Former Liberian president Charles Taylor was found guilty last week for his role in the Sierra Leonean civil war, but will the verdict help stop present and future conflicts, asks David Tresilian Former Liberian president Charles Taylor was convicted last week on 11 counts of crimes against humanity and war crimes committed in the West African state of Sierra Leone during the country's civil war in the 1990s, being found guilty on charges of "aiding and abetting" the rebel movements whose actions had led to the deaths of some 50,000 people and the cruel mutilation of many thousands of others. Taylor, president of neighbouring Liberia from 1997 to 2003 and a participant in the civil war that had earlier done so much to destroy that country, was found guilty of assisting Sierra Leonean rebels in carrying out acts of terrorism, murder, rape, sexual slavery, cruel treatment, inhumane acts including deliberately inflicted mutilation, enslavement, pillage and the recruitment and use of child soldiers. He was found guilty of "planning" military operations carried out by Sierra Leonean rebel forces, in addition to assisting them through providing "arms and ammunition, operational support, moral support and ongoing guidance." In its judgement, the Special Court for Sierra Leone, a mixed UN-Sierra Leone tribunal set up to try those indicted for war crimes and crimes against humanity in the country's civil war, said that Taylor had been found guilty on charges of aiding and abetting the rebel movements and planning actions in coordination with them. However, the tribunal, sitting in the Dutch city of The Hague, found that there was insufficient evidence to find Taylor guilty of a "Joint Criminal Enterprise" to destabilise West Africa or of ordering specific crimes. The verdict was welcomed by the Special Court prosecutor, US lawyer Brenda Hollis, who said that the "historic judgement reinforces the new reality that heads of state will be held to account for war crimes and international crimes." Taylor was indicted shortly before stepping down as president of Liberia, a position to which he had been elected in 1997, and he was later arrested and handed over to the UN-Sierra Leone tribunal by Nigerian authorities. He is the first former head of state to be indicted, tried and convicted by an international criminal tribunal. In a statement on the court's decision, Taylor's defence team, led by UK lawyer Courtenay Griffiths, said that "despite the prosecution's claims to the contrary, the court found that there was no evidence of either Taylor having command responsibility for crimes against humanity or war crimes, or of Joint Common Enterprise [sic] to destabilise the region." Griffiths had earlier written that "the prosecution of Charles Taylor before the Special Court for Sierra Leone has been irregular, selective and vindictive from its inception The case against Taylor has at its core political roots and motives, and the inexorable determination of the United States and Great Britain to have Taylor removed and kept out of Liberia." "The case directly raises the question of whether the judicial process can be fashioned into a political tool for use by powerful nations to remove democratically elected leaders of other nations that refuse to serve as their handmaidens and footstools." Taylor is expected to be sentenced on 16 May and will then have 14 days to appeal against the verdict. Despite arguments over the extent of Taylor's involvement in the civil war in Sierra Leone and whether or not his trial was politically motivated, there can be little disagreement over the catastrophe visited on the country in the 1990s or, presumably, the mechanisms that fuelled it. From at least the late 1980s onwards, a succession of piratical or locust regimes in Sierra Leone had been systematically looting the country of its mineral and other resources, rebel movements in the country's armed forces putting pressure on attempts to maintain law and order amid the decay and abandonment of the country's infrastructure. A coup d'état from within the military in 1992 ushered in a period of growing instability as quarrels within the ruling group, together with the loss of the east of the country to Revolutionary United Front (RUF) fighters, plunged the country into a state of civil war, inviting intervention from outside the country's borders and from those keen to get their hands on its diamonds and mineral resources. A further coup took place in 1997, again from within the Sierra Leonean armed forces, this time by a group calling itself the Armed Forces Revolutionary Council (AFRC). The AFRC, allied with the RUF, then occupied the capital Freetown, and it was apparently during this period that many of the worst atrocities of the civil war were committed. Civilians were routinely killed or mutilated, women raped, and children conscripted into the armed forces. Much of the country's already fragile infrastructure was destroyed by looting, with atrocities against the civilian population being carried out both by the AFRC-RUF rebel groups and by the Civil Defence Forces (CDF) that opposed them. It was only with the arrival of United Nations peacekeepers at the end of 1999, acting in conjunction with forces from ECOMOG, the Economic Community of West African States Monitoring Group representing ECOWAS, a consortium of anglophone and francophone West African states, that order started to be restored. The crisis in Sierra Leone could not have attained the gravity that it did, or led to such prolonged and bloody periods of military conflict, had it not been for essential ingredients from abroad. These came in the shape of the enormous sums to be made from selling off the country's resources and the concomitantly large amounts of money available for buying weapons. There was a fatal link between the export of the country's diamonds and the import of growing quantities of weapons, and it was this inward-outward traffic and the sums it generated that fuelled the civil war. Before the Taylor verdict, the UN-Sierra Leone tribunal, sitting in Freetown as well as in The Hague, had already tried AFRC and RUF commanders on charges of war crimes and crimes against humanity, convicting AFRC commanders Alex Tamba Brima, Ibrahim Bazzy Kamara and Santigie Borbor Kanu to between 45 and 50 years in prison and RUF commanders Issa Hassan Sesay, Morris Kallon and Augustine Gbao to between 15 and 52 years. Indictments against RUF commanders Foday Saybana Sankoh and Sam Bockarie were withdrawn following both men's deaths. CDF leaders Sam Hinga Norman, Moinina Fofana and Allieu Kondewa have been found guilty on various counts of war crimes, crimes against humanity and other violations of international law committed during the Sierra Leonean conflict. A warrant for the arrest of Johnny Paul Koroma, former leader of the AFRC, has been issued, though he is still at large. As far as Taylor is concerned, even aside from his involvement in the conflict in Sierra Leone, confirmed by the findings of the UN-Sierra Leone tribunal, he had earlier played a leading role in Liberia's own civil war from the early 1990s onwards, which had also gone a long way towards destroying that country. Having led a rebellion at the head of National Patriotic Front of Liberia (NPFL) forces against the government of president Samuel Doe, itself installed following a military coup in 1980 and accused of atrocities, Taylor's rule from 1997 onwards was marked by further instability and the looting of the country's resources. The violence was fuelled by the export of diamonds and the easy availability of weapons brought in from outside using illicit funds. In order to prevent the occurrence of further conflicts along the lines of those that took place in Liberia and Sierra Leone, and also to help stop those currently taking place, calls are being made for the serious implementation of the so-called Kimberley Process, set up by the UN in 2003 to police the export of so-called "blood diamonds". This set up an inspection system that requires all rough diamonds crossing international borders to be accompanied by a government-issued certificate attesting to their origin. Countries unable or unwilling to meet Kimberley Process requirements can find themselves excluded from international markets and unable to sell their diamonds. Commentators say that true justice for Liberia and Sierra Leone requires not only that Taylor and others be put on trial and that, if found guilty, they be appropriately sentenced, but also that Kimberley Process regulations be adhered to and that money and appropriate technical assistance be made available for economic and social reconstruction and development. Liberia and Sierra Leone now figure towards the bottom of the UNDP human development index, indicators for life expectancy, educational attainment, health and well-being all being low. Both countries have significant natural resources, including diamonds, and yet the vast majority of each country's population lives in poverty. The Kimberley Process has received the support of many NGOs concerned at the pillaging of resources, among them the UK-based organisation Global Witness. Invited to consult on the setting up of the Process, this withdrew from it last year, citing "one shoddy compromise after another that strips away its integrity and undermines its achievements." "The Kimberley Process has failed to deal with the trade in conflict diamonds from Cote d'Ivoire, breaches of the rules by Venezuela and diamonds fuelling corruption and state-sponsored violence in Zimbabwe." Even with Kimberley Process certification in place, "the trafficking of conflict and illicit stones is looking more like a dangerous rule than an exception," the group says, holding out the prospect of further resource-fuelled conflicts on the pattern of those that took place in Liberia and Sierra Leone. Commenting on the Taylor verdict, Global Witness pointed out that though international sanctions were imposed on Sierra Leone in the 1990s, with official Liberian diamond exports supposedly only amounting to $900,000, in fact diamond imports into Belgium alone reached $270 million. Many of these diamonds could have come from Sierra Leone, smuggled out through Liberia. As a result, the RUF in Sierra Leone, controlling the country's diamond mines and using slave labour, received up to $125 million a year during the rebellion. This would have been "more than enough to sustain its military activities", whatever the assistance it received from Charles Taylor.
