By Thalif Deen
March 17, 1999
United Nations - Ongoing civil wars in Africa - particularly in Angola and the Democratic Republic of Congo - were being fought mainly because of the pursuit for mineral riches, according to a senior UN official.
"These conflicts are referred to as diamond wars," said Felix Downes-Thomas who has just returned from a visit to sub-Saharan Africa.
Downes-Thomas, the head of the UN Peace-building Support Office and Representative of the Secretary-General in Liberia, admitted at a hearing here last week that mercenaries were involved in some of the conflicts in Africa.
He traced a link between security firms hired by warring factions and the flow of military equipment to Africa's battle zones.
Downes-Thomas said that his office was engaged in curbing the demand for arms. "But there is also a need to deal with the flow of arms from the supply side," he said.
He was critical of the double-standards by which the international community is fighting drugs by attacking it from the supply side while refusing to advocate a similar policy in relation to the arms trade.
"I wish the same logic would be applied to small arms, and arms in general, particularly in west Africa," he said.
The drug suppliers were mostly from developing countries such as Colombia, Peru, Bolivia and Afghanistan. But the arms suppliers, who are fueling conflicts in developing nations, come mostly from the West.
Several security firms - including Sandline International and Defense Systems Ltd, both of London, and the now-defunct Executive Outcomes which was based in Pretoria - have been participating in several civil wars in Africa.
According to a UN report released last October, mercenaries have been involved in several countries in Africa, including Angola, Sierra Leone, Lesotho, Liberia, Mozambique, Namibia, Sudan, the Democratic Republic of Congo (former Zaire), Zambia and Zimbabwe.
In a report to the General Assembly, Enrique Bernales Ballesteros of Peru, the UN Special Reporter on Mercenaries, said that the ousted President of Sierra Leone Ahmad Tejan Kabbah sought help from Sandline International "in providing military backing and assisting his return to power."
Mining and financial companies with interests and assets in Sierra Leone allegedly supported and even partially funded the hiring of Sandline International. The London-based company was also accused of exporting military equipment and helicopters to Sierra Leone last year - despite a UN embargo.
In an article published in the New York Times last month, Elizabeth Rubin wrote that in 1995 Sierra Leone hired Executive Outcomes only after the United Nations, the Organisation of African Unity (OAU) and the international community had failed to help restore the democratically elected government in that country.
"The company was willing to do what the United Nations cannot: take sides, take casualties, deploy an overwhelming force and fire pre-emptively," she said.
Executive Outcomes agreed to put down the rebels and restore law and order in Sierra Leone in return for 15 million dollars and diamond mining concessions, she added.
The UN study also referred to the presence of mercenaries in the former Zaire who tried to defend the government of President Mobutu Sese Seko. Most of them decided to leave the country after the fall of Kisangani.
Still in the Congo, however, was the London-registered firm Defense Systems Ltd, which was responsible for guarding various mines and petroleum installations, as well as several embassies in Kinshasa.
The UN study declared the existence of mercenarism and mercenary activities was an undeniable fact. "It may recede when peace, political stability and respect for democratic order are estabished, but it reappears when these conditions experience a crisis."
UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan admitted last year that while he was struggling to raise troops for a peacekeeping force in Africa, some had even suggested that he hire private security firms to provide the United Nations with the rapid reaction capacity it needed.
"When we had need of skilled soldiers to separate fighters from refugees in the Rwandan refugee camps in Goma, I even considered the possibility of engaging a private firm," he said. But he realised that "the world may not be ready to privatise peace."
