Charles Taylor: A foreign policy challenge for Nigeria

By

Prof. Bolaji Akinyemi

THERE have been quite a number of controversial foreign policy issues in Nigerian history. We have had controversies surrounding the Anglo-Nigerian Defence Pact, the International Monetary Fund Loan, the Organisation of Islamic Countries (OIC), and Nigerian-Israel relations. These were big-time controversies. To this list should now be added the Charles Taylor asylum controversy. As far as I know, this asylum case has been so controversial that domestically, it has put the government on one side, and on the other side has been two former foreign ministers, the Nigerian Union of Journalists which even went to court to stop the asylum being granted and several elements of civil society.

Tom Ikimi, a former Nigerian foreign minister declared it a threat to national security. Ambassador Ignatius Olisemeka, a career diplomat of the old school who rose to become a foreign minister denounced the decision in very strong terms. This was quite enlightening because he was one of those trained in the art of silence and discretion but he felt the issue was of such magnitude that he should break with tradition.

The National Human Rights Commission, a government agency wrote a public letter to the president on the issue:

"The commission appreciates the efforts of your excellency together with other ECOWAS heads of state to bring lasting Peace and restore democracy and the rule of law to that war-torn country, but granting asylum to Charles Taylor in Nigeria will go against the national interest of Nigeria and on a personal level, will adversely affect the respect and stature of your excellency as a leading statesman in the comity of nations.

The statement continued by listing the grievous harm that Taylor had done to Nigeria and West Africa and concluded by pointing out that he was an indicted criminal (The Guardian, August 12, 2003 page 4).

The Constitutional Rights Project, an NGO, condemned the asylum as tantamount to "shielding him from paying for his alleged sins against humanity".

Of course, it would be erroneous to give the impression that no one supported the government. One notable supporter was the Catholic Archbishop of Calabar, the Most Rev. Dr. Brian Usanga, who noted that the asylum amounted to helping a brother in trouble, and that it "was part of effort to bring peace and stabililty to Liberia and allow for repair of damages caused by several years of armed conflict". As to Calabar was picked, the Archbishop cited Calabar as having long history for asylum citing the examples of King Jaja of Opobo and the Oba of Benin, adding that in fact that the people of Calabar even gave the Oba a wife. Well, with that news, Jewel, the third wife of Charles Taylor should be sleeping with one eye open.

How did Nigeria become entangled with Charles Taylor

We have to go back to the circumstances surrounding the establishment of the state of Liberia.

Liberia as a state was founded by ex-slaves repatriated from the United States in 1822. Independence was declared in 1847. Right now, it has a population of 3.2 million of which about 5 per cent are the descendants of the Americo-Liberians. From the beginning, the Americo-Liberians imposed their rule on the majority original Liberians. And from the beginning, Liberia was never a colony.

The circumstances of the birth of Liberia had no impact on African attitudes towards it. Under normal circumstances, one would have expected the rest of Africa to resent the treatment of the original Liberians by the Americo-Liberian just as Africans came to resent the treatment of the Africans by whites in South Africa. There are six factors responsible for the positive attitude of Africa towards Liberia from the very beginning.

 Firstly, Liberia was formed as a state around the same time that modern states were being formed in the rest of Africa. Therefore, not only was there a paucity of information about developments within Africa, but the institutions responsible for formation of opinion such as the state, the elite, civil society and the press were either not in existence or were in a state of just being formed. So Liberia was on its own just as other African states were on their own.

 By and large, black on black oppression even now does not elicit from the African elite the kind of emotional and visceral reaction that white on black oppression does.

 The Pan-African Congresses were initiated with the Africans in diaspora being among the prime movers. Not only did this create a black consciousness but it created a positive perception and acceptance of Africans in the diaspora which the Americo-Liberians benefited from.

 Two African who played a seminal and critical role in the formulation of Pan-Africanism are namely, Kwame Nkrumah of Ghana and Nnamdi Azikiwe of Nigeria. Both studied at Lincoln University, USA where they met Americo-Liberians and regarded them as full Africans and hence promoted them as full Africans within Pan-Africanism.

 Even though we have to assume that there was resentment by the original Liberians as to their treatment by the Americo-Liberians, there was no external outlet to voice their grievances and bring them to the notice of the world. As independence was the first target set for the Pan-African struggle, the fact that Liberia and Ethiopia were the only two African independent states was a source of inspiration and pride to the African elite.

By the time of Nigerian independence in 1960, Liberia had assumed a special role in Nigerian Foreign Policy. Ghana which had become independent a few years before had embarked on a militant and radical foreign policy course which included trying to organise independent African states to adopt radical Pan-Africanism. Nigeria knew that what gave Ghana a headstart in Africa was the fact that she got indpendence before Nigeria. In shopping for a counter-foil to Ghana, Liberia which technically had never been colonised came in handy. Hence while Ghana became associated with the Casablanca bloc, Nigeria became associated with the Monrovia bloc. In other words, Liberia became an anti-radical and anti-Nkrumah card in Nigerian foreign policy. In other words, right from the time of Nigerian independence, Liberia has always being a factor in Nigerian foreign policy.

From the beginning, it must be pointed out that Liberia has always tried to bat over and above its own average. The African reverence for age coupled with the esteem derived from its over a century of independence led Liberia into asserting a leadership role in Africa. To a large extent, this is an African phenomenon where each state interprets sovereign equality to mean equality without power consideration.

Ironically, the first clash between Nigeria and Liberia resulted from the issue of the resentment of original Liberians against the Americo-Liberians - an issue long ignored by African states. In April 1980 the Americo-Liberian government of William Tolbert was overthrown in a bloody coup led by a certain Master-Sergeant Samuel Doe. He turned up in Lagos for an Organisation of African Unity summit. The Shagari administration refused him participation at the conference. This decision was criticised by the Nigerian Institute of International Affairs ( I was the Director-General) on the grounds that it was a violation of the international law governing hosting of international conferences. Under that law, the host country is under an obligation to accept entry into their territories of duly accredited delegations for the purpose of attending the conference. It is only the organisation itself which can withdraw or suspended membership or participation at the conference. Nigeria as the host nation did not have the right to forbid the participation of the Doe-led Liberian delegation. You will recall an episode from the United Nations history when the United States under Ronald Reagan refused entry visas to some members of the United Nations thus forcing the UN to shift the conference to Geneva much to the chagrin of New York hotelliers and businessmen.

Foreign Policy like life is full of ironies. While the first conflict between Nigeria and Liberia arose out of the Doe coup of which Charles Taylor was a part, it is also ironic that the second conflict between Nigeria and Liberia should now arise in defense of Doe and against Charles Taylor. But as there is at times logic in madness, there is also logic in irony. Shagari's opposition to Samuel Doe was in defense of democracy, while Babangida's defense of Doe against Taylor was a case of military solidarity.

As earlier mentioned, Charles Taylor was an appointee of Samuel Doe after the Doe Coup in 1980. Both soon fell apart and Taylor fled into exile, having been accused of embezzlement. He was detained in a US prison from where he staged a miraculous escape. He and his supporters went for military training in Libya and Burkina Faso and on Christmas eve 1989, he invaded Liberia from Ivory Coast, leading a rebel group called the National Patriotic Front of Liberia. From this brief summary, it is evident that there were several angles to Charles Taylor's rebellion. Firstly, was the Libyan angle. Secondly, was the Bourkina Faso angle. Thirdly, was the Ivorian angle. Fourthly, was the United States angle. I will now deal with these angles briefly.

The Libyan angle: there was a stage in Libya's foreign policy when it sought to promote radical groups in Africa. Libya had no bilateral problems with Liberia except that Liberia had a conservative profile in both domestic and foreign policies. So a welcoming hand was extended to Charles Taylor and his group.

The Ivory Coast and Bourkina Faso angles. Under normal circumstances, Ivory Coast under Felix Houephouet-Boigny should not be found on the same side of the fence as Libya. In fact, if there was a regime that Ghadaffy would have been more than happy to overthrow, it was that of Ivory Coast. So how did Taylor manage the acrobatic feat

Well, politics often create strange bedfellows. Doe had become an enemy of the President of ivory Coast by executing the husband of the President's niece who was a cabinet member in the regime that Doe overthrew. That niece later on remarried and her new husband was now the military President of Burkina Faso. As the French would say Cherche La Femme. For no other reason except that of revenge, both ivory Coast and Bourkina Faso supported the invasion of Liberia by Charles Taylor.

The United States angle: It is the most mysterious of all the angles and it is still an enigma to be unraveled. I find it extremely difficult to believe that Charles Taylor somehow managed to escape from a United States prison and managed to escape from the United States to go to Libya without some connivance by a United States agency. But why is the enigma.

Which one of these angles provoked the Nigerian response which was military support for the Doe's government against Charles Taylor.

I am sure that none of the angles was the determining factor. At the initial inception of the Babangida's administration, a deliberate attempt was made to build excellent relations between Nigeria on one hand, Ivory Coast, Ghana and Burkina Faso on the other hand. The first two years saw a major rapproachment between Nigeria and Ivory Coast; while under President Sankara, Nigeria and Burkina Faso had also moved closer. In fact the concept of the Technical Aid Corps scheme arose out of a request by President Sankara for Nigeria's assistance for technical personnel in the education, medical and cultural fields. At the inception of the Babangida regime, relations between Ghana and Nigeria were bad due largely to the expulsion of Ghanaians from Nigeria by the previous Buhari regime.

Therefore, the Nigerian response to Charles Taylor's incursion into Liberia was not triggered off by need to respond to the external supporters of Taylor. The reason has to be found elsewhere. In West Africa, the military has always overthrown civilians or military regimes. Charles Taylor was the first civilian-led attempt to overthrow a military regime and it sent alarm bells ringing in the offices and residences of military dictators. Dog bites man, no alarm ring; man bites dog, CNN comes calling. The Babangida administration decided to intervene in Liberia to stop a successful civilian-led insurrection against a military regime. This interpretation is further reinforced by the fact that for the first six months of the war, there was no reaction from Nigeria or West Africa. Taylor's forces were already on the outskirts of the capital, Monrovia, and had in fact blockaded it for a month before ECOWAS troops, spearheaded by Nigeria were sent in.

As far as Charles Taylor was concerned, Nigeria had declared war on him and he accordingly, declared war on Nigeria. According to unofficial estimate, 2000 Nigerians including journalists, armed forces personnel, and civilians have been killed by Charles Taylor's forces. Even the sanctity of the Nigerian embassy was not respected by his forces.

This is the extensive background against which we need to consider the latest challenge posed to Nigerian foreign policy by the Charles Taylor asylum crisis. But the latest irony of ironies in the saga of Charles Taylor and Nigeria is the domestic and international perception of Nigeria as a protector of Taylor. Former Chief of Army Staff, General Victor Malu (rtd) spoke the minds of a lot of Nigerians when he said.

"Charles Taylor has been responsible for the death of so many Nigerians, so to say that Nigeria, of all the countries in West Africa is the one granting asylum to Charles Taylor is the greatest insult to Nigerians, and whoever took that decision does not have the interest of this country at heart".

Those who have termed the civil war in Liberia a 15-year-old war are not mistaking because Liberia had not known any peace since Taylor launched his offensive in 1989. Even the peace brought on by the 1997 elections lasted barely a year before hostilities broke out again. The casualties included over 200,000 dead, 300,000 driven to exile and over 1 million domestically displaced persons.

How did a Liberian local war end up becoming a West African war with fronts in Guinea and Sierra Leone

I have already pointed out the involvement of Ivory Coast and Burkina Faso at the beginning of the Taylor rebellion, Nigeria widened the theatre of war when it involved Sierra Leone in the ECOMOG war in Liberia. In retaliation, Taylor himself opened a second front in Sierra Leone by linking up pschopath called Foray Sandoh who had formed the revolutionary United Front rebels. Another irony of this saga is that Charles Taylor's war indictment is by an international criminal court on Sierra Leone for war crimes in Sierra Leone rather than for his activities in Liberia. Guinea also became involved as one of the anti-Taylor rebel movements called the Liberians United for Reconciliation and Democracy (LURD) launched its offensive using Guinea as a launching pad.

As I have remarked earlier, it is ironic that it is for activities in Sierra Leone rather than in Liberia that has led to criminal charges against Charles Taylor. If truth be told, the war activities of Fonday Sankoh and his RUF were so horrendous that in modern history, they must run at par with the war crimes of the Kymer Rouge in Cambodia.

The purpose of this lecture is not to evaluate the charges against Taylor and so I will not do so or even go into details of the charges. The critical issue is why did Nigeria grant asylum to Charles Taylor and set itself on a collision course with not only its own domestic opinion but also with the international community itself.

The war itself has dragged on for so long. Like all civil wars that are not attached to state authority, the phenomenon of war lords has reared its ugly head, with different factions exercising authority over pieces of territory and the central government holding on tenaciously to the capital. The usual toll of victims, more from starvation than actual fighting outraged the international community. Unlike 1990 when ECOWAS (the Economic Community of West African States) intervened militarily without first securing the consent of the warring parties, ECOWAS set up a mediatory body under the chairmanship of a former Nigerian Head of State General Abdulsalaam Abubakar. The first success recorded by the body was to secure the presence of all the parties, including Charles Taylor, to a peace conference in Ghana.

Those who have experience in peacemaking activities will readily attest to the fact that securing the attendance of a sitting Head of State at a conference with people trying to overthrow him is no mean achievement. It was precisely at the same time that the prosecutor of the International Criminal Court on Sierra Leone unsealed a secret indictment of Charles Taylor and issued a warrant for his arrest. The critical issue is: Why was the indictment unseated at that same time as the conference and why was the warrant of arrest issued at that time

The International Criminal Court on Sierra Leone was set up under the authority of the Security Council of the United Nations.. It was part of the international reaction against the atrocities committed by all the parties during the civil war in that country. Even though set up by the Security Council it is not really a U.N. body simpliciter. It could be said to be under the joint sovereignty of both the United Nations and Sierra Leone as both are responsible for the appointment of judges to serve on the court. Both the Chief Prosecutor and the Chief Investigator are United States citizens, an ill-advised combination.

I will raise a legal question here which I will leave to the subsequent sessions of this symposium to address. Is there any existing statute, including the statute setting up the special court which grants the power to anyone to arrest a sitting President in view of the absolute immunity enjoined by Heads of States.

Some of the comparisons have been way off the mark. Some commentators and scholars have sought to draw a parallel with the Pinochet and Milosevic cases. Both cases did not answer the question as to whether a sitting President can be arrested. The categorical issue addressed by both cases is that ex-presidents can be indicted for their conduct while in office. I concede that Charles Taylor as a sitting President can have a valid sealed indictment against him but that does not automatically translate into the forfeiture of his immunity from arrest. Some have argued that the point is now moot as he is no longer the president and hence the warrant of arrest could and should be executed. I beg to differ. If a warrant of arrest was not valid when it was issued, that defect cannot be cured without a recourse to the original source of the warrant.

The core issue which I wish to raise is more political than legal. I had earlier raised the issue as to the timing of the release of the warrant of arrest. Why was it timed to coincide with the opening of the Accra peace conference.

Some might argue that the presence of Charles Taylor outside his lair in Monrovia was an opportunity too good to be passed up by the prosecutor. Maybe. But it put the court immediately on a collision course not with Taylor but with the whole Economic Community of West African States under whose auspices the conference was been held. The priority of ECOWAS was peacemaking, while the priority of the court was justice or punishment. The president of Ghana who was asked to effect the arrest refused and Charles Taylor promptly returned to the safety of the Presidential mansion in Monrovia. This was a temporary set back for the conference. It could have proved fatal if Taylor had thought that other ECOWAS leaders had set a trap for him.

But it is not only ECOWAS leaders who regarded peacemaking in Liberia as the priority. A content analysis of the statements and declarations of the United Nations Secretary-General and the Bush administration would show emphasis on the exist of Taylor rather than his surrender to the court. Nigeria decided to offer him asylum in Nigeria. The offer was not a secret. It was well known on the streets of Askelon. Was this a unilateral decision in defiance of the international community.

We have it on the authority of the irrepressible Orji Kalu, governor of Abia state that:

"...to the best of my knowledge, there was an appropriate agreement between Presidents Bush and Obasanjo and the US cannot renege on the agreement now, to portray Nigeria as bad people. If no other Nigerian knows, I know from the part of America there is an agreement... If I may tell you, it wasn't in the itinerary of the President of America to stop over in Nigeria. You can see that there was n o fanfare and when I talk to you, I talk to you based on what I know." (Thisday, August, 16, 2003, p4.)

Recently, this view was confirmed by no less a person than Secretary of State Colin Powell who said:

"Because of the crisis we were facing last year, Nigeria was willing to take Mr. Taylor with the understanding that Nigeria would then not find itself in difficulty from the international community or from the tribunal. And everybody accepted that at the time because we needed to end the violence and it worked" (Thisday, February 10, 2004).

Apart from this categorical evidence, there are supportive evidence. As of the time when President Bush visited Nigeria, it was very well known that the offer of asylum to Taylor was on the table. Knowing the American system as I do, if the Bush administration was opposed to the asylum offer, Air Force one would have switched from touchdown mode to takeoff, mode even at the minute. Not only did no such thing take place, there were no on-record or off-record briefing to indicate disagreements with the Obasanjo administration both during and after the visit. There were also on-the-record remarks by high officials of the Bush administration welcoming the developments in Liberia, after the exit of Taylor. Not only that, there was a close and warm relationship between Nigerian troops and United States marines for the short duration of the stay of the marines in Monrovia. I have no doubt in my mind that there was a clear understanding between the United States and Nigeria on the asylum issue.

The European Union was also supportive of the move. A spokesman for the European Commission welcomed the asylum "it is a decision that seems to go in the right direction to stop the violence and reach a solution for Liberia".

I can also prove that Nigeria was working in tandem with ECOWAS and the African Union on the project. At the Monrovia International Airport, to witness the exit of Charles Taylor were Thambo Mbeki, President of South Africa, Joachiqim Chissano, President of Mozanbique and chairman of the African Union, John Kuffor, President of Ghana and chairman of ECOWAS, and Mohammed Ibn Chambas, the secretary-general of ECOWAS. Why would these powerful presidents turn-up at a dangerous spot where American marines were patrolling off-shore, Nigerian troops were patrolling some parts of Monrovia, rebel troops were controlling parts of the same city and remnants of the Charles Taylor forces were in disarray; it was the stuff of a nightmare for security forces. Yet, here were three African heads of State putting their lives on the line.

Some have argued that they were there to ensure that Charles Taylor got on Nigeria 001. Even if this were so, it only confirms my proposition that the asylum decision was not a unilateral one by Nigeria.  I believe it was more than this. Africa and ECOWAS were sending a message to the world. I had earlier pointed out that the warrant of arrest was released the same day that the peace conference opened in Accra. This must have been very offensive to African leaders who had worked so had to get all the parties to the conference table. The timing of that warrant calls into question the sensitivity of the American prosecutor who released the warrant. Would he have done the same thing, if it was the United States which was involved in arranging a peace conference.

I believe that the presence of these African leaders in Monrovia and their presence in Abuja to welcome him to Nigeria marked a dramatic rejection of the warrant of arrest. Yes, Charles Taylor was a pretty disreputable character but it is essential that the first sitting president. There are Presidents in other parts of the world whose records are as torrid as that of Charles Taylor. Yet it was an African president that was targeted for arrest. The right decision was made to resist it.

Even though the United States Congress tried to muddy the diplomatic waters by appropriating $2 million for the capture of Charles Taylor, the United States administration has tried to distance itself from the issue. The crisis over the Charles Taylor case has gone off the world's radar and baring any precipitate and ill-advised act by Charles Taylor, it is likely to remain so.

A legally tidy way out of the legal limbo is for the International Criminal Court for Sierra Leone's prosecutor to admit that trying to arrest a sitting President was a legal error. He should go back to the court for another warrant now that Charles Taylor is no longer president.

May 2004