Spectator's Journal: Diamonds and Death
Corry, John
i . ! ~ :lD4k dV~_ll I1[~il : ~ I I ~ l l l i i : i l l ira1 q by John Corry Diamonds and Death his administration is different. "Africa does How could Clinton even dare show his face in Africa?...
...RUE had come into existence in 1991 , with the support of Charles Taylor...
...We ~ n July, an international panel assembled by the Organization of African Unity issued a report on the 1994 genocide in Rwanda...
...ambassador to Sierra Leone--"He's really a bully," a colleague says--shuttled back and forth "The world needs Nigeria to succeed," Clinton said...
...They referred to him as "our father," and he fed them crack cocaine...
...sent troops to take their place...
...Indeed Jackson had often praised him as a statesman, although by any reasonable standard Babangida was thoroughly corrupt and despicable...
...Gqlen the Canadian general who commanded the United Nations troops in Rwanda sought permission to try to prevent the mass murders before the}.' began, Madeleine Albright, then the U.S...
...But there was not the slightest indication at the time that Albright had any quahns, and she had shown only steel),' resolve...
...Jesse Jackson was the principal architect of the agreement, and you must note now his full title: "Special Envoy for the President and Secreta U of State for the Promotion of Delnocracy in Africa...
...In May of last year, Jackson brokered a cease-fire accord between RUF and the Sierra Leone government...
...negotiated on the rental charge...
...The agreement had been a wholly American effort, and, as Lizza wrote, it "forced the democratic president of Sierra Leone to hand over much of his govermnent and most of his country's wealth to one of the greatest monsters of the twentieth century...
...The Black Caucus, Jesse Jackson, and the New York Times disapproved of Sani Abacha, Nigeria's military ruler--in part, at least, quite appropriately--and so the Clinton administration declared Nigeria a pariah nation, and established an arms embargo...
...When he finally did, Susan Rice, the assistant secretary of state for African affairs, announced a great success...
...After the election, the Nigerians began to leave...
...But the administration has been a disaster for Africa...
...Sierra Leone would not be a country ofalnputees...
...Jackson, Payne, and Rice were with Clinton on his late-August trip to Nigeria...
...contingent in Rwanda from 5,ooo to only 270 troops, she had opposed leaving even that token force...
...It was not an agreement of ours...
...nor leaued on [Sierra Leonean] President Kabbah to open talks with the insurgents...
...I can only tell you this," she said, "that in my entire time at the United Nations I followed JOHN CORRY is The American Spectator's senior correspondent...
...They live today in a fortress-like palace, and are probably the two most disliked and despised people in Nigeria...
...proposals, and sign what would be called the Lome agreement...
...Nigeria sent peacekeepers to Liberia in 199o , and they remained there until 1997, when the "international community" sponsored an election...
...Jackson and the Black Caucus, however, had gotten along well with Ibrahim Babangida, the previous military ruler...
...But I screamed about the instructions I got on this...
...In fact, Payne's relationship with Taylor dates to the early 198o's , when Taylor was in prison in Massachusetts on a charge of embezzlement, and Payne, who was then a Newark official, argued against his extradition to Liberia...
...for $15 million...
...When ABC's Cokie Roberts asked her about the report and Lewis's statement, Albright invoked the Eichmann-in-Jerusalem defense...
...Meanwhile it declines to show repentance, and it keeps the same people in place...
...But as the New Republic then reported, in a devastating story by Ryan Lizza, "Even for the Clinton administration, it was an extraordinary lie...
...Taylor was then a mere warlord in neighboring Liberia, but he is now that country's president, and he runs it as a criminal enterprise...
...Policy-making has been farmed out to political hacks, opportunists, and liberal editorial writers, and the consequences may be seen in the body counts...
...The armored vehicles then sat on a runway in Germany while the U.N...
...Nigeria, with some ,io million people, is the world's most populous black country, and as it goes, so will much of Africa...
...When boys tried to escape, Sankoh's lieutenants chopped off their arms or legs...
...The White House said it would, but rather than turning the vehicles over to the Africans, it decided to rent them to the U.N...
...Rice, an Albright protEgd-she is, in fact, her godchild--told reporters that "the U.S...
...The world needs Nigeria to succeed," Clinton said when he got there, and, just this once, he may have been telling the truth...
...I felt they were wrong, and I made that point, but I was an ambassador under instructions...
...The White House now wants the Nigerians to return, and says it will do what it can to help them...
...But all this has now disappeared down the memory hole...
...The International Red Cross estimated that one million alreadv lnad died...
...Indeed amputation became the favored tactic in RUF's campaign for power...
...Meanwhile the death toll in Rwanda kept mounting, and a month later the Securib, Council decided to vote again...
...Man3: administrations have ignored Africa or treated it with benign neglect...
...Meanwhile you may buy Sani Abacha memorial posters and calendars in some parts of the country...
...First Rwanda, and then Sierra Leone...
...Actually Albright has found a way to live with it...
...The Nigerians suffered thousands of casualties...
...Ambassador Stephen Lewis of Canada, a member of the panel that drew up the report, told the New York Times that Rwanda had left "an ahnost incomprehensible scar on American policy--I don't know how Madeteine A]bright lives with it...
...Joseph Melrose, the plump, overbearing U.S...
...The administration says it had nothing to do with the Lome agreement, and dares anyone to deny that...
...Despairing of any U.N...
...Meanwhile, in addition to Jackson, Taylor also had a champion in New Jersey Democrat Donald Payne, the leading spokesman on Africa for the Congressional Black Caucus...
...between Freetown, the capital of Sierra Leone, and Lome, Togo, where the negotiations took place...
...The American Spectator - 0 c t o b e r 2 o o o .51...
...No American troops would have been involved, but the White House feared political repercussions in the congressional elections...
...Their Liberian peacekeeping mission was over, but then the democratically elected president of Sierra Leone was overthrown in a coup, and Nigeria sent troops to restore him to office...
...Ahnost immediately, though, a number of them were taken hostage and had their equipment stolen by RUF thugs...
...Then, on Christmas Eve 1989, he began a civil war using child soldiers...
...role in Sierra Leone...has been instrumental...
...Babangida also contributed at least $15o,oo0 to the Black Caucus Foundation, although that was only pin money for him...
...Taylor, however, escaped from prison, and returned to Liberia on his own...
...RUE had no political philosophy or agenda other than the seizure of power, and it was distinguished by its brutality...
...For one thing, his wife, Maryam, was widely regarded in Nigeria as the country's leading drug trafficker...
...The White House then dispatched a team from Washington to help draft the agreement that would make Sankoh the vice president of Sierra Leone...
...Sankoh forced boys to kill village elders or even their own parents, and then conscripted them into his rebel "family," while he maintained their loyalty with drugs...
...As a State Department spokesman told the press in June: "The U.S...
...action then, eight African nations said they would intervene in Rwanda if Washington would prov/de them with arnrored vehicles...
...But Jackson had a financial arrangement with Babangida, and while its extent will never be known, it almost certainly was substantial...
...Meanwhile the intervention was costing $1 million a day...
...But back now to Sierra Leone...
...Some 800,000 people were murdered in loo days, and as the report said, "this ultimately triggered a conflict in the heart of Africa that has directly or indirectly touched at least onethird of all nations on the continent...
...matter to the United States," he said in...
...The Nigerians, however, are skeptical, and you can hardly blame them for that...
...When confronted with what they have done, however, the policy-makers either suppress evidence or lie...
...T hat the administration would hand over Sierra Leone to Sankoh and Taylor may seem unimaginable, but there you are...
...When the Security Council voted to reduce the U.N...
...But mindful of his party's constituency, and, perhaps enamored by his own romantic vision, Bill Clinton has insisted can no longer choose not to know what is going on in Africa...
...With hands-on efforts by the president's special envoy Jesse Jackson, Ambassador Joe Melrose, and many others, the United States brokered the cease-fire and helped steer Sierra Leone's rebels, the Kabbah govermnent, and regional leaders to the negotiating table...
...We can only choose not to act--or to act...
...A Nigerian general sensibly told Taylor he would kill him if he interfered...
...Just this once, he may have told the truth...
...They also fought Foday Sankoh's thugs and murderers, who, even by the standards of bush war, were reaching new levels of atrocities--maiming and torturing people, and burning them alive...
...Nigeria needed help, especially in arms and equipment, but no help was forthcoming...
...We neither brokered [it...
...Prosthetic devices are now a major Sierra Leone import...
...Among Capitol Hill Africa specialists," the Nevp Republic pointed out, "Payne's sympathy for Taylor and Sankoh is the stuff of legend...
...In late 1998 , Jackson persuaded President Abroad Tejan Kabbah to "reach out" to Foday Sankoh, the leader of RUF, the .50 O c t o b e r 2 o o o _9 The American Spectator Revolutionary United Front...
...He is also a friend of Jackson...
...More important, it would give him, and, by extension, Charles Taylor, his patron, control of the country's diamond mines, its principal source of wealth...
...an impassioned speech to the National Summit on Africa earlier this ),ear...
...did not pressure anybody to sign this agreement...
...Indeed if the White House had recognized this before, Charles Taylor would have been penned up, and RUF's boy soldiers scattered...
...The White House eventually agreed to a 55 million reduction, but by then it no longer mattered...
...Moreover it said the genocide had been "preventable," and while it condemned France, in particular, for siding with the regime that carried out the genocide, it also criticized the United States...
...A/bright, still undeterred, got the vote postponed while the White House maneuvered...
...representative at the U.N., was instrumental in turning him down...
...His job was to persuade the reluctant President Kabbah to accept the U.S...
...When the exhausted Nigerians said they would leave there, the U.N...
...The White House now denies any involvement in the peace agreement that brought murderous rebels into the Sierra Leone government...
...Jackson is a bad joke gone sour...
...To show its compassion then, the administration said it would join in a project to remove the dead bodies that had washed down the Kagera River and into Lake Victoria...
...instructions because I was an ambassador...
Vol. 33 • October 2000 • No. 8
