military successes. The new soldiers became notorious for preying on civilians, who labeled them “sobels” because they acted like soldiers during the day but behaved like rebels at night, with reports of looting and other atrocities.60 Their large numbers and lack of training also made control of the army difficult, and many reports surfaced of collaboration between the soldiers and the rebels. In part this was due to the rebels’ use of captured or purchased government uniforms to conduct their raids, and in part it revealed the reality of the situation. SLA soldiers reportedly sold uniforms and ammunition to the RUF out of financial need and desire for a better life, a life like that of the military junta in power in Freetown.61 The actions of these sobels and their ineffectiveness in confronting the RUF led quickly to a decline in popular and international support for the NPRC regime. In November 1994, under increasing military and international diplomatic pressure to settle the war, the head of the NPRC government, Valentine Strasser,

57. Author’s interview with ECOMOG soldier, Freetown, Sierra Leone, 11 June 2002; Abdullah and Muana, 1998, 190–191. 58. Author’s interview with former NPRC official, Freetown, Sierra Leone, 12 June 2002. 59. Author’s interview with former NPRC official, Freetown, Sierra Leone, 12 June 2002. 60. For descriptions of “sobel” behavior, see Abdullah and Muana, 1998; Keen, 2005; Reno, 1998. 61. Author’s interview with former NPRC/SLA soldiers, Freetown, Sierra Leone, 29 July 2002; author’s interview with Sierra Leone journalist, Freetown, Sierra Leone, 27 July 2002; author’s interview with former government of Sierra Leone minister, Freetown, Sierra Leone, 30 July 2002.

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offered the RUF a peace plan that included the establishment of a cease-fire; the RUF’s renunciation of terrorism; the RUF’s immediate release of all foreign and Sierra Leonean hostages; the RUF’s demonstrated commitment to a political agenda; and the transformation of the RUF into a political party.62 If the RUF accepted the peace plan, the government agreed to recognize the rebels. Strasser threatened to return to war and to increase the intensity of the government’s military campaign if the RUF refused the offer. The RUF, under no military pressure to negotiate, rejected the peace plan and in December went on the offensive on three major fronts. The RUF quickly gained ground. The growing weakness of the government forces combined with the new military tactics of the RUF and the renewed RUF supply line to Liberia enabled the RUF to once again gain the advantage in the war.

Negotiating Peace in Abidjan (1995–1996) This time period can also be split into two distinct blocks (see table 3.1). In the first part of the period the RUF made substantial military gains and opened a new source of economic income by initiating organized diamond mining. During this time, the expected outcome is that the RUF would continue the war, which it did despite an offer of a cease-fire by the NPRC government. During the second part of the period the RUF faced a significantly changed military situation. The government’s hiring of Executive Outcomes, a private military company, shifted the balance of power as they quickly recaptured territory from the RUF and pushed the RUF out of the diamond-mining areas. During this time, the expected outcome is that the RUF would seek a form of respite. The RUF negotiated the Abidjan agreement at this time. The RUF continued to gain ground in early 1995 with the capture of a number of mines throughout the country, including the bauxite and rutile mines in the south, as well as some of the diamond mines in the east. This led to the closure of the bauxite and rutile mines63—mines that required heavy equipment, technical skill, and export facilities—which seriously affected the Sierra Leone economy and the government’s ability to obtain foreign currency. It also marked the beginning of organized diamond mining by the RUF.64 Facing the possibility of an RUF advance on Freetown, the NPRC offered an unconditional cease-fire and the opportunity for the RUF to participate in national elections. The NPRC insisted, however, on establishing a full cease-fire between the parties

62. Koroma, 1996, 201–202. 63. Author’s interview with Sierra Leone journalist, Freetown, Sierra Leone, 27 July 2002. 64. Author’s interview with Sierra Leone scholar, Freetown, Sierra Leone, 15 July 2002.

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before holding peace talks with the RUF. The RUF rejected this condition, and negotiations stalled largely over the RUF demands for a power-sharing arrangement and for the departure of all foreign troops from the country. The NPRC was negotiating from a position of weakness. The RUF, after achieving a series of significant successes, had no incentive to negotiate and refused settlement. It would take a reversal in fortunes and significant military pressure to bring the rebels to the table. The big reversal came in May 1995 when the government of Sierra Leone hired the private security firm, Executive Outcomes. Only the entrance of Executive Outcomes into the war prevented a government defeat.65 Executive Outcomes, in cooperation with the Nigerian and Ghanaian troops of ECOMOG, swiftly defended Freetown and drove the RUF back into the bush.66 With the training and support of Executive Outcomes, the SLA went on the offensive and started to retake ground. The Civil Defense Forces also contributed to the success of this offensive.67 Executive Outcomes retook the diamond mines of Kono in December, placing further pressure on the RUF. By the end of 1995, with the RUF on the run and seeking another respite from defeat, the RUF agreed to initiate peace talks.68 The peace talks floundered over one major stumbling block: the RUF demand that all foreign forces withdraw from Sierra Leone. Ensuring the departure of Executive Outcomes from Sierra Leone was fundamental to any chance the RUF had to succeed in its war efforts; the presence of the company was also the key to the government of Sierra Leone staying in power.69 As the peace talks stalled, the Nigerian troops and Executive Outcomes increased their attacks, placing greater military pressure on the RUF to negotiate. From late 1995, diplomatic pressure on the RUF to negotiate increased. During this time the RUF also suffered a series of military setbacks. The SLA defeated the RUF forces in Kargari Hills, and Executive Outcomes retook control of Sierra Rutile.70 With the assistance of the Civil Defense Forces, the RUF headquarters at Zogoda and several other key camps were taken in September and October, leading to the capture of many RUF combatants and the flight of many others into Liberia.71 Finally, under mounting 65. See Reno, 1998, 130 and 135. 66. For a more detailed discussion of the Executive Outcomes offensive, see David Shearer, Private Armies and Military Intervention, Adelphi Paper 316 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998). 67. Gberie, 2000. 68. For a more detailed discussion of the negotiation process, see ibid. 69. Reno provides a similar assessment. See Reno, 1998, 137–138. 70. Despite regaining control, the government was incapable of restarting mining operations. Conciliation Resources, Resources, Primary Industry and Conflict in Sierra Leone, September/October 1997, http://www.c-r.org/sites/c-r.org/files/ResourcesPrimaryIndustryandConflict_1997_ENG.pdf. 71. Abdullah and Muana, 1998, 187.

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diplomatic and military pressure, both sides signed the Abidjan Peace Accord in Côte d’Ivoire on 30 November. The domestic and international community believed the RUF was defeated and would abide by the peace agreement.72 However, the peace agreement limited only the government’s capacity to fight, not the RUF’s. The agreement included a provision for expelling all foreign forces, including Executive Outcomes, a longstanding demand of the RUF. This provision proved to be the key to the RUF’s acceptance of the agreement. The government of Sierra Leone fulfilled this commitment by expelling Executive Outcomes in January 1997. The decision by the government to agree to this demand ultimately ensured the agreement’s failure by removing the main source of military pressure on the RUF and enabling the RUF to significantly improve its military position. In addition, the Abidjan agreement imposed no restrictions on the RUF or its access to resources. The RUF leader, Foday Sankoh, remained in Abidjan after signing the agreement. His arrest in Nigeria in March 1997 exposed an alleged arms deal, underscoring the recalcitrance of the RUF and its continued preference for war.

The Lomé Agreement (1999–2000) The Lomé negotiations began in April 1999. At this time, most international observers believed that the RUF could not be defeated on the battlefield and that negotiations were the only solution.73 The United States played a prominent role in the process. At least one driving force behind U.S. interest in ending the war was the increasing pressure applied by lobbyists on the U.S. Congressional Black Caucus to intervene.74 The U.S. special envoy Jesse Jackson, who had well-known ties with the Liberian president Charles Taylor, was sent to convince Taylor to use his influence to pressure the RUF into negotiations.75 The signing of a cease-fire on 18 May 1999 opened the way for negotiations on a peace agreement. Although the analytical framework (table 3.1) did not predict the RUF would negotiate at this time, given the strong position of the RUF vis-à-vis the government, the RUF went along with negotiations for a number of reasons. First, the RUF knew the government of Sierra Leone was negotiating from an extremely weak position. This offered the possibility of gaining large concessions through

72. Abdullah, 1998, 228. 73. William Reno, “The Failure of Peacekeeping in Sierra Leone,” Current History (May 2001): 221. 74. See Ismail Rashid, ‘The Lomé Peace Negotiations,” in Lord, Paying the Price, 2000, 26–33. 75. Author’s interview with West Africa scholar, 26 July 2003; introduction, Politique Africaine 88 (December 2002): 8.

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negotiations. Second, the peace negotiations offered the RUF a tremendous amount of power in a new government.76 For the RUF, there was no reason not to participate. Furthermore, participation in the negotiations, and even signing the peace deal, did not necessarily mean the RUF would willingly implement the agreement. Third, the RUF was suffering from war fatigue, having suffered punishing attacks by the Guinean army in June, although this fact emerged only after negotiations. Evidence of the need for respite came days after the signing of the peace agreement as thousands of rebels and civilians emerged from the RUF areas in search of food. Furthermore, splits in the RUF leadership in late 1999 suggested that the RUF needed time to restore order to its house before proceeding with the war effort.77 Finally, under international pressure from the United States and Liberia, as well as Libya and Burkina Faso (key elements in the support chain to Liberia, which in turn fed the RUF war machine), the RUF agreed to the stipulations of the Lomé agreement.78 Lomé, no matter how apparently beneficial to the RUF, never had the opportunity or the political support to succeed. The failure of Lomé cannot be blamed on the RUF alone. There is ample evidence that the government of Sierra Leone was also slow to implement the peace agreement and remained unwilling to share power with the rebels.79 The desire to negotiate with the rebels came from the international community, not the government of Sierra Leone. Both Sankoh and the government of Sierra Leone were insincere in their willingness to negotiate and sign the agreement because neither side was truly committed to implementing the peace agreement.80 Several cabinet members in the government of Sierra Leone threatened revolt in June if President Ahmed Tejan Kabbah signed the Lomé agreement. Reports of intense diplomatic pressure by the U.S. government suggest one reason why the government ultimately relented and signed the Lomé Accord in July 1999.81 Several factors contributed to the failure of the peace agreement. First, the imminent departure of Nigerian troops provided cause for concern. Nigeria, 76. The Lomé Accord offered the RUF a political party with a trust fund to assist in the establishment of the party (article 3); offered Sankoh the chairmanship of the Board of the Commission for the Management of Strategic Resources, National Reconstruction, and Development as well as the status of vice president (article 5); allowed for any of the ex-combatants to be reintegrated into the new Sierra Leone Army, provided they met requirements (article 17); and pardoned Sankoh and granted all combatants amnesty (article 9). 77. Rashid, 2000. 78. Author’s interview with Sierra Leone scholar, Freetown, Sierra Leone, 15 July 2002; Rashid, 2000. 79. James Obita, foreword to Lord, Paying the Price, 2000, 8–9. 80. Author’s interview with RUF member, Freetown, Sierra Leone, 25 April 2002. 81. Rashid, 2000; Conciliation Resources profile on the United States in Lord, Paying the Price, 2000, 93; Ryan Lizza, “Charles Taylor’s Terror Ties: Ace of Diamonds,” New Republic, 10 July 2003, http://www.tnr.com/article/ace-diamonds.

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having borne the brunt of the responsibility for and casualties of the ECOMOG force, was looking for an exit route. The February election of General Olusegun Obasanjo as president of Nigeria, and his promises to withdraw Nigerian participation from ECOMOG, accelerated the likelihood of the Nigerian contingent’s departure. This departure would weaken the military position of the Sierra Leone government and improve the position of the RUF.82 Second, the RUF remained steadfast in its refusal to disarm. In November the UN publicly revealed concern over several serious cease-fire violations, including troop and weapon movements and human rights abuses.83 The RUF actively prevented its combatants from entering the disarmament process and claimed the UN was forcing RUF combatants to disarm rather than encouraging them to voluntarily disarm in accordance with the Lomé agreement, and this demonstrated a clear bias against the group.84 In part, and according to many international observers to a large degree, the failure to disarm resulted from a growing split between Sam Bockarie and Foday Sankoh and their competition for leadership of the RUF. Whereas Sankoh seemed inclined to abide by the peace agreement and implement its terms, Bockarie posed a large stumbling block to implementation. Bockarie fled to Liberia in December, but this failed to move the peace process forward. Sankoh issued an RUF position paper that highlighted RUF concerns about the Lomé peace process and sent a letter to President Kabbah identifying government violations of the Lomé Peace Accord.85 On 6 March 2000, Sankoh refused Parliament’s request for an appearance to answer questions about the war, claiming “he is not answerable to Parliament, as his position is equivalent to that of vice president.”86 Third, there was evidence of efforts to rebuild the capacity of the RUF. Although Sankoh had banned mining throughout the country in January 2000, photos taken later revealed that mining never ceased in the rebel-held areas of the country. Any RUF disarmament in these areas would have significantly reduced Sankoh’s income and his ability to purchase weapons. Sankoh also actively sought investors and arranged deals with companies to manage the diamond mines.87 In February 2000, Sankoh traveled to Côte d’Ivoire and South Africa, though he was under a UN travel ban and was not authorized to take these trips. The RUF forces seized a large cache of arms and ammunition from UNAMSIL troops in

82. See Rashid, 2000. 83. UN daily press briefing by the Office of the Spokesman for the UN Secretary-General, 2 November 1999. 84. Author’s interview with former RUF combatant, Freetown, Sierra Leone, 17 July 2002. 85. The full text of this letter can be found at http://www.sierra-leone.org/AFRC-RUF/ RUF-022400.html. 86. For Di People (Sierra Leone newspaper), “Salone Yesterday: Diary News,” 10 December 2002. 87. UN document S/2000/1195, 19–20.

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Kambia. Reports continued that the RUF intended to hold its bases in Kailahun while disarming in other parts of the country. Finally, a series of key events bolstered the RUF in early spring 2000. First, ECOMOG continued to withdraw its force, thereby removing the last remaining military force the RUF feared. Second, the disarmament and demobilization process had come to a virtual standstill, as evidenced by thousands marching on Freetown to protest the slow pace of the program in late March. Third, the replacement of the head of the armed forces, General Maxwell Khobe, in midApril, as a result of injuries he had sustained previously, removed a commander the RUF feared. Fourth, the RUF had already successfully attacked UN contingents and seized large amounts of military equipment.88 This successful test of UN capacity left the RUF optimistic; it appeared confident that acting against the UN would scare off the international force and any others that might seek to intervene.89 The departure of the UN would have been significant because it was unlikely the government of Sierra Leone could have survived without the UN presence.90 In view of these events, the increasing pressure to disarm, and the promise of eleven thousand UN troops arriving in Sierra Leone in the future, the RUF likely saw this as the best time to prevent the disarmament of its forces.

End of the War (2000–2002) By 2000 the RUF faced an increasingly untenable situation. During this time, the expected outcome is that the RUF would seek a form of respite (see table 3.1). The RUF did agree to a cease-fire in 2000. However, the RUF also tried to rebuild its capacity and return to the battlefield. It proved unable to achieve either. Facing three active military fronts and completely cut off from resupply lines from Liberia, the RUF faced few options for sustaining the war. The hostage crisis of May 2000 proved to be a major turning point. On 6 May the RUF in Makeni, Magburaka, Kailahun, and Kambia took more than five hundred peacekeepers hostage and the next day shot down a UN helicopter. Disarmament fears were at least part of the reason for the hostage crisis. Lured by the promise of disarmament money, RUF combatants sought to turn in their weapons for cash.91 It remains unclear who actually gave the order to seize the hostages.

88. Dennis Bright, “Implementing the Lomé Peace Agreement,” in Lord, Paying the Price, 2000, 36–41. 89. Author’s interview with RUF member, Freetown, Sierra Leone, 25 April 2002. 90. Author’s interview with National Commission for Disarmament, Demobilization, and Reintegration (NCDDR) official, Freetown, Sierra Leone, 30 April 2002. 91. Author’s interview with Western diplomat, Freetown, Sierra Leone, 1 May 2002.

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Some argue it was Sankoh, others that it was RUF field commanders unhappy with disarmament, and still others claim it was Taylor.92 What is clear is that RUF hard-liners wanted to prevent the further disarmament of RUF combatants, but because they were unable to control the disarmament process as they had hoped and were faced with a large number of combatants wanting to disarm, these hardliners engaged in a desperate attempt to sustain the group. The hostage taking, rather than causing the UN to depart, as the RUF had hoped, prompted the opposite response. UN troops captured and arrested Foday Sankoh and declared him no longer a credible negotiating partner. UNAMSIL increased its force strength to 16,500 troops. The British, in a demonstration of force, moved six warships into Sierra Leone waters and secured the international airport. On 30 May the RUF released 467 UN peacekeepers and a week later asked to reenter the peace process. A number of events in the months between the May hostage crisis and the November cease-fire contributed to the cease-fire agreement. First, the RUF clearly lost any support it had from the international community when it defected from an agreement that all perceived as unreasonably beneficial to the RUF. International support for the peace agreement soon turned into international pressure for the creation of a war crimes tribunal. Second, British forces, in a grand military display, landed on the beaches of Freetown and staged an offensive on Okra Hills to free the British hostages. This overwhelming show of force convinced the RUF that the British were serious and would not leave until the war was finished.93 Third, the RUF faced significant military pressure in the east from Guinea. In September, the RUF had made advances into Guinean territory over a trade dispute between RUF combatants and Guinean military on the border.94 The Guinean response came swift and hard and pushed the RUF back across the borders and well into Sierra Leone. The punishing Guinean attacks appear to have substantially dented the military power and desire for continued military adventures the RUF had at the time.95 Fourth, the Liberian anti-Taylor rebels were building up in northeastern Liberia and cutting off supply lines to the RUF. The options for the RUF, militarily, were decreasing, and the RUF could not withstand a full military confrontation with either Britain or Guinea, let alone 92. Author’s interviews with Sierra Leone scholar, Freetown, Sierra Leone, 15 July 2002, and with Sierra Leonean working with ex-combatants, Freetown, Sierra Leone, 1 August 2002; Tiawan S. Gongloe, “Charles Taylor Admits Supporting RUF,” New Vision (Sierra Leone newspaper), 2 December 2002. 93. Reportedly the RUF believed that the British were coming to end the war and “recolonize” Sierra Leone. The British never had such an intention, but this perception improved the RUF’s willingness to disarm by increasing the perceived costs of having to fight such an elite force. Author’s interview with Western diplomat, Freetown, Sierra Leone, 1 May 2002. 94. Lansana Gberie, “Destabilizing Guinea: Diamonds, Charles Taylor and the Potential for Wider Humanitarian Catastrophe,” occasional paper 1 (Ottawa: Partnership Africa Canada, October 2001). 95. Author’s interview with Sierra Leonean journalist, Freetown, Sierra Leone, 19 April 2002.

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both at the same time. The only option was to buy time and hope that the assistance provided by Liberia, mainly to maintain control of the diamond fields, would enable the RUF to find an alternative to disarmament under the Lomé peace agreement. Liberian support appears to have been too little, too late. Although on 18 June the Washington Post published a report claiming that Liberia continued to resupply the RUF to enable them to maintain control of the diamond areas, there is little evidence that the RUF could in fact maintain control of Kono at this time. The 10 November cease-fire agreement between the RUF and the government of Sierra Leone can be seen as more formality than content. At this point, the RUF lacked the manpower, cohesiveness, and military capacity to continue the war. The British, the Guineans, and UNAMSIL had effectively decreased the RUF’s military capacity to fight, but this did not mean the RUF could not continue to disrupt the peace process or that the RUF had yet capitulated. The early months of 2001 proved an important testing ground for peace. Actions taken by the international community throughout 2001 placed a number of constraints on the RUF’s access to economic resources and maintained military pressure on the RUF. The British announced its forces would remain in Sierra Leone until the war was terminated or resolved on favorable terms. The United Nations imposed sanctions on Liberia for its continued assistance to the RUF. The resolution demanded that the Liberian government cease all support for the RUF by expelling RUF combatants, terminating all military and financial support, and ceasing the import of any Sierra Leone diamonds not sanctioned by the government of Sierra Leone certificate regime. The resolution also imposed sanctions on Liberia, including a full arms embargo on all military items, an embargo on the provision of military assistance to Liberian troops, an embargo on the sale of Liberian diamonds, and a travel ban on senior Liberian government officials and anyone else providing financial or military assistance to armed rebel groups, especially the RUF.96 Despite controlling roughly two-thirds of the country, the RUF could not halt the disarmament process. Although some RUF commanders tried to slow down the disarmament process and believed that they could disarm in Kono but keep control of Kailahun, residents in Kailahun rose up against the RUF and forced them to disarm in Kailahun as well.97 The RUF simply lacked the resources, time, and support to rebuild its capacity and

96. UN Security Council, resolution 1343, UN document S/RES/1343, 7 March 2001. 97. Author’s interview with Western diplomat, Freetown, Sierra Leone, 1 May 2002; author’s interview with Sierra Leone journalist, Freetown, Sierra Leone, 24 April 2002; author’s interview with independent consultant, Freetown, Sierra Leone, 24 April 2002.

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was forced to disarm.98 The government began returning to the provinces and reestablishing a semblance of government control throughout the country. UNAMSIL began the deployment of peacekeepers. These events reduced the RUF’s ability to rebuild its military capacity and further constrained possible military options. The RUF faced limited prospects for maintaining its military position, and therefore accepting the peace deal that was still on offer, the Lomé Accord, provided a better option than military defeat. Despite the need for external support, the RUF failed to develop an expansive support network. Instead it relied heavily on one benefactor, fellow rebel leader Charles Taylor, who, at the start of the Sierra Leone war, was leading his own rebellion in neighboring Liberia. Taylor, who became the president of Liberia in 1997, served as a primary source of financing, military training, arms, and safe haven. This provided the RUF sufficient capacity to initiate its military campaign, which it did from across the border in Liberia. But the level of Taylor’s support has often been overstated. The RUF received some support from Taylor, but it was neither unlimited nor sustained at high levels over the course of the war. Declining support often contributed to RUF defeats on the battlefield. Taylor’s support provides only part of the story. A second factor contributing to the perpetuation of the war was diamonds. The war in Sierra Leone has often been depicted as one of greed, with the RUF seeking to control the diamond fields. However, evidence from the ground suggests that such a simplistic portrayal of the role of diamonds misses the mark on several counts. First, the RUF did not start the war over diamonds. Initially it was the Liberian fighters within the RUF who wanted to move to the diamondmining areas while the Sierra Leone fighters focused on the capital, Freetown. This produced a split in the group by early 1992 over military strategy and whether to target the diamond fields of Kono. Reportedly the RUF leader, Foday Sankoh, did not want his combatants mining because he feared it would distract them and they would become disloyal, and because he did not trust the Liberians, many of whom served as commanders in the initial invasion force.99 Second, for the RUF, diamonds came to play a role only in 1994 as the RUF altered its military strategy and then seized the Kono diamond fields in 1995; they played a significant role only after the May 1997 coup, when the RUF established near permanent control of the Kono fields. Third, the government also funded its side

98. Author’s interview with former government of Sierra Leone minister, Freetown, Sierra Leone, 30 July 2002. 99. Author’s interview with former RUF member, Freetown, Sierra Leone, 2 August 2002.

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of the war through the sale of diamonds. For example, the government promised future diamond revenues to Executive Outcomes in exchange for its support of the government in 1995. This support proved essential to keeping the government in power and averting a rebel victory. While diamonds played a significant role in fueling the conflict and providing economic income to the RUF when it did control the diamond fields, the RUF did not establish and maintain control of the large diamond field in Kono until 1997, six years after the war commenced. A focus on diamonds alone provides an incomplete explanation of the RUF’s capacity to continue the war before this time. The third factor enabling the rebel group to perpetuate the war was the weakness of the Sierra Leone government. The government proved unable to respond robustly to the initial rebel incursion, largely because of the ceremonial nature of the Sierra Leone Army at the time. Military coups and poor recruitment practices further reduced the government’s effectiveness on the battlefield. As a result, rebel successes often depended less on the strength or military acumen of the rebels than on the poor performance of Sierra Leone troops. The RUF did experience serious defeats on the battlefield, but these arose most often when the group could not access sources of resupply and when international actors imposed heavy military pressure on the rebel group. However, this combination of military pressure and lack of supply proved rare, and when it did occur, pressure on the group often abated in postnegotiation periods, leaving the rebel group the room to rest and rearm. Competing interests at the national and international levels further complicated the situation. Government efforts focused largely on defeating the RUF militarily, while international efforts emphasized a negotiated solution to the war. This approach failed to induce the RUF to enter into and abide by peace negotiations at several points. When the government was weak it could not defeat the rebels in combat, and the offering of several unilateral cease-fires at these times only reinforced the rebels’ confidence. Yet when the government did gain the upper hand, as it did at several points during the conflict, international pressure to negotiate, even at times when the government could have eliminated the rebel group, provided sufficient space for the RUF to regroup and rearm. This simply prolonged the war. Neither government nor international actions targeted the root of the problem: the need to dampen the network that fed the RUF and enabled it to resurrect itself numerous times. In 2000 an important change took place. The international position shifted from seeking a negotiated solution to supporting a military confrontation and targeting the RUF supply chain. While military pressure had always been a part of the strategy, the RUF’s defection from the 1999 Lomé peace agreement removed any remaining support for a peace deal with the rebels. Once this change took

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place, the RUF quickly felt the impact. Facing limited access to external resources, a serious military challenge on three fronts, and internal splits and defection among its ranks, the RUF agreed to bring about an end to the war through the implementation of the 1999 accord. The end of the war was not a foregone conclusion, however. Only sustained pressure on the RUF to abide by the disarmament process and international actions that eliminated the possibilities for renewed warfare ensured the RUF could not return to the battlefield. All options but peace had been effectively eliminated.

4 LIBERIA’S REBELS LURD and MODEL

Liberia suffered two civil wars over the span of a decade and a half.1 The first war began in 1989 when Charles Taylor and his National Patriotic Front of Liberia entered from Côte d’Ivoire to overthrow President Samuel Doe. This first war ended when the Economic Community of West African States’ military force in Liberia brokered a peace agreement in 1996. The agreement ended the war and enabled the questionably democratic election of Charles Taylor as president in July the following year.2 After two years without fighting, rebel attacks began in the north in 1999. This marked the start of the second war. The causes of the war ran deep and included a wide range of popular grievances against violent and neglectful regimes. The resolution of the first war did little to mitigate these grievances: indeed, it further exacerbated them, as Taylor’s regime failed to rebuild the war-torn country or install a democratic regime. Although the level of discontent was high, few in Liberia believed anything could be done to change the situation until Taylor left power.3 Liberians based outside 1. Until mid-2003 Liberia’s civil wars had been considered two separate wars. Then in mid2003 the media began referring to Liberia as a fourteen-year war, combining the two wars into one. I believe that the two wars should be studied as distinct phenomena, although I recognize how the first war laid the groundwork for the second. This chapter focuses on the second war. 2. For a discussion of the first war, see Adekeye Adebajo, Building Peace in West Africa: Liberia, Sierra Leone, and Guinea-Bissau (Boulder: Lynne Rienner, 2002); Stephen Ellis, Mask of Anarchy: The Destruction of Liberia and the Religious Dimension of an African Civil War (New York: New York University Press, 2001); Mark Huband, The Liberian Civil War (London: Frank Cass, 1998); William Reno, Warlord Politics and African States (Boulder: Lynne Rienner, 1998). 3. Author’s interviews with Liberian refugees in Bossou and Macenta, Guinea, 30–31 January 2003. 105

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Guéckédou Macenta

Kailahun Voinjama Kenema

GUINEA Zimmi

Zorzor Nzérékoré

Weasua Bopolu Tubmanburg Klay

Robertsport

Gbarnga

Ganta

Danané

Liberia

Monrovia

Tapeta

Robertsfield

Toulépleu

CÔTE D'IVOIRE

Buchanan Zwedru

Greenville

Atlanti

c Ocea

n San-Pédro Harper

Tabou

Government forces (Armed Forces of Liberia) Liberians United for Reconciliation and Democracy Movement for Democracy in Liberia

MAP 4.1.

Liberia: Status of armed forces, mid-2003

0

20 40

Miles 80

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Liberia, many living in exile, took a far more active stance and sought to create the opportunity to remove Taylor from power. It was these forces, a number of them former rebels from the first war, who organized in Sierra Leone as early as August 1998. In 2000, external backing from first Sierra Leone and then Guinea turned a loosely organized association of groups into a full-fledged rebel movement: the Liberians United for Reconciliation and Democracy (LURD). By late 2000, the war had taken on a cyclical nature with the balance of power shifting back and forth between the rebels and Taylor. Success of any faction depended largely on the faction’s ability to import additional resources. Initially, Taylor held the upper hand because he had already built a supply network during the first war and could capitalize on his ability as a head of state to import arms legally for the defense of the country. Taylor relied on a well-used supply transit route from Burkina Faso through Côte d’Ivoire and imported weapons into the southeastern ports as well.4 Taylor drew on his business in the export of timber and diamonds to generate the income needed.5 LURD lacked similar structures to access supplies. The military wing remained heavily dependent on Guinea, which was not always forthcoming with support. In early 2003 important changes took place that would alter the course of the war. A second rebel group, the Movement for Democracy in Liberia (MODEL), emerged as a splinter faction of LURD. Taylor faced declining prospects for revenue and arms imports. His network, built up over more than a decade, had largely been cut off as a result of domestic military pressure from the rebels and international measures aimed at removing Taylor. The rebel groups, on the other hand, showed signs of strengthening and receiving new supplies from their crossborder patrons. The balance of power tipped overwhelmingly in favor of the rebels when LURD launched a series of offensives on Monrovia in June 2003. Taylor, unable to procure additional weapons or defend the capital, had few options but to accept asylum in Nigeria. The end came earlier than many could have anticipated. The war ended officially in August 2003 when the fighting factions signed a peace agreement in Accra, Ghana. With Taylor’s departure, many assumed LURD and MODEL would lose their benefactors and that the August peace agreement could be implemented without serious obstacles. At the end of December 2003, however, LURD and MODEL

4. Author’s interviews with Liberian refugees from Côte d’Ivoire, in Bossou, Guinea, 30 January 2003; WA scholar interview with former LURD member, Freetown, Sierra Leone, 26 February 2003. Also see Reno, 1998. 5. For a detailed discussion of the networks Taylor developed during the first war, see William Reno, “Foreign Firms and the Financing of Charles Taylor’s NPFL,” Liberian Studies Journal 18, no. 2 (1993): 175–187; Reno, “The Reinventions of an African Patrimonial State: Charles Taylor’s Liberia,” Third World Quarterly 16, no. 1 (1995): 109–120; Reno, 1998.

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continued to maintain their support networks, import weapons, and control the majority of the country. The United Nations peacekeeping mission had yet to implement a disarmament process. There were also reports that Taylor was maintaining contacts with military and business officials in Liberia and was seeking to control the situation from abroad. At the beginning of 2004, both LURD and MODEL possessed the capacity to restart the war and it was not entirely clear that the leadership had reached the decision to forego this option. In the end, the rebel groups largely pursued political means of attaining positions of power in the postconflict government. This acceptance of a political solution resulted from the successful deposal of Taylor, heavy international pressure to accept the agreement negotiated in Accra, and the benefits accrued through joining the postconflict government. This chapter assesses the resources, options, and preferences of the rebel groups LURD and MODEL during the 1999–2003 civil war. I begin with the origins of the rebel groups, both of which can be traced back to rebel groups that fought the first civil war. This is important for understanding the support of Guinea and Côte d’Ivoire, as well as the splits that soon became evident during the second civil war. In the second section I focus on the support network of LURD, in particular the military, economic, and political resources of the group, identifying key supporters, as well as obstacles to accessing necessary goods. This section also includes a briefer discussion of the support network of MODEL, which is less extensive given the group’s relatively short life span. The analysis reveals that LURD and MODEL relied heavily on their neighboring benefactors, and that support was not always forthcoming. Identifying the nature of the support networks lays the groundwork for assessing the main argument that resources shape options and fluctuations in access to resources alter the choices of rebel groups. In the third section I set forth an analysis of how changes in resource access influenced the trajectory of the war and the decisions of LURD and MODEL to continue fighting or seek respite. The analysis focuses on four key time periods during the war when large changes in resource access led to visible shifts in the pattern of fighting. The rebel groups’ pursuit of the war largely follows the pattern predicted by the analytical framework (see table 4.1): LURD and MODEL went on the offensive following resupply, and retreated when they ran low on supplies; Taylor’s forces, having been resupplied, went on the offensive when the rebels were weak. The flow of resources helps explain the yo-yo pattern of fighting during the war. One exception did arise in the analysis: the agreement of the groups to a peace agreement in August 2003. At this time it appeared the rebel groups were succeeding in their offensive against Taylor, and his departure for asylum in Nigeria provided an opportunity to take the capital. A number of factors contributed to the decision to sign the peace agreement: heavy international pressure, Taylor’s deposal,

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and the achievement of a number of benefits through the peace agreement, which effectively provided access to power. The rebels also maintained their support networks in the early years after the peace agreement, providing a means to return to war if the spoils of peace did not prove sufficient.

The Rebel Groups A discussion of the role of the United Liberation Movement for Democracy in Liberia (ULIMO) in the first civil war is important to understanding the second civil war and the origins of LURD and MODEL. ULIMO had been Taylor’s main rival in the first civil war in Liberia. ULIMO had received significant support from Guinea and Sierra Leone during that war.6 During the war, in early 1994, ULIMO split into two factions. The majority of the ULIMO combatants fighting with LURD in Guinea were from the ULIMO-K faction, headed by Alhaji Kromah. The majority of the ULIMO combatants fighting with MODEL were from the ULIMO-J faction, headed by Roosevelt Johnson, who had fled to Côte d’Ivoire after the first war.7 While ULIMO ex-combatants formed the core of the new rebel groups, it would be inaccurate to view LURD and MODEL as simply ULIMO-K and ULIMO-J reborn. While many former ULIMO combatants made up the majority of LURD, none of the warlord leaders of ULIMO had been granted membership in LURD—something LURD boasted publicly. Joining LURD provided an opportunity for these combatants to achieve the goal of deposing Taylor, something they had proved incapable of doing during the first war. The emergence of LURD and MODEL drew on existing armed groups active in Sierra Leone and Liberia. Several anti-Taylor groups existed in the late 1990s, including the Organization of Displaced Liberians (ODL), the Union of Democratic Forces of Liberia (UDFL), and the Justice Coalition of Liberia (JCL). These groups conducted small hit-and-run incursions into northern Liberia in 1998 and 1999. ODL conducted brief incursions into Lofa County from Sierra Leone in early 1999. The JCL, backed by General Maxwell Khobe, then in charge of the Sierra Leone Army, conducted small raids into Lofa County in northern Liberia

6. International Crisis Group, Liberia: The Key to Ending Regional Instability, ICG Africa Report 43, Brussels/Freetown, 24 April 2002, 2 (hereinafter ICG, April 2002). For a discussion of the origins of ULIMO, see Abdul K. Koroma, The Agony of a Nation (Freetown, Sierra Leone: Andromeda, 1996), 150–155. 7. Many LURD fighters in Macenta, Guinea, claimed to have fought with ULIMO. Author’s interviews with LURD combatants, Macenta, Guinea, 31 January and 1 February 2003; UN Security Council, Panel of Experts report, UN document S/2001/1015, 26 October 2001, 30.

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in August 1998. None of these groups were organized to fight a war. General Khobe supported the JCL in response to Taylor’s continued support of the Sierra Leone rebels, the Revolutionary United Front (RUF). General Khobe hoped that by backing the JCL he could decrease Taylor’s support for the RUF and his involvement in Sierra Leone’s war, but Taylor did not take the attacks seriously.8 The intent behind supporting these groups was never to start a war in Liberia; the emergence of LURD was an unintended consequence. LURD depended heavily on the support of external actors in its origins and its operations. When it was formally organized in February 2000, LURD requested assistance from the government of Sierra Leone to utilize Sierra Leone as a base for staging its rebellion against Taylor. The Sierra Leone president Ahmed Tejan Kabbah rejected the request, forcing LURD to look elsewhere. Kabbah reportedly also leaked word of a LURD offensive on Monrovia to Taylor and supplied Taylor with the LURD letter requesting Sierra Leone assistance, a letter that contained a number of names useful in Taylor’s counteroffensive.9 LURD moved to southeastern Guinea, where it initially found little active support from the Guinean government, but the Guinean government allowed LURD to maintain a presence along the southeastern border with Liberia and operate from there. LURD made its first incursion into Lofa County, Liberia, in July 2000.10 Early in the fighting it became evident that neither side could win the war quickly. An easy victory by LURD was simply not an option. Instead, both sides began to take measures to ensure they had the capacity to wage a long war.

Liberians United for Reconciliation and Democracy (LURD) The patchwork nature of LURD’s origins foreshadowed the structure of its support network throughout the war. When the war began LURD had not yet even coalesced under an agreed-on name or leadership. The coalition of groups that joined together in early 2000 to form the Liberians United for Reconciliation and Democracy shared the common goal of removing Liberian president Charles Taylor from power and believed this could be accomplished only 8. WA scholar interview, Freetown, Sierra Leone, 26 February 2003; ICG, April 2002, 3. 9. ICG, April 2002, 4. 10. During 1998 and 1999, Liberia suffered a spate of attacks from insurgents based in Sierra Leone and Guinea. The first serious incursion, in which Voinjama was attacked, came on 21 April 1999. Several months of sporadic, though at times heavy, fighting followed this attack. At the time it was unclear who the insurgents were and whether the same group conducted all the attacks. Reports of attacks by different groups, including the JCL and ODL, suggest the attacks were perpetrated by different groups. The JCL did conduct attacks in August 1998 and October 1999, and therefore it is likely that many of the attacks can be attributed to this group. Until early 2000, no concerted effort was made to begin a war, and no group appeared capable of waging one.

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through military force. This shared goal and strategy provided a common link among LURD members, but individuals continued to hold disparate interests and divergent ideas about what characteristics post-Taylor Liberia should have and who should lead the country. The end result of this conglomeration of forces was a motley crew of competing interests and personalities held loosely together by the goal of overthrowing Taylor. From the start divisions emerged within LURD that proved difficult to overcome, and ultimately the common goal of deposing Taylor was insufficient to maintain the unity of the organization. Given these divisions, the military, economic, and political support available to LURD was divided and personalized. This made for unreliable and unpredictable support for the group as a whole. LURD could not always access military resources when it needed them, and when access was possible it was never unlimited. LURD’ S MI LI TA RY C A PAC I TY

LURD procured weapons from two main sources. The first source was capture on the battlefield. LURD seized numerous weapons and ammunition caches from Taylor’s forces during battle.11 In some cases these were taken from dead or wounded soldiers, but in other cases they were seized when Taylor’s forces retreated. One LURD combatant claimed the group had access to advance notice of the dates of the resupply missions to Taylor’s forces and that LURD would attack the Armed Forces of Liberia (AFL) forces shortly after they received new supplies from helicopters.12 LURD military leader Sekou Conneh put the percentage of captured weapons at 60 percent, while those purchased accounted for only 40 percent of LURD’s arsenal.13 There are no official assessments of LURD’s claims, making it impossible to verify them. LURD also obtained some weapons cheaply through barter with unpaid Liberian military and police officers.14 Guinea served as the other main source of weapons. Although the Guinean government denied all involvement with LURD until July 2003, when it claimed only to be in political talks with LURD, there is substantial evidence of

11. Author’s interviews with LURD combatants, Macenta, Guinea, 31 January 2003; Global Witness, The Usual Suspects: Liberia’s Weapons and Mercenaries in Côte d’Ivoire and Sierra Leone, London, March 2003, 25, http://www.globalwitness.org/sites/default/files/import/The%20Usual%20Suspects. pdf, (hereinafter Global Witness, March 2003); UN document S/2001/1015, 31; UN Security Council, Panel of Experts report, UN document S/2002/1115, 25 October 2002, 23. 12. Author’s interview with LURD combatant, Macenta, Guinea, 31 January 2003. 13. Panel interview with Sekou Conneh, UN Security Council, Panel of Experts report, UN Document S/2003/937, 28 October 2003, 15. 14. UN document S/2002/1115, 23.

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Guinean support.15 LURD soldiers admitted receiving Guinean support, though they often complained that it was inadequate.16 Guinea’s Ministry of Defense diverted arms, imported legally by the Ministry of Defense, to LURD forces, which could not have legally imported them, especially after the arms embargo was imposed on LURD. The UN Panel of Experts reported continued violations by Guinea of the arms embargo. Evidence of such diversions came from the capture of LURD arms by Taylor’s forces, which revealed in one case labels from the United Arab Emirates. The Guinean government claimed the weapons contained in the shipment had been destroyed in a fire in 2001 and could offer no explanation for how the LURD forces had come to possess them.17 There is evidence of the Guinean Ministry of Defense importing arms from Iran for delivery to LURD.18 There is also evidence of the Guinean government importing arms through Societé Katex Mine Guinée (Katex), a company based in Conakry. The Guinean government claimed Katex imported agricultural goods, but a number of eyewitness accounts provided reports of Katex importing what appeared to be military supplies, which were off-loaded at the airport by the Guinean military.19 Further evidence emerged when some of the munitions brought in by Katex, which had come from Iran, matched those shells used by LURD during its offensives on Monrovia in June and July 2003.20 In addition to assisting with the procurement of arms, Guinea also provided logistic and artillery support for LURD. The Guinean military assisted with the transport of both arms and troops from Conakry and other areas of Guinea into the north of Liberia, where LURD had its headquarters.21 This logistical 15. I witnessed LURD with large amounts of newly supplied weapons just across the Guinean border, but not the actual delivery, in March 2003. Author’s interview with Western diplomat based in Conakry, Guinea, Freetown, Sierra Leone, 27 January 2003; Global Witness, Taylor-Made: The Pivotal Role of Liberia’s Forests and Flag of Convenience in Regional Conflict, London, September 2001, 27, http://www.globalwitness.org/sites/default/files/pdfs/taylormade2.pdf (hereinafter Global Witness, September 2001); UN document S/2001/1015, 30; ICG, April 2002, 12; WA scholar interviews with RSLAF soldiers, Kenema, Sierra Leone, 11 and 25 February 2003; WA scholar interview with LURD soldier, Mapeh internment camp, Sierra Leone, 24 February 2003. 16. Author’s interview with LURD combatant, Macenta, Guinea, 31 January 2003; author’s interview with Sekou Conneh, Macenta, Guinea, 1 February 2003; Human Rights Watch, Back to the Brink: War Crimes by Liberian Government and Rebels, report vol. 14, no. 4 (A), New York, May 2002, 11, http://www.hrw.org/fr/reports/2002/05/01/back-brink, (hereinafter HRW, May 2002); UN document S/2001/1015, 30. 17. Human Rights Watch, “Weapons Sanctions, Military Supplies, and Human Suffering: Illegal Arms Flows to Liberia and the June–July 2003 Shelling of Monrovia,” briefing paper, 3, New York, November 2003, 18, http://www.hrw.org/sites/default/files/related_material/liberia_arms.pdf, (hereinafter HRW, November 2003). 18. Ibid., 3, 22. 19. Ibid., 19–22; UN document S/2002/1115, 23; UN document S/2003/937, 25–27. 20. HRW, November 2003, 3; UN document S/2003/937, 26. 21. HRW, May 2002, 10; HRW, November 2003, 16–17.

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support proved essential, and LURD relied heavily on Guinean forces to transport necessary materials.22 Guinea provided heavy artillery support when LURD forces were pushed back toward Guinea’s border by Taylor’s forces.23 Guinea often provided safe haven to LURD combatants, especially when LURD needed to retreat from Taylor offensives.24 The Guinean military allowed LURD to move freely back and forth across the border, although it hindered the movement of humanitarian organizations in the border regions.25 Representatives of these organizations claimed this was done to prevent aid workers from witnessing the transport of personnel and military goods from Guinea into Liberia and the forced recruitment of fleeing refugees by LURD forces.26 The United States provided support indirectly through military assistance to the Guinean government. It provided $3 million in military assistance to train eight hundred Guinean troops in May 2002.27 Although the U.S.-trained troops were not supposed to be deployed along the southern border, these troops were indeed being used in the border region next to Liberia.28 This resulted in indirect benefits for LURD forces, since it meant U.S.-trained troops were stationed on the border with Liberia, the area in which LURD operated. Acknowledging concerns about Guinea’s support of LURD, the second half of the U.S. military assistance package was supposed to be predicated on Guinea ceasing its support of LURD. The second half was delivered without any evidence of such an end to Guinean support. U.S. officials claimed they did not have sufficient evidence to prove Guinean support for LURD and therefore completed this particular 22. Human Rights Watch, Liberian Refugees in Guinea: Refoulement, Militarization of Camps, and Other Protection Concerns, report vol. 14, no. 8 (A), New York, November 2002, 10, http://www.hrw. org/en/reports/2002/11/25/liberian-refugees-guinea (hereinafter HRW, November 2002); HRW, May 2002, 3, 10; HRW, November 2003, 16–17. 23. Author’s interviews with UN Military Observers and RSLAF officers, Kailahun, Sierra Leone, 11 February 2003; author’s interviews with RSLAF officers, Yenga, Sierra Leone, 13 February 2003; WA scholar interview with Liberian refugee, Freetown, Sierra Leone, 22 February 2003; UN document S/2001/1015, 30; HRW, November 2003, 16. 24. Global Witness, Logging Off: How the Liberian Timber Industry Fuels Liberia’s Humanitarian Disaster and Threatens Sierra Leone, London, September 2002, 20 (hereinafter Global Witness, September 2002), http://www.globalwitness.org/library/logging; author’s interviews with humanitarian organization representative and LURD combatants, Macenta, Guinea, 31 January 2003. 25. I witnessed this when traveling to the Liberian border to meet with LURD leadership just south of Macenta. During an interview LURD leader Sekou Conneh claimed he had asked for assistance from the humanitarian organization Doctors without Borders, but that the Guinean military would not allow these aid workers to cross the Guinean border. Author’s interview with Sekou Conneh, Macenta, Guinea, 1 February 2003. 26. Author’s interviews with humanitarian organization representatives, Macenta, Guinea, 31 January 2003 and Nzérékoré, Guinea, 1 February 2003. 27. HRW, May 2002, 3; HRW, November 2002, 24. 28. Author’s interviews with Guineans, southeastern Guinea, January 2003; HRW, November 2003, 26–27.

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assistance program, but the United States did not provide additional military support to Guinea, aside from nonlethal weapons, after this program ended.29 Although Guinea provided support to LURD, such support should not be overestimated. Guinea had particular reasons to support LURD: to prevent Taylor’s forces from threatening Guinean territory, to maintain a buffer zone between Guinea and Liberia, and to maintain pressure on Taylor and perhaps provoke his departure; however, Guinean President Lansana Conté did not favor LURD taking Monrovia and Sekou Conneh becoming president.30 The role of Guinean selfinterest is clear at several points throughout the conflict. Initially, although allowing LURD safe haven in the southeastern border regions, Guinea provided very little material assistance to LURD. Assistance tended to increase when Guinean territory came under attack, or threat of attack, by Taylor’s forces. The Guinean position led to inconsistent access to support. For example, Guinean assistance increased in late 2000 following the initiation of attacks on southeastern Guinea by the RUF and Guinean dissidents backed by Taylor. Assistance decreased again in late 2002 under international pressure on the Guinean government to stop providing support to the rebel group. The Guinean government publicly forced LURD to leave Macenta, located in the southeastern border region, and return to Liberia in October 2002. LURD soldiers returned to Macenta in late November 2002, albeit in a much more subtle and less visible fashion.31 Although consisting mainly of former ULIMO soldiers,32 LURD increased its numbers and broadened its composition through additional recruitment. LURD attracted new volunteers who joined in pursuit of what was seen as a righteous campaign against Taylor, for revenge, and to return favors.33 The Kamajor civil defense forces of Sierra Leone provided logistics support, recruitment assistance, and manpower to LURD.34 Numerous reports from the field suggest the Kamajors created an arms supply network from Sierra Leone to support LURD, but there is

29. HRW, November 2003, 26–28. 30. ICG, April 2002, 12. 31. Author’s interview with humanitarian organization representative, Macenta, Guinea, 31 January 2003. 32. LURD combatants I interviewed in Macenta, Guinea, all claimed to be former ULIMO combatants. Author’s interviews, 31 January 2003. 33. Author’s interview with RSLAF officer, Zimmi, Sierra Leone, 1 April 2003. For more on the relationship between the Kamajors and LURD, see Mariane Ferme and Daniel Hoffman, “Combattants irréguliers et discours internationale des droits de l’homme dans les guerres civiles africaines,” Politique Africaine 88 (December 2002): 27–48. 34. Author’s interview with NGO representative, Freetown, Sierra Leone, 26 July 2003; author’s interview with a Western diplomat, Freetown, Sierra Leone, 13 June 2003; author’s interviews with UN Military Observers, Zimmi, Sierra Leone, 1 April 2003; author’s interview with RSLAF officer, Zimmi, Sierra Leone, 1 April 2003; International Crisis Group, Tackling Liberia: The Eye of the Regional Storm, ICG Africa report 62, Brussels/Freetown, 30 April 2003, 12 (hereinafter ICG, April 2003).

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little evidence to support this claim.35 Other LURD members included Liberian politicians and activists; the Liberian diaspora, mainly in the United States but also in Europe; Guinean youths armed by the Guinean government to repel the RUF invasion of Guinea in late 2000;36 and a range of mercenaries. Mercenaries, including ex-RUF soldiers and defectors from the AFL, joined for $300.37 Some combatants were forcefully recruited. Guinean soldiers were complicit in LURD recruiting efforts. LURD maintained a recruitment office in Guéckédou, and used Kissidougou, Macenta, and Nzérékoré as rear bases in the southeastern region of Guinea.38 LURD soldiers were allowed free rein in many refugee camps in southern Guinea, which enabled them to conduct recruitment activities among Liberian refugees.39 Refugees both inside the camps and in border towns joined LURD for security reasons; the only other option was to leave the area.40 In addition, the Guinean military at the border often refused Liberian refugees entry into Guinea, and these refugees were then taken by LURD to act as porters, and sometimes as combatants. The recruitment of refugees increased at times when LURD needed porters, such as when new supplies arrived.41 Despite various recruitment activities, LURD remained a relatively small organization, estimated to number around three thousand troops.42 LURD’s relatively small size forced the group to rely on guerrilla tactics during much of the war and limited its ability to hold territory.43 35. Author’s interviews with Western diplomat, Freetown, Sierra Leone, 8 April 2003; author’s interview with RSLAF, Zimmi, Sierra Leone, 2 April 2003; author’s interview with humanitarian organization representative, Zimmi, Sierra Leone, 3 April 2003; author’s interviews with UN Military Observers, Freetown, Sierra Leone, 13 March 2003; HRW, May 2002, 11; ICG, April 2003, 12. 36. WA scholar interview with humanitarian organization representative, Abidjan, Côte d’Ivoire, 13 March 2003. 37. I repeatedly heard $300 cited as the usual fee for mercenaries. 38. I witnessed use of Macenta as a base in January 2003. HRW, November 2002, 15–16; UN document S/2001/1015, 30. 39. Author’s interviews with humanitarian organization representative, Freetown, Sierra Leone, 24 January 2003; author’s interview with a Western diplomat (based in Conakry), Freetown, Sierra Leone, 27 January 2003; author’s interview with NGO representative, Freetown, Sierra Leone, 17 January 2003; author’s interview with humanitarian organization representative, Macenta, Guinea, 31 January 2003; HRW, November 2002, 19–21; UN document S/2003/937, 17. 40. WA scholar interview with former LURD leader, Freetown, Sierra Leone, 26 February 2003. 41. Author’s interviews with humanitarian organization representatives, Macenta and Nzérékoré, Guinea, 31 January–1 February 2003. For a discussion of these recruitment practices, see HRW, November 2002. 42. The Panel of Experts estimated LURD membership at two thousand in April 2002 (UN Security Council, Panel of Experts report, UN document S/2002/470, 19 April 2002, 12). International Crisis Group placed the number between two and three thousand in April 2002 (ICG, April 2002, 9), and around three thousand in June 2003, arguing that these numbers had likely increased further during the offensives against Monrovia (International Crisis Group, Liberia: Security Challenges, ICG report 71, Freetown/Brussels, 3 November 2003, 5; hereinafter ICG, November 2003). 43. WA scholar interview with RSLAF soldier, Kenema, Sierra Leone, 11 February 2003.

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Another key constraint for LURD lay in its poor logistical capacity. LURD was often described as ill trained, poorly disciplined, unorganized, and overall not a capable military force. In part this was the result of LURD’s poor behavior, including firing randomly into the air,44 and in part it was due to its poor military performance.45 Time and again, LURD proved itself incapable of establishing an effective logistical network to resupply its troops in Liberia. This was especially true the farther the troops moved from LURD headquarters in Voinjama (located in the northern tip of Liberia) and from the Guinean border. At times, it was merely the inability of LURD to move supplies a great distance that prevented troops on the front lines from receiving reinforcements. LURD also faced difficulties in protecting its supply lines, which were often interdicted by Taylor forces. At points when LURD troops were left stranded near the Sierra Leone border, they requested assistance from the Sierra Leone military and police along the border, including the right to trade across the border, enter Sierra Leone to obtain food or medical care, or enter Sierra Leone to rest.46 LURD’ S EC ON O M I C O PPO RTU N I TI E S

The Liberian diaspora was the main financial supporter of LURD’s war against Taylor.47 Many in the diaspora were forced to leave Liberia after the first war and the ascension of Taylor to the presidency. These Liberians, many of whom reside in the United States and Europe, donated large sums of money in the hope of deposing Taylor and thereby enabling their return home. In addition, members of the LURD leadership brought their own financial resources to the cause. While this provided substantial funding for LURD, it also created a fragmented network of donors who were not all contributing to the same cause. Individuals tended to provide funds to individuals in LURD who shared their outlook on Liberia.48 Others provided donations to individuals rather than to LURD as an organization to avoid being seen as LURD supporters, fearing retribution should their support be uncovered.49 This decentralized funding scheme exacerbated tensions and divisions within LURD. 44. An act I witnessed on the border of Sierra Leone and Liberia in April 2003. 45. Author’s interviews with RSLAF officers, Zimmi, Sierra Leone, 1–2 April 2003; author’s interviews with UN Military Observers, Zimmi, Sierra Leone, 1 April 2003; author’s interview with RSLAF officer, Dar es Salaam, Sierra Leone, 2 April 2003. 46. Author’s interviews with Sierra Leone Police, Gendema, Sierra Leone, 3 April 2003; author’s interview with humanitarian organization representative, Zimmi, Sierra Leone, 1 April 2003; author’s interview with RSLAF officer, Zimmi, Sierra Leone, 2 April 2003; WA scholar interview with RSLAF officer, Kenema, Sierra Leone, 11 February 2003. 47. Author’s interview with Sekou Conneh, Macenta, Guinea, 1 February 2003. Additional interviews confirmed this: author’s interview with NGO representative, Freetown, Sierra Leone, 26 July 2003; WA scholar interview with former LURD leader, Freetown, Sierra Leone, 26 February 2003. 48. Author’s interview with NGO representative, Freetown, Sierra Leone, 26 July 2003. 49. WA scholar interview with former LURD leader, Freetown, Sierra Leone, 26 February 2003.

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The main split came between the political leadership based in Conakry, Guinea, and the military leadership based in Voinjama, Liberia. While the political leaders served as the main conduits for financing the movement, it was the military wing that required the funds to fight the war. The political leadership, unhappy with the military leader Sekou Conneh, was stuck in a difficult position. It could not eliminate all funding of the military wing, since this would seriously impact on the goal of the movement, but it also preferred a different military leader. Conneh, understanding this lack of political support, sought to sideline the political wing in order to avoid being sidelined himself. As a result, Conneh grew increasingly dependent on Guinea, while LURD financiers shifted their support to MODEL. Sekou Conneh, not LURD as a whole, received financial assistance from Guinean president Lansana Conté. This money was funneled directly to Sekou Conneh through his wife, Aisha. Aisha Conneh had served as President Conté’s spiritual advisor since 1996, and it was this personal relationship between Aisha and Conté that generated Guinean support for Sekou Conneh. Conté also supported LURD’s cause more generally because it provided a cheaper alternative to utilizing his own military to secure the Guinean border against Taylor’s forces.50 While Sekou Conneh benefited from Conté’s financing, it remained unclear to what extent Conté financed Conneh’s military activities and how often and reliable this support was. Two additional sources of income provided financing to LURD forces: looting and diamonds. LURD combatants did engage in looting during the war. However, reports of LURD looting activities were far less numerous than those of Taylor’s forces, and the majority of LURD’s attacks on civilian populations declined after June 2001.51 It appears LURD forces looted more as a last resort, when their resources were depleted or their troops cut off from supply lines, than as a matter of policy. Looting incidents increased again in mid-2003 when LURD engaged in several battles as it moved toward Monrovia, and then spiked dramatically during the June and July offensives on Monrovia.52 Looting did not offer the most lucrative form of financing for LURD forces given the previous years of war, the vast devastation (to the point of disrupting even subsistence farming), and the limited reinvestment in the interim.53 The only items worth looting were located in the humanitarian camps, timber concessions, and 50. Global Witness, September 2001, 27. 51. HRW, May 2002, 2; ICG, April 2002, 6. 52. ICG, April 2003, 8; ICG, November 2003, 9–10; UN document S/2003/937, 22–23; author’s interview with humanitarian organization representative, Freetown, Sierra Leone, 23 December 2003; author’s interview with NGO representative, Freetown, Sierra Leone, 21 January 2004. 53. UN document S/2002/1115, 36.

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Monrovia. However, attacks on timber concessions led to a decline in timber production and ultimately the departure of these companies from northern Liberia.54 While there are reports of some LURD soldiers selling diamonds in Guinea, there is little evidence that LURD made any effort to harvest alluvial diamonds in an organized fashion in the areas it controlled in Liberia. For example, on taking Fassama, an alluvial diamond-mining area in the north near the Guinean border, LURD leadership discussed the option of diamond mining and decided against allowing mining by LURD combatants or anyone else in the area in order to ensure that diamonds, and the profits from their sale, did not distract combatants or lead to splits or defections with the group. Some LURD combatants did indeed sell diamonds, but these diamonds seem to have been obtained during confrontations with Taylor’s forces.55 Diamond mining did not become a significant source of LURD financing. LURD’ S P O LI TI C A L PATRO N S

From its inception LURD suffered from internal divisions and power struggles that fell along two main lines: ethnic (between Krahn and Mandingo) and organizational (the political versus the military wing).56 The recruitment of non-Mandingo members temporarily smoothed ethnic tensions, but over time the divide widened and eventually led to the split of LURD into two factions. This split along Mandingo and Krahn ethnic lines replayed that of the ULIMO rebel group in the first war, but the organizational divisions were more diverse and complicated. The main division lay between the political wing, largely based in Conakry, Guinea, and the military wing under Sekou Conneh’s command and based in Voinjama, Liberia. The political leaders preferred a broad-based approach to deposing Taylor, and favored using military pressure to force Taylor to leave and create a political transition in Liberia, but did not favor taking the war to Monrovia.57 They disliked Conneh’s emphasis on using military power and LURD’s record of human rights abuses. The political leadership also feared Conneh’s own political ambitions. Conneh tried to limit the influence of the “politicians,” as he called them, going so far as to inform on the Sierra Leone faction, resulting in the arrest and deportation of several LURD leaders from Sierra Leone.58 The lack of unity centered

54. UN document S/2002/470, 32. 55. ICG, April 2002, 7; UN document S/2001/1015; UN document S/2002/470; UN document S/2003/937. 56. HRW, May 2002, 7; ICG, April 2002, 4, 10–11, 23; ICG, April 2003, 4–5; UN document S/2001/1015, 11–12. 57. WA scholar interview with former LURD leader, Freetown, Sierra Leone, 26 February 2003. 58. WA scholar interview with Liberian refugee, Freetown, Sierra Leone, 22 February 2003.

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on power struggles over the presidency; Sekou Conneh argued that LURD was unified militarily but not politically because everyone in a leadership position wanted to be president.59 Initially LURD developed some degree of international political support. International opinion favored LURD, which was seen as a better alternative to Taylor. Conneh actively sought to gain international support for his movement. In an interview in early 2003, Conneh claimed LURD did not want to go against the international community, and that LURD was constrained by international opinion.60 There is evidence that LURD did not wish to offend the international community, and that this may account, in part, for the reduction in human rights abuses after June 2001. It has been suggested that LURD learned from the mistakes of the RUF, that the loss of international support was costly, and LURD therefore chose a less militant name and took a softer approach.61 As time went by it became harder for LURD to maintain this positive image. With its factional splits and numerous leaders bent on seizing the presidency, many feared that a LURD victory might be no better than the Taylor regime. Political support for LURD came largely from Guinean president Lansana Conté. Like his military support for LURD, Conté’s support stemmed from a desire for a buffer zone between Guinea and Liberia and from his relationship with the LURD leader’s wife, Aisha. Conté’s support was subtle but persistent: he preferred to work with Conneh alone rather than with the political leadership of LURD.62 Although continuing to claim that the Guinean government in no way supported LURD, Guinea made efforts to ensure that LURD was not overly demonized by the international community. Guinea served on the UN Security Council from 1 January 2002 through 1 January 2004, which helps explain why the UN did not impose sanctions on LURD until May 2003.63 Guinea allowed the LURD political wing to operate out of Conakry and to travel freely,

59. Author’s interviews with political leaders, activists, and members of civil society, Monrovia, Liberia, 3–9 July 2002; author’s interview with Sekou Conneh, Macenta, Guinea, 1 February 2003. 60. Author’s interview with Sekou Conneh, Macenta, Guinea, 1 February 2003. 61. Ferme and Hoffman, 2002, 39, 46. 62. WA scholar interview with former LURD leader, Freetown, Sierra Leone, 26 February 2003. 63. Guinea served as an elected member to the UN Security Council for this two-year period. UN General Assembly press release, GA/9930, 8 October 2001. LURD was arguably subject to the arms embargo covering Liberia since May 2002; however, UN Security Council resolution 1408, paragraph 4 only “demands that all States in the region cease military support for armed groups in neighbouring countries, take action to prevent armed individuals and groups from using their territory to prepare and commit attacks on neighbouring countries and refrain from any actions that might contribute to further destabilization of the situation on the borders between Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone.” While the resolution certainly referred to LURD and Guinea’s support of LURD, it did not refer to either by name. It was not until UN Security Council resolution 1478 on 6 May 2003 that LURD was named in the arms embargo.

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even though a travel ban had been imposed on some leaders within LURD.64 Some questioned why Conté would risk international censure by supporting LURD. One observer argued that Conté possessed a number of reasons for supporting LURD: having a troubled border helped boost Conté’s domestic support, Conté’s rivalry with Taylor, and the economic interests of facilitating the arms trade.65 Although Conté had received several missives asking him to end support for LURD, Guinea never suffered any adverse effects for supporting the rebel group and therefore faced few costs for continuing to provide support to LURD throughout the war. Support from the United States and Great Britain was far more subtle and indirect. U.S. and British military advisers provided advice to the LURD leadership beginning in 1999, but evidence suggests this support fell away by early 2002. The U.S. interest in LURD stemmed from its desire to rid itself of the headache of Taylor, although this often took the form of keeping Taylor occupied, and therefore contained, rather than seeking his ouster. While some in the U.S. government no doubt preferred an end to the Taylor regime, Taylor had a number of friends in the U.S. government, making it difficult for the United States to overtly seek his deposition. As Taylor grew more recalcitrant, however, and proved unwilling to bend to U.S. pressure to desist from supporting the RUF, U.S. support for the Taylor regime declined and the United States more actively engaged LURD.66 While U.S. support declined, the U.S. government did not support Taylor’s departure. By May 2003, however, U.S. policy shifted in support of Taylor’s removal.67 The British possessed a different reason for supporting LURD, if only by providing military advice or turning a blind eye to LURD activities: Sierra Leone. The British had made a large financial and political investment in the peace process in Sierra Leone. The main threat to that process was Taylor’s continuing support of the RUF, as well as his continuing efforts to destabilize the region as a whole. In order to counter Taylor’s efforts, the British provided military advice to LURD forces. External support for LURD was not unlimited. Neither the United States nor Great Britain pressed for UN sanctions on LURD, as they had for sanctions on Taylor’s regime. However, as LURD increasingly proved to be an unsavory replacement for Taylor, U.S. and British support fell away because of LURD’s

64. ECOWAS imposed a travel ban on LURD leaders on 29 March 2002. 65. Author’s interview with Western diplomat based in Conakry, Freetown, Sierra Leone, 27 January 2003. 66. Public presentation, International Crisis Group, Washington, DC, 4 April 2002; author’s interview with NGO representative, Freetown, Sierra Leone, 26 July 2003; ICG, April 2002, 21. 67. Author’s interview with humanitarian organization representative, Freetown, Sierra Leone, 15 May 2003.

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inability to present a viable and internationally acceptable alternative to Taylor.68 The United States placed pressure on Guinea to end its support for LURD. At the December 2002 meeting of the International Contact Group on Liberia, the U.S. ambassador to Liberia John Blaney claimed that the United States did not support LURD’s actions and urged all parties to end all military support for LURD.69 During the June–July 2003 offensives on Monrovia, the United States asked Guinea to stop providing assistance to LURD. During the peace talks in Ghana, the United States supported the creation of a transitional government, but only one that severely limited the power and political clout of the rebel groups. U.S. officials quietly proposed a peace plan during the talks, but the plan was rejected by the parties because it excluded the leaders of all factions from an interim government.70 By 2003, it was clear that neither the United States nor Great Britain supported a LURD victory, and the former had increased pressure to limit LURD’s options.

The Movement for Democracy in Liberia (MODEL) MODEL relied heavily on the political support of the Liberian diaspora and Ivorian president Laurent Gbagbo, and this support translated into economic resources and military assistance. Gbagbo went so far as to send his own soldiers into Liberia to assist MODEL in its initial offensive campaigns. This high level of support meant that MODEL could obtain both financial and military resources from Gbagbo, but it also left MODEL dependent on its Ivorian patron. MODEL’s military power generated political gains at the negotiating table, while also enabling territorial gains in the south that produced economic opportunities. However, the peace agreement brought an end to much of the fighting, thereby preempting a real test of MODEL’s support network and its capacity to fight a long war. MO D EL’ S M I LI TA RY C A PAC I TY

Although relatively small in size, estimated at roughly one thousand,71 MODEL proved to be a well-armed force during its initial incursions into Liberia. MODEL received the bulk of its military support from the Ivorian

68. ICG, April 2002, 4–5, 22–23; Global Witness, September 2001, 28; William Reno, “La ‘sale petite guerre’ du Liberia,” Politique Africaine 88 (December 2002), 77; author’s interviews with civil society and human rights activists, Monrovia, Liberia, 3–9 July 2002. 69. U.S. Ambassador to Liberia John W. Blaney III, speech at a press conference held at the U.S. Embassy in Liberia, January 2, 2003. See also press statement by John W. Blaney III, To Liberian Press, 20 March 2003. 70. Associated Press, “U.S. Peace Plan for Liberia Would Exclude Taylor,” 18 July 2003. 71. ICG, November 2003, 11.

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government. MODEL forces were reportedly uniformed and well equipped, suggesting a significant investment by the Ivorian government.72 The Ivorian government began arming MODEL in late 2002, mainly for military missions within Côte d’Ivoire against the Ivorian rebels.73 As part of this deal, MODEL was promised that it could keep its weapons and receive additional support for its own rebellion against Taylor.74 MODEL also seized weapons in its clashes with Taylor forces and captured arms depots at the timber concessions in southeast Liberia during offensives, thus procuring additional arms and ammunition. MODEL also had a third source of weapons: the Ukraine. The United States aided MODEL’s procurement of at least one shipment of weapons from the Ukraine.75 While the United States did not purchase or sell the weapons to MODEL directly, U.S. officials did provide the contacts in Ukraine and facilitate the shipment of weapons to Côte d’Ivoire for delivery to MODEL. It remains unclear whether the United States was involved in more than this one shipment.76 Although military resources were relatively abundant, MODEL faced difficulties in moving arms to the front lines, especially when the front lines moved too far from the Ivorian border. This was especially true during the first months of MODEL’s incursions into Liberia. This capacity increased as MODEL gained ground in Liberia, as indicated by MODEL’s capture of Buchanan and the ensuing advance on Robertsfield Airport just outside Monrovia. The cessation of serious fighting in August 2003 meant that the evolving nature of MODEL’s military capacity was never fully known. MODEL proved less dependent on Ivorian support for soldiers, who were mostly Liberians not Ivorians. The core of MODEL came from former ULIMO-J fighters who fled to Côte d’Ivoire in the late 1990s. In addition, MODEL recruited Liberians from the refugee camps in Côte d’Ivoire (e.g., Nicla) and Ghana (e.g., Buduburam). Many Liberians reportedly voluntarily joined MODEL forces as they moved through Liberian territory. In addition, MODEL received backup support, as well as frontline assistance, from the Ivorian Armed Forces (FANCI), especially during the initial offensives into Liberia from Côte d’Ivoire. 72. ICG, April 2003, 1. 73. Ivorian president Laurent Gbagbo reportedly provided MODEL $250,000 to hire Krahn fighters to fight against the Ivorian rebels in the west. WA scholar, unpublished report on MODEL, 21 October 2003. Gbagbo had also provided financial assistance to LURD (Guinea) prior to becoming president of Côte d’Ivoire to assist LURD in starting operations in 2000. WA scholar interview with former LURD leader, Freetown, Sierra Leone, 26 February 2003. 74. HRW, November 2003, 4. 75. Author’s interview with NGO representative conducting research in Abidjan, Freetown, Sierra Leone, 26 July 2003. 76. ICG, November 2003, 14.

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MO D EL’ S EC O N O M I C O PPO RTU N I TI E S

MODEL leaders and the Liberian diaspora provided the bulk of the financial support for MODEL. Several leaders contributed personal funds to the movement and brought in financiers to support MODEL.77 The Liberian diaspora, mainly in the United States but also in Europe, donated funds. Discontent with Sekou Conneh and his methods of waging war led some of the LURD politicians to shift their political and financial support away from the LURD military wing to finance MODEL instead. MODEL, for some, represented the type of rebel organization that LURD should have become. This sentiment came mainly from those leaders who wielded more control within and over MODEL than they had when they were within the leadership of LURD.78 One key financier who switched sides was Roosevelt Quiah. Quiah had been the main financier of the Liberian Peace Council during the first civil war, and then LURD in the early 2000s, before switching his support to MODEL.79 It remains unclear whether, or to what extent, MODEL engaged in the timber trade. By the time timber sanctions took effect in July 2003, most timber companies in the south had already evacuated their personnel and equipment because of the fighting.80 Allegations surfaced of MODEL negotiating deals with timber companies that wanted to return to production in MODEL-held areas, and there were reports of MODEL selling cut timber out of the San-Pédro port in Côte d’Ivoire.81 These reports suggest that MODEL’s participation in the timber trade offered a lucrative source of funding, as well as a potential source of new arms. It also presented a new obstacle to the implementation of the peace agreement, as politicians in the postwar government haggled over control of timber revenues. A MODEL representative in the interim government served as the head of the Forest Development Authority, the government agency responsible for timber concessions, raising concerns that MODEL would use this government position to its advantage by engaging in the timber trade. MO D EL’ S P O LI TI C A L PATRO N S

Initially MODEL experienced some difficulty in putting together its political leadership. While MODEL avoided the plague of internal divisions experienced by LURD, internal divisions began to appear in the months following the signing 77. Author’s interview with NGO representative, Freetown, Sierra Leone, 26 July 2003; ICG, November 2003, 12. 78. Author’s interview with NGO representative, Freetown, Sierra Leone, 21 January 2004. 79. Author’s interview with NGO representative, Freetown, Sierra Leone, 26 July 2003 and 21 January 2004. 80. UN document S/2003/937, 34. 81. Ibid., 23, 35.

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of the peace agreement. Problems developed mainly between the leadership and frontline soldiers when the commanders persisted in reminding the fighters that they were not educated and therefore had to listen to the educated commanders. This resulted in at least one episode in which fighters revolted, throwing chairs at the leaders, revealing a deep divide within MODEL.82 Along with LURD, MODEL claimed the goals of deposing Taylor and holding democratic elections in Liberia. Political support for MODEL came from those who wanted to see MODEL succeed in achieving these goals. The Ivorian government supported MODEL in order to provide a buffer against Taylor, but also in the hope of deposing Taylor and eliminating a significant source of instability in Côte d’Ivoire. The United States also turned a blind eye to the rise of MODEL. Though political support was not overt, evidence suggests that the United States had shifted its support to MODEL in order to balance against Taylor and LURD. Members of the Liberian diaspora, who supported the political leadership of LURD, as well as LURD politicians and defectors from LURD, also supported the rise of MODEL. MODEL was seen by many as the key to keeping LURD in check, reducing the likelihood of a political takeover by LURD military leader Sekou Conneh, and producing a more stable outcome in Liberia when the war ended. Ivorian president Laurent Gbagbo possessed legitimate security reasons for supporting MODEL: providing a buffer zone between Liberia and Côte d’Ivoire and fighting against the Taylor-backed Ivorian rebels. Gbagbo also had a personal reason for backing MODEL: an ethnic connection. Gbagbo’s ethnic group, Bété, is similar to the Krahn ethnic group of the Liberians in the southeastern region and the main ethnic group of MODEL.83 This ethnic connection went beyond the president: the chief of staff of the Ivorian Armed Forces, Matthias Doué, was a Krahn, and the initial meeting between Gbagbo and the rebels was reportedly arranged by an Ivorian Krahn.84 A MODEL government in Liberia, or at least MODEL representation, would be more likely to address Gbagbo’s concerns. While the Ivorian government denied supporting MODEL, it continued to allow the group to operate in Ivorian territory and provided military and economic support for MODEL to continue its military campaign. The United States neither publicly supported nor publicly condemned MODEL. While U.S. officials suggested to Guinea that it needed to stop supporting LURD, it is unclear that these same warnings were given to Côte

82. Author’s interview with NGO representative, Freetown, Sierra Leone, 21 January 2004. 83. WA scholar interview with Liberian refugee, Freetown, Sierra Leone, 22 February 2003. 84. WA scholar interview with former LURD leader, Freetown, Sierra Leone, 26 February 2003.

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d’Ivoire. In part, this difference in strategy resulted from the U.S. perception that MODEL offered a balancing force to counter LURD’s ambitions. International influence over LURD actions had been waning, as evidenced by the inability of the United States to convince LURD to halt the bombardment of Monrovia in June–July 2003. MODEL offered a counterbalance to what appeared to be an increasingly independent and power-driven LURD under Sekou Conneh.

Evolution of the War: Explaining Key Changes The war in Liberia was marked by clear shifts in the balance of power between forces, shifts that took place as a result of changes in access to resources. This section provides accounts of four significant shifts during the war: Taylor’s response to the initial insurgency, the LURD 2001 offensive, the emergence of a second rebel group (MODEL) in early 2003, and the three LURD offensives in June 2003 that led to the Accra negotiations and the end of the war. The analysis of the rebel groups during these periods highlights the importance of access to resources for conducting offensives and the heavy reliance of all factions on external actors for resupply. International efforts to constrain Taylor’s support network greatly aided the war efforts of LURD and MODEL and contributed to ending the war. The war ended much sooner than many would have anticipated as a result of a heavily resourced LURD offensive in mid-2003 alongside Taylor’s loss of access to resupply and international pressure for a negotiated solution. Table 4.1 provides an overview of the analysis in this section. The table indicates the main changes in the parties to the conflict in terms of resources and position. The overall change in each rebel group’s position is indicated (↑/↓), as is the expected outcome. The expected outcome is based on the analytical framework of the book: an increase in resources will lead to a preference for continuing the war; a decrease in resources will lead to a preference for negotiations or some form of respite. The final column in the table indicates the actual outcome. The actual outcomes mirror the expected outcomes in all cases except one for LURD—the negotiated agreement to end the war—and two for MODEL—the agreement to peace talks in June and the negotiated agreement to end the war (indicated by * in table 4.1). The following subsections provide additional context for understanding these time periods and the analysis presented in table 4.1, the fit of the predicted expected outcome, and the deviations from the model regarding the willingness of the two rebel groups to enter into peace talks from positions of strength.

Economic (↑) Political (↑)

MODEL cuts off access to timber areas,

Economic (↑)

LURD conducts three offensives.

Economic (↑)

MODEL engages in third offensive and

captures last remaining seaport.

Military (↑)

MODEL stays out of first two offensives.

Political (↑)

Military (↑)

LURD gains access to new resources.

reducing income for Taylor.

Military (↑)

MODEL creates second front.

Political (↓)

Economic (↓)

Military (↓)

MODEL emerges, supported by Côte d’Ivoire.

LURD is seriously divided.

Continue war (*)

Continue war (*)

Continue war (*)

Seek negotiations

Seek negotiations

Continue war

Seek negotiations

Continue war

EXPECTED OUTCOME

settlement.

MODEL agrees to negotiated

Taylor departs Liberia for asylum.

settlement.

LURD agrees to negotiated

Taylor departs Liberia for asylum.

Peace talks begin in June.

from Côte d’Ivoire.

MODEL advances into Liberia

Peace talks begin in June.

LURD seeks to rebuild.

LURD seeks to rebuild.

LURD retreats.

LURD rejects political dialogue.

seeking respite.

LURD retreats to Guinean border

LURD continues fighting.

ACTUAL OUTCOME

Note: Change in group position is indicated by (↓) for decreasing, (↑) for increasing. An asterisk (*) indicates actual outcome differed from expected outcome.

End of war (mid-2003)

(early 2003)

Emergence of MODEL

Economic (↓)

Taylor retakes territory.

Military (↓)

Taylor imports weapons.

LURD captures several towns.

(2001–2002)

Military (↑)

Military (↓)

Military (↑)

CHANGES IN REBEL RESOURCES

LURD experiences growing splits.

LURD makes gains.

Taylor is unable to sustain costs of war.

Taylor mobilizes soldiers and imports arms.

LURD recruits soldiers.

LURD makes gains.

and Taylor’s response

New LURD offensive

insurgency (2000–2001)

KEY CHANGES

Key changes during the war in Liberia, 2000–2003

Taylor’s response to the

TIME PERIOD

TABLE 4.1

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Taylor’s Response to the Insurgency (2000–2001) This time period can be split into two distinct parts (see table 4.1). In the first part, LURD made significant military gains and increased its ranks through widespread recruitment. During this time, the expected outcome is that LURD would continue the war, which it did. During the second part of the period Taylor rebounded from a weak position to a position of strength through the mass mobilization of former soldiers and the import of arms. As a result, Taylor was able to regain territory and push LURD back toward the Guinean border. During this time, the expected outcome is that LURD would seek some form of respite, which it did, using Guinea as a safe haven. The initial incursion by LURD in July 2000 produced some successes over the following months. Taylor, claiming Guinea had armed and supported the Liberian rebels, supported the Revolutionary United Front rebels in Sierra Leone and Guinean dissidents in northern Liberia to stage attacks on Guinea.85 These attacks began in September 2000 and continued until April the following year. The Guinean government responded by not only sending its own troops into battle but arming and supporting LURD as well as the Donsos, a civil defense force in eastern Sierra Leone. This support from Guinea enabled LURD to conduct a second offensive into Liberia in November 2000. From late 2000 through early 2001, the fighting continued, with the balance of power shifting back and forth and troops from both sides moving across the border frontier. In January 2001, LURD began a recruitment campaign that included members of the Kamajors (civil defense forces in Sierra Leone), the RUF, and the West Side Boys (another rebel faction in the Sierra Leone war).86 By February 2001, the tide had turned against the Taylor-backed forces. The Guinean military pushed the RUF out of Guinea and back into Sierra Leone. The Donsos greatly assisted in this reversal, leading the RUF to request assistance and protection from the UN peacekeeping force then on the ground in Sierra Leone. At the same time, LURD began another offensive in northern Liberia, with heavy fighting reported during this time in the Foya area of northern Liberia.87 This prompted Taylor to actively seek assistance both domestically and abroad to build his army and his arsenal. By early 2001, Taylor considered LURD a serious threat and took measures to defend his regime, including mobilizing former combatants and importing arms. Taylor submitted an official written request to the UN Security Council

85. HRW, May 2002, 10. 86. Ibid., 7. 87. UN document S/2001/1015, 26.

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in February to lift the UN arms embargo on Liberian government forces in order to import arms for Liberia’s self-defense.88 This request was denied, and in March 2001 the UN Security Council voted unanimously to impose new and more comprehensive sanctions on Taylor’s regime.89 Taylor began recruiting additional fighters in April 2001. Many joined Taylor’s ranks voluntarily for the money offered. Taylor mobilized the militias maintained by the timber companies.90 He also tried, with some success, to recruit RUF combatants from Sierra Leone, but many were tired of fighting and preferred the disarmament program in Sierra Leone to fighting in a foreign war.91 Taylor initiated a large campaign to remobilize members of his former rebel organization, the National Patriotic Front of Liberia (NPFL), to build the specialist Anti-Terrorist Unit (ATU) of the Armed Forces of Liberia (AFL) and to support the numerous pro-Taylor militias that had emerged under the leadership of men strictly loyal to Taylor. Taylor, not trusting the national army, had largely marginalized the AFL, which had quickly declined in terms of quality, training, and troop strength.92 Taylor also engaged in a vigorous campaign to import arms for his troops. Taylor at this time had the money to purchase weapons and ammunition through substantial revenues from the sales of diamonds, timber concessions, and the Liberian maritime registry.93 In May he approached Libya for assistance and it is believed that he did receive some military assistance from Libya via Burkina Faso.94 On 10 May, a shipment of arms arrived at the port in Harper in the southeast.95 In addition, the RUF shipped a large quantity of arms and ammunition into Liberia in order to avoid having to relinquish these arms to the disarmament program under way in Sierra Leone. By late 2000 various reports indicated a number of arms shipments had come into Liberia for Taylor. Taylor’s efforts

88. Ibid., 35. 89. UN Security Council, resolution 1343, UN document S/RES/1343, 7 March 2001. 90. Global Witness, The Logs of War: The Timber Trade and Armed Conflict, produced in cooperation with the Fafo Institute’s Programme for International Co-Operation and Conflict Resolution, Fafo report 379, March 2002 (hereinafter Global Witness, March 2002). 91. UN document S/2001/1015, 27–28. 92. Author’s interviews, Monrovia, Liberia, 3–9 July 2002; author’s interviews with UN Military Observers stationed in Sierra Leone along Liberian borders, Kailahun, Sierra Leone, 13 February 2003; author’s interviews with British military officers, Kenema, Sierra Leone, 18 July 2002; WA scholar interview with Liberian refugee, Freetown, Sierra Leone, 22 February 2003; WA scholar interviews with AFL defectors, Mapeh internment camp, Sierra Leone, 24 February 2003; WA scholar interview, Abidjan, Côte d’Ivoire, 14 March 2003. 93. These revenues have been documented by International Crisis Group, Global Witness, and the UN Panel of Experts. 94. Global Witness, September 2001, 3. 95. Ibid., 6.

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proved successful for several months, boosting his military forces and forcing LURD to retreat toward the Guinean border. Yet even as Taylor improved the capacity of his forces, he started to face financial challenges. In March 2001, the UN Security Council agreed to impose additional sanctions on Liberia, which came into effect on 7 May and appeared to have some impact on Taylor’s income by late in the year. By the end of 2001 Taylor was having trouble paying his troops and purchasing weapons.96 Additional threats to Taylor’s financial position came from Sierra Leone and LURD. First, there had been a significant decline in the diamond trade with the RUF. In part this was due to the fact that the RUF could illegally utilize the certification scheme in Sierra Leone to legally sell the diamonds it mined. Another factor was the diamond sanctions placed on Liberia as part of the sanctions regime imposed in May, which made it illegal to import Liberian diamonds. Second, in September 2001 the Sierra Leone Army deployed to Zimmi, a town along the southern border with Liberia, decreasing the ability of Liberia to transport diamonds north to Sierra Leone for export through legal channels associated with the certification scheme.97 Finally, LURD attacked two timber concessions in northern Liberia, disrupting timber production and threatening an important source of income for Taylor. LURD’s shift to an offensive position, alongside Taylor’s difficulties in maintaining his war machine, enabled LURD to gain the advantage.

A New LURD Offensive and Taylor’s Response (2001–2002) This time period can also be split into two distinct parts (see table 4.1). In the first part of the period, LURD once again made significant territorial gains, and Taylor, facing high costs he could not meet, was forced to regroup. During this time, the expected outcome is that LURD would continue the war, which it did, rejecting Taylor’s offer for a political dialogue. During the second part of the period, Taylor rebounds once again after the import of weapons. LURD faces its own difficulties due to splits within the leadership that affect its military capacity. During this time, the expected outcome is that LURD would seek some form of respite, which it did, retreating and rebuilding its forces. LURD made a number of small gains during the first half of 2001. However, Taylor’s reinforced troops proved more effective and posed a greater challenge to LURD forces than expected. In addition, splits within the LURD leadership as well as logistical problems on the military side contributed to reducing the capacity of LURD to fight effectively. LURD appeared to overcome these constraints 96. International Crisis Group, public presentation on Liberia, Washington, DC, 4 April 2002. 97. UN document S/2001/1015, 78.

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and, with new supplies arriving in late 2001, was able to conduct a successful offensive in November 2001 that led to several successes in the first half of 2002. LURD began its November 2001 offensive from southeastern Guinea, assisted by a large influx of arms and ammunition.98 LURD forces moved quickly to take a number of towns in the north. In December, LURD forces captured the town of Voinjama, which would remain LURD headquarters throughout the war, as well as the northern towns of Foya and Vahun. In January and February 2002, LURD advanced on Tubmanburg and Kley Junction, respectively. The attack on Kley Junction brought LURD to within fifty kilometers of Monrovia. As the rebels neared the capital Taylor declared a state of emergency. LURD continued its offensive, advancing to take Zorzor and Fassama. By the end of April 2002, LURD controlled most of Lofa County. It captured large amounts of ammunition from fleeing AFL forces, and a large number of AFL soldiers began defecting.99 At this point, LURD stood in a strong position and remained intent on continuing the war. These achievements were soon overshadowed by growing splits within the LURD leadership, a decline in external support from Guinea, and the defection of more than one dozen LURD leaders to the faction that would become MODEL.100 International public opinion also turned against the group. LURD failed to attend a political dialogue organized by the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) in Abuja, Nigeria, in mid-March, claiming the talks were biased against the rebels.101 In response ECOWAS condemned LURD actions and imposed a travel ban on LURD leadership. Many West African heads of state continued to stand behind Taylor, though they did not all support him for the same reasons. Some of them supported Taylor’s war machine, while others supported Taylor merely because he was a head of state.102 Mohamed Ibn Chambas, who was then head of ECOWAS and a friend of Taylor, went a step further to publicly condemn LURD and its actions.103 On 6 May 2002, the UN Security Council extended sanctions to include all factions involved in the fighting, although the measure did not explicitly name LURD.104

98. UN document S/2002/1115. 99. ICG, April 2002, 7. 100. UN document S/2001/1015, 31; WA scholar interview with former LURD leader, Freetown, Sierra Leone, 26 February 2003. 101. ICG, April 2002, 25. 102. WA scholar interview with former LURD leader, 26 February 2003; WA scholar interviews with NGO representatives, 24 February 2003. 103. ICG, April 2002, 25. 104. UN Security Council, resolution 1408, UN document S/RES/1408, 6 May 2002.

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On the defensive for the first half of 2002, Taylor began a comeback in June with a major offensive against LURD. Throughout the year Taylor received weapons shipments that fueled his offense: a number of suspected arms shipments arrived at the port in Buchanan on 9, 15, 16, and 28 January; another arms shipment arrived from Chad on 25 February; and two additional arms shipments arrived in May.105 Then several additional shipments arriving in the summer months bolstered Taylor’s June offensive: six arms shipments arrived at Robertsfield Airport on 1, 7, and 29 June; 5 July; and 23 and 25 August.106 By the end of September, Taylor lifted the state of emergency as his forces pushed LURD out of Liberia, forcing the group to retreat into Guinea and temporarily removing the threat to Monrovia.107 In October, reports circulated of LURD losing ground and Guinea providing artillery fire along the border region to keep Taylor’s forces at bay. By the end of November, Taylor, believing he had the upper hand and could dictate a favorable settlement, asked ECOWAS to organize peace talks with LURD. LURD during this period experienced serious internal divisions and supply problems. Several senior LURD leaders left the organization over serious differences with the military leader, Sekou Conneh.108 Taylor’s forces pressured LURD into retreating into Guinea, with AFL forces claiming the capture of the LURD headquarters in Voinjama in August. Although Sekou Conneh claimed LURD never lost control of Voinjama since taking it in December 2001, other LURD combatants verified that Voinjama had been lost during this time of fighting.109 LURD’s defeats resulted from poor supply lines and logistics, which left LURD combatants stranded in parts of Liberia. These combatants resorted to looting to obtain food and goods they could sell or barter for weapons. By the end of 2002, LURD appeared seriously divided, disorganized, poorly disciplined, and on the verge of dissolution.

The Emergence of MODEL (2003) This time period witnessed a distinct difference in position of the two rebel groups (see table 4.1). While LURD faced significant divisions and difficulties in accessing new supplies for the war, MODEL emerged as a strong military force in southeastern Liberia with significant support from Côte d’Ivoire. During this time, LURD would have been expected to seek a form of respite, which is did by

105. Global Witness, September 2002, 6, 8–9; UN document S/2002/470, 6–7. 106. UN document S/2002/1115, 18; Global Witness, March 2003, 10. 107. UN document S/2002/1115, 14. 108. ICG, April 2003, 5, 21. 109. Author’s interview with Sekou Conneh, Liberian border, 31 January 2003; author’s interview with LURD combatant, Macenta, Guinea, 1 February 2003; WA scholar interview with LURD soldier, Mapeh internment camp, Freetown, Sierra Leone, 24 February 2003.

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agreeing to negotiations for the June peace talks and at the same time seeking to rebuild its military capacity. MODEL, on the other hand, made great inroads into Liberia during its initial battles and succeeded in establishing a second front against Taylor. Given this position, it is unexpected that MODEL would agree to enter the June peace talks. It is clear, however, that MODEL never retreated from its battlefield position and likely viewed participation in the peace talks as a way of ensuring it was included in any peace deal created; concerns about being omitted from any such settlement came to the fore a month later, suggesting MODEL had been astute in trying to ensure its military power gave it a seat at the negotiating table. The divisions within LURD gave rise to a breakaway faction, the Movement for Democracy in Liberia (MODEL). MODEL rose to stature first in Côte d’Ivoire, where it fought with Ivorian president Laurent Gbagbo’s forces against the Ivorian rebels in late 2002, then in early 2003 with battlefield successes in southeastern Liberia. The rise of MODEL brought a second front to the war in Liberia, making it more difficult for Taylor to defend his regime. MODEL operations in Taylor’s primary timber export areas reduced access to this source of funds, further impinging on Taylor’s capacity to resupply his troops. In addition to fighting LURD, Taylor was also supporting the Ivorian rebels in the west of Côte d’Ivoire.110 Taylor, who had overextended his forces, was ill prepared to fight another rebel group in his own country. Initial incursions by MODEL began in late January 2003. The government of Liberia claimed publicly that the attacks into Grand Gedeh County were conducted by former ULIMO-J generals—at this time MODEL had no official name.111 In February, MODEL attacked Toe Town, Liberia, with the assistance of the Ivorian military. Then in March, MODEL attacked Gbarnga and Zwedru. It was during the attacks on Zwedru in late March that MODEL publicly declared itself as a movement distinct from LURD and gave itself the name MODEL. Before this it had been unclear who the insurgents were, and most believed they were a second front created by LURD.112 However, LURD leaders never claimed the battlefield successes of MODEL as their own, and it soon became apparent

110. Taylor supported two anti-Gbagbo rebel groups in western Côte d’Ivoire beginning in November 2002 in order to keep an eye on the LURD faction in Côte d’Ivoire and prevent their entrance into the Liberian war. Taylor also supported them to keep the arms supply route open from Burkina Faso through Danané, Côte d’Ivoire, and into Liberia and to lessen the pressure on him to pay his troops by offering them the opportunity to loot in Côte d’Ivoire. WA scholar interview with former LURD leaders, Freetown, Sierra Leone, 26 February 2003. See also UN document S/2003/937; ICG, April 2003, 3, 14–18; Global Witness, March 2003, 6–7, 10. 111. “Ulimo Generals Attack Grand Gedeh,” News (Monrovia), 21 January 2003. 112. Author’s interview with LURD combatant, Macenta, Guinea, 31 January 2003.

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that MODEL had opened a new front in the war. Taylor’s forces had great difficulty in stemming the tide as MODEL continued its advance, recruiting fighters as it moved farther into Liberian territory. In February 2003, Taylor began showing signs of retreat. He withdrew his forces from Côte d’Ivoire and the border area with Sierra Leone to protect Monrovia. The government reduced the number of resupply missions to the northern areas, focusing resources instead on those forces defending Monrovia. By late 2002, Taylor was again experiencing difficulty paying his troops and was allowing them to loot as a form of payment.113This lack of salary, logistics, and food in the north led many AFL soldiers to leave the military and defect to Sierra Leone.114 Although Taylor did not trust the AFL soldiers, he had continued to recruit AFL soldiers throughout the war as part of a military strategy to overwhelm LURD with the sheer numbers of AFL fighters, rather than trying to defeat LURD directly on the battlefield. The defection of numerous soldiers reduced the viability of this strategy and reduced the military pressure on both rebel groups. The tide turned against Taylor when MODEL advanced into the port towns in the southeast. On 29 April, MODEL seized the Liberian port of Greenville. Three weeks later, MODEL captured Harper. The seizure of these ports by MODEL severely limited Taylor’s capacity to import arms and his ability to export timber, a key source of his financial revenues.115 This forced Taylor to rely on the last remaining port in the south, Buchanan, and the airfield outside Monrovia for importing military goods.116 Although Taylor had been using Robertsfield to import arms throughout the war, MODEL’s advances forced Taylor to rely more heavily on these air shipments. Taylor’s position worsened when the UN Security Council imposed timber sanctions on 6 May.117 These sanctions, which entered into effect on 7 July, struck at the heart of Taylor’s financial empire. As peace talks finally began on 4 June 2003 in Accra, Ghana, Taylor’s regime entered the negotiations from a severely weakened position.

The End of the War and the Accra Agreement (2003) Both LURD and MODEL had the upper hand against Taylor during this time period (see table 4.1). LURD proved capable of accessing sufficient resources

113. Global Witness, September 2002, 9; author’s interviews in Monrovia, Liberia, 3–9 July 2002. 114. WA scholar interviews with AFL soldiers, Mapeh internment camp, Freetown, Sierra Leone, 24 February 2003; WA scholar interviews with Liberian refugees, Freetown, Sierra Leone, 22 February 2003; ICG, April 2003, 7. 115. Global Witness, September 2001, 8; Global Witness, September 2002, 5–9; Global Witness, March 2003, 6, 18. 116. Global Witness, March 2003, 9–10. 117. UN Security Council, resolution 1478, UN Document S/RES/1478, 6 May 2003.

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to initiate an offensive against Monrovia. Although it took three offensives to finally reach the capital and place significant pressure on the Taylor regime, LURD emerged as a significant threat to the capital during this time. MODEL, although remaining quiet during the initial two offensives, engaged in the third and made significant inroads toward the capital from the southeast. During this time, the expected outcome is that both rebel groups would continue the war. They did and placed sufficient pressure on Taylor to leave the country and seek asylum in Nigeria. However, instead of continuing the battle for the capital and ultimately a victory in the war, both groups agreed to a negotiated solution, a decision resulting from the success in removing Taylor, the pressure from the international community to negotiate, and the potential benefits made possible through a peace deal. Peace talks began in Accra, Ghana, on 4 June 2003. The opening of talks coincided, not by chance, with the Special Court for Sierra Leone unsealing an indictment against Charles Taylor for war crimes. According to members of the prosecutor’s office of the Special Court, the indictment was unsealed at this time because it was a rare opportunity for the court to act when Taylor was not in Liberia.118 Ghanaian officials refused to arrest Taylor and instead escorted Taylor back to Liberia in Ghanaian president John Kufuor’s presidential plane. Shortly after his return, LURD began the first of three major offensives on Monrovia. During these three offensives—referred to in Monrovia as World Wars I, II, and III—LURD pounded Monrovia with heavy artillery. Three offensives were required not because of the strength of Taylor’s forces but rather the weakness of LURD’s logistical capacity. LURD retreated from the first offensive after encountering heavy resistance and having its supply lines cut by Taylor forces. The second retreat came in late June after LURD forces ran out of ammunition. An arms shipment arrived in Conakry on 30 June, which was then transferred to LURD, enabling the group’s third and final offensive.119 The third offensive on Monrovia began on 18 July 2003. Heavy fighting continued for several days. It was at this time that MODEL reentered the war. MODEL had not engaged in the initial two offensives on Monrovia, but it did contribute to the third, and on 28 July MODEL captured the town of Buchanan, the last remaining seaport in the south, thereby cutting off Taylor’s access to both arms and humanitarian assistance. At this point, Taylor’s options were extremely limited. At the time of the signing of the Liberian peace agreement in Ghana in 2003, MODEL controlled roughly the bottom half of Liberia, including the three strategic ports located along the

118. Author’s discussions with members of the prosecutor’s office of the Special Court, Freetown, Sierra Leone, 4–5 June 2003. 119. HRW, November 2003, 2, 6.

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southern coast, while LURD controlled most of the top half of Liberia, including its headquarters in Voinjama and Robertsport. A string of events in August would precipitate the end of the war. On 1 August the UN Security Council approved the establishment of a multinational peacekeeping force in Liberia and on 4 August the first troops of the ECOWAS Mission in Liberia (ECOMIL) arrived in Monrovia. A cease-fire was signed two days later. Although the situation appeared grim, Taylor had been trying to find an alternative to a forced departure. On 7 August, Taylor’s last hope arrived at Robertsfield Airport outside Monrovia—a twenty-ton shipment of arms—but Taylor never received the weapons. ECOMIL forces stationed at the airport confiscated the shipment and prevented Taylor’s forces from retrieving it.120 Taylor had only two options left at this point: fight or seek asylum. Taylor chose asylum in Nigeria on 11 August when it became clear this was the only viable option. This opened the way for the signing of a peace agreement on 18 August and an end to full-scale fighting. A major contributing factor to the end of the conflict was Taylor’s inability to keep his war machine running. Taylor’s network suffered from a number of disruptions. First, his access to Sierra Leone diamonds was severely limited by the middle of 2001. Second, Taylor, having turned to timber to acquire revenue, lost access to the timber concessions when MODEL seized these areas and the nearby seaports in the southeast. Third, the decline in revenue meant Taylor could no longer pay his forces. While this had long been the case for the AFL, it had been rare among Taylor’s elite forces, the ATU, which had largely been responsible for defending Taylor’s regime throughout the war. Fourth, hundreds of AFL soldiers began defecting to Sierra Leone, flatly refusing to heed new recruitment calls. Finally, suffering from a decline in income and limited by the continued arms embargo, importing arms became more expensive and more difficult. The seizure of the 7 August arms shipment deprived Taylor of his last chance of survival in Liberia. The second important factor was the timely resupply of LURD forces. LURD began its offensive on Monrovia on 4 June 2003. Although LURD forces suffered from shortages in ammunition, by the third and final offensive on Monrovia on 18 July 2003 LURD had finally, with significant assistance from Guinean military forces, resolved its logistics difficulties. LURD also received new supplies from Guinea. These supplies were shipped down the coast to Robertsport, controlled by LURD at the time, where they were driven to Bushrod Island, enabling the establishment of a direct supply line to the troops on the front lines.121 The 120. UN document S/2003/937, 6. 121. HRW, November 2003, 24.

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success of the LURD offensive irreversibly changed the balance of power between the rebels and Taylor. The third contributing factor to ending the war was the renewal of MODEL’s offensive. MODEL had made no moves toward the capital during LURD’s first two offensives. Some argue that this was the result of a lack of supplies, but evidence suggests MODEL had the supplies but had been pressured by the international community not to engage in the Monrovia battle. The international community did not want to see a three-way battle for the capital, and therefore wanted to keep MODEL out of the fight. MODEL’s reentry into active fighting came at the end of July when it took the port town of Buchanan and began moving toward Monrovia. Although taking the port eliminated Taylor’s last point of access to a seaport in the south, this may not have been the only goal. MODEL, unhappy with the peace talks because it believed it was being overlooked and underestimated, likely wanted a better deal from the negotiations and felt military success was the only way to achieve it. The MODEL offensive increased the military pressure on Taylor, contributing to his departure, but it also forced an agreement in Accra that provided more benefits to MODEL. The fourth contributing factor to ending the war, and ending it peacefully, was the heavy international pressure placed on the rebel groups to agree to a negotiated settlement. The international community through the UN Security Council clearly indicated that it would not accept any attempt by the rebel factions to seize power through force.122 Surprisingly, the factions heeded this warning and neither group tried to take control of Monrovia and claim victory. Instead, both rebel groups retreated to the outskirts of Monrovia and continued negotiations in Ghana. This produced a peace accord signed by all the factions in August 2003. International actors involved in the peace process clearly wanted a negotiated settlement. The rebels seem to have agreed to this for four main reasons: one, they did not want to risk losing international support for their role in the future of Liberia; two, they had achieved their goal of deposing Taylor; three, they gained a number of benefits from the peace agreement; and four, they maintained their support networks and could easily resort to war if the peace process proved unfavorable. In many respects, the war in Liberia came to an unexpected end when a series of events turned the tide in LURD’s favor and forced Taylor to flee to Nigeria. The war, however, was neither won nor lost. Although LURD, and to some extent MODEL, can claim credit for deposing Taylor, neither could claim the presidency. This unusual and unexpected outcome resulted from 122. UN Security Council, report of the Security Council Mission to West Africa, 26 June–5 July 2003, UN document S/2003/688, 7 July 2003.

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heavy international pressure on the rebel groups to agree to implement the Accra peace agreement and create a transitional government rather than seize power through military means. The international community did not want to see a battle for Monrovia. The rebel groups signed the peace agreement and retreated to the outskirts of Monrovia but had yet to prove their commitment to the peace process. The situation in Liberia remained fluid and uncertain. Many believed that all the factions were merely biding their time until the balance of power became clearer, at which point each faction could decide whether to fully support the peace process or return to the battlefield. Those in power appeared, as they did during the peace negotiations, more fixated on what they could gain personally from their political positions than on how to fix a desperate and devastated Liberia.123 As long as the rebel groups maintained their support networks, they preserved the option to delay the peace process. While some diplomatic initiatives placed pressure on Guinea and Côte d’Ivoire to terminate their support of the rebel groups, there is little evidence that this happened.124 In effect, very little was being done to remove a key obstacle to peace: the rebel groups’ conflict networks and the options they offered to disrupt the peace. At the end of December 2003, it remained unclear how well the new government would function. The interim government showed signs of divisions. The rebels were unhappy with the interim leader, Gyude Bryant. Complaints began in October 2003 and continued into January 2004 with Bryant still failing to appoint LURD nominations. This led to both MODEL and LURD asking for Bryant to be replaced on 26 January, though MODEL backed down on this demand the next day.125 Allegations surfaced that all factions were engaged in government corruption.126 At the beginning of 2004, all signs pointed to the

123. Many Liberians claimed the primary problem in Liberia was that everyone wanted to be president. Author’s interviews in Monrovia, Liberia, 3–9 July 2002. An observer of the peace talks in Accra, Ghana, in June–July 2003 arrived at the same conclusion, pointing out that the talks were more about who would be president and who would benefit from the wealth of the state and the peace agreement than how to bring about stability and prosperity in Liberia. Author’s interview, Freetown, Sierra Leone, 26 July 2003. 124. Both LURD and MODEL continued to import arms in September. UN document S/2003/937, 14; ICG, November 2003, 7. 125. IRIN, “Liberia: Warring Parties Succeed in Demand for More Top Jobs,” 26 January 2004, http://www.irinnews.org/printreport.aspx?reportid=47945; IRIN, “Rebel Factions Want Transitional Leader Replaced,” 26 January 2004, http://www.irinnews.org/Report/48274/LIBERIA-Rebel-factions-want-transitional-leader-replaced; IRIN, “Rebels Back Down on Call for Bryant’s Removal,” 27 January 2004, http://www.irinnews.org/Report/48298/LIBERIA-Rebels-back-down-on-call-forBryant-s-removal; IRIN, “LURD Leader Drops Demand for Bryant to Go,” 5 February 2004, http:// www.irinnews.org/Report/48466/LIBERIA-LURD-leader-drops-demand-for-Bryant-to-go. 126. UN document S/2003/937, 21–23.

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difficulties ahead in implementing the peace agreement and disarming and demobilizing the fighting factions. Yet it was the political process that won out in the end. The removal of Taylor and enhanced access to the political system, combined with the related economic opportunities that came with political positions, encouraged all sides to engage in democratic politics rather than pursue their interests through war.

5 CÔTE D’IVOIRE From the MPCI to the Forces Nouvelles

The Ivorian civil war officially lasted less than a year. The war began on 19 September 2002, and in late January 2003 the Linas-Marcoussis peace accords and the Kléber arrangements provided a platform for ending the war. However, the formal declaration of the end of the war on 4 July 2003 did little to end the stalemate or change the situation on the ground. By December 2003 few of the provisions of the peace agreement had been implemented. The rebels continued to control the north, and the government remained opposed to fully implementing the Marcoussis agreement. Animosity ran high and both sides indicated their preference to resolve their differences on the battlefield. At the end of 2003, Côte d’Ivoire remained balanced in a fragile state of “no war, no peace.” The stalemate endured for two reasons: no side could prevail militarily, and the presence of the French troops ensured neither would try. The emergence of a united rebel front through the creation of the Forces Nouvelles (New Forces) in early 2003 projected an image of a more powerful rebel force, enabling the maintenance of the stalemate, but the Forces Nouvelles were internally fractured along political and military command lines and their strength appeared to wane by 2004. Faced with a persistent stalemate and declining resources, the Forces Nouvelles survived by creating a unifying structure for the rebel forces in 2004. La Centrale, the financial center for the Forces Nouvelles, provided a tax system to ensure sufficient income. Zone commanders, appointed to each of the ten zones in the north, provided an administrative mechanism throughout rebel-held territory, centered at the rebel headquarters in Bouaké. The creation of La Centrale proved essential to ensuring the longevity of the 139

MALI

BURKINA FASO

Odienné Korhogo

GUINEA

Ferkessédougou

CÔTE D'IVOIRE Séguéla

Nzérékoré

Bouaké

Danané

Man Vavoua Bangolo

Toulépleu Tapeta

Yamoussoukro

Duékoué Daloa Guiglo

GHANA

Zwedru

LIBERIA

Abidjan

San-Pédro Harper

Tabou

Atlantic Ocean Government forces (FANCI) Patriotic Movement of Côte d’Ivoire (MPCI) Popular Movement of the Ivorian Great West (MPIGO) Movement for Justice and Peace (MJP)

MAP 5.1.

0 25 50

Côte d’Ivoire: Status of armed forces, March 2003

100 Miles

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Forces Nouvelles, but it served more to solidify the standoff with the government than to resolve the stalemate. The stalemate in Côte d’Ivoire proved extremely resistant to conflict resolution efforts. Several sets of negotiations and agreements failed to move the peace process forward: the Linas-Marcoussis agreement (2003), the Kléber Accords (2003), Accra I (2002), Accra II (2003), Accra III (2004), Pretoria I (2005), and Pretoria II (2005). Despite small steps toward peace, the stalemate remained in place. The zone of confidence provided a buffer, dividing the two forces and limiting actual fighting. The Forces Nouvelles controlled the north, the government controlled the south and the major functions of the state, and neither side had great incentive to alter the situation through negotiations that did not give them what they wanted. Without military pressure to bring them to the table and push forward a settlement, both sides preferred to wait out the stalemate. The 2007 Ouagadougou Accord, negotiated between the Ivorian president Laurent Gbagbo and the Forces Nouvelles, provided a detailed framework for moving forward on the peace process. The accord brought the Forces Nouvelles into government and granted the post of prime minister to the head of the Forces Nouvelles, Guillaume Soro. The accord also provided for the dismantling of the zone of confidence, which had effectively divided the country since 2002. Although the accord inspired hope for an end to the standoff, the lack of progress on two key processes—the national registration of citizens and the disarmament of the factions—delayed the national elections that many hoped would bring a final end to the conflict. Four supplemental agreements (Ouagadougou I, II, III, and IV) followed the Ouagadougou Accord. Elections were postponed numerous times, forcing the international community to extend Gbagbo’s presidential mandate each time. National elections were finally held on 31 October 2010. They resulted in a highly disputed runoff between Gbagbo and Alassane Ouattara, the main opposition leader, in November, a runoff many believe Ouattara won. Gbagbo’s reluctance to accept the results in favor of Ouattara once again highlighted the north-south divide, aligned the national military and the rebel force behind their preferred leaders, and brought the country back to the brink of war. Five months of fighting in the capital ended with the arrest of Gbagbo in April 2011. This formally ended the standoff and placed Ouattara in power, but the violence and divisions that persisted in the ensuing months suggest the situation remains fragile. In this chapter I assess the resources, options, and preferences of the rebel groups that fought the civil war in Côte d’Ivoire. I begin with a brief discussion of the beginning of the war and the expectations of the mutineers that their coup d’état would be successful. The failure of the mutineers to overthrow the president and their forced retreat to the north led to stalemate, but only if the

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rebels could sustain their forces. In the second section I focus on the support network of the Patriotic Movement of Côte d’Ivoire (MPCI), and in particular the military, economic, and political resources the group had at its disposal. Having expected a quick victory, the MPCI was unprepared for a military standoff, and by late 2002 it appeared near bankruptcy. By late 2003 the group, by this time renamed the Forces Nouvelles, faced significant challenges in terms of both leadership divides and financial shortfalls; its access to resources proved limited. The creation of an economic support structure resuscitated the group in early 2004 and provided a dependable source of income to maintain the stalemate. In the third section I set forth an analysis of how changes in resource access influenced the trajectory of the war and the decision of the rebel groups to continue fighting or seek negotiations. The analysis focuses on four key time periods during the war when large changes in resource access led to visible shifts in the pattern of fighting. The analysis of rebel groups’ pursuit of the war largely follows the pattern predicted by the analytical framework: continued fighting (or in this case, maintenance of the stalemate) when resources existed, and pursuit of negotiations during difficult times (see table 5.1). The limited amount of actual fighting between rebel and government forces, as well as the positioning of peacekeepers as a buffer between the forces, contributed to reducing the costs of the war and the burden on the Forces Nouvelles to generate income and obtain military resources. One exception to the framework did arise in the analysis: the continued effort by the MPCI to seek a negotiated solution in late 2002. This was part of a dual-prong strategy to maintain lines of negotiation while at the same time rearming and preparing for the failure of negotiations.

Start of the War The rebels began their mutiny in the early morning hours of 19 September 2002. In well-organized and coordinated attacks, the mutineers simultaneously attacked military installations in the economic capital and government seat, Abidjan, and the northern towns of Bouaké and Korhogo. Amid widespread surprise and confusion, including various rumors about the identity and intentions of the rebels, the mutineers took control of Bouaké and Korhogo, but failed to take Abidjan and depose Gbagbo, and retreated to Bouaké, which would become the rebels’ headquarters. The group of mutineers took the name the Patriotic Movement of Côte d’Ivoire (MPCI) a week after the coup attempt, though the leadership would not come forward until nearly a month later. By the end of September, the rebels had established control of the northern half of the country.

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The rebels achieved their initial successes because of the lack of any real opposition from the Ivorian armed forces (FANCI).1 FANCI forces appeared either unwilling to challenge the rebels or incapable of doing so.2 Divisions within FANCI quickly became apparent when soldiers defected to the rebels, and Gbagbo was forced to buy time in order to find additional fighting forces.3 The FANCI forces were poorly equipped, with insufficient arms, training, and motivation to fight. Gbagbo had not trusted FANCI and instead had invested government resources in the gendarmes, giving them rather than FANCI the available military equipment, supplies, and training.4 By comparison, the rebels were too well armed to be defeated easily.5 Although the Ivorian armed forces tried to dislodge the rebels from their proclaimed headquarters in Bouaké, they failed to achieve this goal. The French forces, based in Abidjan, contributed significantly to preventing the overthrow of Gbagbo.6 The French protected Abidjan and Yamoussoukro, ensuring the rebels could not take the economic and political capitals, respectively. Abidjan had been the primary objective and the key to success for the rebellion.7 The rebels would have succeeded in deposing Gbagbo had they been able to take Abidjan, but their failure forced them to retreat to Bouaké. This began a long standoff between the rebels in the north and government forces in the south, setting the stage for prolonged peace talks and the solidification of the emerging division of the country between north and south. Early battles between the government and the MPCI forces demonstrated the strength of the rebels and the weakness of the government forces. As time passed, however, the balance of power shifted: the MPCI declined in military strength, but the presence of the French deterred Gbagbo from trying once again to crush the rebellion and win the war. Events on the ground suggested the rebels were willing from early in the rebellion to negotiate an end to the fighting. However, their political demands, in particular the removal of Gbagbo, made this less of a

1. Human Rights Watch, Trapped between Two Wars: Violence against Civilians in Western Côte d’Ivoire, 15, no. 14 (A), August 2003, 1, 6–9, 10 (hereinafter HRW, August 2003). Similar sentiments were expressed to me during interviews in Abidjan in November 2002. 2. Author’s interview with humanitarian organization representative, Freetown, Sierra Leone, 31 October 2002. 3. Author’s interview with international journalist, Abidjan, Côte d’Ivoire, 11 November 2002; author’s interview with humanitarian organization representative based in Abidjan, Freetown, Sierra Leone, 20 November 2002; International Crisis Group, Côte d’Ivoire: “The War Is Not Yet Over,” ICG Africa report 73, 28 November 2003, 9 (hereinafter ICG, November 2003). 4. Author’s interview with humanitarian organization representative based in Abidjan, Freetown, Sierra Leone, 20 November 2002. 5. Author’s interview with Western diplomat, Abidjan, Côte d’Ivoire, 14 November 2002. 6. ICG, November 2003, 1. This was the prevailing assessment of international journalists and foreign diplomats in Abidjan in November 2002 during my visit to Abidjan. 7. Author’s interview with Western military official, Abidjan, Côte d’Ivoire, 13 November 2002.

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possibility.8 The MPCI chose to sign a unilateral cease-fire in mid-October 2002, which Gbagbo later reluctantly agreed to accept. This cease-fire line effectively divided the country in half, with French troops, and eventually United Nations troops, patrolling the division line. The buffer zone, the “zone of confidence,” created by these troops cemented a stalemate that would last for nearly a decade.

The Support Network of the Patriotic Movement of Côte d’Ivoire The Patriotic Movement of Côte d’Ivoire (MPCI) began not as a full-fledged rebel movement but as a small group of soldiers and former soldiers intent on deposing Gbagbo in a military coup. The MPCI apparently believed its victory would be quick and did not have plans beyond overthrowing Gbagbo.9 Believing the rebellion would be short-lived and successful, the group did not expect a drawn-out military standoff and was inadequately prepared to sustain one. Despite receiving safe haven in Burkina Faso during the planning of the coup and initial military support to carry out the coup attempt, the MPCI possessed a poor support network. Once it realized it could not prevail militarily, the leadership attempted to expand its options through collaboration with the rebel groups in the west and negotiations through international mediators. The former produced few benefits and the MPCI failed to gain international recognition as a legitimate political actor. The MPCI faced significant financial challenges as its military force declined in capacity and splits developed within the MPCI and among the various rebel groups. The organization of La Centrale in 2004 renewed the MPCI’s financial strength under the banner of the Forces Nouvelles, placing it in a stronger position to maintain the stalemate.

The MPCI’s Military Capacity The two main sources of military equipment and soldiers for the MPCI were Burkina Faso and the Ivorian military. Burkina Faso provided arms, training,

8. The MPCI eventually put forward a core set of demands. These included Gbagbo’s resignation; new national elections open to all Ivorians; a review of the constitution, specifically laws pertaining to citizenship, candidate eligibility, and land-ownership; the reintegration of the rebel forces into the national military; amnesty for the rebels; and the opening up of the political sphere to northerners. Author’s interviews in Abidjan, Côte d’Ivoire, November 2002; local news reports; UN Security Council, UN document S/2003/374, 26 March 2003, 3–4. 9. Author’s interview with international journalist, 11 November 2002; author’s interview with Western military official, 13 November 2002; both in Abidjan, Côte d’Ivoire.

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and a safe haven for the MPCI planners in exile in Ouagadougou who reportedly started planning the coup in late 2000.10 Reports surfaced of Ibrahim Coulibaly building a militia in northern Côte d’Ivoire and Burkina Faso with help from the Burkinabé president Blaise Compaoré.11 Compaoré made no secret of the presence of these soldiers in Burkina Faso.12 Compaoré had repeatedly warned Gbagbo of the danger of not addressing the concerns of the military officers in exile. Compaoré offered to return these soldiers, some of whom had been tried and convicted in absentia, to Côte d’Ivoire, but only on the condition that they be given amnesty for their alleged crimes and reinstated in the military.13 Gbagbo refused the deal and Compaoré continued his support of the rebels. The MPCI possessed significant numbers of arms and ammunition in the early days of the rebellion.14 Much of this equipment came from the Ivorian military through seizures before the rebellion and defection of Ivorian soldiers to the rebels after the attempted coup. Some of the arms used came from a robbery of the Abidjan military depot in July 2000, during which some forty-three tons of military equipment were stolen.15 The MPCI also seized large military stocks of arms in Bouaké and Korhogo during the initial attacks. Overall the Ivorian military (FANCI) lost roughly 40 percent of its small arms stocks to the rebels.16 In addition, reports suggested the MPCI received arms from Burkina Faso, via Odienné in the north, shortly after establishing its headquarters in Bouaké.17 Most of the soldiers for the initial rebellion came from the Ivorian military. Some seven to eight hundred soldiers, many of them scheduled for demobilization by Gbagbo, participated in the rebellion. In the weeks following the failed

10. ICG, November 2003, 11. 11. “Gbagbo Rides the Tiger,” Africa Confidential 41, no. 25 (22 December 2000), http://www. africa-confidential.com. In mid-2001 there were reports of “rumors of coup plots and attacks from army deserters in Burkina Faso.” “The Military Might?” Africa Confidential 42, no. 13 (29 June 2001). 12. It remains unclear just how many Ivorians were operating in Burkina Faso. Côte d’Ivoire claims it was two hundred men, while Burkina Faso claims it was fifteen. ICG, November 2003, 11. 13. ICG, November 2003, 11; R. Otayeh and R. Banégas, “Le Burkina Faso dans la crise ivoirienne: Effets d’aubaine et incertitudes politiques,” Politique Africaine 89 (March 2003), 71–87; Stephen Smith, “Côte d’Ivoire: Le vrai visage de la rebellion,” Le Monde, 11 October 2002. 14. Author’s interview with Western military official, Abidjan, Côte d’Ivoire, 13 November 2002; author’s interview with international journalist, Abidjan, Côte d’Ivoire, 12 November 2002; ICG, November 2003, 11. 15. Author’s interview with international journalist, Abidjan, Côte d’Ivoire, 12 November 2003; ICG, November 2003, 9, 11. 16. UN document S/2003/374, para. 44. 17. Humanitarian organization representatives reported that the movement of arms was the reason why they were not allowed in the northern area, especially around Odienné. Author’s interview with humanitarian organization representative based in Sierra Leone, Abidjan, Côte d’Ivoire, 15 November 2002; author’s interview with humanitarian organization representative, Freetown, Sierra Leone, 31 October 2002; ICG, November 2003, 11.

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coup the MPCI began a recruitment drive and its numbers swelled to an estimated five thousand by March 2003.18 Volunteers and mercenaries alike joined the MPCI. Support was forthcoming from a variety of sources that shared the MPCI’s political grievances. Many of the government soldiers located in the northern towns remained there, defecting to the rebels. Some soldiers in the south also defected to the north, and were joined by many northerners who had left the military after Gbagbo took power in October 2000 because of the harassment of soldiers with typically northern names.19 The MPCI recruited mercenaries in northern Côte d’Ivoire, Mali, Burkina Faso, Liberia, and Sierra Leone, promising daily wages of between seventeen and forty dollars to those who joined.20 The MPCI also recruited Dozos, traditional hunters located mainly in the north, who were willing recruits because of their grievances against the government, their use by opposition politicians as bodyguards, and their potential to transform themselves into a civil militia.21 The growing size of the rebellion clearly posed a threat to the FANCI forces, which had numbered only five thousand prior to the rebellion but had lost a significant number of soldiers to the rebellion.22

The MPCI’s Economic Opportunities The MPCI’s financial backing came from a number of sources. Initial financing came from those who planned the coup in Burkina Faso and an August 2002 bank robbery in Abidjan. The MPCI engaged in several bank robberies. The Central Bank of West African States branch in Abidjan was robbed on 27 August 2002. The crime was not originally associated with the rebellion. An Ivorian with a “northern” or Burkinabé name was arrested in Burkina Faso and extradited to Côte d’Ivoire, but the money was never recovered.23 Later evidence suggested a link to the MPCI: when the MPCI forces entered new towns they brought with them freshly printed bank notes, notes believed to have come from the Abidjan bank robbery. The total amount taken during the heist was roughly $3 million (2 billion CFA), an amount sufficient to provide initial funding for the rebellion.24

18. UN document S/2003/374, paras. 46, 12. 19. Author’s interview with Ivorian human rights activist, Abidjan, Côte d’Ivoire, 15 November 2002; ICG, November 2003, 14. 20. HRW, August 2003, 9; ICG, November 2003, 12. 21. Author’s interview with Ivorian human rights activist, Abidjan, Côte d’Ivoire, 15 November 2002; HRW, August 2003, 9; “Gbagbo Rides the Tiger,” 2000; West Africa Network for Peace-Building, WARN Policy Brief: Crisis in Côte d’Ivoire, 13 December 2002, 4 (hereinafter WANEP, December 2002). 22. UN document S/2003/374, para. 44. 23. Author’s interview with Western military official, Abidjan, Côte d’Ivoire, 13 November 2003. 24. ICG, November 2003, 12.

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However, it would not have provided sufficient funds to sustain the movement.25 Rebel forces later robbed a bank in Bouaké in September 2003, taking nearly $28 million.26 Two additional robberies were attempted in the west in October 2003, but both failed. The bank robberies provided additional funding for the rebels, but they did not serve as a primary or sustained source of financing. Liberia provided some initial financial backing to the MPCI. Allegedly, two Liberian government officials close to the Liberian president Charles Taylor arrived in Bouaké on 17 September to deliver a large sum of money to the rebels.27 It remains unclear why Taylor would have provided this funding, though it is likely to have been offered in order to keep the arms route to Taylor open and to deter the Ivorian rebels from assisting the Liberian rebels based in Guinea. There is no evidence of subsequent Liberian assistance to the MPCI. The rebels may have received some assistance from the western rebel groups, and therefore indirectly from Taylor, but this remains unclear. It is possible that additional assistance was not provided because Taylor became increasingly suspicious of the MPCI after the group’s recruitment efforts in Ghana, which allegedly brought anti-Taylor Liberians into the MPCI. The Forces Nouvelles did request additional assistance from Liberia in mid-2003, but there is no evidence that they received anything.28 Taylor’s departure from Liberia in August 2003 would have precluded any further assistance to the Ivorian rebel groups. In the early weeks of the coup allegations arose of Libyan support for the MPCI; however, only circumstantial evidence supports such a link. Reportedly, Libya provided $2 million to support the rebels as a result of a visit by Compaoré and the MPCI leader Ibrahim Coulibaly to Tripoli shortly after the failed coup. The French foreign minister Dominique Villepin traveled to Libya on 18 October 2002 to warn Gadhafi not to interfere in Côte d’Ivoire, suggesting the allegations had merit.29 While Gadhafi had a history of providing support to rebel movements in West Africa, there is little hard evidence to prove such a link in this case, and no further incidents of support surfaced. Burkina Faso remains the most frequently identified source of financing for the rebels, but while Burkina Faso provided support that enabled the initial rebellion, there is limited evidence that this support continued. The MPCI organizers living in Burkina Faso received favorable treatment in Ouagadougou, reportedly living comfortable lifestyles in addition to receiving military

25. 26. 27. 28. 29.

Author’s interview with Western military official, Côte d’Ivoire, 13 November 2003. ICG, November 2003, 16. Ibid., 15, n. 73. Ibid., 25. Ibid., 11.

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assistance and training.30 Compaoré allegedly provided some additional financing following the coup to enable the MPCI to recruit, rearm, and reorganize during the cease-fire.31 The lack of a clear trail of support from Compaoré is in part explained by the divisions within the rebel group’s military leadership. While there is evidence of ties between the Ivorian defectors living in Burkina Faso and the Compaoré government, the ties between these defectors and the MPCI are somewhat less clear. The MPCI leaders Guillaume Soro and Louis Dakoury-Tabley assisted in the planning of the coup and had traveled to Ouagadougou in the year preceding the rebellion, but when the MPCI finally declared its leadership in October 2002, only Guillaume Soro and Tuo Fozié made their roles public; those in Ouagadougou were not named.32 Shortly after the coup attempt, the MPCI called on Ibrahim Coulibaly, living in Ouagadougou and believed to be the mastermind behind the rebellion, to join the MPCI leadership, but Coulibaly rejected the offer. Coulibaly did not take on a public leadership role until December 2003, at which point his leadership was strongly disputed by Guillaume Soro. Following the coup, the MPCI received support from Ivorian citizens, mainly northerners residing both in the north and in the west of the country. Part of the financial assistance for the movement came from the Dioula33 barons—the wealthy landowners of the north.34 Additional assistance came from the local population, who were supportive of the MPCI because its proclaimed goals entailed the protection of northerners and a more equal status of northerners with southerners. While individual donations may have provided additional income in the early months of the war, this could not be sustained indefinitely. The government closed the banks in the north, leading to a cash flow shortage. Crops could not easily be shipped south for export, thereby further reducing the cash flow in the north.35 MPCI-held territory became increasingly isolated,

30. Ibid., 1, 10–11. 31. Ibid., 8. 32. Ibid., 10. 33. There is some dispute over the term Dioula. Some use it strictly to indicate a small ethnic group in the north of the country, although the term has broadened in significance. Others claim that the term encompasses all northerners and started as a term for traders in the north, while still others argue that it was not initially considered a pejorative term but took on a negative connotation following the death of Félix Houphouët-Boigny and was used as such by progovernment forces during the crisis. Author’s interviews, Abidjan, Côte d’Ivoire, November 2002. 34. Author’s interview with international journalist, Abidjan, Côte d’Ivoire, 11 November 2002; ICG, November 2003, 11. 35. Author’s interview with humanitarian organization representative based in Abidjan, Freetown, Sierra Leone, 20 November 2002; ICG, November 2003, 15; UN document S/2003/374, para. 58; IRIN, “Agencies Say Food Situation Getting Worse in North,” 20 May 2003, http://www.irinnews. org/Report/43853/COTE-D-IVOIRE-Agencies-say-food-situation-getting-worse-in-the-north.

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leading to a significant deterioration in the living conditions in the north and a decline in sources of income for the rebels. By late December 2002, the MPCI appeared close to bankruptcy and was forced to seek other avenues of income to sustain the rebellion.36 The MPCI sought and received additional donations from the population, but this source was finite. The MPCI sought an alliance with the western rebel groups in an attempt to gain access to cocoa exports and to the southern port of San-Pédro. The MPCI’s inability to hold Daloa, the center of the cocoa industry, greatly circumscribed its economic prospects. Capturing the resources of Daloa would have provided economic income to the MPCI while also severely hampering Gbagbo’s revenue flow and ability to purchase arms.37 Maintaining control of Daloa would have also provided an access route to the southern port of San-Pédro, the secondlargest port in the country, and provided an avenue for exporting agricultural goods and importing arms. The government’s recapture of Daloa on 14 October prevented the MPCI from moving south toward the port in San-Pédro. By early 2003, looting and extortion, initially unheard of in MPCI territory, became frequent sources of income for soldiers.38 By late 2003, all indications suggested the MPCI faced significant challenges and limited options for financially sustaining its war effort.

The MPCI’s Political Patrons The political grievances outlined by the rebels were widely recognized by the population in the north, opposition politicians in Côte d’Ivoire, and the international community trying to mediate the crisis. However, the MPCI received little recognition as a legitimate political actor. The population in the north shared the political grievances of the rebels and supported efforts to alter the political system that placed northerners at a severe disadvantage.39 Compaoré supported the rebels’ political objectives of removing Gbagbo and creating multiethnic and inclusive government policies. Alassane Ouattara, the main opposition leader in Côte d’Ivoire, also professed many of the same goals as the rebels and certainly benefited from the rebels pushing forward these demands. Yet Ouattara never openly supported the rebellion and refused Soro’s invitation to join the MPCI. The French and West African (ECOWAS) negotiators provided some political 36. “From Crisis to Crisis,” Africa Confidential 44, no. 1 (10 January 2003); “Foul Play,” Africa Confidential 44, no. 2 (24 January 2003); ICG, November 2003, 11. 37. Comfort Ero and Anne Marshall, “L’ouest de la Côte d’Ivoire: Un conflit libérien?” Politique Africaine 89 (March 2003): 95. 38. HRW, August 2003, 25; ICG, November 2003, 15. 39. HRW, August 2003, 10.

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leverage to the rebels by recognizing their political grievances as legitimate and validating some of their demands by not allowing Gbagbo to use military force to end the rebellion. However, while the legitimacy of the rebels’ expressed grievances and their initial good behavior earned them good standing, it did not win them any recognition as a political movement, which sorely hurt the MPCI’s ability to negotiate political changes. For the first year of the rebellion, the MPCI maintained its positive image but proved unable to build a more extensive network of support. The political wing tried to create a political network in Europe, Mali, and Burkina Faso, but these efforts failed.40 More important for the MPCI, this support did not translate into military support or support for a military victory by the rebels. While international support may have prevented Gbagbo from utilizing helicopter gunships to defeat the rebels, it also narrowed the options available to the rebels to one: negotiating a political solution. The main problem for the MPCI was that once it had achieved its goals through the Linas-Marcoussis Accords in Paris in January 2003, it was relatively powerless to ensure the implementation of the accords by political means. Although nine rebel ministers joined the reconciliation government, power remained solidly in Gbagbo’s hands. The rebels had no political movement and no popular pressure to bring to bear on the government to implement its Marcoussis commitments. Instead, the rebels had the choice of enduring political impotency or falling back on their one source of power: military pressure. By late 2003 the latter option looked less viable.

Evolution of the War: Explaining Key Changes Although the war in Côte d’Ivoire officially ended through internationally negotiated peace agreements in 2003 and again in 2007, the stalemate persisted. In 2010 the country remained divided, and highly contested elections at the end of the year raised the specter of war once again. After five months of fighting between government and rebel forces, the rebels seized President Gbagbo in April 2011, ending the stalemate and installing Ouattara as president, a position he had won in the November runoff elections. This effectively brought the rebels to power under the leadership of Ouattara. In the months following Gbagbo’s arrest, violence committed by both sides suggested the divisions continued to run deep, and Côte d’Ivoire in 2011 remained far from stable. 40. ICG, November 2003, 16.

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This chapter does not cover the full course of the war. Instead I concentrate on four important periods in the early years of the war (2002–2005): the initial negotiations following the failed coup attempt, the rise of the two rebel groups in the west, the 2003 peace accords, and the creation of La Centrale in 2004. Analysis of these periods explains the emergence of the military stalemate, the reasons why it proved difficult to overcome the stalemate through political negotiations, how the rebels sustained themselves for several years, and ultimately why both sides preferred the continuation of the stalemate to implementing a peace agreement. These early years highlight both where the MPCI could have failed and lost the war and how the conversion of the MPCI into the Forces Nouvelles and the generation of a reliable stream of income set the stage for a protracted period of “no war, no peace.” Table 5.1 provides an overview of the analysis in this section. The table indicates the main changes in the parties to the conflict in terms of resources and position. The overall change in the rebel group’s position is indicated (↑/↓), as is the expected outcome. The expected outcome is based on the analytical framework of the book: an increase in resources will lead to a preference for continuing the war; a decrease in resources will lead to a preference for negotiations or some form of respite. The final column in the table indicates the actual outcome. The actual outcomes mirror the expected outcomes in all cases except one: the pursuit of a negotiated solution by the MPCI in late 2002 (indicated by * in the table). The following sections provide additional context for understanding these time periods and the analysis presented in table 5.1, the fit of the expected outcome, and in the one case of deviation from the model, an explanation for why the MPCI pursued negotiations when the analytical model predicts it would continue the war. The MPCI in fact did both.

Initial Negotiations: A Cease-Fire and Peace Talks (September–October 2002) After failing to depose Gbagbo in a coup, the MPCI was poorly prepared to fight a war with the government. The group therefore quickly agreed to a unilateral cease-fire and sought negotiations. The MPCI also sought external political support for the rebellion and for its demands that national elections be held and Gbagbo step down from power. ECOWAS did recognize the grievances of the mutineers but failed to push for Gbagbo’s removal or recognize the political legitimacy of the rebel group. This weakened the negotiating position of the MPCI, limited the group’s options for obtaining its goals, and contributed to the MPCI’s pursuit of military means to achieve its goals. During this time the MPCI was extremely weak and it largely followed the expectation (see table 5.1) that it would seek negotiations.

Forces Nouvelles establishes taxation system.

UN imposes sanctions on Ivorian government.

and La Centrale

(2003–2004)

Economic (↑)

Military (↑)

Economic (↓)

Military (↓)

Military (↑)

Military (↑)

Continue war

Seek negotiations

Continue war (*)

Continue war

Continue war

Seek negotiations

EXPECTED OUTCOME

and establishes financial system.

Forces Nouvelles maintains stalemate

Groups sign peace agreement.

Groups attend peace talks in France.

alliance with western rebels.

MPCI seeks to build capacity through

MPCI maintains stalemate.

solution.

MPCI continues to seek negotiated

MPIGO continues fighting.

MJP continues fighting.

MPCI seeks negotiations.

MPCI agrees to unilateral cease-fire.

ACTUAL OUTCOME

Note: Change in group position is indicated by (↓) for decreasing, (↑) for increasing. An asterisk (*) indicates actual outcome differed from expected outcome.

Forces Nouvelles establishes administrative structure.

Forces Nouvelles resolves leadership divisions.

Gbagbo rearms troops.

of western rebel groups.

Ivorian rebel ejection of Liberian forces reduces power

Forces Nouvelles; but structure proves ineffective.

Rebel groups unite under the umbrella structure of the

Forces Nouvelles

Emergence of

Ivorian rebels cannot control Liberian elements of

Paris (2003)

western rebel groups.

Western rebels fail to take Daloa and San-Pédro.

and reduces military pressure on MPCI.

Entrance of new groups diverts Gbagbo’s attention

MPIGO emerges, supported by Liberia.

Peace accords in

(November 2002)

groups in West

Military (↑)

Rise of rebel

MJP emerges, supported by Liberia.

Economic (↓)

Military (↓)

CHANGES IN REBEL RESOURCES

(2002)

MPCI is not prepared to fight a long war.

KEY CHANGES

Key changes during the war in Côte d’Ivoire, 2002–2004

Initial negotiations

TIME PERIOD

TABLE 5.1

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Following the failed coup, the rebels proved willing to negotiate with the government. They agreed with ECOWAS negotiators to a cease-fire on 3 October 2002, but Gbagbo several times failed to send representatives to sign the ceasefire, leading to the departure of the ECOWAS negotiators without an agreement a few days later. The Ivorian government was clearly unwilling at this stage to agree to negotiations that would require the government to acknowledge the rebel group and the legitimacy of its demands. These demands included amnesty for the rebels, their reintegration into the Ivorian military, and the resignation of the defense minister Moïse Lida Kouassi and the army chief of staff Matthias Doué.41 The government refused to sign the cease-fire and instead attacked Bouaké in an attempt to recapture it from the rebels. Heavy fighting took place on 6 and 7 October in and around Bouaké.42 The attacks began the day the ECOWAS negotiators departed and provided evidence that the government preferred a military solution as it tried to dislodge the rebels from their newly established headquarters. Fighting also took place in the southwest, in the town of Daloa, the heart of the cocoa plantations. Although government forces proved incapable of dislodging the rebels from Bouaké, they quickly recaptured Daloa. This proved significant to shifting the tide. The rebels held the city only for a few days, and its loss demonstrated their military weakness, but it also removed a significant economic prospect from their control. The recapture of Daloa was significant to Gbagbo for several reasons: politically, because it lies in the heart of Bété land, Gbagbo’s ethnic group; economically, because it ensured government control of the cocoa crops and the revenues from their imminent harvest and prevented the rebels from gaining an access route to the port in San-Pédro in the south; and militarily, because it demonstrated some military capacity by the FANCI forces. The loss of Daloa to government forces led to further negotiations, and the MPCI leadership agreed to a unilateral cease-fire on 17 October. The timing and reasoning of such a move by the rebel leadership seemed out of character at the time given that only two days earlier the MPCI leadership had claimed “they did not believe Gbagbo really wanted peace” and declared “they had enough supplies to fight a two-year war to overthrow him.”43 However, the loss of Daloa changed the rebels’ prospects. Côte d’Ivoire supplies nearly half of the global production of cocoa. The seizure of the cocoa fields and the ability to export the crops through San-Pédro would have provided a significant economic boon for

41. “Whose Army?” Africa Confidential 43, no. 20 (11 October 2002). 42. Ofeibea Quist-Arcton, “Côte d’Ivoire Announces Imminent Recapture of Rebel-Held Bouaké,” allAfrica.com, 8 October 2002, http://allafrica.com/stories/200210080001.html. 43. “Ivorian Rebels to Meet Mediators,” BBC News, 17 October 2002, http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/ hi/africa/2335745.stm.

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the rebels. The failure to maintain control over Daloa or to reach the port left the rebels landlocked and without significant economic resources. Gbagbo subsequently accepted the cease-fire. He was forced to do so. His military forces had achieved some successes, such as the recapture of Daloa, but overall had proved incapable of sustaining a war with the rebels. Gbagbo needed time to restructure his troops. Military failures against the rebels prompted Gbagbo to hire new military forces. He started by recruiting radical youths, not by calling up reservists, whom he did not trust. Gbagbo reinforced his troops with recruits from the xenophobic and radical youth movements, as well as mercenaries from foreign countries, including South Africa, France, and Angola.44 The cease-fire, although proving to be more a temporary respite for the fighting factions than a step toward peace, did set the stage for ECOWAS to lead a series of peace negotiations in Lomé, Togo. Peace talks began in late October, and within a week both sides agreed to reaffirm their commitments to a cease-fire, pledged to refrain from human rights abuses, and acknowledged the desire to maintain the territorial integrity of Côte d’Ivoire. On 1 November, Gbagbo accepted in principle the rebel demands for amnesty and the reintegration of the rebel soldiers into the national army and agreed to submit a draft bill to the National Assembly including these provisions. Yet Gbagbo’s commitment to deliver on his promises remained in doubt given that he sent low-level delegates to the talks, delegates who did not have the authority to commit the government to such pledges.45 The negotiations ultimately foundered on the rebel demand for new elections to be held, an option Gbagbo refused to consider and ECOWAS refused to support. ECOWAS ruled out early elections and Gbagbo’s departure as options, declaring the rebels could make only military demands, not political ones, because they did not represent a political organization with a popular mandate.46 The rebels had few options through negotiations; reintegration alone would not have addressed the grievances in the north and would have potentially placed the rebels in a dangerous position given the history of military purges in the country. The negotiations achieved little additional progress during the month of November as both sides refused to lay down their arms until their political demands were met.47 44. Author’s interview with humanitarian organization representative, Freetown, Sierra Leone, 31 October 2002; author’s interview with international journalist, Abidjan, Côte d’Ivoire, 11 November 2002; author’s interview with international journalist, Abidjan, Côte d’Ivoire, 12 November 2002. Also reported in ICG, November 2003, 17; “Faux EO,” Africa Confidential 44, no. 8 (18 April 2003). 45. “Fighting for Peace,” Africa Confidential 43, no. 22 (8 November 2002). 46. Author’s interview with international journalist, Abidjan, Côte d’Ivoire, 12 November 2002; ICG, November 2003, 2. 47. Author’s interview with international journalist, 12 November 2002, Abidjan, Côte d’Ivoire; author’s interview with humanitarian organization representative, 13 November 2002, Abidjan, Côte d’Ivoire. See also UN document S/2003/374, para. 14.

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ECOWAS remained reluctant to send in a peacekeeping operation as long as the peace talks stagnated and a return to fighting remained a possibility. The ECOWAS mandate, agreed to on 29 September 2002, “included monitoring a proposed ceasefire, ensuring the disengagement of the insurgents from the areas that had fallen under their control, and disarming the rebel groups.”48 The mandate did not include preventing a return to war. ECOWAS proved an insignificant player in the military situation in Côte d’Ivoire. The ECOWAS force, numbering roughly fourteen hundred troops, was ill equipped and poorly financed and imposed no pressure on the factions to move toward peace. From the time of their arrival doubts emerged about how long the mission could last because of the lack of finances.49 There was simply no reason for the factions to take the mission seriously. Throughout October and November it became increasingly clear that neither side possessed the capacity to win. Several battles had proven this. Despite this fact, international observers, increasingly concerned about reaching a peace settlement to ensure the harvest of the cocoa crops, pushed for a political settlement.50 The conditions on the ground did not support such efforts; neither side was suffering to the point of needing to end the battle. In fact, the cease-fire provided a respite from active fighting. The MPCI also received external assistance following the October 2002 cease-fire, enabling it to rearm and reorganize.51 Gbagbo continued to purchase arms, including attack helicopters in October, and recruited mercenaries, included hiring Liberians to fight with FANCI forces against the western rebel groups and to protect the port in San-Pédro.52 Both sides remained committed to war if the peace talks could not produce an acceptable solution; and both sides continued to prepare for this possibility.

Rise of the Rebel Groups in the West (November 2002) Attention shifted away from negotiations when two new rebel groups emerged in the west of the country. Negotiations completely broke down in December when the MPCI withdrew from the talks over accusations that the government was

48. UN document S/2003/374, para. 11. 49. See ICG, November 2003, 33; UN document S/2003/374, paras. 40–43, 11–12; UN Security Council, UN document S/2003/1069, 4 November 2003, para. 33; UN Security Council, resolution 1497, UN document S/RES/1497, 13 May 2003. 50. Author’s interview with Western diplomat, Dakar, Senegal, 7 November 2002; author’s interview with UN representative, Dakar, Senegal, 10 November 2002; author’s interview with humanitarian organization representative based in Abidjan, Freetown, Sierra Leone, 20 November 2002. 51. ICG, November 2003, 8. 52. Author’s interview with Western diplomat, Abidjan, Côte d’Ivoire, 14 November 2002; Author’s interview with UN Representative, Dakar, Senegal, 8 November 2002; ICG, November 2003, 11; “Fighting for Peace,” 8 November 2002; HRW, August 2003, 33–35.

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using Angolan mercenaries to fight the war.53 While this was the public reason the MPCI gave, it is also likely that the MPCI, upset with ECOWAS for refusing to acknowledge the group’s political demands, hoped that walking out of the negotiations would make ECOWAS reconsider its position. The MPCI withdrew out of frustration at the lack of progress on key political issues but also from fears of being sidelined from the political process since the MPCI was not considered a legitimate political player. It made sense for the MPCI to pursue negotiations if it could achieve its aims through a settlement because it was poorly resourced and inadequately prepared to fight a long war; however, given that it could maintain the stalemate at this point in time, it was also unwilling to accept an agreement that offered little hope of changing the political situation. The emergence of the rebel groups in the west altered the balance of power on the ground. Although not large forces, they possessed sufficient firepower to challenge Gbagbo’s already weakened military. The western rebels fought hard to move toward Abidjan, as well as to seize the lucrative cocoa areas in the west and the port in the south. The entrance of the western rebel groups also aided the MPCI by diverting government forces to the west and relieving the military pressure on the group. During this time, the expected outcome is that all three rebel groups would continue fighting (see table 5.1). The groups in the west did continue fighting, with neither the western groups nor the government considering negotiations. The MPCI pursued a dual agenda of seeking alliances with the western rebel groups to improve its military position and continuing negotiations with the government in an attempt to resolve the crisis. The emergence of two new rebel groups in the west—the Movement for Justice and Peace (MJP) and the Popular Movement of the Ivorian Great West (MPIGO)—complicated the situation on the ground. Trained and armed in Liberia, these two small groups entered Côte d’Ivoire on 28 November 2002.54 They moved quickly to take the towns of Man and Danané in the west. These towns would serve as their respective headquarters. They failed, however, to reach their main objective: Abidjan. The rebels, as well equipped as they were, could not match the French forces intent on preventing the rebels from moving on Abidjan or the southern port town of San-Pédro. While both groups claimed the dual goals of avenging the former Ivorian president and general Robert Gueï and deposing Gbagbo, they also stressed they were unrelated to the MPCI. Yet by

53. WANEP, December 2002, 3. 54. The initial attacks on 28 November 2002 came shortly after Taylor received a two-hundredton shipment of arms, some of which was assumed to have been sent to these groups. It is unlikely the groups could have staged their attacks without the assistance of Liberia. Ero and Marshall, 2003, 92.

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January 2003, both western rebel groups were proclaiming the same goals and political demands as the MPCI.55 The MJP was the smallest of the rebel groups. Although it received initial support from Liberia, after its entrance into the war it is unclear how much further assistance it received. In contrast to MPIGO, the MJP maintained its Ivorian character. The Liberian contingent numbered several hundred and joined mainly to loot, and often operated outside of the MJP command and lived in their own camp outside Man. The rebels evicted the Liberian combatants from Man in February 2003.56 Without the Liberian mercenaries to fight its battles, the MJP faded as a distinct rebel group, folding into the MPCI. This reinforced what many observers had already believed: that the MJP served as a satellite group for the MPCI, enabling the MPCI to continue fighting in the west, capture lucrative agricultural areas in the west, and attempt to seize access to a port in the south, which the MPCI could not do because of its geographical position, its relatively small size, and the October cease-fire agreement.57 The MJP’s base in Man remained highly contested during the war because of its economic potential in cocoa and coffee. Had the MJP been able to capture San-Pédro, the group could have developed a significant source of economic financing through the export of coffee. Ultimately, the MJP proved relatively insignificant as a group itself to the war in Côte d’Ivoire. MPCI commanders took charge of MJP military operations in early 2003.58 MPIGO, the “least Ivorian” of the rebel groups, may be more accurately described as a proxy force for Taylor rather than an Ivorian rebel group.59 MPIGO based its financing on two main sources of income: looting and cocoa.60 Many 55. Clar Ni Chonghaile, “In Côte d’Ivoire’s Rich West, Arrival of Liberian Fighters Pushes Fear to Fever Pitch,” Associated Press, 10 January 2003; WANEP, December 2002, 2, 5; Paul Welsh, “Côte d’Ivoire: Who Are the Rebels?” BBC News World Edition, 15 January 2003, http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/ hi/africa/2662655.stm. 56. Silvia Aloisi, “Battles Erupt as Côte d’Ivoire PM Tries to Form Government,” Reuters: AlertNet, 11 February 2003, http://reliefweb.int/node/118984. 57. MJP did emerge at an opportune time for the MPCI, and there is evidence that the two groups shared military and logistical assistance and a laissez-passer visa system. Author’s interview with international human rights activist, Freetown, Sierra Leone, 13 March 2003; HRW, August 2003, 11; Ero and Marshall, 2003, 92; ICG, November 2003, 20. 58. ICG, November 2003, 20. 59. Taylor supported MPIGO for his own strategic gains: to punish Gbagbo for providing safe haven and military assistance to Liberian rebels and dissuade him from further support; to prevent the establishment of a second front operated by Liberian rebels on Ivorian soil, and, when he had failed to do this, to provide a buffer against incursions into Liberia; to depose Gbagbo and install a regime friendly to Taylor; to deflect international attention away from the war in Liberia; to provide his fighters, whom he could not pay, with a source of income through looting; and to provide a buffer zone to prevent the MPCI from taking control of the north. Ero and Marshall, 2003, 90; HRW, August 2003, 30; ICG, November 2003, 18–20. 60. Some reports surfaced that MPIGO was mining gold in the Ity gold mine near ZouanHounien. See HRW, August 2003, 36. However, a later report suggested that MPIGO had captured

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Liberian soldiers joined MPIGO on the promise of being paid through looting opportunities in the aptly titled “Operation Pay Yourself,” during which soldiers looted every village they entered and sent hundreds of vehicles, household goods, televisions, and other stolen goods back across the border for sale on the Liberian black market.61 MPIGO also established checkpoints to extort goods and cash from the local population. The second main source of income came from the sale of cocoa, sold through Mali, Guinea, and Ghana.62 While the cocoa-export business was relatively large, with some fifty thousand tons of cocoa exported during the 2002 harvest, this source of revenue was seasonal (October–January).63 MPIGO made several efforts to broaden its economic opportunities by seizing the port of San-Pédro in the south, which would have provided the capacity to export agricultural goods and import military goods. However, MPIGO was never able to advance on the heavily protected port. Although initially strong militarily thanks to the presence of the Liberians and the military support from Liberia, MPIGO weakened quickly. By late 2003, with the departure of Taylor from Liberia and the loss of Liberian support and soldiers, MPIGO proved increasingly ineffectual as a fighting force. The Ivorian element of the group was eventually subsumed under the Forces Nouvelles. The increase in the number of rebel groups with which the Ivorian government had to contend complicated the situation. Although the Ivorian government appeared increasingly willing to negotiate with the MPCI, it was not willing to negotiate with the western groups.64 The government viewed these groups as mostly pro-Taylor Liberian mercenaries without political programs or legitimate grievances. Gbagbo preferred to engage them militarily, using his own Liberian mercenaries. From December 2002, Gbagbo recruited and paid antiTaylor Liberian mercenaries to fight against the Liberians and Ivorian rebels in the west.65 The rebel groups did not abide by the October cease-fire, since it had been signed before their entrance into the war, and therefore fought freely. This further stretched Gbagbo’s military resources. Throughout December the western rebels clashed with government forces and with the French troops operating along the cease-fire line. At the end of

twenty-seven kilograms of already mined gold and then lost control of the town to government forces and never engaged in actual mining. See UN Security Council, Group of Experts report, UN document S/2006/735, 5 October 2006, 36–37. 61. Chonghaile, 10 January 2003; HRW, August 2003, 29, 35–36; Welsh, 15 January 2003. 62. HRW, August 2003, 35; ICG, November 2003, 15; IRIN, “Peacekeepers Say 2000 Gunmen Still Roam the Wild West,” 16 July 2003, http://irinnews.org/printreport.aspx?reportid=44954. 63. HRW, August 2003, 36. 64. WANEP, December 2002, 4. 65. ICG, November 2003, 18.

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December 2002, war raged between the government forces and the groups in the west as peace efforts failed between the government and the MPCI in the east. The government’s focus on the groups in the west relieved the military pressure on the MPCI forces in the east. The clashes between government and western rebel forces demonstrated that while the government could withstand the attacks and did not lose important territory to the western rebels, it could not eliminate the western rebels through force. This increased the pressure on the government to find a different solution.

Peace Accords in Paris (2003) By early 2003 the rebel groups faced a renewed stalemate. The western rebels failed in their attempts to unseat Gbagbo and open an economic front through Daloa and the port in San-Pédro. The divisions within the rebel groups, between the Liberians and Ivorians, were increasing, making it difficult for the Ivorian rebel leadership to control the combatants. The creation of the Forces Nouvelles umbrella structure did little at this point to resolve these challenges or create an effective front against the government forces. During this time, the expected outcome is that the rebel groups would seek a form of respite (see table 5.1). They agreed to negotiations in Paris and eventually signed a peace agreement in late January. Implementation of the peace agreement proceeded slowly, however, and the rebels faced waning prospects of maintaining the military stalemate. Meanwhile, Gbagbo continued efforts to rebuild his military capacity through the purchase of arms and the support of mercenaries. The weak position of the rebels favored pursuit of the implementation of the peace agreement. The French reluctantly played an active role throughout the crisis but proved unwilling to take sides in the fight. From the start the French were looking for ways to reduce their involvement in the crisis. This desire increased in conjunction with rising anti-French sentiment in Abidjan and throughout the government-held areas. Initially the French wanted to be less involved, and less visible, but this proved impossible after the failure of the Lomé talks.66 The French could not support a military coup but they were “unimpressed” with Gbagbo and increasingly exasperated with his refusal “to do anything to defuse the crisis.”67 While the French did not support the rebels, they were equally unwilling to use force to keep Gbagbo in power. The French clearly preferred a diplomatic solution to the crisis rather than a militarily imposed one. In large

66. Author’s interview with Western diplomat, Dakar, Senegal, 7 November 2002. 67. For more details on the French position, see “Whose Army?” 11 October 2002, and “Fighting for Peace,” 8 November 2002.

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part the French position resulted from the belief that the problem was a political not a military one and therefore had to be resolved through political means.68 French neutrality made both sides unhappy. Gbagbo wanted military support to defeat the rebels, and even requested France to activate the mutual defense pact. France refused, declaring the war to be an internal matter. The French did in fact save Abidjan from the rebels but refused to assist Gbagbo further.69 The rebels, for this reason, were unhappy, for it was the French who prevented them from taking Abidjan. France stood in the awkward position of being both the peacemaker and the one blamed for not ending the war. Yet the clear preference of the international community for talks, and the French position that it would not grant either side the chance to test its luck on the battlefield, pushed the factions to the negotiating table. France hosted a roundtable of peace talks outside Paris in January 2003. Representatives from the fighting factions as well as the main political parties in Côte d’Ivoire participated in the talks aimed at creating a peace plan acceptable to all interested parties. The talks eventually produced the Linas-Marcoussis peace agreement, signed on 23 January.70 The agreement offered a genuine chance for peace because it addressed the concerns of the rebels but also the concerns of a large portion of the Ivorian population, including respect for the territorial integrity of the country; the creation of a representative government of national reconciliation; reform of the military; and efforts to address the sensitive issues of Ivorian citizenship, the status of foreign nationals, eligibility to run for state office, land tenure, media reform, and human rights protections.71 The agreement provided a platform for redirecting the trajectory of the country toward a more inclusive political, social, and economic system, freed of much of the discrimination that had permeated government policies since the 1990s.72 68. Author’s interview with international journalist, Abidjan, Côte d’Ivoire, 15 November 2002. 69. “Whose Army?” 11 October 2002; author’s interview with Western diplomat, Dakar, Senegal, 7 November 2002; ICG, November 2003, 29. 70. There are discrepancies in the dates reported for the signing of the agreement. IRIN reported 24 January; Human Rights Watch reported 25 January (HRW, August 2003, 11); and the United Nations reported 23 January (UN document S/2003/374). The 23 January 2003 date is used here because it is the date written on the actual peace agreement. This is not the only disputed date, as several other dates of events during the conflict are reported differently in various sources, though they usually only vary by a day or two. 71. The full text of the agreement can be found in UN Security Council, UN document S/2003/99, 27 January 2003. 72. For a discussion of events in the 1990s that provided the foundation for the September 2002 coup, see the following articles in Africa Confidential: “Pushing Out Patronage,” 40, no. 3 (5 February 1999); “Fighting the Fund,” 40, no. 8 (16 April 1999); “EU Exports,” 40, no. 14 (9 July 1999); “ADO Ado,” 40, no. 17 (27 August 1999); “No Holds Barred,” 40, no. 20 (8 October 1999); “Bédié’s Flashpoint,” 40, no. 23 (19 November 1999). See also Human Rights Watch, The New Racism: The Political Manipulation of Ethnicity in Côte d’Ivoire, vol. 13, no. 6 (A), New York, August 2001; Human Rights

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The primary stumbling block remained disputes over the nomination of the prime minister, who would lead the reconciliation government, and the appointments of the ministers of defense and the interior. The peace agreement did not allocate specific posts to particular factions. Additional negotiations resulted in what are now commonly referred to as the Kléber arrangements, under which Gbagbo agreed to give the appointments of the two ministers to the MPCI and in exchange Gbagbo could name the prime minister. This arrangement appeared to resolve the remaining obstacles to the agreement; however, it would soon become clear that these arrangements were untenable domestically in Côte d’Ivoire. The Kléber arrangements sparked large demonstrations in Abidjan protesting the deal with the rebels. Progovernment youths engaged in violent street demonstrations.73 Both the Ivorian military and the National Assembly rejected the agreement. Gbagbo, facing stiff opposition from hardliners in government, as well as progovernment youth movements and the military itself, referred to the agreement as “mere proposals.”74 The Ivorian reaction to the peace agreement raised serious concerns about the willingness of the government to implement the accords. The peace plan looked doomed to failure from the start. Gbagbo changed his position in early February to support the peace agreement and encouraged the public to do the same.75 In a speech on 7 February, Gbagbo reconfirmed his commitment to the peace process and the appointment of Seydou Diarra, Gbagbo’s own selection, to the post of prime minister in the government of reconciliation. Gbagbo appointed Diarra for a period of only six months, however, rather than until the next elections as dictated by the Marcoussis Accord. Significantly, Gbagbo refused to allocate the selection of the two ministerial posts, defense and interior, to the rebels, as this had been the main source of discontent among progovernment supporters. This proved to be a major obstacle to the implementation of the peace accords. The allocation of these posts to the rebels had been a major gain for the rebels, and one they would not relinquish easily.

Watch, Côte d’Ivoire: Government Abuses in Response to Army Revolt, vol. 14, no. 9 (A), November 2002 (hereinafter HRW, November 2002); HRW, August 2003, 5–8; ICG, November 2003, 2–3, 5–8; Politique Africaine 89 (March 2003). 73. ICG, November 2003, 3, 31. 74. “Unity’s Opponents,” Africa Confidential 44, no. 7 (4 April 2003); “Hard Core Gbagbo,” Africa Confidential 44, No. 7 (4 April 2003); HRW, August 2003, 12; ICG, November 2003, 3; UN document S/2003/374, para. 23. 75. Somini Sengupta, “Ivorian Leader Urges Supporters to Give Peace Accord a Chance,” New York Times, 8 February 2003, http://www.nytimes.com/2003/02/08/world/ivoirian-leader-urgessupporters-to-give-peace-accord-a-chance.html; Emily Wax, “Ivorian President Asks Followers to Accept Pact,” Washington Post, 8 February 2003, http://www.highbeam.com/doc/1P2-235533.html.

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Further questions about the feasibility of the implementation of the accords were raised by the merger of the three rebel groups. In an effort to coordinate efforts and create a more united front, the rebel groups entered into an alliance under the umbrella name “Forces Nouvelles” in February 2003. The Forces Nouvelles initially represented a coalition organization of the three rebel groups, not a true merger of the forces.76 The union was designed to coordinate rebel activities, especially those in the west, not to create a single hierarchy. The groups maintained their own chains of command, but the MPCI took on the leadership role. Effectively, the MPCI leaders became Forces Nouvelles leaders, with the MPIGO and MJP leaders sidelined to periodic appearances at large public meetings with international mediators. The MPCI leaders claimed to speak for all three groups, but their effective authority never stretched to the western border.77 The alliance created a united front against Gbagbo’s regime and presented a significant challenge to his position. The MPCI’s decision to ally with the western groups produced strategic benefits for the MPCI, but it also posed operational challenges. In January 2003, the MPCI tried to reduce the destructive impact of MPIGO by expelling the Liberian mercenaries affiliated with the group. This proved difficult to achieve. By March 2003 it was clear the MPCI could not achieve this alone, and the MPCI leaders admitted to Prime Minister Diarra that they were having problems and told him if the French did not act to resolve the situation, they would.78 Reestablishing control of the west and reducing the operations of MPIGO in that area remained essential to restoring some semblance of stability to the country. Even with the merger of the rebel groups into the Forces Nouvelles, fighting continued in the west. Throughout March and April heavy fighting continued between MPIGO forces and their Liberian units and the progovernment Liberian mercenaries and FANCI forces, while fighting in the north between the MPCI and FANCI had ended in April in most areas.79 The largest problem was the presence of Liberian mercenaries; the lack of discipline, command and control within MPIGO and the Forces Nouvelles can largely be attributed to their presence. The MJP and MPGIO rebels in the west fought continuously from their appearance in November 2002 until the cease-fire in May 2003. The formation of a coalition government in mid-March and a comprehensive cease-fire agreement in May further reduced the pressure on the rebels. An important condition of the cease-fire was the agreement by all factions to expel

76. 77. 78. 79.

UN document S/2003/1069, para. 35. UN document S/2003/374, para. 49. HRW, August 2003, 50. IRIN, 16 July 2003.

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all Liberian fighters from Ivorian soil. Efforts by the French and ECOWAS forces to expel the Liberians and pacify the western area restored order to much of the west and reduced friction within the Forces Nouvelles, which gave the MPCI greater control over the alliance. By late June, the security situation had greatly improved with the eviction of the majority of Liberian forces fighting with the Ivorian rebel groups. The eviction of the Liberians decreased the power of the western rebels and improved Gbagbo’s military position. Although the war was officially declared over in July 2003, implementation of the accords remained slow, political obstacles impeded further progress, and evidence suggested that both sides continued to import weapons in preparation for a return to war. Neither the rebels nor the government appeared entirely committed to the peace process. Steps forward were constantly countered by steps backward, as good deeds by one side were often met with recalcitrance by the other. The rebels were understandably frustrated with the lack of progress and their lack of political power to push the implementation process forward, but they also contributed to the problems by taking actions that aggravated the Ivorian government. For example, the rebels held their own Independence Day celebration in Bouaké and boycotted the government-held one in Abidjan just one day after parliament approved the amnesty law on 6 August.80 Despite these actions, Gbagbo continued to be the main obstacle by failing to resolve the differences over the appointments of the disputed ministerial posts, enabling the progovernment militias to operate and train, and continuing to import weapons.81 Gbagbo used cocoa revenues to finance military purchases, including additional helicopter gunships and fighter aircraft. There were also reports of at least two arms shipments in May for the progovernment militias.82 The UN warned that both sides appeared to be rearming, though they offered no hard evidence of the rebels receiving weapons.83 At this time, the MPCI benefited more from implementing the peace accords than returning to a war it was increasingly ill equipped to fight, but the recalcitrance of the government spawned divisions within the rebel forces. The government effectively sidelined the Forces Nouvelles (former MPCI) leadership from a political process that the rebels found difficult to join. Although the rebels participated in the reconciliation government, Gbagbo effectively ran the country, and there was little the rebels could do to change this situation. The rebels quickly realized they were losing their bargaining position. Their demands were

80. 81. 82. 83.

UN Security Council, UN document S/2003/801, 8 August 2003, para. 8. ICG, November 2003, 3, 9. Ibid., 42, 44. UN document S/2003/801, para. 6; ICG, November 2003, 36.

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not being met by the government, the government was manipulating the implementation of the Marcoussis agreement to its own ends, and the rebels had no political power to change the situation. Divisions developed within the Forces Nouvelles, making it increasingly difficult for the rebels to abide by the terms of the peace agreement. The leadership split over who held positions in government and the continuing presence of Gbagbo as president. One faction, led by those holding ministerial posts in the reconciliation government, preferred to negotiate a political solution. Those outside the reconciliation government wanted to pursue a military course to depose Gbagbo and opposed the participation of Forces Nouvelles leaders in the government. The chain of command that had appeared relatively stable and functional early in the war deteriorated. The MPCI leadership in Bouaké held little power over local commanders, especially those in the west, where many communities experienced high rates of crime, robbery, and extortion at the hands of the rebels.84 The lack of control became embarrassingly evident when a bank robbery in Bouaké on 25 September resulted in the rebels fighting among themselves over the money. Rebel leaders had to call on the French and ECOWAS forces to resolve the dispute, and requested French forces remain in Bouaké for security.85 Money had become a pressing issue for the rebels. Reports of increased looting by the rebel forces indicated the situation was nearing one of desperation.

La Centrale: The Resurgence of the Forces Nouvelles (2003–2004) Although the Forces Nouvelles faced difficulties in 2003, the situation began to turn around in 2004. The ability to resolve the leadership struggle and establish an administrative system in the rebel-held north improved the coordination of rebel forces and created a more united front against government forces. The creation of the economic administration in the north, La Centrale, provided the economic resources needed to sustain the rebel movement. Both developments contributed to the solidification of the Forces Nouvelles position in the north and improved the group’s prospects for continuing the war. During this time, the expected outcome is that the Forces Nouvelles would continue the war, and they did (see table 5.1). The Forces Nouvelles also continued efforts to push the peace process forward, seeing the holding of national elections as the key to removing Gbagbo from power, something the rebels could not achieve militarily.

84. UN document S/2003/1069, para. 13. 85. Ibid., paras. 14, 32.

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By mid-2003 a growing divide within the Forces Nouvelles leadership threatened the stability of the rebel coalition and the peace process as a whole. The main split occurred between those supporting the peace plan and pursuing a political agenda (e.g., Guillaume Soro and Tuo Fozié, the original leaders of the MPCI) and those preferring a military solution, including the overthrow of Gbagbo (e.g., Ibrahim Coulibaly and his loyalists in Korhogo, Séguéla, Vavoua, and Bouaké).86 This divide could be seen in the control over areas of the north, with the towns of Korhogo, Séguéla, Odienné, and Man remaining some of the most autonomous in the rebel-held territory.87 These divisions exacerbated discipline problems.88 The Forces Nouvelles leaders in Bouaké found it increasingly difficult to control local commanders and their troops. As the Forces Nouvelles’ capacity to sustain the stalemate with the government waned, prospects for a return to war increased. First, the Forces Nouvelles leader Guillaume Soro became increasingly hard-line in his stance toward the implementation of the peace accords. In large measure this was the result of his struggle to maintain support and credibility within the Forces Nouvelles. Second, the divisions in the ranks and the increase in crime and disciplinary problems in the Forces Nouvelles decreased the willingness of the government to implement the 2003 peace accords and increased the difficulty the Forces Nouvelles leaders faced trying to convince the rank-and-file soldiers to abide by it. Third, Ibrahim Coulibaly remained a threat to Soro, to Gbagbo’s government, and to the peace process more generally. In late 2003 and early 2004, Coulibaly became increasingly vocal in claiming the leadership position of the Forces Nouvelles. Soro denied these claims, and Forces Nouvelles leaders reportedly asked Coulibaly to join the movement “instead of meddling in its affairs from outside” Côte d’Ivoire.89 The dispute escalated, resulting in serious clashes between the rebel factions and a public leadership struggle between Coulibaly and Soro.90 Soro’s faction proved more capable on the battlefield, winning these clashes and successfully sidelining Coulibaly’s

86. This division in loyalty appeared early in the crisis, when the MPCI in Bouaké and the MPCI in Korhogo were still acting in collaboration, but evidence suggested the movement was not as cohesive as most assumed and there were sharp differences among group members, including the fact that the rebels in Korhogo refused to sign the 17 October cease-fire. Confidential assessment of Côte d’Ivoire produced by an international humanitarian organization, 28 October 2002. 87. UN document S/2003/1069, para. 35; ICG, November 2003, 16, 24. 88. HRW, August 2003, 51; ICG, November 2003, 16. 89. “Côte d’Ivoire Rebel Leader Says He Will Not Run for President,” Voice of America, 12 February 2004. 90. Jodie Ginsberg, “Côte d’Ivoire Rebel Split Threatens Shaky Peace,” Reuters, 10 February 2004; Voice of America, “Côte d’Ivoire Rebel Leader,” 12 February 2004; Laurent Banguet, “Splits between Côte d’Ivoire Rebels Emerge, Spelling Danger for Peace,” Agence France Presse, 12 February 2004.

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faction. Soro then solidified his control over the Forces Nouvelles through the dismantling of the residual organizational structures of the Coulibaly faction and replacing them with his own.91 The creation of the Forces Nouvelles administrative system, and in particular the financial structure of La Centrale in 2004, indicated a clear shift in operations for the Forces Nouvelles, and the reestablishment of a more effective rebel organization that could sustain the rebels and enable them to compete with Gbagbo’s forces. These changes ended most of the divisions within the leadership, created a solidified rebel front against Gbagbo, and provided the economic means to support the Forces Nouvelles. An important element of the transformation of the Forces Nouvelles was the creation of La Centrale in 2004. The more formal political organization of the Forces Nouvelles created a loose framework for control from the center. It also enabled the introduction of a centralized financial system for the north as well as a system of taxation. La Centrale implemented a schedule of taxes and duties for rebel-held areas.92 Taxes were collected at the zone level, with the zone commander allowed to determine how to use the revenue for identified needs within the zone before forwarding any residual to La Centrale in Bouaké.93 The Forces Nouvelles developed an impressive income-generating mechanism through the imposition of a wide range of taxes on natural resources, vehicles, transportation, and goods. Despite widespread accusations of the trade in natural resources, taxes served as the primary financing mechanism for the rebels.94 Taxes on diamonds provided one important source of income.95 Several artisanal-diamond-mining areas exist in the north, including Séguéla, Tortiya, Bobi, Diarabana, and Toubabouko. Forces Nouvelles combatants controlled the mining areas but did not appear to have transported or sold diamonds directly; instead they raised funds through taxing mining collectives and the transportation of diamonds.96 Dealers exported the diamonds to Ghana, Mali, Burkina Faso, and Guinea. News of diamond exports from rebel-controlled territory led to the imposition of an embargo on rough diamonds from Côte d’Ivoire by the United 91. Daniel Balint-Kurti, Côte d’Ivoire’s Forces Nouvelles, Africa Programme Paper, Armed NonState Actors Series (London: Chatham House, September 2007), 22. 92. UN Security Council, Group of Experts report, UN document S/2007/611, 18 October 2007, 15. 93. UN Security Council, Group of Experts report, UN document S/2008/235, 14 April 2008, 30. 94. EGMONT Royal Institute for International Relations, Towards Stability in Côte d’Ivoire? Africa briefing, seminar report, Brussels, July 2007, 7; UN Security Council, Group of Experts report, UN document S/2006/735, 5 October 2006, 34. 95. UN document S/2006/735, 36. 96. The Forces Nouvelles reportedly levied a tax of 8% on diamonds. BICC, “Conflict Diamonds and Peace Process in Côte d’Ivoire,” BICC Focus 8, June 2008, 3; UN Security Council, Group of Experts report, UN document S/2005/699, 7 November 2005, 18; UN Security Council, Group of Experts report, UN document S/2007/349, 14 June 2007, 22.

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Nations Security Council in December 2005.97 The sanctions initially had limited impact on the trade. The UN Group of Experts estimated the annual value of the rebel diamond trade at $9–$23 million in 2006 and $12.5–$21 million in 2008.98 Increased international scrutiny of Ghana did not halt the diamond trade, but it did appear to redirect it from Ghana to Mali beginning in 2007.99 Taxes on cocoa provided a second source of income. Cocoa harvested in the north moved through Burkina Faso and on to Togo and Ghana for export.100 Again, as with diamonds, the rebels did not harvest or transport cocoa themselves but instead imposed taxes on the harvests and on the transportation of the cocoa by the kilogram, and required purchasing-agreement fees from traders. The taxes on the trade brought an estimated $30 million per year; the Forces Nouvelles reported the amount to be much higher but could never provide records to support their claims.101 It remains unclear how much the Forces Nouvelles earned through the cocoa trade. Similar to the diamond trade, the illicit cocoa trade through Ghana declined in 2006, suggesting the impact of international pressure to halt deals with the rebels.102 Despite some constraints on the flow of natural resources out of Côte d’Ivoire, the Forces Nouvelles proved effective in raising income through taxation and establishing relative control over the north. The establishment of the zone system provided a mechanism for rebel control well beyond Bouaké, an improvement and extension on previous rebel authority. Although zone commanders retained some autonomy from headquarters, the system functioned relatively well and provided a much more unified front against Gbagbo. This unity, in combination with the financial capacity to keep the rebel system functioning, enabled the rebels to maintain the stalemate with the government and wait out the political process. The rebels’ capacity was also enhanced by the actions taken by the French and the UN in late 2004. The government, frustrated with the peace process and the refusal of the rebels to disarm, bombed Bouaké in early November. The bombing raids hit the French troops stationed in Bouaké, and the French responded with force and eliminated the Ivorian Air Force, destroying the gunship helicopters 97. BICC, 2008, 1; UN Security Council, resolution 1643, 15 December 2005. 98. The UN Group of Experts derived these estimates based on a rough calculation of land used for mining, the estimated number of miners working the diamond pits, and the highest value expected per carat. How accurate these measures are remains unknown. UN document S/2006/735, 39; UN document S/2008/235, 33. 99. UN document S/2007/349, 19; UN document S/2007/611, 19. 100. Global Witness, Hot Chocolate: How Cocoa Fuelled the Conflict in Côte d’Ivoire, London, June 2007, 39–45. 101. Ibid., 33–35. 102. UN document S/2006/735, 34.

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and the military advantage they had given the government forces. The UN then imposed an arms embargo on all factions in Côte d’Ivoire, including the government, hampering the government’s ability to rearm and replace what the French had destroyed. These events never gave the rebels the upper hand in terms of changing the military stalemate; they could not attack Abidjan without being countered by both UN and French military forces. Instead, these actions leveled the playing field further, cementing the stalemate in place for the next several years.

Epilogue: Never-Ending Stalemate The peace process stumbled along in 2005 and 2006. Neither side made any real effort to resolve the impasse, but neither did they attempt to break the stalemate through active fighting. Numerous external interventions to mediate the crisis finally resulted in the 2007 Ouagadougou Accord and a second declaration by Gbagbo that the war was over. The accord provided benefits to both sides. The government received the promise of a return of the administration to the north. In particular this focused on the return of the financial administration, meaning control over taxation. Taxation in the north had provided the cornerstone of the Forces Nouvelles’ financial system for several years; a return of this revenue stream to the government would have seriously undermined the Forces Nouvelles’ capacity to sustain itself. Although government officials did return to the north, the Forces Nouvelles continued to serve as the primary authorities in the area and retained control of their financial structure.103 Through the accord, the Forces Nouvelles received the prime minister post, granted to the Forces Nouvelles leader Soro, and arguably a more influential post than the previous ministerial positions received under previous agreements. Ultimately, though, Soro had little impact on the pace of the implementation of the peace plan. Again the peace process inched forward slowly with the postponement of national elections several times while disarmament efforts floundered. The Ouagadougou Accord had limited impact on the balance of forces on the ground or the stalemate, but it did achieve one important goal: the elimination of the zone of confidence that had divided the country in half for four years. While the removal of the zone of confidence was seen by many as a sign of progress, it could also be interpreted as removing a potential obstacle to a return to war. The formal termination of the maintenance of this zone, a buffer

103. UN Security Council, UN document S/2010/600, 23 November 2010, 9.

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between the factions, entailed the reduction of foreign forces patrolling the zone and the replacement of these foreign forces with members of the newly created joint national force, consisting of the national army and Forces Nouvelles troops. While foreign forces, in particular the French Licorne force, had discouraged military engagement between the factions, it is not clear that the dismantling of the zone of confidence in late 2007 and the patrolling of this area by the fighting factions themselves would provide a similar deterrent. During the stalemate neither Gbagbo nor the Forces Nouvelles gave any indication of breaking the peace deal, but they did little to move forward on its implementation. Many observers believed both sides remained militarily capable of returning to the battlefield if necessary.104 The UN Group of Experts, mandated to investigate possible violations of the arms embargo, never found any serious violations of the arms embargo by the Forces Nouvelles between 2005 and the end of 2008. Despite the presumption by some observers that the rebels were using tax revenue to purchase arms, information about military purchases was scarce.105 Reports did surface in 2008 of some members of the Forces Nouvelles receiving training in other countries, but no clear evidence of when or where this training took place.106 There were also reports of the Forces Nouvelles buying all-terrain vehicles, but nothing to indicate that this was done in large quantities or for military purposes.107 The one possible, and significant, violation of the arms embargo was the discovery by the UN Group of Experts of a falsified end-user certificate in Burkina Faso for 450,000 rounds of ammunition and two hundred rounds for rocket-propelled grenade launchers (RPG-7), presumed destined for the Forces Nouvelles, but there was no evidence that the sale ever took place or that the ammunition was delivered to the rebels.108 In fact, evidence of Forces Nouvelles soldiers entering Mali and Ghana to sell their weapons for food, cars, and consumer goods suggests that obtaining weapons was not a priority.109 The lack of evidence of arms purchases could be explained by the fact that it would have been extremely difficult to access such information given the dominance of the Forces Nouvelles in the north. The UN Group of Experts had raised concerns about the lack of controls over the transport of goods through Forces Nouvelles territory, goods that had not been checked when they arrived at the ports in the south, and that this provided an opportunity for the Forces Nouvelles

104. “Ivorian Parties Continue to Rearm Despite Embargo, Says UN Report,” UN News Service, 27 October 2009, http://www.un.org/apps/news/story.asp?NewsID=32732&Cr=ivoire&Cr1. 105. Global Witness, 2007, 36. 106. UN document S/2008/235, 11. 107. UN document S/2005/699, 40–41. 108. UN document S/2006/735, 13. 109. UN document S/2005/699, 23.

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to smuggle anything it chose in and out of the country.110 Despite this possibility, the UN Group of Experts maintained from 2005 through 2008 that the Forces Nouvelles had little reason to obtain additional arms. First, the Forces Nouvelles had captured significant amounts of arms and ammunition during the September 2002 attempted coup.111 Second, sufficient numbers of arms were already circulating in Côte d’Ivoire.112 Third, there had been limited use of arms and ammunition during the conflict, reducing the need for additional purchases.113 In other words, given the lack of active fighting, the Forces Nouvelles had few reasons to spend their tax revenue on weapons. The Forces Nouvelles continued to control much of the north in 2010, even as government officials began to redeploy to the region, and maintained effective control of the borders, customs, and taxation. The peace process remained stalled in the lead-up to the 2010 elections because neither side had any incentive to fully implement the agreement. Although the United Nations continued to advocate and press for faster implementation of the peace agreement, this had little effect on the parties. There was simply no real pressure on the factions to cooperate, and the situation remained stuck in a comfortable impasse. The Forces Nouvelles continued to press for national elections they believed Ouattara would win, while Gbagbo continued efforts to manipulate the political process. Gbagbo’s failure to further delay elections, or to effectively rig them when they did happen, provided the necessary catalyst to end the standoff. The election victory of Ouattara and Gbagbo’s refusal to step down gave the international community the reason it needed to end the war. Although it was the rebel forces that arrested Gbagbo and enabled Ouattara to take his elected post, it was the acquiescence of the French and UN forces on the ground, and some would argue their active support of the rebels, that resolved the impasse.

110. 111. 112. 113.

UN document S/2008/235, 9. UN document S/2005/699, 25. UN Security Council, UN document S/2006/204, 31 March 2006, 10. UN document S/2005/699, 25.

Conclusion

The story of West Africa is not unique. Rebel groups fighting around the globe have demonstrated the capacity to develop a wide range of support networks to fuel their conflicts. Groups have sought financial resources from the sale of natural resources, donations from diaspora, support from sympathetic governments, and taxes on trade. In Sri Lanka, the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) developed a reliable donation system based on a diaspora that made monthly contributions to the group. In Colombia, the Revolutionary Armed Forces (FARC) have profited from the production and sale of drugs. Groups have turned to kidnapping, bank robberies, and the sale of protective services to generate income. Kidnapping has become quite common, with a range of groups engaging in the practice including the Taliban, the FARC, Abu Sayyaf, and Somali pirates. These groups access weapons through arms brokers and sympathetic patrons, and in swaps for natural resources. In the Niger Delta militants conduct a lucrative business of selling stolen oil and in some instances directly swapping oil for guns. Weapons also come from second-hand sales, individual sales, bartering with other armed forces, and seizures on the battlefield. Rebel groups receive political support through diaspora pressure on governments, political legitimacy through external recognition, external state sponsorship in negotiations, and the provision of safe haven. The phenomenon of rebel groups developing support networks is common, and arguably necessary if a group wants to continue fighting. However, these support networks are rarely the focus of inquiry. There is often a presumption of access to resources rather than an assessment of access. This leads to a focus on 171

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certain lucrative gems and minerals or drugs as primary sources of income. Too much attention to gems, drugs, and oil detracts attention from the wide range of support groups receive and the numerous ways in which they obtain resources that enable them to continue fighting. It also often leads to an overestimation of group resources and capacity to fight and the assignment of certain motives (i.e., greed) to a group, all of which are less evident on closer scrutiny. On the ground, some groups are adept at securing needed resources, while some groups merely scrape by on what they can steal and barter. Some groups maintain consistent support and supply, while others have a much more flawed record. Such differences indicate the need to rethink how we study armed groups and how we understand their capacity on the ground and assess their options and preferences for continued warfare. Rebel groups face two main options in war: continue fighting or seek negotiations. There are several possible strategies available in pursuit of either path. The options available, however, depend largely on the capacity of the group vis-à-vis the government, with capacity being largely determined by the group’s access to resources. As access increases, a group is more likely to pursue war and will possess more numerous options to do so. As resources decline, the options become more constrained, and when severely limited, the group will have no option but to choose negotiations. During negotiations a rebel group is likely to seek to rebuild its capacity to return to war. If there is a chance of obtaining all that a group wants through victory, then the group will pursue this option. Only constant military pressure on the group and continued constraint on the group’s supply network will prevent this from happening. This combination of military pressure and the elimination of access to resources is crucial to successful negotiations and the implementation of peace agreements; these efforts must eliminate war as an option.

Support Networks in War: The Case Studies Any group fighting a civil war must develop access to key military, economic, and political resources needed to sustain the group’s capacity to continue fighting. Access to resources depends on the ability of a rebel group to develop a reliable and effective support network. The strength of a group’s support network determines its capacity on the battlefield, the options available in war, and the preference of the group to continue fighting or seek negotiations. Some groups are adept at developing strong networks that provide plentiful and reliable access to needed resources, such as the FARC and the LTTE, and even the Forces Nouvelles in Côte d’Ivoire. Other groups face significant difficulties in accessing what they

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need, such as the Revolutionary United Front (RUF). In all cases, resource access is never guaranteed. Over the course of any given war groups will experience fluctuations in access as a result of battlefield wins and losses, market changes, territorial gains and losses, seasonal changes, changes in suppliers, and actions taken by national and external actors. The case study chapters illustrate these dynamics. The RUF possessed a limited support network that made it difficult to always access needed resources. The group relied heavily on Charles Taylor, rebel leader and then president, in Liberia for access to a range of resources—from arms and finances to contacts for selling diamonds. The RUF survived for nearly a decade not because it was strong but because the government was weak and the RUF was able to rebuild its capacity at key points in time during the conflict. At several points the group faced defeat, but international pressure for a negotiated solution relieved the military pressure on the group and constrained the government’s options for trying to eliminate the rebels. With the pressure lifted and all eyes focused on negotiations, the RUF seized the opportunity to resupply its forces and return to war. The group was defeated only when the military pressure was maintained and it faced battles on three fronts, with no possibility of resupply because all access to its support network had been eliminated. At this point the RUF had no choice but to accept the implementation of the 1999 peace accord. In Liberia, the Liberians United for Reconciliation and Democracy (LURD) possessed an unreliable support network. Given the political divisions among those in the political wing, and the differences in strategic vision between the political and military wings, the military wing did not receive unconditional support from the political wing. Instead, the military wing of LURD depended heavily on Guinea for access to funding and military goods. Guinea, however, was not always consistent in its support. Guinea wanted a buffer to Taylor’s activities, including the war in Liberia but also Taylor’s support of antigovernment rebels in Guinea. The Guinean government wanted to pressure Taylor to end his activities in Sierra Leone and Guinea, but Guinea did not want to see LURD take power in Monrovia and therefore never gave the group overwhelming support to facilitate its victory. Taylor’s departure from power decreased the need for a fight for Monrovia, but it did not completely eliminate this possibility. LURD remained equipped to continue fighting when the peace agreement was signed. Significant international pressure on the rebels to accept a negotiated solution based on a power-sharing arrangement provided what one could call a “negotiated victory” for LURD. The Movement for Democracy in Liberia (MODEL) followed a path similar to LURD’s. It too relied heavily on an external patron, in this case Côte d’Ivoire. Ivorian support provided sufficient military equipment and forces for MODEL to enter Liberia in 2003 and make significant gains against Taylor’s forces. However,

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MODEL’s short life span makes it difficult to assess whether such support could have continued for a significant period of time. Many factors in Côte d’Ivoire could have placed pressure on the Ivorian president Laurent Gbagbo and reduced his willingness and need to support MODEL: peace negotiations in Paris, the 2003 declaration of the end of the war, and the forced removal of Liberian mercenaries from the ranks of the Ivorian rebels, which had been a key reason for Gbagbo to support MODEL forces. Regardless of possible future scenarios, MODEL did possess sufficient resources to engage in the war in Liberia and to fight for a seat at the negotiating table. MODEL clearly demonstrated its military capacity during LURD’s final offensive on Monrovia in June 2003. Although MODEL had refrained from engaging in the first two offensives, the group reentered the war during the third offensive, fearing it would be sidelined at the negotiating table if it did not demonstrate its equal capacity for war. The peace agreement offered MODEL a better option for gaining what it wanted than an outright war with LURD for control of Monrovia would have. In Côte d’Ivoire, the Patriotic Movement of Côte d’Ivoire (MPCI) was well resourced initially, but ultimately it was structured to carry out a coup against President Laurent Gbagbo’s regime, not a long civil war. MPCI’s failure to overthrow Gbagbo and achieve a quick victory left the group scrambling to establish a stalemate with the government. The MPCI had a limited supply network. Efforts to ally with the western rebel groups did little to alter this position or to offer additional sources of resupply. Although the alliance enabled the MPCI to claim it controlled the northern half of the country, it possessed no real control over what happened in the west. The cease-fire line that effectively divided the country in half provided a buffer between rebel and government forces, deterring most military clashes, and thereby decreasing the costs of the war. Yet sustaining this stalemate proved difficult without an influx of income. Prior to efforts to turn the alliance into a truly coordinated rebel movement, the Forces Nouvelles, the MPCI faced declining prospects for continuing the war. The Ivorian rebel groups in the west—the Movement for Justice and Peace (MJP) and the Popular Movement of the Ivorian Great West (MPIGO)—had relatively short life spans of several months. This resulted both from their being cut off from their main supplier—Liberia—and the efforts of the MPCI to bring the groups under its control. These groups did manage to establish themselves in the west but failed to make strategic gains in clashes with the Ivorian forces. When they failed to capture Daloa (desirable for its cocoa crops), San-Pédro (the southern port), and Abidjan (the economic capital and seat of government), the financial prospects of the group diminished greatly. The MJP and MPIGO engaged in numerous clashes with government forces and the Liberian mercenaries supporting Gbagbo, increasing the costs of rebellion. The expulsion of

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the Liberian contingent of the MJP and MPIGO reduced their military strength, while the departure of Taylor from Liberia eliminated their access to further funding and military support. As a result, the groups largely disbanded and the Ivorian elements were subsumed under the MPCI in the creation of the Forces Nouvelles. The Forces Nouvelles initially served as an umbrella group to provide a united rebel front against the Ivorian government. The alliance served to provide a common name, but initially did little more. It did not bring in new resources or establish new sources of supply. The divisions within the leadership of the Forces Nouvelles meant the main MPCI leadership received little of the Liberian support going to the western groups and little of the Burkinabé support going to the other faction of the MPCI led by Ibrahim Coulibaly. Two important developments changed this situation. First, the resolution of the MPCI leadership dispute reduced the rebel infighting and competition among rebel factions for access to resources in the north. Second, the Forces Nouvelles, under Soro’s command, created an administrative structure and established a taxation system in the north. This enabled the Forces Nouvelles to project a more solid front against Gbagbo and generated a reliable source of income to sustain the long-term stalemate with the government.

Commonalities in War The case studies provide a basis for making certain generalizations about civil wars and the rebel groups that fight them. The conditions favoring civil war are not new; these enabling factors have been well known for some time. The cases suggest grievance and opportunity provide the strongest drivers of conflict, whereas greed plays a rather minor role in the conflicts. The cases also underscore the importance of external links for rebel groups to access channels of support and trade. Such access heavily influences the dynamics of conflict, which are far more about the fluctuations in resources and resupply than they are about the contagion of violence. Ultimately, turning off the taps that feed the war machines of fighting factions plays an important role in limiting the prospects for war and improving the chances for peace.

Favorable Conditions for War Countries experiencing civil wars share a number of characteristics that provide fertile ground for war. These include a weak government, a weak military, porous borders, and widespread popular grievances. While such conditions exist

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in many countries, including those experiencing war and those purportedly at peace, they are not sufficient in themselves to ignite a conflict. The key factor in initiating the civil wars in Sierra Leone, Liberia, and Côte d’Ivoire was the existence of at least one armed group willing to use military force to change the political situation in the country: the RUF, LURD, and the MPCI, respectively. Once a rebellion occurred, these conditions on the ground provided opportunities for the rebel groups to make initial gains, establish themselves in the country, and build a support network to fight the war. Widespread popular grievances about corruption, discrimination, state violence, and poor governance provide a context more receptive to rebellion. Many rebel groups enjoy popular support from populations persecuted by the government or those who hold other grievances against the government. This support often enables a rebel group to make initial territorial gains against government forces, and to do so without large-scale fighting, and at times with the assistance of the population. The MPCI quickly established control of the northern half of Côte d’Ivoire with minimal resistance by the population; even the RUF enjoyed popular support initially. Popular support can also result in financial support— through contributions by diaspora, as seen with LURD, and local supporters, as happened in Côte d’Ivoire—as well as manpower when supporters join the rebellion. Rebel groups that are able to maintain this popular support face fewer obstacles to holding territory and to recruiting financial and human resources from the population. Popularity often depends, however, on the actions of a group and the ability of the group to deliver on its promises, whether related to the economic well-being or security of the population. When a rebel group takes indiscriminate action against civilians (e.g., looting, rape), it loses this support. This was especially true of the RUF, which quickly lost popular support as a result of its aggressive and abusive tactics, while the MJP and MPIGO never had popular support because of their treatment of the population and the perception that these groups were merely Liberian mercenaries. MPCI, on the other hand, developed popular support by providing some modicum of governance and stability in the north, and proved capable of maintaining this support under the Forces Nouvelles umbrella. The support came from a population that was aggrieved by government actions and sought the same goals as the rebels: the removal of Gbagbo and the ending of the Ivorité system. Government weakness—defined as the lack of administrative presence and control—provides space and opportunity for a rebel group to organize and operate in a country. Government weakness is common throughout many developing countries. Governments simply lack the resources and personnel, and sometimes the political will, to govern areas effectively. This is especially true of areas far from large cities and towns: governments focus resources and attention on the

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capital city and governance often does not extend far into the interior. This can contribute to poor responses by a government to news of incursions. The Sierra Leone government viewed the RUF rebellion initially as nothing more than a localized uprising that the army could easily put down. Many Sierra Leoneans commented that they never believed the rebellion existed until the RUF threatened Freetown a few years after the war began. A lack of government presence limits the ability to communicate back to the capital, reduces response time, and minimizes state resistance to a rebellion. The porous nature of borders provides the access and opportunity to initiate a conflict. The rebel groups studied in this book all organized abroad and initiated their wars from a neighboring country: the RUF from Liberia, LURD from Guinea, and MPCI from Burkina Faso. The porous nature of the borders enabled them to quickly enter the country without much warning to the government; news of the incursions often took time to reach the capital. Porous borders also contribute to the perpetuation of conflicts, especially in cases where a rebel group can establish a support network through a neighboring country. Since most rebel groups rely on access to external sources of support and trade, establishing a point of import for these resources is vital. The lack of border controls enables the easy crossing of borders by both people and goods. Porous borders can also enable the creation of safe havens in neighboring states. LURD often took respite in southeastern Guinea; by contrast, the RUF lacked a safe haven during much of the war because of the operations of Liberian rebels in the border regions with Sierra Leone. Provided the neighbor state is sympathetic to the rebel group, or at least not outright hostile to its presence, the availability of a safe haven provides a space for rest and resupply, as well as retreat if necessary. Leaders fearing coups tend to maintain small and ineffective militaries. The Sierra Leone Army was largely a ceremonial force prior to the war. If governments do provide resources to a military force, it is often not the national army but special units that provide a leader with direct control over a small number of soldiers. Charles Taylor was well known for financing his special unit but neglecting the Liberian army as a whole. The mainly ceremonial nature of the national army leaves it in a poor position to respond to a rebellion, enabling a rebel group to achieve initial military victories. This can discourage the military, create confusion, lead to heavy losses incurred by the state military, and reduce the capacity of the state military to respond. Successes by a rebel group, especially in areas where the population is unhappy with the ruling government, can generate widespread popular support for the rebellion, as happened in Sierra Leone toward the RUF and Côte d’Ivoire toward the MPCI. This further alienates the government and the military from society, and can increase the ability of a rebel group to move easily throughout the population. Quick victories on the battlefield can also buy

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a rebel group time to build its strength through recruitment and replenishment of military supplies. However, the state military is unlikely to remain weak indefinitely. The government will seek to improve its military capacity to respond to the rebellion through recruitment, arms imports, and the hiring of mercenaries. Sierra Leone recruited external mercenary forces and formalized the role of the Civil Defense Forces. The Ivorian government recruited foreign mercenaries and supported the Liberian rebels based on Ivorian soil. The result of both sides arming is often a comfortable impasse in which neither side can win but both sides possess sufficient capacity to continue the war.

Rebel Groups and Their Support Networks Rebel groups often start wars without well-established networks of support. A group may have received support, training, or military resources to start a war, but it rarely possesses a developed system of resupply and revenue generation. None of the rebel groups in Sierra Leone, Liberia, or Côte d’Ivoire controlled reliable support networks when they initiated their wars. Once a rebel group has initiated a war and does not win the war quickly, it needs to develop a support network to sustain itself. Support systems do not simply exist, nor do they develop spontaneously. Some resources can be looted from local populations or gained through battle, but often these are not sustainable sources of income and military goods. Resources frequently have to be obtained from external sources, access to which requires building relationships with suppliers, supporters, and benefactors. Once established, rebel groups must actively develop and maintain their support networks. This does not happen automatically. Relationships in conflict networks are often mutually beneficial: both parties gain something from the relationship. A rebel group must be able to deliver something of interest to the external actor in order to maintain the relationship. For example, when the RUF had diamonds for sale, it could more easily access military resources through Taylor; however, when the RUF could not provide diamonds, Taylor’s support often faltered, and the RUF was forced to obtain weapons through seizures during combat, and when resources dwindled, retreat. Rebel groups rarely control the actions of external actors, whether patrons or businessmen, and thus support is never guaranteed. LURD relied heavily on Guinea, but this did not prevent Guinea from denying the group safe haven in late 2002 and forcing the group to leave Guinean territory. If a rebel group does not actively maintain its support network, actors that supply resources will defect, and the group will lose its access to resources needed to sustain the war. The need to develop a support system, and the effort this requires, may explain the tendency of rebel groups to rely on one primary benefactor. Rebel groups face

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a number of difficulties in generating support: the group may be a pariah, making it politically tricky to support the group, as happened with the RUF and the LTTE; neighboring countries may have little interest in supporting rebellion; or neighboring states may face their own domestic security challenges. Proximity does appear to be a factor. Many rebel groups seem to have a neighboring state as a patron. This is beneficial in that it can provide a safe haven for organizing a rebellion and easy access routes for initiating a war and supplying the group. However, reliance on one primary benefactor for access to resources and supply routes results in dependency on this actor. This dependency places the support network at risk of disruption and collapse if the benefactor is eliminated or chooses not to supply the group, or if the benefactor is somehow prevented from providing resources (because of sanctions, for example, or lack of access due to ongoing fighting). Relying on a single actor for war resources severely reduces the options of the group to access what it needs and to maintain a capacity to fight the war. While dependence was common to the groups studied in this book, it is not necessarily common to all rebel groups. The most successful rebel groups will be those with the most diversified support network, such as the LTTE, the FARC, and the Forces Nouvelles (post-2004). The greater the number of sources of support the group can develop, the more options it has for accessing resources it needs, and the more adaptable it can be when the flow of resources from any given actor changes. Adaptation appears to be a key element for survival, as seen in the Angolan rebels’ shift to diamonds when superpower support ended with the cold war, and in the Forces Nouvelles’ creation of La Centrale and generation of a new source of sustainable income. External support is often extremely important to a rebel group. This is just as true at the early stages of planning a rebellion as it is for providing support to initiate a war and providing safe haven and other assistance once the war begins. Rebel groups often organize outside the country of conflict and then enter the country to initiate the war. This is possible only through a neighboring country providing safe haven to the rebel group and allowing it to operate within its borders and to cross the border as necessary. The RUF and MPCI enjoyed this access from Liberia and Burkina Faso, respectively, while LURD could not obtain such support from Sierra Leone and was forced to move into Guinea. In many cases, the host government also provides assistance to the group in the form of military resources, military training, and financial support, and in the fact that the government maintains secrecy about the existence of the group. The staging of rebellions from neighboring countries is significant for two reasons: one, it demonstrates the involvement and responsibility of neighboring countries; and two, it suggests that rebel groups are likely to maintain their connection to the host country and potentially remain dependent on the support of the host country, either through continued access to resources or as a safe haven during the war.

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There is limited evidence to suggest that the civil wars in West Africa occurred because of the motivations of “greedy” rebels. This is important to highlight because these are the wars often used to justify the greed thesis: that groups engage in war for profit. Analysis of the rebel groups offers limited evidence to support this. None of the groups studied here initiated the wars for economic gains. However, this is not to say that some who fought with or supported these groups did not provide their support in order to achieve economic benefits. This did occur. Greed offered some motivation for the Liberian units fighting with the MJP and MPIGO in Côte d’Ivoire, and underpinned some of the actions of the RUF leadership in the late 1990s. It also provided incentives for arms traders and diamond dealers to enter into economic relationships with Taylor and the RUF, but greed did not appear to be a major contributing motive for participation in the conflicts or for perpetuating them. There is no doubt that the sale of natural resources and other financial activities aided in fueling these wars, but there is little evidence of any but a few leaders getting rich from war. A second point about natural resources is that while the sale of diamonds and other goods did provide funding for war, estimates of income from such sales remain very poor. Without better estimates of the intake and output of groups it is hard to prove the greed thesis; better analysis on both income and expenditure could contribute to understanding these dynamics. Currently, anecdotal reports and rough estimates provide the bulk of knowledge about revenues derived from natural resources and other financing mechanisms (e.g., kidnapping, taxation). It remains difficult to assess how accurate these estimates are or how much of the estimated profit is actually received by a rebel group. For example, in the case of the RUF reports suggest a significant amount was taken from diamond sales by Taylor and various brokers, with relatively small amounts making it back to the RUF. A number of factors influence the ability to profit from the sale of resources, including level of access, which the case studies indicate was inconsistent; fluctuations in market prices; costs of transportation and harvest; and payments to brokers. Beyond these numeric indicators, there is little information about how groups establish access to the resources, what their level of production is, how they connect with brokers, what prices they receive, and what profits they make. This remains a large gap in the literature.

Dynamics of Civil War Wars are not contagious. The notion of contagion, described as the uncontrollable spillover of war from one country into its neighbors, has become commonplace in the media and increasingly prevalent in research studies. Unfortunately,

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such discussions often offer little insight into the mechanisms by which conflict “moves” from one country to another.1 There are two versions of the contagion explanation: bad neighbors and bad neighborhoods. Bad neighbors are external actors (usually states) who actively intervene to enable a civil war in a neighboring country. Bad neighborhoods include regions fraught with war and the attendant consequences: circulating arms and combatants, mass refugee movements, large amounts of humanitarian assistance, weak borders, weak states, and so forth. Each explanation points to important factors that can influence conflict—access to supporters, safe haven, and arms—but neither offers a general explanation for civil war, and their use to explain civil wars can often obscure more important domestic conditions. The “bad neighborhood” theory suggests that war spills over from one country to another through “swarms of refugees or fighters crashing across borders, bringing turmoil and violence with them, or radicalized politics sweeping throughout regions.”2 The influx of refugees, combatants, arms, and radical political ideas could act as risk factors for conflict, but this requires a preexisting level of instability in the host country and a population or some group within the population willing to act on that instability in a violent way. Thus bad neighborhoods can raise the risk of conflict, but the theory does little to explain why conflict occurs in some countries in an afflicted region but not others. For example, contagion is often used to describe civil wars in contiguous countries, such as in the Mano River Union in West Africa or the Great Lakes region of central Africa. On closer inspection, however, the contagion explanation often breaks down. Although war did occur in Sierra Leone and Liberia, contagion fails to explain why war did not spread to Guinea, or why Côte d’Ivoire’s war emerged several years after the wars in Sierra Leone and Liberia, and in fact emerged as a result of support for the rebels from Burkina Faso, not any assistance from Sierra Leone, Liberia, or Guinea. While connections do exist between the conflicts—the RUF received support from Liberia at times, Guinea assisted LURD, and Liberian soldiers fought with Ivorian rebels—these links explain, and only in part, how rebel groups gained access to resources; they do not explain the origins of these wars.

1. See, for example, Monika François and Inder Sud, “Promoting Stability and Development in Fragile and Failed States,” Development Policy Review 24, no. 2 (2006): 141–160, in particular the discussion of bad neighborhoods (144–145); Kristian Skrede Gleditsch, “Transnational Dimensions of Civil War,” Journal of Peace Research 44, no. 3 (2007): 293–309, in particular the discussion of contagion (295–297); Stewart Patrick, “Weak States and Global Threats: Fact or Fiction?” Washington Quarterly 29, no. 2 (2006): 27–53, in particular the discussion of bad neighbors (44–45). 2. Michael E. Brown, “The Causes of Internal Conflict: An Overview,” in Nationalism and Ethnic Conflict, ed. Michael E. Brown et al. (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1996–1997), 16.

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The “bad neighbor” theory offers an explanation for the spread of conflict by placing the blame on bad neighboring states.3 However, this explanation seems to misplace agency, suggesting that external actors have more influence than internal actors on the emergence and outcome of rebellion. The case studies in this book dispel the notion of conflicts “spilling over” into neighboring countries by providing evidence of the intentional efforts of specific regional and international actors to support domestic rebel groups. These conflicts did not spread uncontrolled like a virus, nor did they simply move from one country to the next. Instead, external actors took specific and deliberate actions to assist active rebel groups in the instigation of war in a neighboring country and to sustain those groups once a war began by providing military and economic resources. Charles Taylor did not create the RUF, but he did support the group in their initial incursion out of his desire to access the Sierra Leone diamond fields and distract the international peacekeeping force based in Sierra Leone. Gbagbo supported MODEL because the group provided a domestic security force to use against the Ivorian rebels, but Gbagbo did not dictate when MODEL entered the war in Liberia; that decision resulted from internal divisions within LURD and in response to the dynamics of the civil war already taking place in Liberia. While bad neighbors made war possible, and contributed to the perpetuation of conflict through the provision of financial and military support, they did not cause the wars. These civil wars occurred because of the presence of a domestic rebel group willing to fight; the wars were internally constructed, but externally supported and funded. The dynamics of the civil wars in Sierra Leone, Liberia, and Côte d’Ivoire tended to follow the pattern of resupply and recruitment to the factions. As one side built up its forces and imported military arms and ammunition, it went on the offensive. Usually these offensives were successful and achieved territorial gains. Yet they also expended the available resources, thereby requiring resupply. In many instances additional resources were not readily available, leaving the side unable to continue the offensive and allowing a break in the fighting. At this point the other side appears to regroup and resupply and then commence its own offensive. In some cases these swings in the balance of power were quite large, leading to significant changes in control of territory. The RUF made significant gains in 1994 and 1995, taking over the Sierra Rutile and Sieromco mines, as well

3. Normally, bad neighbors are viewed as those who intervene to achieve a preferred outcome based on the actor’s interests. Jacob D. Kathman argues that external intervention may often be a response to the threat that the conflict will spill over into the intervener’s country, and thus intervention is a defensive action to guard against “infection” by conflict. See Kathman, “Civil War Contagion and Neighboring Interventions,” International Studies Quarterly 54 (2010): 990.

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as establishing a presence in the diamond-mining areas of Kono District, only to be pushed out by Executive Outcomes in late 1995. In Liberia LURD made large territorial gains at the start of the war and increased its ranks through recruitment, only to be pushed back by Liberian forces following extensive remobilization of former fighters by the government and the import of large quantities of arms. In some cases the changes were relatively small, involving a town or two or played out in the margins where enemy territories met, and did not significantly affect the strongholds of the factions. In all cases, the international community (e.g., the United Nations, the International Committee of the Red Cross, regional organizations, among others) demonstrated a preference for negotiated solutions. Despite the intent to end the wars through negotiations, these interventions contributed to prolonging the wars. The push for negotiations when one side was extremely weak provided the faction time to rebuild its military capacity. It also constricted the options by the stronger side to eliminate the opponent through military force. In Sierra Leone, external pressure on the government in 1993 led the government to offer the RUF a unilateral cease-fire rather than eliminate the group militarily. Although the intent was to reduce civilian harm, the break in fighting provided the RUF the time it needed to resupply and return to the battlefield. In Côte d’Ivoire the insistence by the UN and the French on maintenance of the zone of confidence, effectively separating the two warring factions and dividing the country in half, may have reduced active fighting but did little to encourage a political resolution to the war and in fact enabled a stalemate for nearly a decade. The focus on a political solution ignored the balance of power on the ground and the supply networks that contributed to the capacity of factions to continue fighting. While attention was paid to negotiating the politics, little was done to eliminate the capacity of the rebel groups to access new resources. The United Nations did impose broad measures aimed at vital resources—sanctions on diamonds, for instance, and embargoes on arms—but did little to secure their effective implementation or ensure that they targeted specific supporters and supply chains of the rebel groups. Although external actors pressed for negotiations, those doing so did little to reduce the opportunities for war. Peace agreements are a necessary element of ending wars if the goal is to end them through negotiated settlements rather than on the battlefield; on their own, though, they are insufficient to end wars. The fact that in many civil wars factions negotiate and sign numerous peace agreements, only to break them repeatedly, suggests the focus should not be on peace agreements and political negotiations alone. Efforts to end wars must also focus on altering the circumstances of the fighting factions and thereby circumscribing the options they have to continue fighting. It is important to provide incentives through negotiations,

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and disincentives through a credible commitment to punish defection, but the third, and missing, piece of the equation is to reduce the capacity of the group to continue fighting by restricting its access to resources. The case studies indicate that this is a key element to success: eliminating the possibility of returning to war, thereby shifting the focus to negotiating a peace. Examples of both intentional and unintentional changes in access to resources demonstrate the deleterious effect these can have on the capacity of a group to continue fighting. Unintentional changes take place irrespective of actions taken by the rebel group or other actors engaged in the conflict, including changes in market prices, poor seasonal harvests, and events in neighboring countries. For example, Liberian rebels blocked the supply route between the RUF and Taylor as a result of expanding their territorial control in northern Liberia; this was an unintended consequence of rebel action in Liberia. By contrast, intentional efforts specifically target rebel factions and aim to reduce access to resources through such actions as military engagements to dislodge rebels from resource areas, sanctions and embargoes, and border enforcement. However, these efforts are rarely comprehensive, nor are they often enforced at the level of targeting specific supply channels to rebel groups. For example, diamond sanctions made it illegal to sell Sierra Leone diamonds without certification, but they never entailed making sure diamonds were not mined or that diamonds were not being carried over the borders. Actions that effectively target rebel group supply networks and reduce access to needed resources constrain rebel group options on the battlefield, thereby providing conditions more conducive to negotiations. The case studies of the rebel groups in Sierra Leone, Liberia, and Côte d’Ivoire represent only a fraction of the armed groups that have fought, or are fighting, civil wars since the end of the cold war. The cases offer insights into when rebel groups have developed effective support systems and where they have fallen short. They provide a good start to developing a different way of thinking about the capacity of rebel groups and how this capacity fluctuates over time. Yet more information is still needed. Adaptation to changing circumstances appears to play an important role in the survival prospects of a group. Some groups adapt poorly and are not able to overcome large changes in their circumstances, while other groups adapt to the loss of resources by generating new sources of revenue and support. These dynamics are important but understudied. More research is also needed to determine which measures are effective in truncating a rebel group’s support network. The need for better measures of income and profit has already been mentioned but bears repeating. We know rebel groups obtain financial resources from numerous sources: the natural resource trade, trade in other goods, kidnapping, bank robbery, taxation, and donations. What we do not know is how much financing this actually provides, whether it is sufficient to sustain a

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war (since we do not know how much wars cost), and what amount of this profit actually reaches the rebel group rather than being absorbed in the transaction process. We also do not know what happens to these support networks in the aftermath of wars and the implementation of peace agreements. These are large gaps in existing knowledge. Even a cursory investigation of other rebel groups, from the FARC in Colombia to the LTTE in Sri Lanka, suggests the potential for generalizing the findings from this study to rebel groups both in Africa and on other continents. Future studies can identify whether similar patterns in fact exist and how far one can generalize these findings to other rebel groups.

Insights for Conflict Management International interventions aimed at ending civil wars often entail two responses: support for the negotiation of a peace agreement and the establishment of some form of peacekeeping mission. Both responses can contribute to a successful peace process. However, both can also unintentionally produce incentives for war and prolong stalemates when they do not address the capacity of the fighting factions to continue the war. The lesson learned from this study is clear: interventions must severely constrict, if not eliminate, the support network of a rebel group in order to bring the group to the negotiating table. Such pressure cannot be lifted during negotiations but must be maintained throughout the implementation of a peace agreement in order to ensure the rebel group has no option to return to war and the only option is to pursue the peace. Multilateral third-party interventions are no guarantee of success. Placing diplomatic pressure on warring factions to come to the negotiating table and reach an agreement is unlikely to produce a sustainable outcome. International pressure for negotiations can create the incentive to negotiate: it offers time to rest from active fighting (though factions do not always abide by this) and an opportunity to maintain positive relations with the international community, demonstrate a willingness to resolve matters peacefully, and garner support for one’s side. It also often entails negotiations in a foreign country in rather nice surroundings on someone else’s dime. Negotiations of the Ivorian conflict took place in Paris, while for Liberia it was Accra, and for Sierra Leone, Abidjan. However, putting pressure on a rebel group to come to the table is not the same as ensuring that group has no other option. The numerous negotiations that took place over the course of the three conflicts studied suggest holding negotiations is relatively easy; it is obtaining a peace agreement that sticks that proves difficult to achieve. This pattern holds true across many civil wars, from Angola to Myanmar and Colombia to Sri Lanka.

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Pressuring a government to accept negotiations can have at least two negative effects. First, when third parties act to circumscribe a rebel group’s network (and therefore its access to necessary war goods), a government may see this as an opportunity to attack while the group is weak. This can lead to an escalation of the war, rather than its termination, and an attempt by the government to annihilate the rebel group. Second, too much pressure on a government to accept negotiations and a peace deal, without fully circumscribing the network of the rebel group, can lead to a peace deal in which the rebel group feels it now has the upper hand. The group may choose to escalate the conflict once again because it believes it can win the war. Thus, not only must intervention circumscribe the networks of the rebel group to force it into a position where it is willing to negotiate, but this pressure must also be maintained (if not increased) throughout the negotiations and the implementation of the peace agreement. If this pressure is not maintained, a rebel group can utilize this break in fighting to reestablish its support network and reignite the conflict rather than abide by the peace agreement. Rebel groups do not choose to continue fighting because they necessarily prefer war to peace. They continue because they prefer winning to losing and winning remains an option. A negotiated settlement is always a compromise on the distribution of power in the postwar period. As such, a negotiated settlement offers less than a victory. If continued warfare offers better chances for gain than a settlement, and the group maintains the capacity to continue fighting, then the group will choose to continue the war. Peacekeeping operations can impose unintended negative effects on war termination efforts and contribute to the prolongation of conflict. Peacekeeping missions aim to place an international force on the ground to provide a buffer between fighting forces. The hope is that this buffer can provide time and space and security guarantees that can enable a decrease in active hostilities and encourage negotiations and the establishment of a political process for ending the war. However, when peacekeeping forces stand between fighting factions, reduce the frequency of military engagements, and prevent the stronger side from winning, they can contribute to sustaining the war, even if unintentionally, as happened in Côte d’Ivoire. The presence of the peacekeeping force in Côte d’Ivoire provided a neutral zone between the fighting factions. This buffer aided the weaker side but did not produce a military resolution to the crisis. Instead it reduced the incentives for a political solution to the war by creating the conditions of a comfortable impasse. Neither side engaged in many clashes with the other; both sides strove to increase their military capacity through arms imports (despite UN embargoes); and though negotiations took place several times, the lack of military pressure for a solution meant there was no pressure on the parties to alter their positions or abide by agreements. Stalemates have persisted in other countries as a result

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of the presence of UN peacekeeping operations (e.g., Cyprus, Western Sahara) or other international forces (e.g., NATO in the Balkans). While a reduction in active fighting provides positive returns in terms of reducing casualties, stalemates that do not heighten the costs of war produce few incentives for ending the war, and in fact may have the opposite effect, providing conditions conducive to long-term stalemates. This raises the question of what third parties can do to make negotiations more attractive and more likely to succeed. I do not mean to imply that the answer lies with external parties alone. There is no presumption here that domestic actors are putty in the hands of international actors or that international actors can somehow “fix” the problems of other countries. However, regional and international actors—whether states or international organizations—that possess leverage and are able to raise the costs of war can affect the capacity of armed groups to continue fighting, thereby altering the incentives for seeking a peace. Based on the analysis in this book I argue the answer lies in taking a three-pronged approach aimed at constraining (if not eliminating) a rebel group’s support network and thereby limiting the group’s access to military, economic, and political resources. In short, the goal is to reduce the capacity of a group to continue fighting to the point where it no longer views military victory as possible and raise the costs of maintaining a stalemate. International actors can impose a variety of measures to dampen the supply of resources to a group. The determination of which measures to apply depends on the nature of a group’s existing support system; it requires figuring out how a group accesses resources, and then deciding how best to interdict those efforts. The effectiveness of measures taken rests on the willingness of international actors to monitor activities and enforce the measures. The first prong focuses on restricting access to military resources. This can include an arms embargo on the group, or on the conflict country, prohibiting the provision of support to certain (or all) factions in the war. Sanctions can be applied, or at least threatened, against governments known to be selling arms to rebel groups or allowing their countries to be transit points for these arms. Travel bans on rebel leaders, or rebel representatives, can limit travel to countries to lobby for support or to make deals for weapons. Amnesty clauses and disarmament packages can encourage combatants to defect from a rebel group. Military assistance can be provided to the government to improve its capacity to place military pressure on the rebel group, or this military pressure can come from an external intervening power. If weapons are imported across a border, then border patrols and surveillance of borders can help, especially if backed by interdiction efforts. If rebels are obtaining weapons through barter with state military forces, then military-reform efforts, provision of salaries and support, and better supervision of state forces can help reduce this trade.

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The second prong focuses on eliminating a group’s economic financing. Financial flows can be constrained by freezing bank accounts of known members of a group and known supporters, restricting the travel of leaders to foreign countries where they may receive financial assistance, and tracking the activities of diaspora who might contribute donations to the group. The sale of natural resources can be constrained through the imposition of sanctions on these goods, such as the sanctions imposed on the import of diamonds originating from Sierra Leone and Liberia. Another option is to militarily move the rebel group out of the areas rich in resources, thereby eliminating their access to the good and their ability to profit from its trade. Addressing the issues of looting, taxation, and unorganized small-scale trade is more difficult; it requires reestablishing government authority in ungoverned areas, enforcing law and order, and monitoring cross-border activities. The third prong focuses on reducing the political support of the rebel group. Many of the previously discussed measures can be used to deter political supporters from providing groups with economic and military supplies. In addition, where governments are involved in supporting a rebel group, diplomatic pressure can be placed on the government to desist in financing a rebel movement, providing safe haven, or assisting with the logistics of receiving new supplies. This can be done through quiet diplomacy or through public condemnation and naming and shaming those who support a rebel group. Adherence by the government can be assessed by monitoring borders and inspecting former and suspected safe haven areas. A mixture of carrots and sticks could be used to encourage governments to withdraw their support of rebel groups. The former could include offering economic incentives for ending support, while the latter could threaten sanctions for continued support. Some countries may require security assistance if these governments fear the conflict will “spill over” into their countries. International actors cannot force peace on a country, but they can alter the incentives for negotiations, during which grievances can be addressed by the parties to the conflict. Interventions are complex—logistically and politically, as well as financially and militarily. Yet they must address the support networks of the conflict parties to be effective. Too often the focus of international interventions aimed at ending wars is on the political peace process, and there is little willingness to do more. However, the international commitment to getting a peace agreement needs to be more than a desire for a piece of paper signed by the factions. This is expensive diplomacy without an outcome if the parties simply return to the battlefield. Implementation of the peace agreement is a key element of preventing a return to war. This means international interventions must create the conditions conducive to and supportive of the peace process, from

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negotiations through the implementation of a peace agreement. Unfortunately, the international community has demonstrated little appetite for taking such comprehensive measures. Until this situation changes and external actors are willing to turn off the taps that fuel war, peace agreements will continue to fail, and civil wars will persist.

Index

Note: Page numbers in italics indicate maps. Abidjan Peace Accord, 50, 86, 88–90, 89, 94–96 Abu Sayyaf, 56–57, 171 Accra peace agreements: for Côte d’Ivoire, 141; for Liberia, 107–9, 121, 125, 126, 133–37 Afghanistan, 16, 171; drug trade of, 2, 6, 36; gem trade of, 6 African Union, 1, 19 Angola, 16, 34, 38; diamond trade of, 2, 4, 5, 22, 179; mercenaries from, 154, 156; oil of, 2, 6, 36 Armed Forces of Liberia (AFL), 111; AntiTerrorist Unit of, 128; areas controlled by, 106; defectors from, 115, 130, 133, 135 Armed Forces Revolutionary Council (AFRC), 80 Arusha Accords, 23 “bad neighborhood” theory, 181 “bad neighbor” theory, 181–82 Balkan wars, 1, 5, 13, 27–28, 29n9, 62 black markets, 12, 13, 35, 54, 158 “blood diamonds,” 6, 36, 73n1. See also diamond trade Bockarie, Sam, 80, 81, 84, 87, 98 Burkina Faso, 15, 80, 107; Forces Nouvelles and, 58, 169; MPCI and, 15, 144–48, 177; RUF and, 75n2, 80, 86, 97 Burma, 15; cease-fires in, 20, 22; gem trade of, 6, 36; militias of, 51, 62; timber trade of, 2 Burundi, 27, 57 case selection, 69–71, 172–75 cease-fires, 19–20, 20; with Burmese rebels, 22; with FARC, 9, 32; with LTTE, 9, 32, 50; with RUF, 88, 89, 92, 94, 96 Civil Defense Forces (CDF), of Côte d’Ivoire, 127; Kamajors, 114–115, 127; of Sierra Leone, 74, 79, 91, 95; civil wars, 29–33; asymmetry in, 29–31, 29n11; conflict management of, 185–89; costs of, 7–8, 15–18, 184–85; definition of, 1n1, 20, 29n9; duration of, 4, 6, 18, 25–33, 47–48, 55; dynamics of, 180–85; favorable conditions for, 175–78; frequency of, 16, 17; leaders of, 37–41; termination of, 19–20, 20, 38–40, 59n16, 66–68

cocoa trade, 54; Ivorian, 2, 36, 149, 153, 157, 158, 163, 167 cold war, 2, 16, 29; post-cold war, 8, 19, 25, 52n6, 56, 184 Colombia, 49; drug trade of, 2, 6, 14, 28, 36, 171 Compaoré, Blaise, 145–49 conflict contagion, 175, 180–81, 181 n1, 182 n3 conflict management, 185–89 Congo, Democratic Republic of, 1, 26 n3; Angolan rebels and, 35; casualties in, 8; gold trade of, 2, 6, 65; Mai Mai of, 51; mercenaries of, 45; Rwanda and, 46, 57, 58 Conneh, Aisha, 117, 119 Conneh, Sekou, 111, 114, 117–19, 123–25, 131 Conté, Lansana, 114, 117, 119 Côte d’Ivoire, 22–23, 68, 139–70; Burkina Faso and, 15, 80, 107; cocoa trade of, 2, 36, 149, 153, 157, 158, 163, 167; diamond trade of, 166–67; evolution of war in, 150–59; French forces in, 143, 154, 156, 159–60, 162, 164, 167–68; gold trade of, 157n60; Liberian rebel support by, 108, 109, 121–22, 126; map of, 140; mercenaries in, 45, 154, 156, 158, 162–63; peace negotiations in, 152, 154–56, 159–64; RUF and, 86–88; Taylor support by, 107 Coulibaly, Ibrahim, 145, 147, 148, 165–66, 175 Darfur, 1, 27, 41. See also Sudan diamond trade, 54, 178–80; of Angola, 2, 4, 5, 22, 35, 179; of Côte d’Ivoire, 166–67; of Liberia, 15, 36, 75, 91, 118, 128–29; of RUF, 11–15, 22, 57, 78–79, 81–86, 91, 94, 101–3; of Sierra Leone, 2, 35, 36, 44, 128–29, 135, 184; UN sanctions on, 44 diaspora, 54; Ivorian, 150; Liberian, 105–7, 115, 116, 121, 123, 176; Tamil, 2, 4, 44, 57, 171 drug trade: of Afghanistan, 2, 6, 36; of Columbia, 2, 6, 14, 28, 36, 171; of Peru, 6, 9–10 East Timor, 1, 27 ECOMOG (ECOWAS Monitoring Group), 87, 105; Sierra Leone and, 62, 78, 79, 82, 95–99 191

192

INDEX

ECOWAS (Economic Community of West African States), 19, 62; in Côte d’Ivoire, 149–56, 163; in Liberia, 87, 105, 130, 131, 135 Eritrea, 27, 57, 58 Ethiopia, 27, 57 Executive Outcomes, 89, 94–96, 103 FANCI (Forces Armées Nationales de Côte d’Ivoire). See National Armed Forces of Côte d’Ivoire FARC (Fuerzas armadas revolucionarias de Colombia). See Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia Forces Nouvelles of Côte d’Ivoire, 51, 68–69, 158, 163–70; emergence of, 139–42, 152, 162, 176; La Centrale of, 139, 144, 151–52, 166–68; peace negotiations by, 163–65; supply network of, 57–59, 146–47, 172, 175, 179. See also Patriotic Movement of Côte d’Ivoire Fozié, Tuo, 148, 165 Gbagbo, Laurent, 132, 141–50, 175; arrest of, 150, 170; Compaoré and, 145; evolution of war by, 150–59; MODEL support by, 121, 122 n73, 124, 157 n59, 174, 182; peace negotiations by, 154, 159–69 Gbao, Augustine, 39–40 gold trade, 54; of Congo, 2, 6, 65; of Côte d’Ivoire, 157 n60 guerrilla tactics, 52; in Liberia, 109, 115; of RUF, 63. See also terror tactics Guinea, 15; LURD support by, 46, 57–58, 107–15, 117, 119–21, 127, 135; RUF and, 100–101; U.S. support of, 113–14, 124 human rights abuses: by LURD, 118, 119; by RUF, 86–88, 98, 176 Indonesia: Aceh rebels and, 49; East Timor and, 27 Ivorité, 176; and ethnic discrimination and political grievances, 141, 145 n8, 146, 148–49 Justice and Equality Movement (JEM), 41 Justice Coalition of Liberia (JCL), 109–10 Kabbah, Ahmed Tejan, 97, 110 Kamajors. See Civil Defense Forces Khobe, Maxwell, 99, 109–10 kidnapping, 2, 57, 171, 180, 184; of UN peacekeepers, 39, 88, 99–100 Kléber arrangements, 139, 141, 161 Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA), 5, 62. See also Balkan wars

Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), 2; administration of, 10; cease-fires with, 9, 32, 50; defeat of, 26 n3, 37; diaspora support of, 2, 4, 44, 57, 171; goals of, 38–39; supply network of, 49, 59, 172, 179 Liberia, 68, 105–38; diamond trade of, 15, 36, 75, 91, 118, 128–29; evolution of war in, 125–38; Ivorian rebels and, 147, 156–58, 162–63; map of, 106; maritime registry of, 128; RUF support by, 3, 15, 75 n2, 91, 94, 97, 100–101; timber trade of, 107, 117–18, 123, 128, 129, 133; UN sanctions against, 101, 128, 130, 133 Liberians United for Reconciliation and Democracy (LURD), x–xii, 41, 68–69, 107– 21; Accra peace agreement and, 133–37; areas controlled by, 106; evolution of war by, 125–38; formation of, 107, 110; Guinean support of, x–xii, 46, 57–58, 107–15, 117, 119–21, 127, 135; membership of, 115 n42; military capacity of, 111–16, 129–30; MODEL and, 123, 124, 130–33; political patrons of, 118–21; recruits of, 113, 115, 118, 127; RUF and, 82, 85, 127; supply network of, 59, 110–11, 116–18, 131, 173–74, 176; ULIMO and, 109 Libya, 1, 4; MPCI support by, 147; RUF and, 83–84, 87, 97; Taylor and, 87, 128; UN sanctions against, 28 Lomé Peace Accord, 75, 83, 86, 88–90, 96–103 Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA), 28, 46 LTTE. See Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam LURD. See Liberians United for Reconciliation and Democracy Map: of Côte d’Ivoire, 140; of Liberia, 106; of Sierra Leone, 74 Marcoussis peace accords, 71, 139, 150, 161 mercenaries, 35, 45, 75 n2, 174; in Côte d’Ivoire, 45, 154, 156, 158, 162–63; of Executive Outcomes, 89, 94–96, 103; of LURD, 115 methodology, 68–72 MJP. See Movement for Justice and Peace Movement for Democracy in Liberia (MODEL), 41, 63, 66, 69, 107–9, 121–26; Accra peace agreement and, 133–37; areas controlled by, 106; evolution of war by, 125–38; factions of, 123–24; Ivorian support of, 121, 122 n73, 124, 157 n59, 174, 182; LURD and, 123, 124, 130–33; military capacity of, 121–22; political patrons of, 123–25; recruits of, 122, 133; supply network of, 117, 123, 173–74

INDEX

Movement for Justice and Peace (MJP) of Côte d’Ivoire, 69, 152, 156–57; areas controlled by, 140; Forces Nouvelles and, 162; supply network of, 174–75 MPCI (Mouvement Patriotique de la Côte d’Ivoire). See Patriotic Movement of Côte d’Ivoire MPIGO (Mouvement Populaire du Grand Ouest). See Popular Movement of the Ivorian Great West National Armed Forces of Côte d’Ivoire (FANCI), 143, 145–46, 154; areas controlled by, 140; MODEL and, 122; MPIGO and, 162 National Patriotic Front of Liberia (NPFL), 77, 105 National Provisional Ruling Council (NPRC) of Sierra Leone, 77, 81, 89, 91–96 Ndogboyosoi rebellion, 77 negotiated settlements, 8–9, 19–20, 20, 25, 183–89; alternatives to, 27–29, 59–64; “comfortable impasse” in, 31–32; “ripe moment” in, 32, 65 n22; spoilers of, 37–40, 39 n37; stalemates and, 20, 31–32; success of, 16, 20–21, 24; victory versus, 18, 20, 66–67. See also specific agreements Nepal, 1, 4, 26 n3, 49 Nigeria: ECOMOG troops from, 95, 97–98; militias of, 51, 64; oil of, 6, 10, 14, 36; Taylor’s asylum in, 107, 134–36; weapons supply from, 13n33 NPFL (National Patriotic Front of Liberia), 77, 105 NPRC (National Provisional Ruling Council), 77, 81, 89, 91–96 oil, 10–12, 14; Angolan, 2, 6, 36; Nigerian, 6, 10, 14, 36; Sudanese, 6 Organization of Displaced Liberians (ODL), 109, 110 n10 Ouagadougou Accord, 141, 168 Ouattara, Alassane, 141, 149, 150, 170 Patriotic Movement of Côte d’Ivoire (MPCI), 69, 142–50; areas controlled by, 140; core demands of, 144n8; evolution of war by, 150–59; military capacity of, 144–46; negotiations with, 160–64; political patrons of, 149–50; recruits of, 145–46; supply network of, 144, 146–49, 174–77. See also Forces Nouvelles Peru, 6, 9–10, 30

193

Popular Movement of the Ivorian Great West (MPIGO), 69, 152, 156–58; areas controlled by, 140; Forces Nouvelles and, 162; supply network of, 174–75 Prabhakaran, Vellupillai, 38–39 Pretoria accords, 141 process tracing method, 69 resources, 50–55; access to, 10–15, 22–24, 57–59, 64–66, 184; economic, 33–37, 56–57, 59n17, 178–80; options and, 59–64. See also supply networks Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), 2, 5, 26 n3; administration by, 10; cease-fires with, 9, 32; Liberian rebels and, 15; as narcotraffickers, 14, 28, 171; stalemate with, 31; supply network of, 13, 59, 172, 179; training programs of, 4 Revolutionary United Front (RUF) of Sierra Leone, 10, 30, 69, 73–104; Abidjan Accord and, 94–96; areas controlled by, 74; British policies toward, 77–78, 85, 100; diamond trade of, 11–15, 22, 57, 78–79, 81–86, 91, 94, 101–3; economic opportunities of, 82–86; guerrilla tactics of, 63; Guniean policies toward, 100–101; Liberian support of, 3, 15, 75, 91, 94, 97, 110, 182; Libyan support of, 83–84; Lomé Accord and, 96–99; LURD and, 82, 85, 127; military capacity of, 79–82; negotiations with, 50, 75, 88–89, 91; political patrons of, 86–88; supply network of, 59, 75, 78–79, 102, 173; UN hostages of, 39, 88, 99–100; U.S. policies toward, 88, 97; war crimes of, 86–88, 94, 98, 100, 176 RUF. See Revolutionary United Front Rwanda, 23, 27, 35; Congo and, 46, 57, 58 safe haven, x–xi, 46–47, 57, 57 n15, 177–79 Sankoh, Foday, 77, 93, 98; arrests of, 81, 83, 84, 96, 100; on diamond mining, 85, 86, 98, 102; Lomé Accord and, 97n76; political prestige of, 87–88; Taylor and, 77, 79, 81 Savimbi, Jonas, 34, 38 security dilemma, 41–44 Sendero Luminoso (Peru), 9–10, 30 Sierra Leone, 68, 73–104; diamond trade of, 2, 35, 36, 44, 128–29, 135, 184; Liberian rebel support by, 107, 109, 116; map of, 74; National Provisional Ruling Council of, 77, 81, 89, 91–96 Sierra Leone Army (SLA), 75, 79, 177; areas controlled by, 74; National Provisional Ruling Council and, 91; Revolutionary United Front and, 77, 81, 89, 93, 95, 103

194

INDEX

Somalia, 1, 171 Soro, Guillaume, 141, 148, 149, 165–66, 168, 175 South Africa, 98, 154 SPLA (Sudan People’s Liberation Army), 17, 51, 57 spoilers, 37–40, 39 n37 Sri Lanka, 2, 26 n3, 67 stalemates, 20, 29–33, 139, 141, 168–70, 186–87; “comfortable impasse,” 31–33, 62, 170, 178, 186; mutually hurting, 23, 29, 31–33, 42, 46 Strasser, Valentine, 93–94 Sudan, 17, 26 n3; Darfur and, 1, 27, 41; Eritrea and, 58; oil of, 6; Uganda and, 46 Sudan People’s Liberation Army (SPLA), 17, 51, 57 supply networks, 2–6, 33–37, 49, 172–75; access to, 10–15, 22–24, 54, 57–59, 64–66, 184; characteristics of, 53–59, 178–80; determination of, 50–53, 68–69; options for, 59–64. See also specific rebel groups taxation, by rebel groups, 5, 36, 51, 54, 139, 166–68 Taylor, Charles, 66, 85, 87, 91–92, 102, 105–11, 125–33; Accra peace agreement and, 133–37; departure of, 107, 120–21, 126, 134–36; income of, 5, 14–15, 84–86, 107, 128–29, 135, 180; Ivorian rebels and, 147, 156–58; Jesse Jackson and, 96; Libyan support for, 87, 128; militias of, 54, 177; MPCI support by, 147; RUF support by, 15, 75, 91, 110, 173, 182; Sankoh and, 77, 79, 81; supply network of, 107, 125, 133, 135; war crimes of, 134

terror tactics, 52; in Liberia, 128; in Sierra Leone, 86–88, 94, 100; in Sri Lanka, 4, 26 n3. See also guerrilla tactics Thailand, 27, 30 timber trade, 11, 15; of Burma, 2; of Liberia, 107, 117–18, 123, 128, 129, 133 Uganda, 28, 35; Congolese rebels in, 57; Sudan and, 46 ULIMO. See United Liberation Movement for Democracy in Liberia Union of Democratic Forces of Liberia (UDFL), 109 Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR), 2, 16, 52 n6 United Kingdom: RUF policies of, 77–78, 85, 100; Taylor and, 120 United Liberation Movement for Democracy in Liberia (ULIMO), 91–92, 114, 132; factions of, 109, 118, 122 United States: Congressional Black Caucus of, 96; Guinean support by, 113–14, 124; MODEL support by, 122; RUF policies of, 88, 97; Taylor and, 120–21 UN peacekeeping forces, 18–19, 58, 186–87; in Côte d’Ivoire, 167–68; hostages of, 39, 88, 99–100; in Liberia, 108; in Sierra Leone, 74, 79, 98–101, 127 UN sanctions, 186; against Côte d’Ivoire, 167, 168; against Liberia, 101, 128, 130, 133; against Libya, 28; against Sierra Leone, 44, 184 Western Sahara, 45, 187 West Side Boys of Sierra Leone, 127 Yugoslavia, 27. See also Balkan wars