Double shot of instability: Mali and Cote d’Ivoire

Who says West Africa can still be mildly instable?

Mali has mostly avoided the issues with Tuaregs that has recently plagued the government of Niger. That may be due to the government’s more conciliatory approach to the situation. Have things taken a decidedly worse turn?

From IRIN:

Citizens are divided on what should be the next steps following the latest round of violence between Tuareg rebels and Malian army officers, which has led to the kidnapping of up to 30 Malian soldiers and the deaths of three soldiers and five civilians in Mali’s northern Kidal region.

Fighting broke out on 20 March 18 km from the town of Tin-Zaouatene when rebels ambushed a government military supply convoy capturing soldiers and seizing as many as eight vehicles.

"We do not know what to do. When the shooting began between the rebels and the army, the entire population had to hide out at home,” said Amadou Koné a government official in Kidal.

He continued, “people stop trusting each other because they don’t know who is who. It is like being in Iraq or Palestine.”

The fighting came two weeks after the Northern Mali Tuareg Alliance for Change (ATNMC) released 22 military hostages from the nearby town of Kidal, 1,200 km from Bamako.

Recently, western Cote d’Ivoire has seemed to be the most lawless area of the country. The reasons are plentiful: The number of internally displaced persons habituating this area along with the large number of Liberian refugees who sought safety there; or, perhaps it’s the former Liberian soldiers living in that part of the country and continuing to look for work.

Again, IRIN:

Two towns in western Cote d’Ivoire have been shut off by two days of riots by disgruntled Ivorian soldiers.

Troops started rampaging through the town of Duékoué, 400 km north west of the commercial capital Abidjan, on the morning of 24 March, protesting the murder of a low-ranking soldier by robbers the night before, Commandant Vazoumana, a gendarme in Duékoué told IRIN.

“We have been unable to leave our houses,” Flora Gbazé, a civilian in Duékoué, said on 24 March. “Since the morning soldiers have been shooting in the air.” Later the same day riots broke out in nearby Guiglo, army sources in the town told IRIN.

According to a humanitarian source in the region, one civilian death has been confirmed by stray gunfire.

Rioting continued in Guiglo on 25 March, however in Duékoué the soldiers spent the day in negotiations with government officials, a humanitarian official familiar with the situation told IRIN.

The soldiers were demanding the resignation of the governor in the region, the source told IRIN.

“The signals coming from both the government and military leaders are not at all clear,” the source said, noting that Ivorian soldiers had been petitioning the regional authorities to improve their security arrangements for some weeks.

Humpty Dumpty: Gbagbo promises Ivorian election by June; questions remain about demilitarization

So, how do you put a country back together after civil war? Does one wait for the militaries to hand in their weapons? Or, does one rush to the polls to attempt to forge out a new government that people from both sides can rally around?

As part of the peace deal signed in March 2007 in Ouagadougou, fighters on both sides of the conflict will be disarmed; a new unified national army will be created; most importantly, identity documents will be distributed, which will determine citizenship (an issue that lead to the civil war); finally, the Ouagadougou agreement stipulates that and elections will be held.

Political leaders such as President Laurent Gbagbo and former rebel Guilllame Soro, who is now the Prime Minister, would like to hold elections at the end of June, a timeline Gbagbo reiterated after meeting with South African President Thabo Mbeki, who is acting as a mediator.

However, Reuters reports, that the country’s disarmament and military demobilization process is far behind schedule and this likely to impede the country’s political reunification. Opposition politicians Henri Konan Bedie from the south and Allassane Ouattara from the north worry that the two leaders will use the delayed disarmament as an excuse to further postpone the elections (and remain in power), argues Selay M.K in the citizen journalism site Agora Vox.

Question: Isn’t it also true that the two leaders have refused to disarm their militias to keep the other side(s) honest? The issue here is that elections have been scheduled in the past and have been postponed after previous peace deals fell apart.

Earlier this year, UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon called the government’s election plan “very ambitious.” However, a diplomat speaking anonymously told IRIN the June election deadline may be ambitious, but leaders set it to insure elections will be held during 2008.

With northerner Guillame Soro as Prime Minister, federal authority is slowly, but surely reinstalling itself in the former rebel-zone northern part of the country. This process has been hampered because many rebels would like to keep their parallel command structures intact in case the country devolves into conflict again, IRIN reported.

Other issues remain. In an October 2007 report, the UN Secretary General admitted the population is still visibly scarred by the civil war and many issues, such as land ownership, have not been resolved. Under this backdrop, the United Nations has pressed ahead on creating identity documents so people can vote. The Secretary General will release a report regarding election preparations before April 15.

Politics, aid and competence in post-war Sierra Leone

A story from the Concord Times in Freetown (via AllAfrica.com) reports that UNICEF, the World Food Program and the Government of Sierra Leone recently signed a $100 million three-year plan of assistance.

The story quotes UNICEF representative, Geert Cappelaere: "I am particularly happy and proud to witness this joint signing ceremony of Country Programme Action Plans (CPAP) by UN agencies with the government of Sierra Leone. It is a clear demonstration that children are indeed central to the national development agenda. If we are truly committed to addressing the millennium development goals and making a difference in this country, there is definitely the need for stronger partnerships among development partners including the UN system."

The question I always have with these announcements is: will this money be well spent? Perhaps, but the prospects are somewhat dim, according to a recent report from the European Network on Debt and Development, EURODAD, and the Campaign for Good Governance from Freetown. The reason? Aid in Sierra Leone seems neither efficient nor effective and pretty much ad-hoc.

First things first
Sierra Leone is clearly dependent on aid. Cue inspirational music. Rising like a phoenix from the smoky ruins of a bloody 10-year civil war, the government of Sierra Leone has done what it can: presiding over a relatively free and fair election in 2007; continued work on the shattered infrastructure; cleaning out of decades of poor governance and mismanagement.

Now, cue somber music. While the country has undoubtedly become more stable, seven out of 10 people still live on less than a dollar a day. It’s an aid dependency, this country. The government takes in only 57 cents on every dollar budgeted, forcing the international community to come up with the rest for the government to even exist.

Poor conditions aside, the track record of aid and development remains spotty in Sierra Leone. Some of the problems are common shortfalls of aid and development everywhere. How does one tackle the age-old question of priorities: How much more important is it to build government capacity (while at the same time trying to decentralize its institutions) than providing basic needs to the population?

Other common problems persist on ground: Schools get built, but no one is qualified to teach in them. Somebody pays to construct clinics, but they lack medicine and health care professionals.

The war against common sense
Yet some problems seem inherent (or even worse) in Sierra Leone than elsewhere. Donors are currently implementing 265 different aid projects, but most of them are currently unknown to the government, which has a hard time collecting information on competing aid projects. Parallel governance structures seem to spring up everywhere, like the decentralization secretariat (funded primarily by the World Bank), the HIV/AIDS secretariat and Governance Reform Secretariat (funded through Dfid), “as a way of donors pushing their priorities whilst bypassing government structures they do not trust,” the authors note.

At least a quarter of the government’s budget comes from major donors providing direct budget support, which supposedly reduces reliance on these parallel systems. (See our short debate on budget support). One problem, the authors argue, is that this support comes with many a string attached, meaning the government must perform difficult tasks, such as distributing certain amount of bed nets or conducting major civil service reform before it receives any funds. These conditions are a common aid practice, but sometimes they are so onerous, everyone else in the developing world ignores them. For example, the report sites the fight between some donors and the government over the idea of how the government procurement office should work, which Bretton Woods institutions would like all governments to open up to bidding by international firms, a move being resisted everywhere. Because of the fragile nature of Sierra Leone, any suspected conflict with one of its “major partners” puts necessary programs at risk.

Project ownership is another issue. Because national governments have been distrustful in the past, international aid organizations have simply learned to bypass them, fostering an attitude of go-it-alone.

From the report:

Donors are struggling in Sierra Leone to respect the commitments they have made under the Paris Declara­tion on Aid Effectiveness, particularly around “ownership” and the need to relinquish control over allocation of aid resources and the policy agenda. A chicken and egg situation exists with the prevalent lack of trust between the government and the donors and donors’ continued practice of heavily conditioning their aid, setting up parallel project units to control their aid and trying to mould policy-making.

The continuing isolation of citizens and civil society from aid distribution policies is another major problem. (And a pet issue of EURODAD). A fine example: The closed-door negotiations between government ministries and major donors. Perhaps more tellingly, members of civil society were not invited to a discussion regarding the $13.9 million Education for All – Fast Track Initiative.

While a definite lack of transparency exists at the government level, donors are also to blame. Oftentimes they do not provide the public with timely information regarding their work in the field. Report requests from government agencies supposedly overseeing aid are sometimes ignored. NGOs often don’t understand the realities of power on the ground, and local citizens (and groups) are often unable to change the direction of unfeasible or unrealistic projects.

The authors’ underlying argument is this: A more informed citizenry will demand stronger responses to their problems from both development organizations and the government. Perhaps these groups are unwilling to give citizens a decision-making role; or, perhaps they just simply don’t have the capacity themselves to bring other people on board.

Finally, the checks aren’t arriving on time. In 2007, the government received a whopping $26 million less from donors than it had budgeted for, a total that is a few million short of the complete USAID budget for Sierra Leone. The minister of finance complained that these ghost funds were his largest worry because on a daily basis, he does not know how much the government can spend.

If you can’t anything nice…
Even in the most functioning of countries, getting aid to work right is a difficult task. But in Sierra Leone, it must be extremely difficult task. I am somewhat of a cynic, so I am likely find blame in both parties – crooked, incompetent governments and development organizations who care more about selling pretty calendars than poverty reduction and building capacity. Anyway, after reading this report, one finds that both sides appear extremely serious about turning Sierra Leone around. It’s a doubly hard task when the need is so great. However, the country suffers from the nexus of extremely high demand and, as the title points out, a culture where old habits die hard. Thinking outside the box sure has turned into a cliché. But somewhere down the road, it would be nice to find a better way. Here’s hoping they get it figured out.

What is the UN Peacebuilding Commission and what is it doing in Guinea-Bissau?

According to the Global Policy Forum, the Peacebuilding Commission was first proposed by then-UN Secretary General Kofi Annan to assist with the prevention of violent conflicts before they started, which appeared easier for the UN than their normal task of tamping down existing conflicts. “Annan proposed that the PBC would have a broad membership that would include not only UN member states but also development agencies and possibly even NGOs,” Global Policy Forum writes of the new integrated approach.

The important matter, notes Ellen Margrethe Løj, Co-Chair of the General Assembly Working Group on the Peacebuilding Commission, is that the international community was not very good with dealing with transitioning a war-torn country form military support (the blue helmets) to the long-term development phase. (A place like Haiti comes to mind.) Hopefully, by bringing the actors together around a single table – and there is still some debate on the role of the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund in the process – this umbrella organization can help move the country beyond security issues to development and nation-building issues.

From its website, the Peacebuilding Commission will:

• Propose integrated strategies for post-conflict peacebuilding and recovery;
• Help to ensure predictable financing for early recovery activities and sustained financial investment over the medium- to longer-term.
• Extend the period of attention by the international community to post-conflict recovery;
• Develop best practices on issues that require extensive collaboration among political, military, humanitarian and development actors.

So far, this method has been employed in Sierra Leone and Burundi.

How is it doing? According to Carolyn McAskie, head of the Peacebuilding Support Office, the office has learned this:

"The development link to peacebuilding is also very important," she explains, "to the G77 members of the Commission but also to the western countries because, as any practitioner knows very well, one of the reasons these countries fail is that they are often 'aid orphans.' They may have two or three faithful donors but do not have the 25 donors that their neighbors have. Thus, resources for development are a very important issue for these countries. But that has to be juxtaposed with keeping them on track politically as well. You can have the most beautiful reconstruction program, but if you run into serious political problems, it can all be offset. We need to get the balance right." She adds, "Therefore the SC has to be engaged, as the GA will be. But the GA is a very large body and we should keep in mind that it is difficult for it to engage in practical change, which is why I believe ECOSOC, as responsible for economic and social issues, could be involved."

With this in mind, perhaps the one benefit the Peacebuilding Commission can lend is providing certain “failed states” with the proper exposure they need to become stable.

So, finally: What is the Peacebuilding Commission doing in Guinea-Bissau? Here is a summary of exploratory meetings with the government:

While Guinea-Bissau was struggling to overcome years of political strife, civil unrest and corruption, Prime Minister Martinho N’Dafa Cabi today told the Peacebuilding Commission that his Government was consolidating recent fragile gains, but needed help to make improvements in key areas, including security, fiscal management, combating drug trafficking, youth vocational training and election assistance.

“We have the courage necessary to see the peace consolidation process through, but that courage must be [bolstered] by commitment and support from the intentional community,” Prime Minister N’Dafa Cabi said, as he highlighted the serious challenges his country faced after years of sporadic civil conflicts and military uprisings, which, by the late 1990s, had left the tiny West African nation politically polarized, poverty stricken and unable to pay its workers or to educate its children.

World Bank’s plan for post-conflict states discussed in Liberia

In the second leg of his week-long African tour, World Bank President Robert Zoellick flew to Liberia to meet with officials from the Liberian government, international development agencies and the private sector to search solutions to help rebuild the country.

The Bank president said it was imperative to bring in the private sector to help create jobs and rebuild the country’s infrastructure.

From Reuters:

…Zoellick met donors and U.N. officials to discuss how to fund Liberia's infrastructure needs, which the government puts at $700-800 million, mostly for roads. The Bank oversees a Liberia infrastructure trust fund which already has $90 million.

Liberia has struggled to attract private companies to build roads, mostly due to high costs importing equipment. Chinese firms have expressed interest but want to be sure they can get contracts if they spend the money bringing in the equipment.

Zoellick said post-conflict governments faced a shortage of skill-led workers, with many professionals having left the country and living abroad. The challenge was to either quickly train new professionals or compensate and attract back those who had left.

During his two-day trip Zoellick also meet with finance ministers of four other West African post-conflict countries – Guinea, Sierra Leone, Cote d’Ivoire, Togo and Liberia – to seek advice how to provide financial support to speed the recovery of these states. Other than providing monetary aid in a timely manner, I could not find any other concrete suggestions solicited from the group. More later, I hope.

Today’s Sierra Leone: the long fight back

After spending a decade embroiled in a brutal civil war, Sierra Leone emerged feeling fresh and recently held an equitable, peaceful and well-organized elections. Carol Lancaster, a visiting fellow for the Center for Global Development, wrote an essay after returning from the nation known as Lion Mountain, the poorest country in the world (according to the United Nations Development Programme).

Here are some highlights of the report, which are all quotes:

• The first thing that strikes the visitor to Freetown, the capital, is the extensive slums, the run down buildings and above all, the abysmal condition of the roads. The roads get worse as one travels up country. Only four wheel drive vehicles can survive there and even those frequently break down because of the enormous potholes and mud traps that have never been fixed.
  
• Living conditions in the countryside are even more basic—the country has reverted to a subsistence economy after once having been an exporter of agricultural goods. But even if farmers produced enough to export today, it is difficult and expensive to get their products to market with the vanishing roads.
• There is little manufacturing, little tourism (despite the attractive beaches outside of Freetown), and little private investment outside of mining.
• Why is a country with so much potential so desperately poor? Disastrous governance, sustained over many decades is the short answer, exacerbated by the existence of diamonds. Whatever the structure of government—whether it has been democratic, a one party state or a military junta (and it has been all of these since independence) —governance has been about elites enriching themselves and their patronage networks with little effort to use the country’s resources for the good of its people.

Finally, Lancaster provides this little nugget.

• [T]here really is not a viable alternative to democracy in sub-Saharan Africa, even if it is illiberal and flawed initially. In no case on the continent have authoritarian governments spurred sustained growth and development; indeed, they have often blocked economic progress as the political constraints on their leaders and elites have decayed with their emphasis on centralized control, on secrecy, on repression and on enriching themselves. There have been no authoritarian economic miracles in Africa like Korea, Chile or Taiwan and there are not likely to be, given the poverty, the weak bureaucracies, ethnically divided societies, and social pressures on politicians to direct public resources to their families, clans, regions and ethnic groups, and, of course, to their patronage networks. Democracy at least forces governments to be more transparent and less repressive even if it doesn’t guarantee probity, the rule of law and rapid economic progress.