War Dun Dun – war is over

Watch Sierra Leone. There may be lessons to be learned in this piss-poor but diamond-rich West African country devastated by a decade long very brutal civil war. For now, Sierra Leone has pulled it off. A cease fire and peace agreement last year was followed by an official end of the war this January, after over 45.000 rebels officially disarmed.

Last week Sierra Leone had elections that according to international observers could compete in free, fair and peacefulness with many long established democracies. As the EU’s chief electoral observer Van Hecke told the BBC: "There have been numerous logistical shortcomings but from what I have seen so far I think these are due to lack of resources and not part of any political manipulation". With 12 out of 14 districts declared, ruling president Ahmed Tejan Kabbah won 66 percent of the votes. Most likely it means Kabbah will avoid a second round run off and win the elections straight out.

Messy is the only description fitting Sierra Leone politics. Independent in 1961 the country had six military coups and tried three times to return to civilian rule. Multiparty elections finally happened in 1996. Kabbah became president, was ousted a year later by Johnny Paul Koroma and returned in 1998 thanks to a huge Nigerian intervention in the civil war.

Meanwhile the Revolutionary United Front (RUF) who had been fighting the government since the beginning of the nineties, came close to capturing the capital in 1997 and 1999. The RUF’s main claim to fame is their habit of forced dismemberment, chopping off hands, feet and whole limbs. In fact, in a way they dismembered themselves. As selling diamonds mainly financed the RUF, the atrocities they committed were an important reason united diamond dealers came to an agreement to halt conflict diamonds

The Front is now a political movement, having added the P for party to their acronym. Leader Foday Sankoh is in jail and faces a special UN court for war crimes. RUF supporters still hope for his release – something that is highly unlikely – and have put forward Sankoh’s former Secretary General Pallo Bangura, as interim presidential candidate of the RUFP.

Nine parties vied for seats in parliament in the May 14 elections, but it quickly appeared there were just two main contenders for the presidential seat. Ruling president Kabbah with his Sierra Leone Peoples Party (SLPP) and Ernest Koroma, the candidate of the All Peoples' Congress (APC), which ruled Sierra Leone as a one-party state in the 1970s and 1980s. Former military ruler turned Born Again Christian, Johnny Paul Koroma (no relation with Ernest) and his Peace and Liberation Party (PLP) seems to be doing well with the police and armed forces, and is posed for a good third place.

Election Day May 14 went without a hitch. Some 2.3 million registered voters casted their ballots at about 5,000 polling stations across the country. Queuing began as early as 1.30 a.m., even though the polling stations would not open until seven in the morning. During the day people waited for hours in long lines under the blazing sun, but there were no reports of irregularities. Key state employees had had a special vote four days earlier, to enable members of the armed forces, National Electoral Commission, fire department, police force and others who would be on duty before the main poll to cast their ballots.

Campaigning had been generally peaceful too. Only the Saturday before the elections Freetown was the scene of intense riots after a rally of the ruling SLPP tried to march along the head office of the RUFP. It remains unclear who started the riots, but the RUFP offices were trashed and looted. At least twelve people were injured. The fights only stopped when peacekeepers of UNAMSIL arrived and started firing in the air. Observers however claim it were the first peaceful elections since independence in 1961.

The seventy years old Kabbah had a clear advantage in this campaign. He presents himself as peacemaker – and in a way he is. He is the one responsible for bringing in the immensely popular British military presence, which aid the UN peacekeepers of UNAMSIL. It is a difficult thing for the other presidential candidates to counter. War dun dun - war is over – has become Kabbah’s slogan, but it is clear that without foreign intervention Kabbah would not have been able to pull it off.

Kabbah’s rival Ernest Koroma however also has a point. He warns of dependency on foreign military and economic aid. Many people in Sierra Leone nevertheless seem pretty happy with the current close relationship with their former British colonizer.

Currently there are around 17.500 peacekeepers in Sierra Leone and they will not be leaving soon. Though at over US$ 700 million a year the cost of UNAMSIL is enormous, the UN claims to have learned from past experiences in other African countries as the Central African Republic and Angola. Here the UN pulled out too soon after elections, which helped contribute to the ensuing civil conflict in these countries.

Of special concern to the UN is the security situation in neighboring Liberia. The RUF’s former sponsor and diamond dealer president Charles Taylor, is in a tough spot as rebels of Liberians United for Reconciliation and Democracy have advanced close to Monrovia, the capital. It would not be the first time in Africa for an internal war to spill over into a neighboring country. While Sierra Leone’s elections are a hopeful sign for better times to come, there will still be a lot of work to be done to keep the current stability.