Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Liberal Peace and Post-Conflict
Liberal Peace and Post-Conflict
Liberal Peace and Post-Conflict
Studies
Series Editor
Oliver P. Richmond
University of Manchester
Manchester
United Kingdom
This agenda-setting series of research monographs, now more than a
decade old, provides an interdisciplinary forum aimed at advancing inno-
vative new agendas for approaches to, and understandings of, peace and
conflict studies and International Relations. Many of the critical volumes
the series has so far hosted have contributed to new avenues of analysis
directly or indirectly related to the search for positive, emancipatory, and
hybrid forms of peace. New perspectives on peacemaking in practice and
in theory, their implications for the international peace architecture, and
different conflict-affected regions around the world, remain crucial. This
series’ contributions offers both theoretical and empirical insights into
many of the world’s most intractable conflicts and any subsequent
attempts to build a new and more sustainable peace, responsive to the
needs and norms of those who are its subjects.
Liberal Peace
and Post-Conflict
Peacebuilding
in Africa
Patrick Tom
Mindleag Limited
St Andrews, Fife, United Kingdom
The study could not have been completed without the help of a number of
people and organizations in various locations. To begin with, I express my
sincere gratitude to the Allan and Nesta Ferguson Charitable Trust
(through the University of St. Andrews) for funding, the Gilchrist
Educational Trust and University of St. Andrews’ School of
International Relations for providing me with research grants that allowed
me to undertake fieldwork in Sierra Leone.
I would like to thank Oliver P. Richmond for the useful suggestions and
encouragement. Thanks are due to Ian Taylor, Faye Donnelly, Ali Watson
and Ezekiel Conteh. I would also like to thank all the people who parti-
cipated in the research in Sierra Leone, without them this book would not
have been realized. I also express my sincere gratitude to Dennis Gbambor
James, a friend and former classmate at the University of Leeds for putting
me in contact with his friends in Sierra Leone, who then introduced me to
other prospective participants, his wife Jenneh Ann-Marie James, Farai
Muronzi, Nassal Millicent Kamara, Reverends Peter Kainwo and Joseph
Victor Gbango and their families, Kormahun Moriba Vonjoe, Moses
Coomber, Michael Charles and Peter Amara for hosting me during my
fieldwork in various sites in Sierra Leone, I owe this to you.
My special thanks to my sister-in-law, Ellen Chirindo, for proofreading
parts of this book. I must express my gratitude to my wife Loice and family
for their strong support, my sons Rangariraishe and Tawananyasha for
their patience and resilience during the course of researching and writing
of this book.
vii
viii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
1 Introduction 1
ix
x CONTENTS
11 Conclusion 203
Bibliography 209
Index 235
LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS
xi
xii LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS
Introduction
Since the end of the Cold War intrastate conflicts have threatened developing
states more than interstate ones. These conflicts have resulted in the death
of millions of civilians. Africa has had the largest number of such conflicts and
displaced people in the world. Despite increased international attention on the
conflicts in the past two decades, civil wars are not a new phenomenon in
Africa, for example Congo (1960–1964), Nigeria (Biafra) (1967–1970),
Chad (1965–1979), Angola (1975–2002), Mozambique (1975–1994) and
Sudan (Southern Sudan) (1955–1972).
However, the 1990s witnessed an increase in violent intrastate conflicts
in sub-Saharan Africa, which became increasingly viewed as a serious
threat to international peace and security. This was generally attributed
to a number of factors including the end of the Cold War that left many
African states in a weaker position because superpowers withdrew their
support, which had enabled African leaders to control internal threats; the
collapse of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR), which resulted
in the international system’s realignment; the failure of the state and its
institutions and the inappropriateness of the Westphalian system as an
international order. In Africa, civil wars were further attributed to a
number of causes that are linked to the nature of the African state.
During the 1990s, the issue of ‘state collapse’ and ‘state failure’ became
an issue of international concern. This period witnessed the emergence of
an international consensus that failed or collapsed states, and non-state
actors posed a serious threat to international peace and security more than
how this impact on the nature of peace being built. Moreover, critical
literature fails to engage with the types of hybridity that are emerging in
these contexts and their implications for durable peace. This book aims
to engage with such issues and it will use the concept of hybridity as a
conceptual approach in understanding the dynamics in post-conflict
environments in the context of liberal peacebuilding.
In order to achieve this, the book, in addition to drawing on fieldwork in
Sierra Leone, expands on Robert Belloni’s (2012) typology of hybridity to
discuss the types of hybridity that are emerging in post-conflict Sierra
Leone including the possibilities of hybridity that can result in emancipa-
tion. Although a number of recent articles have addressed the interaction of
traditional or locally determined forms of governance and patrimonial
politics with the liberal peace in Sierra Leone (Fanthorpe 2005; Jackson
2005; Sawyer 2008; Richards 2005b; Albrecht 2010; Labonte 2011;
Acemoglu et al. 2013) as well as hybridity, politics, development, security
and law in relation to traditional forms of governance in Africa (Buur and
Kyed 2006; Kleist 2011; Lund 2006; Obarrio 2010; Renders and
Terlinden 2010), tackling this dynamic from the perspective of types of
hybridity – and in particular through Robert Belloni’s framework – pro-
vides a fresh perspective. International peacebuilding and statebuilding
(which is also linked to security sector reform) in Sierra Leone has been
presented as a ‘liberal peace project’, emphasizing the transformation of the
Sierra Leone society along liberal lines, economically and politically with
the aim of establishing a stable and peaceful Sierra Leonean society. The
book will attempt to define and discuss in depth what the ‘liberal peace
project’ in Sierra Leone consists of, and how it is different from local
forms/ideas of peace.
The book makes theoretical and empirical contributions to the emer-
ging debates on hybrid forms of peace/‘post-liberal’ peace. In applying
concepts of power, hybridity and resistance, and providing different
kinds of hybridity and resistance to explore post-conflict peacebuilding
in Sierra Leone, the book makes an original contribution to the literature
by providing various ways in which power can be exercised not just
between locals and internationals but also among locals themselves and
the nature of peace that is produced. Moreover, the book provides
various ways in which hybridity and resistance can be manifested.
A more rigorous development of these concepts offers a better under-
standing of the nature of these concepts, and also helps us to distinguish
forms of hybridity and resistance that are emancipatory/transformatory
1 INTRODUCTION 5
their nature, legitimacy and effectiveness, what causes peace, the nature of
peace to be built, the owner(s) of the peace and how the international
actors should relate with local actors. While it is widely acknowledged that
the dominant liberal peace model is in crisis and that on the whole,
international peacebuilding has not achieved the intended goal of helping
war-torn societies transform from states of violent conflict to self-sustain-
ing peace and economic development, the debate over the liberal peace
reflects a polarization between mainstream and critical scholars.
Concurring with critical scholars, in this chapter, I argue that it is vital
for the international actors to more seriously consider the local context
and needs, and the forms of peace that are being produced as ‘the local’
and the international interact, if lasting peace is going to be established in
post-conflict situations.
In Chapter 5, hybridity, power and resistance are regarded as essential
in understanding local agency and hybrid forms of peace. This chapter
conceptualizes hybridity, power and resistance as well as identify typolo-
gies of hybridity. It is crucial to distinguish forms of hybridity that are
useful in promoting emancipation from those that do not change people’s
circumstances, that is, those that are futile, regressive or an accommoda-
tion with power. This is also crucial in helping us understand the form and
quality of peace that is being produced in post-conflict environments that
are experiencing liberal peacebuilding. This chapter adopts concepts of
hybridity, power and resistance as a way of understanding hybrid forms of
peace that are emerging in post-war Sierra Leone and the agency of local
actors in peacebuilding.
Chapter 6 provides a comprehensive account of the causes and evolu-
tion of the civil war in Sierra Leone. It takes a long-term historical account
of the causes of the crisis. A comprehensive account of the background to
the civil war in Sierra Leone is useful in helping us gain a more intimate
understanding of the local context and its possible challenges to the liberal
peace and the building of durable peace as well as the quality of peace
being produced in Sierra Leone. This chapter first discusses historical
factors (Sierra Leone’s pre-colonial and colonial inheritance) that laid a
weak foundation for the modern state and its path to dictatorship, corrup-
tion, state failure, civil war and state collapse. It also offers a brief overview
of the nature of the civil war in Sierra Leone.
Chapter 7 provides a discussion of liberal peacebuilding in Sierra
Leone, and its positive and unintended consequences. It argues that
contemporary peacebuilding in Sierra Leone is a ‘liberal peacebuilding
1 INTRODUCTION 7
INTRODUCTION
This chapter provides a broad historical overview of political organization in
the pre-colonial, colonial and post-colonial periods and the challenges that a
number of post-colonial African states are facing, including that of building
viable states and sustainable peace. Colonial rule saw Africans not being
given an opportunity to define the world from their own position and
existential realities. This was done for them and continues in modern
Africa. It is also important to understand how externally imposed policies
including liberalization policies have contributed to the restructuring of
African societies and how this has contributed to instability in these societies.
The chapter first attempts to justify why Africa’s past matters in discussions
of international peacebuilding, then discusses European representations of
Africa, the nature of the pre-colonial political institutions, and colonial and
post-colonial states in Africa. It offers generalizations about the nature of the
African pre-colonial political institutions and the colonial state.1 It will then
look at the general characteristics of Africa’s post-colonial states, challenges
from the period of their inception and external intervention in their affairs.
By so doing, this chapter aims at providing a background on the un-
derstanding of why attempts at Western-style liberal democracies in post-
conflict environments are shallow, and as such, supporting the idea
that peacebuilding should emphasize agency and activities of people in
the host-societies. It is hard to talk about the present situation in Africa
international tournaments: the 2003 Cricket World Cup and the 1995
Rugby World Cup. Contrary to this, when terrorists murdered 11
Israelites athletes at the Munich Olympics in 1972, the games continued
as abandoning them would have been perceived as victory for the
terrorists.
More recently, the Ebola disease that ravaged three West African nations
of Sierra Leone, Liberia and Guinea witnessed the epidemic becoming
one of the biggest news stories in 2014, with Africa being associated with
it – helping to reinforce old stereotypes about Africa, for example, as a place
of disease. The World Health Organization (WHO) Director-General, Dr
Margaret Chan described the Ebola crisis as not only a health crisis but also
a social, economic and humanitarian crisis as well as a threat to national
security beyond the affected countries. As the healthcare systems in Sierra
Leone, Liberia and Guinea struggled to cope and were facing collapse, the
UN established the United Nations Mission for Ebola Emergency Response
(UNMEER) to contain the outbreak. However, there was a lot of panic and
fear not only in affected countries but also around the world. As Africa
became associated with Ebola, Africans felt stigmatized. Several cases of
Ebola panic, for instance, were reported in the USA with a number of
Africans (including those from countries not experiencing Ebola) facing
discrimination. For instance, on social media, it was reported that three
students returning to Inola high school in Oklahoma from a mission trip in
Ethiopia caused an Ebola scare at the school preventing students from
attending class. In Maple Shade, New Jersey, some parents forced two
children who had just moved from Rwanda to miss the start of school at
Howard Yocum Elementary school due to Ebola panic. The children had to
wait until the virus’s incubation period of 21 days had passed. Yet, the
problem of Ebola largely remained limited to the three West African coun-
tries. Much of Africa remained Ebola-free.
The picture that is often painted about African societies before the
coming of Europeans is chaotic, barbaric, violent, dangerous, mysterious,
diseased, dark and ungovernable. In his Lectures of the Philosophy of World
History, the nineteenth-century German philosopher, Geog Wilhelm
Friedrich Hegel described what he called ‘Africa proper’4 as ‘[ . . . ] the
land of childhood, removed in the light of self-conscious history and
wrapped in the dark mantle of night [ . . . ]’ (1975: 174). Besides denying
rationality to black Africans and relegating ‘Africa proper’ to ‘a land of
childhood’ and ‘immaturity’, ‘barbarism’ and with no international rela-
tions as well as being ‘difficult to comprehend’, Hegel denied its own
14 LIBERAL PEACE AND POST-CONFLICT PEACEBUILDING IN AFRICA
disputes (see, for example, Horton 1971; Middleton and Tait 1958; Fyle
1999; Evans-Pritchard 1969). In stateless societies, there were cultural
institutions that not only provided blood ties but also cohesion (Fyle
1999). A combination of the ties including common ritual ties that they
shared formed the basis for cooperation. Segments of society had equal
power and balanced each other in disputes, which was essential for main-
taining social order and stability.
and custom (Ali 1990). This made it difficult for the king or chief to
make unilateral decisions as he faced resistance from the secret societies
and the community. For instance, during the colonial period, Paramount
Chiefs who owed their positions to British patronage often made moves
to consolidate their positions using any means available; however, Poro
societies would coordinate resistance to such chiefs (Fanthorpe 2007).
For example, in 1956, a Commission of inquiry that was established to
investigate the causes of widespread riots in hinterland Sierra Leone
against Paramount Chiefs’ governance between November 1955 and
March 1956 reported that men’s secret societies coordinated the riots
(Government of Sierra Leone 1956).
Moreover, consensus over substantive decisions was a central feature in
most traditional African political systems allowing rulers to exercise power
and authority via some form of consultation with the people. As Fortes and
Evans-Pritchard point out, the ‘structure of an African State implies that
kings and chiefs ruled by consent. A ruler’s subjects are as fully aware of the
duties he owes to them as they are of the duties they owe to him, and are
able to exert pressure to make him discharge these duties’ (1940: 12).
On the occasion of the chief’s accession to power, his followers
submitted a whole series of taboos and injunctions to him reminding him
of responsibilities which he accepted and put limits to his power.5 The
following are some of the examples of the injunctions that the Akan people
of Ghana declared to the chief: ‘we do not wish that he should be disobe-
dient’ and ‘we do not wish that he should act on his own initiative’ (Gykeye
1997: 122). This shows that accountability and some form of social contract
existed between the ruler and the governed in such societies. It is not
surprising that a chief who abused power would experience resistance
from his followers including the withholding of tribute. Furthermore, dis-
gruntled subjects could remove the unpopular chief from power. Moreover,
most of the pre-colonial states in Africa had no fixed boundaries making it
easy for disgruntled subjects to abandon their chief, relocate and settle in
areas outside his control. However, this changed with the colonization of
Africa by European countries from the late nineteenth century.
While the European colonizers gave the impression that they wanted to
promote political rights on the continent, in reality the colonial state did
not accept the African as an equal citizen who had political rights to be
protected and promoted. The African was portrayed as inferior as well as a
child who needed the protection of Europeans: ‘This type [the African]
has some wonderful characteristics. It has largely remained a child type,
with a child psychology and outlook. A child-like human cannot be a bad
human, for we are not in spiritual matters bidden to be like unto little
children’ (Smuts 1930: 75).
Although the African was regarded as a child, the colonial state could
not protect him/her, but subjected him/her to violence and abuse. Faced
with resistance, the colonial state had to rely on violence and coercion to
gain legitimacy among Africans. As Gyekye contends:
Despite the use of violence and coercion, the colonial state continued to
face resistance from the colonized and found it difficult to gain legitimacy
from them. Besides the use of violence and coercion, all over Africa colonial
domination was entrenched in a ‘politics of collaboration’ (Boone 1994).
For instance, in British colonies there was a shift from ‘direct rule’ to
‘indirect rule’. Direct rule involved the British colonizers imposing their
system and culture on Africans and their institutions with attempts to
eliminate ‘barbaric’ indigenous institutions and customs. Indirect rule
was the opposite of direct rule as the British sought to govern their colonies
via indigenous rulers and customary law. Smuts viewed the new policy of
indirect rule as a means to ‘foster an indigenous native culture or system of
cultures, and to cease to force the African into alien European moulds’
(1930: 84). The British gave the chiefs and native councils the authority to
run affairs in their own areas, however, under the supervision of the
2 AFRICA BEFORE, DURING AND AFTER COLONIAL RULE 21
colonial rulers. Chiefs who resisted were removed from power and the
British would impose one. Thus, the chiefs and native councils no longer
derived their authority from the people, but from the colonial government.
It was thought that the new system would preserve traditional institutions,
keeping ‘intact as far as possible the native system of organisation and social
discipline’ (Smuts 1930: 99). However, colonial rule whether direct
or indirect had a negative impact on pre-colonial African forms of political
authority.
One of the outcomes of indirect rule was the creation of a dualistic
form of political power and authority as well as a plural legal order
(European colonial law and indigenous law, and in some societies such
as in Sierra Leone, Islamic law in addition to the two). The concept of
legal pluralism has been used to refer to the existence of plural legal
orders. As for dualistic forms of authority, two realms existed – the
realisms of state sovereignty and traditional governance (Sklar 1993).
Under such arrangements competition and negotiations for legitimacy
and sovereign authority between state elites and chiefs often occurred.
At times, it resulted in the co-option and regulation of chiefs. This of
course also meant the formal recognition of traditional leaders and
institutions. At times the competition also implied either the repression
or the lack of recognition or the abolition of customary institutions and
practices.
Besides constituting a political structure that supported the process of
peasantization, indirect rule saw the ‘strongmen’ in rural Africa becoming
links in hierarchical chains consisting various forms of ‘personal rule’
(Boone 1994). Chiefs often used coercive measures to collect tax from
their followers and to recruit them as farm and mine laborers for a despotic
colonial government. The chief became both a ‘native authority’ and an
administrative agent of the colonial regime. As such, the British colonial
policy of indirect rule produced despotic chiefs and dysfunctional hybrid
forms of governance at the local level, resulting in what Mamdani (1996)
has called ‘decentralized despotism’.
The colonial chain of command included the European field adminis-
trators, the field officers, commandants de circle and the chiefs (who were
below this chain of command) (Boone 1994). Colonial administrators
wielded a lot of power:
Indeed, colonial administration did not serve the needs and interests of the
governed and it was not based on social contract. Whatever methods the
colonialists used were designed to serve the interests of imperial govern-
ments. As Davidson (1992: 12) puts it: ‘So these, being alien models failed
to achieve legitimacy in the eyes of a majority of African citizens, and soon
proved unable to protect and promote the interests of those citizens, save for
a privileged few’. This meant coercion could be used if it served the interests
of the colonial government. Colonial rule which was won via violence and
had to be maintained through the use of violence and coercion. Young
(1994) uses the image of Bula Matari (the crusher of rocks) to describe
the autocratic nature of the colonial state. In the Congo, the Belgians under
King Leopold committed atrocities against the Congolese, used them as
cheap labor as well as exploited the Congo’s resources for the much needed
raw materials in the metropolitan state.6 In Zimbabwe colonial rule was also
exercised using brutality and dispossession. For example, the late 1890s
witnessed the British settlers forcibly removing indigenous people away
from the most productive land to newly created tribal reserves that had
infertile soils such as Gwai and Shangani in Matabeleland.7 Consequently,
the indigenous people were denied rights to own land in the most agricul-
turally productive parts of the country. Thus, they ended up serving the
settlers by providing manual labor on the commercial farms, in industry and
on the mines. This also contributed to the weakening of pre-colonial political
structures. Moreover, alterations in production in rural areas and in regard to
control over economic surpluses also contributed to the destabilization of
indigenous political systems (Boone 1994). Similarly, Young (1994: 9)
observes that the African colonial state ‘totally reordered political space,
societal hierarchies and cleavages, and modes of economic production’.
One of the key characteristics of the colonial state was dominance, hence
its destruction of many traditional African political institutions using means
that would enhance hegemony over the territory under its rule.
As Young (1994) contends, although the African colonial state enjoyed
some of the defining attributes of stateness (territory,8 population, power,
law and state as an idea), it lacked three crucial traits for a modern state,
namely, external actor, sovereignty and nation. The colonial state was not
an actor in the international system. Sovereignty is understood in two
2 AFRICA BEFORE, DURING AND AFTER COLONIAL RULE 23
senses: internal and external. External sovereignty implies that the state is
an international legal person and internal sovereignty exists when the state
has unlimited theoretical domination over its citizens (Young 1994). Since
imperial states had full control over the government of the colonies (with
the help of their agents of rule), African colonial states lacked sovereignty.
Since in many parts of Africa many unrelated areas and peoples were
joined together, colonial rule denied various nations in Africa their right to
freedom, independence and self-rule. As noted earlier, in Africa colonialism
resulted in people from a wide range of languages, histories and cultures
being put within one state. Unlike in Europe where nation-states were a
result of local social forces, the modern nation-state in Africa emerged from
colonial oppression. Indeed, as Gyekye rightly puts it, the ‘conquerors who
shepherded different nationalities into nation-states failed to realise that it is
one thing to make Ghana or Kenya or Yugoslavia; it is quite another to
make Ghanaians or Kenyans or Yugoslavs’ (1997: 82). As such, most of the
states in Africa face a challenge of populations that are divided along
political lines, posing a serious threat to political stability within the states
as well as in neighboring states. This colonial legacy was inherited by Africa
and has continued to be a serious challenge for the post-colonial state,
leading Davidson (1992) to comment that the nation-state has proved to
be a curse for post-colonial Africa.
For the first generation of African leaders, a focus on these issues was
crucial for promoting unity, peace, stability and security on the continent.
In Africa, the decolonization process created a wave of optimism, and
expectations of rapid economic growth. The transition from colonial rule
to independence was not easy for many African states as the legacies of
colonialism created challenges that proved difficult to deal with. For
instance, the colonial creation of artificial state boundaries in which a
variety of ethnic groups were lumped together and often many commu-
nities straddling boundaries with neighboring states presented two main
challenges for post-colonial governments: first, the likelihood of irredent-
ism; and second, the possibility of intra-ethnic conflict (Thomson 2000).
External observers and the new African leaders shared the expectation of
widespread and protracted border disputes with Kwame Nkrumah, the
president of Ghana, warning in 1958 against the risks inherent in the
colonial ‘legacies of irredentism and tribalism’ (Touval 1999: vii). For
instance, at independence in 1960, Somali nationalist leaders sought to
unite Somali-inhabited territories in the Horn of Africa under the political
authority of Somalia, which colonialism had divided. Article 6(4) of
Somalia’s 1960 constitution states that the ‘Somali Republic shall pro-
mote, by legal and peaceful means, the union of Somali territories’. There
was a drive to unite ethnic Somalis in Ethiopia, Kenya and Djibouti under
the Somali polity. As a result, border disputes erupted between Somalia
and Ethiopia over the Ogaden region of Ethiopia, and between Kenya and
Somalia over the North Eastern province of Kenya inhabited by a large
population of Somalis.
Faced with the problem of border disputes, it is not surprising that
the OAU in its first ordinary session of the Assembly of Heads of
State and Government held between 17 and 21 July 1964 in Cairo,
Egypt, adopted a resolution on border disputes which recognized
that the border challenge constituted ‘a grave and permanent factor
of dissention’ and also that the borders of African states at indepen-
dence constituted ‘a tangible reality’. The OAU decided to retain
and legitimate colonial boundaries declaring that all Member
States ‘pledge themselves to respect the frontiers existing on their
achievement of national independence’. As Davidson contends, the
26 LIBERAL PEACE AND POST-CONFLICT PEACEBUILDING IN AFRICA
The ex-colonial states have been internationally enfranchised and possess the
same external rights and responsibilities as all other sovereign states: juridical
statehood. At the same time, however, many have not yet been authorised
and empowered domestically and consequently lack the institutional features
of sovereign states as also defined by classical international law. (1990: 21)
2 AFRICA BEFORE, DURING AND AFTER COLONIAL RULE 27
Centralization of Power
In response to this challenge, African leaders resorted to the centraliza-
tion of power banning multi-party politics as they saw such form of
politics as anti-progress and divisive, and therefore, a potential threat
to peace, unity and stability. Moreover, the dominant view at the time
was that the main task of the post-colonial state was to pursue social and
economic development. Competition between various political parties
was seen as a potential threat to progress and unity. For instance, Kwame
Nkrumah, the president of Ghana, rejected Ashanti claims for autonomy.
He became a strong critic of the multi-party system in Ghana. Other
African leaders who dismantled the multi-party system in their states
include Felix Houphouet-Boigny of Côte d’Ivoire, Kenneth Kaunda of
Zambia, Ahmed Sekou Toure of Guinea and Julius Nyerere of Tanzania.
The African leaders justified their actions on the grounds that this would
promote national unity in the new African states. A strong government
was considered essential in welding the nation together that was divided
along ethnic lines. It was argued that the single-party system represented
‘the will of all the people’, it permitted ‘mass participation in decision-
making’ and in so doing encouraged ‘the development of a sense of
personal responsibility in government’ (Cowan 1964: 8). Furthermore,
African leaders argued that a single-party system was more democratic
than the West’s multi-party system since it did not ‘represent only the
interest of a group, a section or an economic class in the population’
(Cowan 1964: 8). Thus, in many African countries, the Western-style
institutions of parliamentary government that colonial rule had estab-
lished were dismantled and opposition movements, the media and civil
28 LIBERAL PEACE AND POST-CONFLICT PEACEBUILDING IN AFRICA
The Western nations – Britain, the United States, France and others – have
taken generations to develop those political institutions which they feel will
best serve the needs of their societies, and the process is by no means
finished. The parliaments, and the parliamentary forms devised by Britain
and France and deeded to the colonies in Africa, were developed as a felt
response over the course of centuries to the needs of European societies. It is
not expected that these institutions will always meet the needs of African
societies, whose traditions and backgrounds differ from our own.
literature has dealt with the subjects of personal rule, clientelism and the
neo-patrimonial nature of many African states, this chapter will not pro-
vide a detailed discussion of this here.11 Local ‘big men’ became central
figures in African politics, thus displacing the local governments that the
post-colonial state had inherited from the pre-colonial state, as will be
shown in Chapter 6 in relation to Sierra Leone. Such local ‘big men’
manipulated various ethnic groups for personal gain including access to
state resources. Chazan and others note that, ‘Competition over access to
and control of state resources nurtured an instrumental view of politics in
which the public domain was seen as a channel for individual or partisan
enrichment’ (1999: 12). Thus, it is not surprising that in the 1970s, a
number of African states experienced political, economic and social chal-
lenges: brutal leaders who were intolerant to popular opposition, military
regimes12 and civil wars, and the economic failure. Brutal leaders who
emerged during this period include Jean-Bedel Bokassa of the Central
African Republic and Idi Amini of Uganda. Thus, in the late 1970s, the
post-colonial state was variously labeled: pirate, predatory or even vampire
state (Young 2004: 37).
Moreover, most post-African states’ economies could not meet the
economic expectations of development. Africans who at independence
had high expectations of their government to promote development that
would see an improvement of their lives were left disillusioned as their
governments failed to meet their expectations.13 One of the implications
of this was the damage done to state legitimacy. Writing about state
legitimacy, Englebert (2000: 4) notes that a state is considered legitimate
‘when its structures have evolved endogenously to its own society and there
is some level of historical continuity to its institutions. State legitimacy is
thus a historical, structural condition of the entire state apparatus’. Using
this definition of state legitimacy, the post-colonial African state lacked
legitimacy. Since the leaders of the new African states faced a serious
challenge to ‘acquire sufficient hegemony over their society in order to
stabilize and routinize their power’, it became hard for them to ‘use devel-
opmental policies and institutions to generate support for themselves’, since
these needed ‘a level of bureaucratic loyalty and a degree of supply response
from private agents [ . . . ]’ (Englebert 2000: 5). As the post-colonial African
state lacked this, it promoted the growth of corruption, rent-seeking, pre-
dation and patronage among other activities in many African states.
Consequently, the state’s capacity to provide institutions necessary for
fostering economic growth was severely curtailed. In this case, African
30 LIBERAL PEACE AND POST-CONFLICT PEACEBUILDING IN AFRICA
leaders, just like any other political actors, had to ‘respond rationally to the
historical constraints that they [had] inherited’ (Englebert 2000: 7). The
structures that the post-colonial state inherited from colonialism could not
promote both economic growth and technological advancement. The neo-
patrimonialism mechanism became a means of maintaining the state on ‘an
inadequate social and economic base’ (Clapham 2002: 780). However, this
tended to undermine the state’s effectiveness. With the world recession of
the late 1970s, many African states faced serious economic crisis that to
some extent threatened neo-patrimonial relations since they became
increasingly dependent on external actors, including their international
patrons, especially the USA and the USSR, and international donors.
Such actors also became involved in the internal affairs of these states,
thus contributing to the undermining of the principle of state sovereignty
that the OAU had advocated at its inception in the early 1960s.
Foreign Intervention
Besides the internal political factors that led to the crumbling of domes-
tic political order in Africa, external meddling in the internal affairs of
African states in the post-independence period also contributed to many
of the challenges that are affecting them today.14 This includes military
and political intervention during the periods of decolonization (1956–
1975) and the Cold War (1945–1991) which was largely extra-conti-
nental as the colonial powers, the USA, China, Cuba and the Soviet
Union involved themselves in conflicts in African states (see Schmidt
2013). Former colonial powers (mainly France, Britain, Belgium and
Portugal) wanted to control the decolonization process hoping to
establish neo-colonial regimes that would protect their economic and
political interests. Neo-colonialism became the order of the day in post-
independence Africa. As Kwame Nkrumah wrote in his Neo-colonialism:
The Last Stage of Imperialism, ‘The essence of neo-colonialism is that the
state which is subject to it is, in theory, independent and has all the
outward trappings of international sovereignty. In reality its economic
system and thus its political policy is directed from outside’ (1965: ix).
Neo-colonialism in Africa became an obstacle to political integration and
good and effective leadership on the continent as former colonial powers
supported even authoritarian regimes as long as such regimes protected
their strategic geopolitical interests, not those of ordinary Africans.
A typical example of a neo-colonial agent is Mobuto Sese Seko of Zaire
2 AFRICA BEFORE, DURING AND AFTER COLONIAL RULE 31
CONCLUSION
History is a very significant, but much overlooked factor in the experiences
of conflict-prone societies in Africa and most importantly, the history of
external intervention in Africa. Here, I am not just referring to European
colonialization of Africa that led to the creation of states with artificial
political boundaries, which undermined existing political institutions and
their particular insertion into the world economy, but also the impact of
foreign intervention during the Cold War on African states, and the failed
development experiments that powerful international actors have imposed
on sub-Saharan Africa, from the immediate post-independence period
(the 1960s) including the SAPs, now dressed up as Poverty Reduction
Strategies Papers. It is crucial to understand how these external economic
policies have restructured African societies as well as increased inequalities
in these societies. As the chapter has shown, in addition to the political
culture in Africa, this has contributed to the explosion of so many fragile
states in Africa. Interestingly, as will be discussed in the following chapters,
the last two decades have witnessed international actors attempting to
bring back such states from anarchy and violent conflict using the same
policies without an understanding of the context in which peacebuilding
programs are implemented including the root causes of the conflict and
the political culture in the host state.
NOTES
1. The use of the term ‘state’ in the singular as in colonial state or post-
colonial state reflects the similarities found in these states that significantly
influence their political culture. It is crucial to point out that I do acknowl-
edge the diversity of Africa and that it should not be portrayed as
36 LIBERAL PEACE AND POST-CONFLICT PEACEBUILDING IN AFRICA
12. Thomson (2000) has observed that between 1952 and 1990 Africa experi-
enced 71 military coups that overthrew governments in 60 per cent of the
continent’s states.
13. Not all African countries faced a decline in economic growth and the crisis
varied widely. For example, Botswana has been labeled a success story, ‘an
African miracle’ (see Samatar 1999), given its fast rate of economic growth;
Ghana, Sierra Leone, Zaire and Sudan were of persistent economic crisis,
while other countries such as Benin, Burkina Faso and Senegal stagnated
and others including Mozambique, Uganda, Angola and Central Africa
Republic, external intervention and civil war lowered the growth rates (see
Faber and Green 1985).
14. For an interesting and detailed discussion of foreign intervention since
decolonization, see Schmidt (2013).
15. There is an extensive literature on the low or negative growth rates in Africa
from the late 1970s to the early 1980s, this section will not provide a
detailed discussion of it (see, e.g., Sahn 1994; Faber and Green 1985; The
World Bank 1981, 1983, 1994; Englebert 2000; Lawrence 1986).
CHAPTER 3
Peacebuilding, Statebuilding
and Liberal Peace
The violent intrastate conflicts in many parts of Africa and other parts of
the developing world that coincided with the end of the Cold War
witnessed an increasing change in both the norms and practice of inter-
national response to violent intrastate conflict, involving both state and
non-state actors. In response to this, the UN took a leading role in
multidimensional peace support operations that were aimed at preventing
a return to conflict and promoting durable peace in situations including
Namibia (1989), Cambodia (1991–1992), Mozambique (1992–1994),
Bosnia and Herzegovina (1995–2002), El Salvador (1991–1995), Haiti
(1993–1996, the Central African Republic (1998–2000), Sierra Leone
(1999–2005) and East Timor (1999–2002). Since the UN’s traditional
peacekeeping approach primarily sought to minimize interstate conflict
through monitoring ceasefires between hostile states, it could not match
the emerging post-Cold War peace and security challenges in low-income
countries. Peacebuilding could no longer be limited to keeping warring
parties from returning to conflict, but also addressing the root causes of
conflict including promoting development. Underdevelopment became
increasingly linked with violent conflict and insecurity in low-income
countries. This was later linked to security and terrorism, particularly, in
the so-called collapsed, failed, failing and weak states. The development of
the concept of statebuilding in the 1990s should be seen as a response to
the challenges that such states posed. Moreover, the 11 September 2001
terrorist attacks on the USA witnessed the international community
CONCEPTUALIZING ‘POST-CONFLICT’
The concept ‘post-conflict’ has been used in various senses and at times in
a confusing way. As Lambach (2007) points out, the challenge about the
concept of post-conflict relates to the fact that the prefix ‘post-’ is a
temporal signifier that is attached to a noun ‘conflict’ that does not have
a fixed temporal content. For him, an outcome of this is that the idea of
post-conflict leads to a mental dichotomy that transforms ‘conflict’ into a
synonym of war and post-conflict into a synonym of peace. In this dichot-
omy, the idea of ‘conflict’ relates to situations in which organized groups
engage in acts of violence against each other. For instance, a state against a
rebel movement, and this is conducted in accordance with a dominant
conflict narrative, whereas, post-conflict would mean the end of such
violence, and a return to normalcy and peace (Lambach 2007).
3 PEACEBUILDING, STATEBUILDING AND LIBERAL PEACE 41
POST-CONFLICT PEACEBUILDING
During the Cold War the UN did not give political currency to the concept
of peacebuilding. Its emphasis was more on preserving the territorial integ-
rity of conflicting states through monitoring ceasefire agreements, creating
buffer zones and peacekeeping, among others, partly as a result of conflict-
ridden power politics between the USA and USSR, and their allies during
the Cold War. The end of the Cold War coincided with an increase in
intrastate conflicts and civil wars that posed a serious new threat to
3 PEACEBUILDING, STATEBUILDING AND LIBERAL PEACE 43
international peace and security as well as human welfare. At the same time,
it provided the UN and other international actors with an opportunity to be
involved in efforts aimed at ending such violent conflicts within states in
different parts of the developing world. It appeared peace could now be
enforced as the impediment (the Cold War) to its enforcement had ended.
Media images of untold suffering of civilians in states from Africa to the
Balkans to Central Asia experiencing violent intrastate conflict played a
crucial role helping such societies to receive high-level international atten-
tion. Since the conflicts posed serious threats to international peace and
security, it was vital for the UN Security Council to respond to them and
take the lead in dealing with them. The dramatic increase in UN peace
support operations in the immediate aftermath of the Cold War witnessed
the first African UN Secretary General, Boutros Boutros-Ghali of Egypt
establishing the UN Department of Peacekeeping Operations (DPKO) in
1992 with the role to adequately manage the peace support operations.
Although in 1965 the UN General Assembly founded the Special
Committee on Peacekeeping Operations, the establishment of the DPKO
saw the institutionalization of peacekeeping within the UN.
On 31 January 1992, the UN Security Council held a summit meeting
for the first time at the level of Heads of State and Government.
Concerned about the new threats to international peace and security
brought by the end of the Cold War, the Security Council included in
its agenda the need to address ‘the responsibility of the Security Council in
the maintenance of international peace and security’ (UN Security
Council 1992). The Security Council tasked Boutros-Ghali to prepare
an analysis and recommendations on how the UN could strengthen and
improve its capacity to maintain international peace and security in the
post-Cold War period. On 17 June 1992, Boutros-Ghali submitted to the
Security Council a report entitled, An Agenda for Peace: Preventive
Diplomacy, Peacemaking and Peacekeeping (hereafter, An Agenda for
Peace) in which he looked at the changing context of international rela-
tions and provided recommendations on how to improve the UN’s capa-
city to enhance international peace and security.
Although the term ‘peacebuilding’ is not recent, in his An Agenda for
Peace, Boutros-Ghali brought it to the UN agenda. The document had a
great influence on our understanding of the enterprise of peacebuilding
and as such, it is not surprising that it is often celebrated as a landmark
document in the development of contemporary peacebuilding. Boutros-
Ghali defined peacebuilding as ‘action to identify and support structures
44 LIBERAL PEACE AND POST-CONFLICT PEACEBUILDING IN AFRICA
which will tend to strengthen and solidify peace in order to avoid a relapse
into conflict’ (Boutros-Ghali 1992). Furthermore, he differentiated
between peacebuilding, preventive diplomacy, peacemaking and peace-
keeping suggesting ways in which the concepts can be effectively used.
Peacebuilding was associated with post-conflict activities that aimed at
consolidating peace. It included the following activities: ‘rebuilding
the institutions and infrastructures of nations torn by civil war and strife;
and building bonds of peaceful mutual benefit among nations formerly
at war’ as well as addressing ‘the deepest causes of conflict: economic
despair, social injustice, and political oppression’ (Boutros-Ghali 1992).
Peacebuilding would also encompass such activities as ‘disarming the
previously warring parties and the restoration of order, the custody and
possible destruction of weapons, repatriating refugees, advisory and train-
ing support for security personnel, monitoring elections, advancing efforts
to protect human rights, reforming or strengthening governmental insti-
tutions, and promoting formal and informal processes of political partici-
pation’ (Boutros-Ghali 1992). The concept peacebuilding has often been
associated with the multidimensional UN peace support operations in the
early to mid-1990s in countries including Mozambique, Somalia, Angola,
El Salvador, Cambodia, Namibia, the former Yugoslavia and Haiti.
In his Agenda for Development, Boutros-Ghali stresses the importance of
economic and social development as means to promoting lasting peace. In
the Supplement to an Agenda for Peace, Boutros-Ghali defines the essential
goal of peacebuilding as ‘the creation of structures for the institutionaliza-
tion of peace’ (Boutros-Ghali 1995). In this report, he asserts that addres-
sing the root causes of conflict is crucial for building lasting peace.
Peacebuilding would mean not only the elimination of armed conflict but
also addressing its root causes in order to promote the resolution of disputes
without resorting to violence. Boutros-Ghali saw a link between democracy,
development and peace since ‘democracy provides the long-term basis for
managing competing ethnic, religious, and cultural interests in a way that
minimizes the risk of violent conflict’ (1995).
However, with time, new challenges and complex realities on the
ground led to new understandings and development of the concept of
peacebuilding within the UN, academia, leading states, non-governmental
and bilateral organizations. As Call and Cousens rightly point out:
their transition from war to peace, and help prevent states from collapsing
and assist states avoid a relapse into conflict; and (2) a Peacebuilding Support
Office to act as a secretariat of the UNPBC. Thus, it was proposed that the
UNPBC would focus on the prevention of conflict, and post-war recovery as
well as deal with the challenges of coordinating international peacebuilding
efforts. In this regard, the High Level Panel called on international financial
institutions, regional and sub-regional organizations, and the principal
donor countries to participate in the UNPBC’s deliberations, thus support-
ing its peacebuilding efforts.
In his report, In Larger Freedom: Toward Development, Security and
Human Rights for All (2005), the UN Secretary-General supported the
panel’s proposal to create a UNPBC. At the September 2005 UN World
Summit in New York, heads of state and government agreed to create the
UNPBC, and two bodies that would back it – a Peacebuilding Support
Office and a Peacebuilding Fund. Paragraph 97 of the 2005 World
Summit Outcome document states the following:
promote liberal market democracies, and has closely worked with neo-
liberal institutions such as the World Bank.
In the UN policy documents and the work of the PBC discussed above,
peacebuilding has come to mean a number of things: strengthening the
rule of law, enhancing development, promoting justice, building democ-
racies, ending overt violence, reconciliation and stability, among others,
aimed at strengthening and solidifying peace in order to avoid a relapse
into conflict. Despite the expansion and modification of the concept of
peacebuilding in these policy documents as well as an upsurge in peace-
building activities since the early 1990s, the concept of peacebuilding has
remained elusive and contested, among academics and policymakers.
While there have been disagreements on the role of external actors in
post-conflict societies, there tends to be a consensus on their significance
in supporting peacebuilding activities in such societies.
PEACEBUILDING DEBATES
Questions have been raised regarding the roles and responsibilities of
external actors in peacebuilding operations who often determine or have
significant influence on the final outcome of the peacebuilding process –
whether they should act as mere facilitators of peacebuilding processes or
use more intrusive approaches if this helps promote lasting peace or end
overt violence. While some scholars have put emphasis on minimalist
peacebuilding approaches aimed at ending overt violence, others have
argued for maximalist approaches that aim at addressing root causes of
conflict and structural violence, such as social injustice and poverty
(Newman 2009a). The narrow approach is security-oriented since it
emphasizes the prevention of a return to violent conflict with the aim of
promoting stability and order subordinating other values such as justice,
development, emancipation and empowerment to the preservation of
internal security, whereas, the maximalist approach is social-oriented
since it places emphasis on addressing underlying causes of conflict (see
Call 2008b). Many scholars and practitioners tend to advocate a narrow
definition of peacebuilding which states that its main objective should be
that of maintaining a ceasefire since for them it is more realistic and quite
feasible (Newman 2009a). For these proponents, peacebuilding should be
considered a success when a ceasefire is achieved and does not collapse.
Yet, a focus on maintaining a ceasefire may help in avoiding overt violence,
but does not address underlying causes of conflict with a likelihood of a
3 PEACEBUILDING, STATEBUILDING AND LIBERAL PEACE 49
strikes a middle ground that includes the lack of recurrence of warfare as well
as some sustained, national mechanism for the resolution of conflict –
signified by participatory politics. Participatory politics does not equate to
liberal democracy, but refers to mechanisms for aggrieved social groups to
feel that they have both a voice and a stake in the national political system.
This standard is difficult to measure but excludes stable, authoritarian, and
clearly illegitimate governments. (Call 2008b: 6–7)
well-being of their own populations. Some of the weak states have lost
their monopoly over the use of violence to warlords, militia groups and
terrorists.2 Recent events in the Middle East and North Africa have shown
that the seemingly strong states such as Syria, Iraq and Libya are capable of
failing in situations of violent internal conflict. In all the three states
various armed groups (including external non-state actors) are competing
and fighting for the control of the state. As states are consumed by internal
violence, they cease providing basic services and security, especially human
security to their citizens. Such states cannot control their territories and
are characterized by a lack of respect for the rule of law, human rights
abuses, weak institutions, destroyed infrastructure, political instability,
humanitarian emergencies, criminal gangs, arms and drug trafficking and
a loss of domestic legitimacy (Fukuyama 2004; Rotberg 2004) with
extreme and stubborn forms of poverty persisting in such countries
(Collier 2007).
In response to the challenges posed by fragile and weak states, interna-
tional organizations such as the UN and its agencies including UNDP
have established programs and initiatives to create functioning and legit-
imate state institutions thought to be essential for achieving durable peace.
Post-9/11 saw UN-led peacebuilding missions being deployed for longer
periods in situations such as Sierra Leone and Liberia as long-term com-
mitment was essential in dealing with the challenges that these post-war
situations experienced. In 2008 the UNDP launched the ‘Statebuilding
for Peace’ project to empower ‘national and local actors to develop and
implement strategies that address fragilities and enhance responsiveness
and resilience of states for sustainable peace’ (UNDP 2009a: 5).The
Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) in
its Principles for Good International Engagement in Fragile States and
Situations considers a focus on statebuilding as the main objective in
enhancing state stability and order (2007). The World Bank’s World
Development Report 2011 states its central message as ‘strengthening
legitimate institutions and governance to provide citizen security, justice
and jobs is crucial to breaking cycles of violence’ (2011: 2).
Moreover, since early 2013, the EU has been using State Building
Contracts (SBCs) to provide budget support to conflict affected states as
well as fragile states. It has signed SBCs with African countries including
South Sudan, Mauritania, Liberia and Mali. In South Sudan, the SBC was
never implemented since the country relapsed into internal conflict in 2013.
In May 2015, the EU signed a SBC contract worth €50.8 million with the
3 PEACEBUILDING, STATEBUILDING AND LIBERAL PEACE 55
provision of basic services (water and health) to citizens and restore the
rule of law for the entire population. The specific objectives of the SBC for
Mali are to:
While the EU and other international agencies and leading states that
promote statebuilding have viewed statebuilding as the surest means to
bring out of turmoil states such as Mali, like most war-torn societies, the
impact of external statebuilding and assistance on Mali is uncertain.
APPROACHES TO STATEBUILDING
There are two different approaches to the state: the institutional approach3
and the ‘legitimacy’ approach (Call 2008b; Lemay-Hebert 2009). An
institutional approach to statebuilding focuses on building effective state
institutions in post-conflict environments as a remedy for the ‘weirdness’
or ‘abnormality’ found in weak and failed states that is absent in strong
states. This approach largely draws from the Weberian notion of statehood
which views a state as a political entity that has monopoly over the
legitimate use of violence. Since the institutional approach places emphasis
on building the capacity of state institutions, it tends to ignore customary
institutions (Call 2008b). In addition to service delivery, another impor-
tant element of the state, according to the institutional approach, is the
state’s capacity to institutionalize its diverse organizations. Call (2008b: 8)
defines institutionalization as ‘the process by which a cluster of activities
acquires a persistent set of rules that constrain activity, shape expectations,
and prescribe roles for actors’. Institutionalization is believed to enhance
the durability of the state and its institutions, and even the death of a
leader would not result in the collapse of the state. However, Call (2008b)
3 PEACEBUILDING, STATEBUILDING AND LIBERAL PEACE 57
LIBERALISM
International organizations, powerful states and international financial orga-
nizations have used the liberal rhetoric to justify international peace support
operations, and peacebuilding and statebuilding programs in societies emer-
ging from civil war. It is thus crucial to briefly discuss the notion of liberal-
ism bearing in mind that there is no consensus on the exact meaning of the
concept. A number of scholars have provided an understanding of the
concept based on themes that frequently recur in orthodox discussions of
the concept. These themes, as Mac Ginty states, include
In contrast, Dworkin (2002: 128) has argued that liberals are committed
fundamentally to a particular conception of equality that supposes that
‘government must act to make the lives of those it governs better lives, and
it must show equal concern for the life of each’. Here we see two conflict-
ing views about liberalism, one emphasizing a certain conception of
equality, and the other liberty. As such, it is difficult to define liberalism
via its concepts (Williams 2009).
Although liberalism has been primarily a product of Western historical
experiences, its proponents assume that it is suitable in any context. This
argument for the universality of liberalism and the legitimacy that the
democratic peace theory has given to liberal democracy has led Western
policymakers to export liberal democracy to illiberal states using the
rhetoric of emancipating ‘those “vanquished” by illiberal regimes’
(Williams 2006: 1) so as to enable them to join the liberal international
order of democratic states. The ‘vanquished’ in the context of interna-
tional peacebuilding are those people who live in societies emerging from
violent internal conflicts experiencing what Mitt Romney, the Republican
presidential nominee for the US 2012 presidential elections, called during
his presidential campaign ‘unspeakable darkness’. Drawing on the demo-
cratic peace thesis, Romney pointed out that in order to ‘save’ the world
from such ‘unspeakable darkness’, the USA needed to return to its ‘demo-
cratic ideals because a free world is a more peaceful world’.
Williams (2006: 2) contends that ‘liberal thinkers and latterly states
have increasingly come to believe that they can bring about an “end” to
3 PEACEBUILDING, STATEBUILDING AND LIBERAL PEACE 63
LIBERALISM AS A PROJECT
Drawing on Margaret Canovan’s (1990) argument that liberalism is ‘a
project to be realized’, Williams and Young have argued that the broad
reform project of Western states and development agencies aimed at
reforming most African states can be conceived as a liberal project. In
this sense, liberalism is not just a body of theorizing but also a political
project of social transformation (Williams and Young 2012; Williams
2009, 2010; Young 2002, 2003) – a project of transforming troubled
African societies into ‘liberal’ societies. This liberal project reflects liberal
ways of thinking about the state and its relationship with society and
economy. As has been mentioned, liberalism places high value on auton-
omous individuals and such individuals are capable of making rational
decisions that are not a threat to others, at the same time, their decisions
can still allow them to pursue their own interests in an efficient manner.
64 LIBERAL PEACE AND POST-CONFLICT PEACEBUILDING IN AFRICA
CIVIL SOCIETY
Civil society is a widely used and discussed concept within contemporary
social science and policy circles. Despite this, no precise definition of the
concept exists. It is generally understood as a sphere of voluntary
(uncoerced) action around shared values, interests and purposes
(Pouligny 2005). As Williams and Young (2012: 8) write, the traditional
liberal story offers three crucial elements of civil society: (1) it is an
example of liberal commitments to equality and freedom and in this
arena individuals have the freedom to pursue their own interests in free
association with others; (2) as an arena for criticism, open and free debate,
it acts as a check and balance on the power of the state. Given the state’s
(and its agents) ability to undermine freedom, it is crucial that it is limited
and hold to account, civil society does play this role; (3) it is an arena for
the cultivation of particular attitudes and personal virtues such as civic
engagement, accountability, tolerance, self-reliance and cooperation, cru-
cial for sustaining liberal social life. Williams and Young, further assert:
The third issue relates to the question of the exact kinds of public interest
that civil society should shape or influence: to what extent can civil society
be relied upon to support a liberal order or to what extent should liberals
seek other guarantees, for instance, the state, that lie outside of the domain
of civil society? (Williams 2010; Williams and Young 2012). These
66 LIBERAL PEACE AND POST-CONFLICT PEACEBUILDING IN AFRICA
THE STATE
Liberals fear that the state can abuse the power it possesses. That is, there are
fears and concerns, for example, that state power can be used for repression,
inhibiting individuals’ freedom to pursue their own interests. Yet, as
Williams (2010) contends, in almost all liberal thought, the state continues
to be the primary vehicle for achieving liberal goals and practices. Within the
Western liberal theory, the state is considered as both weak and strong.
Some liberal theorists have tended to link liberalism with neutrality. For
such theorists, the principle of neutrality is said to be a central element of
liberal political theory that provides an understanding of liberalism as well as
distinguish it from other political theories (Alexander and Schwarzschild
1987). A neutral state is conceived of as weak. In this sense, the state is
envisaged as ‘purely an enabler, little more than a neutral mechanism
providing the security to allow free, equal individuals to pursue their life
projects unhindered by others’ (Young 2003: 3). Since in a society indivi-
duals hold varying conceptions of the good and as a ‘neutral mechanism’,
the state (and its laws) must not limit the freedom of individuals in ways that
favor one particular notion of the good.
As such, a strong state is conceived of as a potential threat to
individual rights and freedoms. Threats to individual freedoms are
said to be twofold: (1) there is the possibility that state agents may
abuse institutions of the state and the stronger the state, the higher the
likelihood of abuse; and (2) the state may attempt to advance a certain
kind of social order without the consent of citizens, which might
represent some values that undermine individuals’ rights and freedoms
(Young 2003; Williams 2010). It is argued that such threats can be
countered by establishing some measure of restraint on the state’s
exercise of power and a limit to its scope. This happens via institutional
strategies viewed as mechanisms to establish limits on arbitrary state
power, thus mitigating the fears of abuse of state power and ensuring
that the state does not undermine individual freedoms. Historically,
3 PEACEBUILDING, STATEBUILDING AND LIBERAL PEACE 67
within the liberal tradition, this has taken the form of ‘a universal legal
code to which state officials are also subject, and [ . . . ] a complex of
institutions now generally referred to as liberal democracy and compris-
ing universal suffrage, political parties, rights of political participation
and so on’ (Young 2003: 3). At the same time, liberals have argued for
a strong state which is not captured by social forces. Such a strong state
ought to a certain extent be detached from social interests as well as
not overcome by them. It must be a capable state, that is, it must be in
a position to impose and maintain a certain kind of domestic order – a
liberal democratic order – ensuring that it inculcates certain kind of
values and depositions in people. This requires a strong, responsive and
effective state that is capable of establishing and defending liberal
values, institutions and policies (Young 2003: 3–4).
As Williams (2010) and Young (2003: 4) argue, these tensions and
contradictions regarding the state – ‘accountable but captured, autono-
mous but not oppressive, neutral but interventionist’ – cannot be resolved
on a purely theoretical level, rather, ‘they can only be made sense of as a
project, a project the nature of which is sharply illuminated by the debate
about Africa because liberal capitalism is not yet hegemonic there and the
processes by which such hegemony is constructed cannot be easily
obscured as in the West’ (also see Taylor 2007). Western states and
development agencies have reproduced these ambiguities in their peace-
building and development projects in Africa. Williams and Young’s work is
crucial in helping us understand international peacebuilding as a ‘liberal
peace project’ of social transformation in post-conflict situations. The
liberal peace project is aimed at transforming fragile post-conflict states
into peaceful and stable liberal entities (as will be shown in this book, in
the context of Sierra Leone) via a set of policies and programs that
promote the rule of law, democratization, individual human rights, good
governance, fighting corruption, market-based economic reform, devel-
opment, a vibrant civil society, and a stable and secure liberal state. The
two main goals of these initiatives are to prevent a return to conflict and
the creation of conditions for building sustainable peace in the country.
It is crucial to point out that the view that international peacebuilding is
liberal peace-oriented is controversial. More recently, some studies have ques-
tioned whether international peacebuilding interventions are essentially liberal
or liberal peace-oriented (see for example, Zaum 2012; Selby 2013). The
notion of liberal peacebuilding has been portrayed as ‘a fallacy and a myth’
(Selby 2013: 58), and that it must therefore be abandoned as the ‘breadth of
68 LIBERAL PEACE AND POST-CONFLICT PEACEBUILDING IN AFRICA
the concept and the wide variety of interventions that it encompasses suggest
that it does not offer a useful analytical lens for understanding contemporary
peacebuilding efforts’ (Zaum 2012: 130). Selby contends that ‘states, strategy
and geopolitics continue, as ever, to be crucial determinants of [contemporary
peace] processes; and that the influence of liberalism, and the degree of global
consensus over the liberal peace, are significantly overstated within liberal
peacebuilding discourse’ (Selby 2013: 65). Joshi et al. (2014) have rejected
arguments that the notion of liberal peacebuilding does not really exist. Their
study uses data from the Kroc Institute’s Peace Accord Matrix (PAM) project7
to show that liberal peace actually exists, at least in relation to the inclusion of
liberal goals of good governance, human rights, security sector reform, rule of
law and democracy in peace accords. This book concurs with the argument
that liberal peacebuilding (in its various forms) actually exists.
CONCLUSION
The 1990s witnessed the rise of violent intrastate conflicts in many parts of
Africa and other parts of the developing world, which coincided with the end
of the Cold War. This saw an increasing change in both the norms and practice
of international response to civil wars, involving both state and non-state
actors. During this period, the issue of ‘state collapse’ and ‘state failure’
became an issue of international concern, witnessing an ideological turn in
relation to the UN peace operations. Moreover, this period witnessed the
emergence of an international consensus that failed or collapsed states and
non-state actors posed a serious threat to international peace and security
more than aggressive powerful states. This resulted in the argument that
building effective and legitimate liberal states would deal with such a threat
as well as promote self-sustaining peace in war-torn societies. In each of the
war-torn societies, international peacebuilding actors introduced post-conflict
peacebuilding initiatives based on the liberal peace tenets with little attention
being paid on the local context, and such peacebuilding processes have
produced mixed outcomes, thus generating an interesting debate within the
academy and policies circles.
NOTES
1. Even when Boutrous-Ghali wrote his Agenda for Peace in 1992, it was not
really clear what peacebuilding was. This is reflected, for instance, in the
development of UN policy documents on peacebuilding such as An Agenda
3 PEACEBUILDING, STATEBUILDING AND LIBERAL PEACE 69
the liberal peace made better and cannot see ‘realistic’ alternatives outside
it, thus would prefer a search for alternatives within the liberal peace itself
(Paris 2004, 2010; Begby and Burgess 2009), and those who have sub-
jected it to critical scrutiny questioning its viability, appropriateness and
legitimacy, and have suggested the need to search for alternatives to the
liberal peace that are context specific (see, e.g., Richmond and Franks
2009; Mac Ginty 2010a, 2011), with some like Richmond proposing
post-liberal peacebuilding (2011b).
The aim of this chapter is to offer a critical review of literature on the
liberal peace agenda and the controversies surrounding liberal peace-
building. The growth in literature on post-conflict peacebuilding and
the liberal peace is a result of the increase and omnipresence of civil
wars in the developing world after the end of the Cold War and the
supposed failure in the dominant liberal peace paradigm to create con-
ditions that contribute to durable and self-sustaining peace in post-
conflict environments.
What we are witnessing is not just the end of the Cold War, or a passing of a
particular period of postwar history, but the end of history as such: that is,
the end point of mankind’s ideological evolution and the universalization of
Western liberal democracy as the final form of human government.
(Fukuyama 1989: 4)
In his 1992 book The End of History and the Last Man to Stand, Fukuyama
wrote that at the end of history, no serious ideological competitors were
left to liberal democracy, and ‘[ . . . ] outside the Islamic world, there
appears to be a general consensus that accepts liberal democracy’s claims
to be the most rational form of government, that is, the state that realizes
most fully either rational desire or rational recognition’ (1992: 211–212).
4 THE LIBERAL PEACE IN QUESTION 73
The collapse of communism led to the belief that liberal democracy is the
only viable and good form of governance, and that its universalization and
a decline in military expenditure would result in the world society enjoying
a ‘peace dividend’. Against the backdrop of the collapse of communism in
the former Soviet Union, the fall of the Berlin wall and a ‘wave’ of
democratic transitions in Eastern Europe, sub-Saharan Africa, Asia and
Latin America, an optimistic atmosphere emerged in the liberal democra-
cies of the West. However, the celebration of the triumph of liberal
democracy and the ‘wave’ of democratic transitions in the developing
world were overshadowed by an increase in violent intra-state conflicts in
the developing countries – the majority of them were African countries –
including Rwanda, Sierra Leone Somalia, Bosnia, Kosovo, Angola, Liberia
and Burundi.
In the absence of superpower competition, the conflicts presented
Western liberal democracies and international institutions such as the
UN with an opportunity to intervene for humanitarian purposes, to
end the conflicts and adopt approaches aimed at establishing a liberal
peace that has proved durable in Western liberal democracies. For
proponents of the liberal peace as noted in the previous chapter,
open markets and open political spaces are essential for both domestic
and global peace and security. Another assumption is that, since the
liberal peace has worked well in the West, transplanting it wholesale in
other parts of the world, especially those emerging from violent con-
flict, can deliver sustainable peace in them. Based on these assump-
tions, international actors have pursued fast-track political and market
liberalization initiatives simultaneously.1 Championed by international
financial institutions such as the World Bank, free market reforms
involve the implementation of policies that lead to deregulation,
macroeconomic stabilization and the opening up of domestic markets
to foreign investment, among others. On the political front, post-war
societies have witnessed international actors pushing for multi-party
elections, the writing of constitutions, the promotion of the rule of
law, the liberalization of political activities and the establishment of
vibrant civil societies. In post-conflict environments, it is assumed that
providing individual liberties and free markets would promote not only
economic growth but also a self-sustaining peace since this encourages
peaceful means of resolving conflicts. The simultaneous promotion of
market liberalization and political liberalization is based on the
assumption that the two are intrinsically connected and complement
74 LIBERAL PEACE AND POST-CONFLICT PEACEBUILDING IN AFRICA
each other. However, the two tend to conflict with each other. For
instance, market democracy encourages competition and conflict, and
in a situation where institutions are lacking to manage economic and
political competition this can lead to violence and can undermine the
(re)building of state institutions and the promotion of political liberal-
ization in war-affected societies (Paris 2004). Moreover, research has
shown that in countries such as Tunisia, rather than fostering democ-
racy, market-oriented reforms reinforced authoritarianism, clientelism
and corporatism (King 2003). Furthermore, in post-conflict situations
free market reforms have resulted in neo-liberal economics co-opting
the liberal peace, thus reifying neo-liberal capitalism while undermin-
ing welfare, human needs and social justice (Pugh 2009) thus exacer-
bating socio-economic inequalities that contributed to the conflict in
the first place.
In an attempt to answer the question whether international peace-
builders’ strategies of political and economic liberalization can recreate
conditions of civil war, in his book at War’s End, Roland Paris (2004)
provides a critique of all 14 major peacebuilding operations under the UN
umbrella between 1989 and 1999. These 14 peace operations shared a
basic assumption of immediately transforming into liberal market democ-
racies emerging from violent conflict. Paris observes that the 14 cases
produced mixed results. For instance, post-conflict elections in Rwanda
(1994) and Angola (1992) led to renewed conflict, and in the case of
Nicaragua, Guatemala and El Salvador liberal economic policies reinforced
socio-economic equalities which had contributed to violence in the three
countries in the first place. In most of these cases, the process of political
or economic liberalization or both had damaging and destabilizing effects.
Paris concludes that rapid liberalization helped rekindle overt violence or
contributed to the recreation of the social and economic conditions that
had caused violence in many of the countries that have hosted these UN
missions, raising questions about the reliability of the current ‘peace-
through-liberalization strategy’ (2004: 155).2
Paris attributes the big part of this problem to contemporary students
of the liberal peace thesis and peacebuilders who have continued to pay
excessive attention to contemporary advocates of rapid liberalization while
ignoring classical liberals’ ‘pragmatic emphasis on authoritative and effec-
tive – in addition to limited – government as a precondition for domestic
peace’ (2004: 152). For him, it is crucial to draw on classical liberalism’s
‘insights into the preconditions for lifting societies out of the state of
4 THE LIBERAL PEACE IN QUESTION 75
resource, not recipients. He further asserts for the need to build appro-
priate models from the cultural and contextual resources for peace and
conflict resolution available within a conflict environment. For this to be
achieved, Lederach argues, those in the international community should
go beyond ‘a simple prescription of answers and modalities for dealing
with conflict that come from outside the setting and focus at least as much
attention on discovering and empowering the resources, modalities, and
mechanisms for building peace that exist within the context’ (1997: 95).
As noted in Chapter 2, indigenous traditions and institutions have
played a significant role in creating conditions for order, healing, reconci-
liation and peaceful coexistence at community levels in Africa. For instance,
the Jir (a community dispute mediation session) among the Tiv commu-
nity of Nigeria, the guurti system (inter-clan mediating council) in
Somaliland, mato oput (drinking the bitter herb) in northern Uganda and
the ubuntu approach to reconciliation in South Africa (Murithi 2008). In
Somaliland, traditional leadership institutions played a significant role in
bringing together the various clans and creating a government and legis-
lature that combines traditional governance structures and the modern
state (Murithi 2009; Boege et al. 2008).4 The situation in Somaliland is
more promising than in central and southern Somalia as it currently enjoys
some relative peace and stability. These traditional and indigenous forms of
peacemaking and dispute resolution have co-existed with the interna-
tional/Western ones and remain resilient against the onslaught of moder-
nity, thus continue to be extensively used at community levels in most parts
of Africa.
In the context of Sierra Leone, its 1991 constitution recognizes the
institution of the Paramount Chief and customary law. In fact, a dual
formal legal system exists in the country that is based on a common law
consisting of English law which is administered through national courts
and customary law that is administered through local courts in 149 chief-
doms (Sawyer 2008). The 1991 Sierra Leone constitution defines cus-
tomary law as ‘the rules of law which by custom are applicable to particular
communities in Sierra Leone’ (section 170(3)). In addition, in Sierra
Leone, ‘Customary justice is dispensed in line with the beliefs, customs
and traditions of inhabitants of the local area through the administration
of customary law by local courts’ (Robins 2009: 1).5 Although most of the
rural population use local courts, such courts’ jurisdiction is limited to minor
criminal offenses, land disputes, seduction, witchcraft, divorce and debt.
An informal legal system also exists in the country. Sawyer (2008: 393)
80 LIBERAL PEACE AND POST-CONFLICT PEACEBUILDING IN AFRICA
notes that, often village headmen, paramount chiefs and section hold
informal courts, and at these courts they do levy fees, adjudicate cases
and impose fines or other forms of punishment. In addition, they are more
accessible for most of the rural populace. Furthermore, most of the rural
population also rely upon secret societies, diviners and ‘medicine men’
‘who may offer alternative forms of adjudication or retribution’ (Sawyer
2008: 393; Alie 2008; Sriram 2011), even though the state does not
recognize them.
The rural populace, in Sierra Leone in particular and Africa in general,
has continued to rely upon customary, non-state justice systems for a
number of reasons: corruption and limited access to the formal justice
sector, customary justice systems offer a range of advantages to them
including being cheap, accessible, connecting them to their customs,
flexible, familiar to the conflicting parties, not adversarial, offer restorative
justice (aimed at mediation that leads to decisions that restore and rebuild
community relations) as opposed to retributive justice, give them a sense
of ownership, payment of compensation to the individual(s) who is
wronged and are flexible (see Sawyer 2008; Sriram 2011; Alie 2008).
Like other parts of Africa, Sierra Leone’s customary law has been criticized
for privileging men over women, especially in the context of marital
disputes (Alie 2008; Sriram 2011). However, among the Kpaa Mende,
according to Alie (2008: 137), this is done for the purpose of maintaining
relations and peace:
Manifesto ’99 (2002), a human rights NGO in Sierra Leone, notes that
traditional beliefs play a significant role in the lives of Sierra Leoneans and
most of the 14 ethnic groups in the country have long-established traditional
practices of conflict resolution. In addition, Sierra Leoneans have used
proverbs and idioms in conflict resolution. For instance, Stovel (2008:
306) has observed that, in post-war Sierra Leone, officials and civil society
leaders searched their traditions and found the conciliatory Krio proverb:
4 THE LIBERAL PEACE IN QUESTION 81
‘Bad bush nor dae for troway bad pekin’ (‘There is no bad bush to throw
away a bad child’), which means that irrespective of what a person has done
the community will still accept him/her. As Stovel argues, the philosophy
behind this Krio proverb extends beyond children as it implies that Africans
are community-oriented and the community will always have space for its
members (2008). In the post-war period, state officials and civil society
leaders, in Sierra Leone, used this proverb to promote reconciliation and
integration of former rebels and child soldiers in the society.
However, this approach has led to the romanticization of this conciliatory
tradition-based expression and, thus, has a danger of being blind to or to
reinforce the power structures that contributed to the conflict (Stovel 2008).
Besides the use of proverbs in promoting reconciliation and peace, secret
societies’ ‘processes of justice and conflict resolution [such as cleansing
ceremonies that] often emphasise truth-telling and reconciliation’ have
been used to facilitate the reintegration of former combatants, especially
the reintegration of former child soldiers into their families (Sriram 2011:
130; Alie 2008). One of the limitations of secret society processes is that
given an oath of secrecy, it is difficult for members to seek recourse, even
when a decision made under such a process is abusive (Sriram 2011).
Furthermore, customary approaches to peacemaking can be useful in
recognizing the voices and agency of ordinary people in post-conflict
environments as well as in dealing with some of the root causes of conflict
at community or village levels. At the same time, these approaches should
not be over romanticized. It is crucial to expose their limitations as well as
argue for integrating their positive aspects with other forms of peace-
building, if this promotes the creation of lasting peace. In post-conflict
societies, a mere adoption or uncritical use of customary approaches to
peacemaking can reinforce the local power structures that were part of the
root causes of the conflict. Moreover, recognition of positive aspects of
customary systems and traditional belief systems, chieftaincy and African
philosophy as expressed in proverbs can help identify local ‘resistances’ to
violence (Milne 2010).
Furthermore, Lederach has observed that in societies emerging from
violent conflict ordinary people express feeling including distance, suspi-
cion and indifference and as such, for him, it is crucial to pay attention to
‘social spaces, relationships, ideas and processes’ that can contribute to the
restoration of trust (2005: 59). In rural Africa, customary approaches to
justice, peace and conflict resolution have played a significant role in
rebuilding social and interpersonal trust through participation, forgiveness,
82 LIBERAL PEACE AND POST-CONFLICT PEACEBUILDING IN AFRICA
acknowledges that Sierra Leone’s fragile stability is legacy of the civil war,
she also argues that it is also a product of a post-conflict peacebuilding
initiative that places emphasis on ‘trickle-down peace’ and fails to pay
greater attention to social welfare. As such, this makes it difficult for the
liberal peace to establish sustainable peace in post-war environments in
Africa, where poverty, exclusion, marginalization and inadequate access
to social justice are major problems.
International peacebuilders’ emphasis on the state and creating
strong state institutions has resulted in activities which most citizens
perceive as not helpful in meeting their everyday needs. Most citizens in
such post-war environments continue to engage in what Gordon (2002
cited in Gonzalez de Allen 2006: 9) calls ‘extraordinary measures to live
ordinary lives’. As Richmond argues, local views of the liberal peace
agenda and its focus on statebuilding in many post-conflict societies
‘indicate it to be ethically bankrupt, subject to double standards, coer-
cive and conditional, acultural, unconcerned, with the social welfare,
and unfeeling and insensitive toward its subjects’ (2009b: 558). It is
clear that the liberal peace blue-print for creating ‘a liberal peace for all’
(Richmond 2009a) made promises beyond what it could deliver. As
Mathews (2004: 378) rightly argues, ‘To promise to deliver a starving
man a meal and then only to deliver a few crumbs is to fail to keep a
promise’. This failure to deliver on a promise – a concrete peace
dividend at the level of civilian population’s everyday life – has under-
mined efforts that seek to produce durable and sustainable peace in
post-war societies (Richmond 2009a). Given this, some critics have
concluded that the liberal peace is in crisis of success, legitimacy and
confidence (Richmond 2009b; Cooper 2007).
alternatives should come from within liberalism itself since there are no
viable alternative strategies outside it (Paris 2010; Begby and Burgess
2009). For instance, Paris, rejecting the claim that liberal peacebuilding
is in crisis, regards it as the only realistic solution for reconstructing war-
torn societies (Paris 2010). Paris further points out that scholars and
commentators who argue that the liberal peace is illegitimate or basically
destructive are being ‘hyper-critical’, and as such, liberal peacebuilding
needs to be ‘saved’ from such ‘hyper-critics’ who have offered exaggerated
claims about it. He asserts that ‘there is no realistic alternative to some
form of liberal peacebuilding strategy’ (Paris 2010: 340, emphasis not
mine). For him, ‘alternatives strategies – that is, strategies not rooted in
liberal principles – would likely create more problems than they would
solve’ (Paris 2010: 357).6 For Paris, ‘The challenge today is not to replace
or move “beyond” liberal peacebuilding, but to reform existing
approaches within a broadly liberal framework’ (Paris 2010: 362). He,
thus, challenges scholars like Duffield, Mac Ginty, Richmond and Cooper
who offer a radical criticism of the liberal peace to ‘[ . . . ] spell out a clear
alternative to current liberal peacebuilding practices ’ (Paris 2010: 353).
Critical theorists, of course, reject this criticism. Richmond, Cooper,
Turner and Pugh and Tadjbakhsh have taken issue with Paris’ claim that
there is ‘no real alternative’ to liberal peacebuilding (Richmond 2011b;
Cooper et al. 2011; Tadjbakhsh 2011). For Richmond, the ‘defensive
claim that there is “no real alternative” is . . . a liberal fantasy, derived from
crypto-colonial claims of cosmopolitan universalism’ (2011b: 2). For
others, Paris’ ‘deterministic assumption’ that there is no viable alternative
to the liberal peace agenda is ‘unjustified’ (Cooper et al. 2011: 1995).
Contrary to Paris, recent empirical research in Namibia, Mozambique,
Liberia, East Timor, Kosovo and Bosnia show that alternatives and mod-
ifications to the liberal peace agenda exist (see Richmond 2011b). As
Cooper et al. note,
The thinking that there are no alternatives outside the liberal peace is
controversial, as it impedes ingenious thinking regarding various ways in
which durable peace can be built in post-war societies, including imagina-
tions about positive hybrid forms of peace and political orders. Some
critics of the liberal peace agenda have suggested the need to ground
liberal peacebuilding in local contextual matters taking sufficient account
of local agency, needs and welfare as well as everyday lived experiences of
most of the population in post-conflict environments. In other words,
such critics suggest an emancipatory alternative that take into account
local realities, communities and agencies, and various actors, bottom-up
and top-down approaches to peacebuilding in post-conflict societies.
Concerns here include the totalizing discourses of the liberal peace
which have ‘depoliticized and removed [local] agency’ (Richmond
2010a: 201). Critics of liberal peacebuilding ‘reject imposition in favour
of negotiation over what type of “peace” is being built and for whom’
(Cooper et al. 2011: 2007). These responses reflect a deep polarization
between the critical theorists and mainstream critics who would want to
see the liberal peace model made better within the liberal internationalist
framework.
In addition, despite acknowledging the dilemmas of statebuilding in
post-war situations, Paris and Sisk (2009) would want to see international
actors managing the dilemmas of statebuilding rather than abandon it.
The two scholars argue that although statebuilding remains a core element
for peacebuilding in war-torn societies, it faces inherent contradictions and
tensions which international state builders have paid little attention to and
these tensions and contradictions in turn have resulted in policy dilemmas
for both international and local actors. Roland and Sisk further argue that
although statebuilding has produced mixed results and its record has
generally been disappointing, neither can it be abandoned nor can the
international state builders do more, but should manage these dilemmas
(at the same time, noting that these dilemmas are difficult to resolve).
Moreover, these dilemmas of statebuilding can better be managed by
having a deeper understanding of them. The two scholars recommend
‘dilemma analysis’ as a new analytical tool that international state builders
must use before and during their missions in order to more effectively deal
with the inherent tensions and contradictions of statebuilding. However,
this ‘dilemma analysis’ does not aim at replacing the more conventional
approach to mission planning, but supplements it and starts from the
assumption that many of the elements of statebuilding will not integrate
4 THE LIBERAL PEACE IN QUESTION 87
easily. This still reflects an ethnocentric bias which does not see anything
good in the non-European ‘other’ and views the liberal peace as the best
possible alternative.
This raises the question whether the liberal peace is prepared to
engage with the non-liberal other. And if it is tolerant to local
approaches to peacemaking, as Paris is pointing out, why is it that for
the past two decades it has paid little attention on them or undermined
them? Is this being done with the consent of recipients of the liberal
peace? Or is the social contract not of much significance? Legitimacy
can only be built with the consent of those in host-countries and
without this the politics of anger, frustration and resentment can
emerge. In other words, the liberal peace-is-good-for-sustainable
peace argument fails to realize that liberal peace-without-local-legiti-
macy-is-not-good-for-sustainable peace. This argument is in line with
utilitarian arguments which argue for approaches that would produce
best possible results in a given situation and also points out to the
possibilities of other alternatives.
actors, would emphasize facts on the ground and attempts to show that
post-conflict situations follow their own logic or that state institutions
exist alongside with non-state institutions such as indigenous and tradi-
tional political institutions and secret society institutions (as in the case of
Sierra Leone) which have various claims to authority, legitimacy, power,
sovereignty and order. This calls for the need to recognize multiple
sovereignties and legitimacies in such situations rather than focusing on
undermining or banning these institutions.
As critical approaches on liberal peacebuilding have highlighted, the
liberal peace is far from being perfect, particularly in post-conflict environ-
ments. Hence, the need to investigate what is on the ground. In order to
have a clear picture of what is going on the ground, it is crucial to unpack
concepts including power, resistance and hybridity in the context of
international peacebuilding in societies emerging from violent conflict.
For Allen (2003), power is not a ‘thing’ since it exists solely as a result of
social interaction. This implies that it cannot be something that can ‘be
readily centralized and “stored” in certain institutions or roles’ (Low
2005: 85). As such, power is not just a preserve of the powerful as it can
also be enacted through resistant formations within society (Sharp et al.
2000).
As Scott (1990: ix) notes – in his work on peasant farmers and the ways
in which they respond to domination – faced with exploitation via tradi-
tional patron–client relationships, peasant farmers exercise power by
adopting ‘a strategic pose in the presence of the powerful’ and engage in
‘hidden’, but powerful everyday forms of resistance, such as non-coopera-
tion, stealing harvests, false compliance, feigned ignorance and foot-drag-
ging. Power, in this case, is enacted through the peasant farmers’ ability to
resist, what can be called ‘resisting power’. In this book, power is under-
stood to be present in moments of domination and resistance.
The issue of powerlessness and domination has been highlighted in
debates on the liberal peace. The liberal peace has often been depicted as
hegemonic in nature. Given that its proponents have access to material
resources and possess technological skills, and have the ability to use them
to get local actors do what they otherwise would not do as well as maintain
much control over the post-conflict peacemaking agenda in post-war
societies, the liberal peace has been viewed as very powerful. This, at
times, has been traced back to the colonial period with some critiques,
as noted in Chapter 4, arguing that it is a form of neo-imperialism – a form
of social engineering – in which international actors want to build post-
conflict societies in the image of the West as well as compel them to
90 LIBERAL PEACE AND POST-CONFLICT PEACEBUILDING IN AFRICA
CONCEPTUALIZING HYBRIDITY
Mac Ginty (2011: 8) has defined hybridity as ‘the composite forms of social
thinking and practice that emerge as the result of the interaction of different
groups, practices, and worldviews’. The concept of ‘hybrid’ is not new.
Young (1995) traces its origins to biology and botany. He notes that in
Latin, it referred to the progeny of a tame sow and wild boar and for human
beings, a progeny of human parents of different races. The 1828 Webster’s
Dictionary (cited in Young 1995: 6) defined hybrid as ‘a mongrel or mule;
an animal or plant, produced from the mixture of two species’. In the
eighteenth century, colonialism and population displacement in countries
such as the USA, UK and France led to interracial contact, resulting in new
debates on the notion of hybridity (Kraidy 2002). Hybridity, during this
period, was viewed negatively since there was a general fear in the West that
the other races they encountered and colonized would pollute them.
Adherents of white supremacist ideologies often invoked biology to justify
such ideologies and warned against the dangers of inter-breeding across
races, termed ‘miscegenation’ and ‘amalgamation’ (Kraidy 2002). Scottish
anatomist, surgeon and zoologist, Robert Knox (1850) argued, ‘the hybrid
96 LIBERAL PEACE AND POST-CONFLICT PEACEBUILDING IN AFRICA
Given that the liberal peace is engaging the non-liberal other in a dominant
way, one would understand why some critical scholars have concluded
that liberal peacebuilding is a form of neo-colonialism or neo-imperialism.
98 LIBERAL PEACE AND POST-CONFLICT PEACEBUILDING IN AFRICA
For instance, Roberts (2008: 64) views liberal statebuilding and peacebuild-
ing as a ‘post-Cold War neo-imperial agenda of intervention’ in which states
in post-conflict environments are being built in the image of the West. For
Roberts, such an approach which is invasive and imperial has failed and will
continue to fail as long as there is a failure to recognize and understand that
‘transitional impositions of democratic practice cannot be substitute for or
replace, in the short-term, political behaviours derived from needs, experi-
ences, histories and evolutions quite different from those from which
Western democracy is derived’ (2008: 64). Similarly, Darby (2009) using a
post-colonial critique of liberal peacebuilding notes that it is a colonial
enterprise that marginalizes the experiences, approaches and understandings
of non-Western societies and does not connect with their everyday lives.
Paris’s (2009) response is that while there were echoes of European
colonialism in other parts of the world during the nineteenth century, in
current peacebuilding operations, comparisons of modern peacebuilding
and European colonialism should be limited. He further notes that,
although liberal peacebuilding and European colonialism share the idea
of refashioning of domestic structures of weaker societies with the inten-
tion of achieving a greater ‘good’ – civilization for nineteenth-century
European colonialism and ‘good governance’ in the form of a liberal
market democracy – they differ in four important respects: (1) the primary
motive of the practice of colonialism was to benefit the colonizing state at
the expense of colonized societies (for instance, through cheap labor and
the extraction of material resources from them), whereas in the case of
liberal peacebuilding resources flow from international actors to war-torn
societies8; (2) liberal peacebuilding support operations are multilateral
involving a wide range of actors, international and local; however, this
was not the case with colonialism which was primarily carried out by
individual colonial states for their own benefit; (3) Europe’s imperial states
often perceived overseas colonies as their permanent possessions until the
latest stages of colonialism, whereas, post-Cold War peacebuilding mis-
sions are not permanent and aim at establishing necessary conditions for
effective governance in the host-countries; and (4) the practice of coloni-
alism was grounded in ideologies of racial superiority; however, this is not
the case with liberal peacebuilding (Paris 2009). Paris thus argues that
equating liberal peacebuilding with colonialism or imperialism is not only
an exaggeration but it ‘implicitly (or explicitly) discredits and delegiti-
mizes peacebuilding by framing it as an exploitative, destructive and
disreputable form of international intervention’ (2009: 102).
4 THE LIBERAL PEACE IN QUESTION 99
they do x and y, and everywhere you go, there’s a British person’ (2010).
While critics call this form of intervention intrusive and neo-colonial, the
British government, state elites and mainstream scholars view it as a social
mission, a form of partnership aimed at ‘planting the seeds of progress’ in
Sierra Leone (Little 2010). Yet, as will be discussed in Chapter 7, over a
decade of ‘peace’ in Sierra Leone has not done much to deal with high
poverty and unemployment rates as well as high child and adult mortality
across the country.
Chandler (2006a) has argued that external support operations, such as
the case of the British government’s intervention in Sierra Leone, can have
negative effects such as creating a dependency syndrome, the weakening of
politics at both national and local levels which could further diminish the
political autonomy and capacity for self-rule, and also creates challenges
for state elites to establish broad legitimacy among ordinary citizens.
Without self-governance, the state has no legitimacy and also will not
function independently, thus will remain weak and cannot deal with
post-conflict (and even pre-conflict) challenges including socio-political
divisions, unemployment and poverty (Chandler 2006a). This form of
external intervention leads to what Chandler calls ‘peace without politics’
in which the creation of liberal democratic institutions is not grounded in
domestic politics (2006b).
If liberal peacebuilding is to be ‘saved’, it ought to be saved from its
‘cheer leaders’ who offer prescriptive strategies without a critical reflection
on their viability and acceptability in post-conflict environments and have
witnessed local resistance to them. While the liberal peace model has
worked well in the West, it is crucial to question whether transplanting it
wholesale to non-Western societies with different cultural and historical
backgrounds from it will work. In fact, war-torn societies need to be
‘saved’ from problem-solving approaches that are biased toward these
societies and ignore local agency, capacities for peacemaking, order and
recovery. It is crucial for the locals’ voices to be heard, since as insiders,
locals possess a number of resources – linguistic, cultural and historical –
that external actors lack, and such resources play a vital role in helping
understand the underlying causes of conflict as well as finding solutions
that contribute to sustainable peace (see Lederach 1997; Donais 2009,
2012). At the same time, it is crucial to be aware that there are various
claims to local ownership in post-conflict environments and how these
claims can be dealt with in ways that do not recreate the conditions for a
violent conflict.
102 LIBERAL PEACE AND POST-CONFLICT PEACEBUILDING IN AFRICA
CONCLUSION
This chapter has provided an overview of the liberal peace debate. Liberal
peace debate relates to the discussion in the relevant literature on the
theory and practice of external intervention in post-war societies by inter-
national actors. Liberal peacebuilding initiatives in post-war societies have
generated debates and controversies within the academic and policy circles
on their nature, legitimacy and effectiveness, what causes peace, the nature
of peace to be built, the owner(s) of the peace and how the international
actors should relate with local actors. In addition, questions have been
raised regarding the assumptions, strategies, viability and coherence of
international peacebuilding initiatives.
While the critical voices on the liberal peace cannot be grouped in a single
category, it is now widely acknowledged that the dominant liberal peace
model is in crisis and that on the whole, international peacebuilding has not
achieved the intended goal of helping war-torn societies transform from states
of violent conflict to self-sustaining peace and economic development. Yet,
the debate over the liberal peace reflects a polarization between those who
would want to see the liberal peace made better – those who take a problem-
solving approach – and cannot see ‘realistic’ alternatives outside it, thus would
prefer a search for alternatives within the liberal peace itself, and those who
have subjected it to critical scrutiny questioning its viability, appropriateness
and legitimacy, with some suggesting a ‘post liberal’/hybrid forms of peace
model, which takes the local into account – those who take a critical approach.
Concurring with critical scholars, I have argued that it is vital for contempor-
ary peacebuilders to more seriously consider the local context and needs, and
the forms of peace that are being produced as ‘the local’ and the international
interact, if lasting peace is going to be established in post-conflict situations.
NOTES
1. This study adopts Simmons et al.’s (2008: 2) use of the concept political
liberalism to refer to policies aimed at reducing ‘government constraints on
political behavior, promote free political exchange, and establish rights to
political participation: “democratization”’, and economic liberalism to refer
to ‘policies that reduce government constraints on economic behavior and
thereby promote economic exchange: marketization’.
2. Chua (2004) has also shown that there is a link between democratization
and market liberalization, on one hand, and an increase in ethnic violence
and instability, on the other hand. For Chua, where an ethnic minority
4 THE LIBERAL PEACE IN QUESTION 103
needs and interests, hence the need for an empirical study of post-conflict
societies helps to come up with a deeper understanding of realities on the
ground and identifying the forms of peace that are emerging which may or
may not lead to durable peace in these societies.
Based on recent experiences of liberal peacebuilding and statebuilding
in post-conflict societies, some critical scholars have suggested the need to
pay attention to the dynamics and resilience of local politics and their
relationship to external intervention, that is, local and contextual
responses (at various levels – elite and grassroots) to the liberal peace
project (Richmond 2010c, 2011b; Heathershaw and Lambach 2008).
Critical scholars who have thrown a stern rebuttal to the claim that
‘there are no viable alternatives’, in their search for alternatives, have
noted the need to think of peace support operations, for instance, in
terms of hybridity (Richmond 2011b, 2009; Mac Ginty 2011) and also
to think of them normatively in terms of welfare (Pugh 2009), empathy
and care, as well as empirically in terms of ‘the everyday’ (Richmond
2009a, b, 2011b). Such scholars have analyzed the ‘new’ distinctive
forms of peace and politics that are neither liberal nor ‘local’ that are
produced as the liberal peace and the ‘local’ interact, that is, hybrid
forms of peace and hybrid political orders. In such debates, the ‘local’
including customary institutions, knowledge and practices, tribes,
traditional authorities, religious groups and elders is viewed as not only
important but essential in contributing to the production and promotion
of durable and sustainable peace in post-war situations.
Richmond (2009a), for instance, has shown an interest in the possibilities
of drawing upon resistance and the everyday of those individuals in the host-
communities taking note of the hybridity that emerge as the ‘local’ and the
international interact, resist, tolerate and accept each other. Similarly,
Heathershaw and Lambach (2008) have dismissed the view that post-conflict
environments are just objects of international involvement and have suggested
the need to consider them as spaces in which various agency emerge – where
international and local actors re-appropriate, appropriate, accept, hybridize,
subvert, resist and co-opt peacebuilding or statebuilding initiatives to suit their
own interests and needs, some of which may be at odds with the intended
objectives of the liberal internationals. As Heathershaw and Lambach have
highlighted, post-conflict spaces should be understood as ‘fields of power
where sovereignty is constantly contested and negotiated among global,
elite and local actors’ (2008: 269). This implies that there is no full absorption
of international peacebuilding and statebuilding in post-conflict societies, but
108 LIBERAL PEACE AND POST-CONFLICT PEACEBUILDING IN AFRICA
get mixed with local forms of peacemaking. Thus, these local responses and
reactions result from vested interests among various local actors. These local
actors develop ‘tactics’ aimed at promoting their interests and needs, in
response to the liberal peacebuilding and statebuilding strategies that have
seen powerful external actors attempting to create the liberal state, (neo)liberal
economics and liberal forms of governance in such societies.1
As this emerging critical literature points out, these responses and reac-
tions on the ground may lead to hybridized forms of peace (Richmond
2011b, a; Richmond and Mitchell 2011; Mac Ginty 2011). This, according
to Richmond (2011b), might be called a ‘post-liberal peace’, which high-
lights the mutual dependency between the internationals and the locals in
constructing peace in societies that are going through transition. Such work
on hybrid peace reflects a growing interest in understanding the local
context including local perspectives and dimensions of peace in the context
of international peacebuilding – what has been called the ‘rediscovery of the
local’ (Mac Ginty 2015) or the ‘local turn’ in peacebuilding (Mac Ginty and
Richmond 2013). This shift is also reflected in recent international policy
documents which attempt to look at how international donors need to
modify their approaches in fragile and conflict-affected states.
The 2009 report of the UN Secretary-General on Peacebuilding in the
Immediate Aftermath of Conflict states that national ownership and a context-
specific approach to peacebuilding are essential for building sustainable peace
in societies emerging from violent conflict: ‘Only national actors can address
their society’s needs and goals in a sustainable way. The imperative of national
ownership is a central theme of the present report, as are the unique challenges
we encounter arising from the specific context of early post-conflict situations’
(UN Secretary-General 2009: 4, para. 7). The OECD (2011), Supporting
Statebuilding in Situations of Conflict and Fragility: Policy Guidance argues
that statebuilding is a deeply political process and as such, if international
support is to help produce positive outcomes it is crucial to understand the
local context in situations of fragility and conflict. This includes paying greater
attention to the complex power dynamics in such situations. Furthermore,
in 2011 the World Bank published a report, Conflict, Security and
Development, which examines the relationship between conflict, development
and security in post-war states. It is mainly concerned with identifying
effective ways in which international interventions should focus on long-
term institutional transformation that is crucial in promoting security and
development. The report argues that a ‘mixture of state and nonstate
bottom-up and top-down approaches is a better underpinning for
5 POWER, RESISTANCE AND HYBRIDITY IN INTERNATIONAL PEACEBUILDING 109
a stable package that includes a mix of liberal and illiberal elements adapting
to each other. Rather, hybridity is best understood as a condition of tension
5 POWER, RESISTANCE AND HYBRIDITY IN INTERNATIONAL PEACEBUILDING 111
While this is the case, the concept of hybridity is useful in advancing the
critique of the liberal peace and also it shows that liberal peace hegemony
has declined in the process of hybridity (Mac Ginty 2011). The theory of
hybrid peace assumes that it has the power to break the dominant liberal peace
and argues that hybridity is an expression of local agency. In the literature
concepts such as ‘hybrid political orders’ (Beoge et al. 2009), ‘hybrid peace
governance’ (Belloni 2012), ‘hybrid peace ownership’ (Jarstad and Olsson
2012), ‘liberal-local hybridity’ (Richmond 2009a) and ‘local-liberal hybridity’
(Richmond 2011b) have been used. Richmond has observed the existence of
resistance to the liberal peace in post-conflict environments, such as the
Solomon Islands, Liberia, Mozambique and Timor Leste, and local agency
being expressed (Richmond 2010b). This has led to the contamination,
transgression and modification of both the international and the ‘local’ result-
ing in, for instance, ‘local-liberal’ hybrid forms of peace (Richmond 2010b).
Although Richmond uses the concept ‘contaminate’, he does not use it in the
negative sense, as was done in the eighteenth century in reference to interracial
mixing, but in a positive sense in which the agency of local actors becomes a
resistive force to the hegemony of the liberal peace resulting in forms of peace
that are a mixture of local forms of peace and the liberal peace. This defies the
purity and hegemony of the liberal peace in post-conflict environments. While
Richmond has conceptualized the forms of peace that emerge as the liberal
peace interacts with local forms of peace in terms of ‘local-liberal’ hybrid peace,
Boege et al. (2009) have argued for the need to recognize hybrid political
orders as the basis for statebuilding and peacebuilding.
‘“state” does not have a privileged position as the political framework that
provides security, welfare and representation; it has to share authority, legiti-
macy and capacity with other structures’ (2009: 606). Furthermore, such
hybrid political orders differ significantly from the model of the state asso-
ciated with the West.
Particular internal logic governs hybrid political orders and empirical
evidence has shown that such political orders can be a source of stability as
in Somaliland. In situations where state and informal institutions co-exist
alongside each other, there is a tendency for them to share authority and
legitimacy. In hybrid political orders legitimacy derived from tradition and
custom interacts with legitimacy derived from legal-rational authority.
Boege et al. (2009) argue for the need to recognize the hybridity of
political orders in the context of statebuilding and peacebuilding. By
doing so, such an approach deconstructs the idea of the Western liberal
state as a crucial and superior form of political order and stability by itself.
This implies paying attention to the complexity or dynamics of domestic
processes, to local agency, local institutions and indigenous knowledge.
The idea of hybrid political orders reveals the political potential intrinsic in
hybridity. However, very little empirical work has been done to interro-
gate the usefulness and types of hybridity that are produced as the liberal
peace interacts and coexist with the ‘local’.
hybrid courts have been established, international legal experts have also been
involved. At the civil society level, hybrid arrangements have also been taking
place as international experts partner with local non-governmental organiza-
tions (NGOs) ensuring that such local NGOs are developed and strengthened
along liberal lines (Belloni 2012).
The third form of hybridity, according to Belloni, involves violent state
actors and institutions dominating or ‘capturing’ liberal state institutions.
He further points out that, at times such actors may be invited to join
government as a means to ensure a stable state. For example, militia
commanders and warlords have been included in government in post-
Taliban Afghanistan. Other cases include Liberia, Sierra Leone and
Guinea-Bissau where power-sharing arrangements between governments
and contesting groups (warlords, rebels or juntas) were put in place in
order to secure peace and build democracy (Levitt 2012). Powerful actors,
such as warlords and criminal networks, may ‘capture’ state institutions
and use their resources to their own advantage.
This book intends to expand on these types of hybridity that Belloni has
offered to include a fourth type hybridity which I will call here emancipa-
tory hybridity through examining the case of Sierra Leone. In this case, the
book will examine the possibility of a type of hybridity that can lead to
social transformation or emancipation. This relates to an understanding of
hybridity which challenges not only the hegemony of the liberal peace but
also dominant local structures as well as deals with marginalization and
exclusion. This can result in the overturning of local structures of exclu-
sion or oppression as well as includes the customary, the promotion of the
rights, needs and welfare of most of the population including the politi-
cally and economically marginalized.
the liberal peace given the absence of the voices of scholars in the global South
and also that its main proponents hail from Europe and whether this would
mean the concept ‘trans-liberal peace’ is more appropriate as it relates to
transcending the liberal peace. Although the main proponents of the notion
of ‘post-liberal peace’ come from Europe, their proposal of a post-liberal
peace is based on facts on the ground – a result of empirical research in various
post-conflict situations, such as East Timor, Liberia, Kosovo, Bosnia,
Somaliland and Pacific Islands including the Solomon Island and Tonga.
However, it is crucial for these progressive intellectuals to do more collabora-
tive research with thinkers from various post-conflict environments in the
developing world, especially in Africa where it remains under theorized.
In regard to the prefix post-, as Gianni Vattimo (1991 cited in Mazotti
2008: 100) has argued, it ‘does not always imply a temporal sequence, but
simply an oppositional practice’. In this sense, the prefix post- as in the context
of liberal peace is an indication of ‘a desire among the dominated subjects to
alter or overcome [the liberal peace] domination, and it would also recognize
that this desire generates a variety of subjective positions and agency’ (Mazotti
2008: 100). In addition, it does not negate other forms of peace and knowl-
edges, rather recognizes them and emphasizes their co-existence.
In this case, a ‘post-liberal’ peace agenda advocates a move toward new
and reconstructed approaches and strategies that allow different actors –
international, state elites and local groups – to participate in peacebuilding
and statebuilding processes in non-hegemonic ways. It also engages in pro-
cesses that are relevant to socio-political, cultural, historical and economic
experiences of the host-state. This recognizes and accepts the positive changes
or modifications that are happening on the ground as locals interact with the
internationals, resist, modify, accept, reject and tolerate international peace
initiatives in an attempt to establish peace that is relevant to their situation.
Such an agenda (as noted earlier) implies moving beyond the representation
of local populations as victims who need Western concepts of progress and
peace for them to move out of their situation, while at the same time, ignoring
or avoiding local forms of political organization and peacemaking in interna-
tional peacebuilding practice and policy. It is also a project that advocates the
liberation or emancipation of Dussel’s ‘post-colonial’ marginal (1995) or
Spivak’s ‘subaltern’ (1988) or Fanon’s ‘wretched of the earth’ (1967), who
often have been represented as victims who cannot liberate themselves out of
their situation without outside intervention.
In a nutshell, a ‘post-liberal peace’ agenda deconstructs conventional
approaches to peace- and statebuilding which explain violent conflicts,
116 LIBERAL PEACE AND POST-CONFLICT PEACEBUILDING IN AFRICA
CONCLUSION
Emerging critiques on liberal peacebuilding have shown that the liberal peace
has never been universally embraced. Such critiques, via empirical research,
and through the use of concepts including hybridity, hybrid, resistance and
agency, have helped us to gain an understanding of the nature of peace that is
5 POWER, RESISTANCE AND HYBRIDITY IN INTERNATIONAL PEACEBUILDING 117
emerging or has emerged in situations where the liberal peace interacts with
the ‘local’. Hybridity is increasingly becoming a common terminology in the
study of contemporary peacebuilding in post-war societies. While the litera-
ture on hybridity has offered us insights into the existence of ‘local’ agency in
peacebuilding as well as the limits of the liberal peace, much of the literature
fails to engage with the types of hybridity that are emerging in these contexts
and their implications for durable peace. This chapter, expanding on Robert
Belloni’s typology of hybridity, has discussed different types of hybridity that
might emerge in post-conflict situations including the possibilities of hybridity
that can result in emancipation. The following chapters are case study chap-
ters, which provide an in-depth discussion of the historical background to the
conflict in Sierra Leone, and apply the concepts of power, hybridity and
resistance to explore peacebuilding in the country.
NOTES
1. On the relationship between strategy and tactics, see de Certeau (1984).
2. Mary Louise Pratt’s (1992: 6) notion of ‘contact zones’ could be useful in
the analysis of the interaction of external and local actors. She uses the
concept ‘contact zone’ to refer to ‘a space of colonial encounters, the
space in which peoples geographically and historically separated come into
contact with each other and establish ongoing relations, usually involving
conditions of coercion, radical inequality, and intractable conflict.’
3. For an overview of the concept of hybrid sovereignty, see Bacik (2008).
CHAPTER 6
COLONIAL LEGACIES
Violence in Chiefdoms
The colonial transformation of chiefs had a negative impact on their
relations with the followers. Since the end of 1898 Hut Tax War and the
British consolidation of colonial rule, the protectorate had never been free
from politically motivated violence. The violence that came to characterize
chiefdom politics and periodically disrupted it, has largely been attributed
to conflicts among the hinterland people themselves (Tangri 1976). Two
different explanations regarding the frequency and virulence of the vio-
lence in the chiefdoms, especially since the late 1930s, have been pro-
vided.4 Kilson (1966) attributes the conflict in the hinterland to rural
‘radicalism’. He notes that a form of rural ‘radicalism’ characterized this
conflict ‘which in some instances constituted a virtual peasant revolt
against traditional rulers and authority’ (Kilson 1966: 60). For instance,
the November 1955–March 1956 riots in the hinterland have been attrib-
uted to this rural radicalism. For Kilson, ‘a populist groundswell against
taxes resulted in great violence’ and the objects of this populist violence
were ‘all related to specific features of local administration that proved
unjust or unduly burdensome to the masses’ (1966: 188–189). Contrary
to this position, Barrows (1976) and Tangri (1976) attribute the intense
political competition among ruling house families to the violence that
came to characterize chiefdom politics.
Because of the power and economic benefits associated with the
Paramount Chieftaincy including its use as an avenue for private accumula-
tion as well as the general underdevelopment in the rural areas, the office of
the Paramount Chief became a site of intense (sometimes violent) political
competition among rival ruling houses due to the existence of a ‘zero-sum
game’ (Keen 2005). This was more pronounced in the Mende chiefdoms
since the idea of a ‘bi-polar chief’ (‘chief-opposition ruling house’) was alien
to them (Barrows 1976: 100). Unlike the Temne in the north, the practice
of rotating the chieftaincy was not common to the Mende (Barrows 1976;
Keen 2005). For the Mende chiefdoms, their openness to internal rivalries
often led the various factions forging alliance with outsiders who further
divided them, unlike other societies, such as, the Somali in Somalia where
rival clans have often closed ranks against outsiders (Barrows 1976). Often
members of a rival ruling house(s) mobilized ‘young men’ to engage in
protests and acts of violence against incumbent chiefs in order to advance
their personal interests, for instance, economic gain, political power and
position.5 As Tangri (1976: 312) has pointed out, ‘violence has been a
6 THE STRUGGLE FOR SIERRA LEONE 125
means of seeking to achieve greater share of the resources and benefits of the
chiefdom – for themselves and their clienteles – by overthrowing the incum-
bents and installing themselves in office’. Tangri adds that, ‘young men’
resented the chiefly hierarchy, and as result, disaffected ‘young men’ who
feared continued forced labor and the heavy fines forged alliances with
opposition elders who were more interested in their own personal gain
such as power and position in the chiefdom affairs than the masses.
Although chiefs, their supporters and property were targeted, no chief
was killed and attention was on removing certain chiefs from power as well
as doing away with specific chiefdom policies and rules (Tangri 1976). For
Tangri, this shows that the protests neither represented ‘a popular move-
ment against the existing establishment, nor the wholesale change of the
structure of chiefdom authority’, but largely a result of opponents of the
local establishment who manipulated popular discontent (1976: 315).
Moreover, hinterland people respected the institution of the chief and
wanted to see it continue. Indeed, the post-colonial society inherited the
institution of the chief with the new African state elites, like their colonial
predecessors failing to reach the grassroots, but relying on the chiefdom as
the basic unit of administration since for the new state elites, the chiefdom
was the only local institution that could command support from the
hinterland people.
The hold to chiefs, as Keen (2005) points out, was further underpinned
by Sierra Leone’s path to independence. In preparation for Sierra Leone’s
independence, the British and Sierra Leone elites in 1960 held a constitu-
tional conference in London which saw them drafting Sierra Leone’s
constitution without the input of most of the population. Following
this, the British granted independence to Sierra Leone in 1961. In Sierra
Leone there was no broad-based nationalist movement that could have
played a role in mobilizing popular discontent and threatened the chiefs’
position (Keen 2005). Unlike other colonial states, such as Mozambique
where the post-colonial government depicted chiefs as colonial stooges
and a threat to the modern nation-state it wanted to establish, Paramount
Chiefs in Sierra Leone were not viewed that way since chiefs had been
involved in the country’s struggle for self-governance. As such, at inde-
pendence, Sierra Leone inherited a combination of a Westminster model
and indigenous institutions of chieftaincy in which central and chiefdom
politics closely intertwined.
As noted earlier, the colonial state in Sierra Leone never had effective
and legitimate state institutions and the colonial government’s attempt to
126 LIBERAL PEACE AND POST-CONFLICT PEACEBUILDING IN AFRICA
integrate traditional political structures into the colonial state led to the
transformation of the indigenous political order and the relations between
ordinary people and their rulers as well as society and state, and increased
the role of patronage as competing ruling families sought to outdo each
other. The post-colonial state inherited this.
transfer of power from a ruling party to an opposition one. A few days after
Brigadier Lansana took over, a second coup was staged resulting in the
creation of a National Reformation Council (NRC) which took control of
the government for a year. A year later, a third military coup led to the
restoration of civilian rule with the handing over of state power to APC and
the position of Prime Minister to Siaka Stevens. The transfer of power
marked the beginning of the decline of the state and the country’s descent
to state autocracy that contributed to the Revolutionary United Front
(RUF) insurgency in 1991. Stevens first transformed the country into
a republic in 1971 and then into a one-party state in 1978 after several
attempts to overthrow his government failed. In 1985, Joseph Momoh,
a former army commander, succeeded Stevens. However, his rule was
brought to an end in 1992 when disgruntled front-line soldiers led by
Captain Valentine Strasser seized power and established the National
Provisional Ruling Council (NPRC).
Kaplan refutes the political dimensions of the civil war in Sierra Leone
and other parts of West Africa, and emphasizes its criminal nature – an
outcome of traits embedded in the local culture. For him, like in other
parts of West Africa, the conflict in Sierra Leone is a result of a combina-
tion of factors including marginalization from the world economy, over-
population, environmental collapse, disease, crime and deep-seated tribal
hatred. Kaplan’s work reduces rebels in West African countries like Sierra
Leone to irrational and superstitious bandits engaged in primitive vio-
lence. Since his work is not analytical and also it does not examine the
local context in a historical perspective, it does not help in explaining the
structural causes of the civil war. Other scholars like Richards (1996)
who have critiqued the ‘New Barbarism’ thesis have pointed out that the
RUF insurgency is an outcome of the disintegration of patrimonial
politics in Sierra Leone.
forces for its survival and this had a devastating effect on, for example, the
hinterland, education, jobs and social services (Richards 1996: 36).
Furthermore, the crisis of patrimonialism had a negative effect on
young people, especially in the area of education (Richards 1996: 36).
Momoh who succeeded Stevens viewed education as a privilege rather
than a right of Sierra Leoneans. As such, for him the state had no obliga-
tion to provide education to its citizens. Prospective students were
awarded government scholarships for higher education on the basis of
their patronage ties and ethnic identity, and not merit (Kandeh 1999).
This resulted in the alienation of youths. The reality of state recession was
felt by the youths in the mining districts such as Kailahun and, ultimately
providing a fertile recruitment ground for the RUF (Richards 1996). As
such, the RUF insurgency is viewed as a response to this social exclusion,
which sought to provide an alternative political organization.
essential industries, such as diamonds as well as the collapse of the iron ore
mines which had previously played a vital role in providing much of Sierra
Leone state’s official revenue. The informalization of public resources was
later extended to state sectors, such as gold and fisheries. As Bangura
argues, this weakened the government’s capacity to collect revenue from
state enterprises. For him, while the fiscal crisis affected general state
provisioning and administration, it increased the fortunes of those who
used the state as a source of their livelihood. He thus argues that, there is a
positive correlation between ‘the poverty of the state’ and the ‘affluence of
“patrimonial” groups’ (Bangura 2004: 27). Such ‘patrimonial’ groups
were insensitive to the suffering of those who were not part of their
networks, and who had been seriously affected by the shrinkage of the
state and the informalization of public resources.
Contrary to Richards, Bangura argues that foreign aid flows in Sierra
Leone never declined, but instead went up consistently each year since
1987 (except for 1990 when it dropped): ‘[ . . . ] official development
assistance to Sierra Leone went up from US$68 million or 7.3 percent
of GNP in 1987 to US$99 million or 10.6 percent of GNP in 1989; it
dropped to US$66 million or 8.1 percent of GNP in 1990; but shot up
to US$108 million or 10.8 percent of GNP in 1991 [ . . . ]’ (Bangura
2004: 26). This, as Bangura has pointed out, happened at a time when
APC was engaged in the informalization of essential formal structures
crucial for revenue collection in both the private and public sectors.
International donors ended up taking the responsibility to promote the
welfare of ordinary Sierra Leoneans while state elites and their clients
abused state resources and strengthened patrimonialism. Bangura con-
cludes that most of the population suffered due to the crisis of the state
and the increasing gains of patrimonialism, not from the crisis of
patrimonialism as Richards claims.
Most analysts and Sierra Leoneans in general are nearly unanimous that
a large number of people who participated in the war were youth and their
participation was an outcome of their socio-economic and political mar-
ginalization at both state and chiefdom levels (Abdullah 1998; Peters
2011a; Kaplan 1994; Richards 1996; Rashid 2004; Kandeh 1999;
Humphreys and Weinstein 2004). Young people accounted for more
than half of all documented ex-combatants who passed through the
various disarmament camps in the country at the end of the civil war,
and over 70 per cent of the RUF rebels were children and youth below the
age of 25 (Rashid 2006).
6 THE STRUGGLE FOR SIERRA LEONE 133
Several Sierra Leonean scholars have argued that the bulk of the RUF
recruits were ‘lumpen youth’,6 prone to criminal behavior (Abdullah
1998; Rashid 2004; Bangura 2004; Kandeh 1999). Other scholars such
as Richards (1996) and Peters (2011a) have suggested otherwise – poor
and marginalized rural youth, not criminals were at the center of the civil
war. Toward the end of the civil war NGOs and DFID conducted exten-
sive public consultations for the Paramount Chiefs Restoration program in
rural areas which also provided substantial evidence that one of the causes
of the war was youth exclusion and exploitation (Jackson 2005; Fanthorpe
2005). This focus on the rural factor has helped to draw attention to the
motivations of many rural youths in participating in the conflict.
In a context of abject poverty, economic crisis, political repression and
corruption, high unemployment and limited educational opportunities as
well as limited resources to marry as elders controlled access to women, it
became difficult for a large number of young men to acquire social stand-
ing including the position of an adult or eldership in the community
resulting in their frustration with the system (Peters 2011a). This was
also confirmed by traditional authorities including Paramount Chiefs,
youths, NGOs and villagers during this author’s fieldwork in Sierra
Leone, who pointed out that forced labor, social exclusion and heavy
fines were among the factors that led young men to flee rural areas. Such
youths ended up in urban and mining areas in search of a better life, and
some fled to Liberia where they became easy recruits to the RUF which
promised to improve their lives. Youths, disenfranchised by customary
traditions and law, in dire need of empowerment, resorted to armed
rebellion to revenge against a system that oppressed them and blocked
their upward social mobility, aiming to gain respect, power and status over
the ‘big men’ and also as a survival strategy. Small arms and light weapons
became ‘the weapons of the weak’ (Scott 1990) to wrestle power out of
the hands of chiefs and elders.
From the above discussion, it is vital to note that ‘community failure’
(which contributed to the marginalization of rural youths) and ‘state
failure’ (which largely affected urban youths as the state could not provide
public goods including education and the creation of employment oppor-
tunities) should be viewed as interdependent. Both had a role in contri-
buting to the country’s youth crisis that saw marginalized youths playing a
central role in the civil war. In this regard, putting much emphasis on
urban lumpen youths will not help us understand the magnitude of the
‘youth crisis’ in Sierra Leone and it also silences youths from rural areas
134 LIBERAL PEACE AND POST-CONFLICT PEACEBUILDING IN AFRICA
who voluntarily joined the RUF. The urban lumpen youth thesis also fails
to account for the involvement of foreign Liberian and Burkina Faso
youths in the RUF ranks.
This author interviewed two former combatants, one a former RUF
commander and another, a former Civil Defence Forces (CDF) comman-
der who both pointed out that poverty and continued marginalization that
most ex-combatants experience in post-war Sierra Leone may force them
to join rebellions in other countries in the region – at least by doing so,
they can earn a living. Further, they pointed out that the 2009 and 2010
instability in neighboring Guinea made a number of former combatants
‘excited’, most of these combatants lived in cities such as Bo, Kenema and
Freetown, with their fellow ‘brothers and sisters’ (other former comba-
tants) since their families and communities rejected and re-marginalized
them. This could also explain why foreign mercenaries from Liberia and
Burkina Faso joined the RUF ranks – poverty and marginalization in their
communities. As such, the crisis should not be seen as limited to Sierra
Leone’s urban lumpen youths, but should be seen as a regional one.
As such, the two views – the view that the RUF had a political agenda
and the one that sees the war as mainly a function of economics – should
not be seen as in much contradiction with each other. As noted earlier, in
Sierra Leone the dominant group’s (state elites and their allies) appropria-
tion of public resources and their distribution to their patrimonial net-
works had a devastating effect on the population and the state, resulting in
the less-dominant group (disenfranchised youths, in particular) claiming
their share and joining the RUF to wage a ‘war of liberation’. In this
regard, greed by state elites and their allies, generated grievances from the
marginalized which resulted in them calling for an armed ‘revolution’ as
well as joining the RUF ranks. As a result, the outbreak of the civil war in
Sierra Leone (in relation to the short-term causes discussed above) could
be attributed to the interaction of economic motives and opportunities
with political factors and economic grievances. However, the revolution
turned wrong when the RUF wanted to achieve their political agenda and
access to mineral resources by any possible means as was the case during
the 1999 invasion of Freetown code-named ‘operation no living thing’ in
which a lot of civilians lost their lives (Gberie 2005; Alie 2000).
Despite the fact that the agreement provided an opportunity for both the
RUF and the Kabbah government to gain legitimacy as well an access to
economic and political power for the RUF, the protagonists had not nego-
tiated in good faith, thus failed to sustain the process resulting in its collapse
as well as the country’s failure to make a transition to peace and stability. The
peace process was largely flawed. Since the immediate imperative was to stop
overt violence as well as achieve order and stability, the peace agreement was
rushed. Given that the violence was largely associated with the RUF, the
negotiations were done between the RUF and the government. This resulted
in a range of key stakeholders including other armed combatants such as the
Kamajor militia, AFRC/SLA and West Side boys, civil society and local
community leaders being marginalized in decision-making. Moreover, those
involved in the peace negotiations failed to make use of the barry system, a
community decision-making system that is found throughout Sierra Leone
which local communities use to discuss issues, resolve conflicts and reach
decision through consensus. As such, a bottom-up approach to the process
could have been useful in helping formulate an agreement that had a vision
for the country as it would have allowed the wider public and other stake-
holders to participate in the peace process.
In May 2000, the Lome Peace Agreement collapsed and much blame was
laid on the RUF which had been reluctant to disarm, continued to harass
civilians, contested the legitimacy of UNAMSIL and took hostage 500 UN
peacekeepers as well as confiscated its equipment threatening its collapse (ICG
2001a). The May 2000 crisis brought the conflict to increased international
attention with the UK, which had not been involved much in post-colonial
Sierra Leone until the late 19990s, taking a pivotal role in ending it.
A combination of factors contributed to the eventual stabilization of the
situation, disarmament and demobilization of thousands of the RUF and
other armed groups, and an end to the conflict. These include diplomacy,
British military intervention, the May 2001 Guinean bombardment of
Kambia – a town in north Sierra Leone on the Sierra Leone–Guinea border
that was under RUF control, the UN Security Council expanded the size of
UNAMSIL and its mandate which allowed UN troops to use force against the
RUF, civil disobedience, and the imposition of economic and travel sanctions
on Charles Taylor’s government in Liberia (Ero 2009; Olonisakin 2008; Paris
2004; ICG 2001b). In early 2002, the war was officially declared over and
multi-party elections were successfully held in the same year, which Kabbah’s
SLPP won. The post-war period has seen international intervention strategies
aimed at promoting the liberal peace in Sierra Leone.
6 THE STRUGGLE FOR SIERRA LEONE 141
CONCLUSION
This chapter has provided a historical account of the causes, nature and
evolution of the civil war in Sierra Leone. It has explained the complex factors
that contributed to the outbreak of the civil war and state collapse in Sierra
Leone showing how some of the causes of the war are connected to Sierra
Leone’s past including the intense social, economic and political polarization
that the country experienced during the colonial period, which the postcolo-
nial state inherited. At independence, Sierra Leone inherited, as its legacy from
close to two hundred years of British colonial rule, a parliamentary system of
democracy, based on the British Westminster model, but which was never
adapted to suit the local conditions. State elites soon abandoned this model,
and the Sierra Leonean state became a victim of administrative corruption and
bad governance, eventually evolved into a predatory state, which marginalized
the masses. A historical account of the background to the civil war in Sierra
Leone helps us gain a more intimate understanding of the local context and its
possible challenges to liberal peacebuilding and the building of durable peace
as well as the quality of peace being produced in Sierra Leone.
NOTES
1. Chapter 2 has discussed the nature of the colonial state in Africa and the
issues raised are relevant to Sierra Leone.
2. The colonial government introduced a system of ‘ruling houses’ in which
each chiefdom had at least two ruling houses and only if someone was a
descendent from a ruling house he/she was eligible to contest an election
for Paramount Chieftaincy and was elected for life, unless if the relevant
Chiefdom Council (an assembly of elders and notables) disposed him/her.
3. The colonial government introduced the Native Administration system in
the Protectorate in 1937 with the aim of putting the chiefdom administra-
tion on ‘a sound footing’ and it served three main purposes: (1) ‘the
establishment of separate financial institutions, known as Chiefdom
Treasuries, for each unit of administration’; (2) ‘the grant of tax authority
to each chiefdom unit’; and (3) ‘authorisation of Paramount Chiefs and
other Tribal Authorities to enact by-laws and issue orders in pursuance of
social services and development functions’ (Alie 1990: 152).
4. Fanthorpe (2007) has attributed the violence to the power struggles
between secret societies and chiefs.
5. The Mende use the term ‘young men’ to refer to males who have no respect,
little power and hold no position in the chiefdom affairs (Barrows 1976).
142 LIBERAL PEACE AND POST-CONFLICT PEACEBUILDING IN AFRICA
The use of ‘young men’/youth in political violence at the national level has
also been noted as a key factor to the recent civil war in Sierra Leone.
6. Abdullah (1998: 207) defines lumpens as the ‘largely unemployed and
unemployable youths, mostly male, who live by their wits or who have
one foot in what is generally referred to as the informal or underground
economy’.
7. Although he was not part of the first RUF rebel group that invaded eastern
Sierra Leone from Liberia, a former RUF commander acknowledged the
presence of the Burkinabés in the RUF and also pointed out that he was
among the group that the ‘special forces’ from Burkina Faso provided with
military training in Liberia (personal interview, November 2010).
8. The former RUF commander cited above also told me that the RUF fought to
put SLPP in power and he could not understand why the same SLPP which he
fought for went on to imprison him and his colleagues after the war.
9. These were community-based militias that emerged in the mid-1990s
among various communities in Sierra Leone. Their main aim was to protect
their communities from RUF and government soldiers attacks when it
became clear that the Sierra Leone Army was colluding with the rebels to
destabilize the countryside and also that the army was failing to defeat
rebels. The most prominent and largest community-based militia was the
Kamajoisia – a militia force from the south and eastern parts of Sierra Leone
that was rooted in Mende cultural practices (see Hoffman 2007).
10. According to this view, the RUF was more interested in mining diamonds
than seizing political power.
CHAPTER 7
In February 2002, during her visit to Sierra Leone, Clare Short, the
then UK secretary of state for International Development, said: ‘[ . . . ]
the UK government is committed to stand by Sierra Leone for the
long-term provided that we have a strong mutual commitment to the
building of a competent, transparent and uncorrupted modern state’.
Indeed, the end of the civil war gave international actors an opportu-
nity to transform the Sierra Leonean state on liberal lines, economically
and politically with the aim of creating a stable and peaceful post-war
society. This saw international actors playing a lead role in the initia-
tion, planning and implementation of the country’s post-conflict peace-
building and statebuilding project, and as such, the Sierra Leonean
post-conflict peacebuilding and statebuilding process largely conformed
with the standards set by international actors. Much international
attention has been given to building a Western liberal democracy and
effective state institutions, a (neo)liberal economic order, security and
governance. International actors intervened in the war-torn state of
Sierra Leone on the assumption that the locals did not have the
capacity to (re)build it on their own, viewing themselves as having
the capacity to do so. Based on this flawed assumption, international
actors (working with state elites) took a direct role in the statebuilding
and peacebuilding efforts in the Sierra Leone. This international peace
support operation in Sierra Leone appeared to be neo-colonial in
nature as international attempts at social and political engineering
From this, it appears that Sierra Leoneans prefer a liberal polity – a state
that is both weak and strong, that upholds the rule of law and that is
insulated from elite capture, a vibrant civil society, media and state institu-
tions that can hold the government to account, and so on. Does this then
mean that Sierra Leoneans are liberals, advocating a liberal peace? If that is
the case, then Sierra Leonean peace is after all a liberal one. It is difficult to
conclude that Sierra Leoneans advocate a liberal form of peace basing on
the TRC report, given that, for instance, despite the chieftaincy system’s
(an illiberal institution) role in the civil war and the re-introduction of
local councils in all districts, recent research has shown that the general
feeling among Sierra Leoneans is that it is an important and legitimate
local government institution which should play a crucial role in the
country’s future (Manning 2009; Fanthorpe 2005; Swayer 2008).
Furthermore, recent research has also shown that groups based on affec-
tive ties such as secret societies continue to be highly regarded in rural
Sierra Leone and are regarded as legitimate forms of local governance
which can, for instance, play a crucial role in promoting participatory
development (Lavali 2005; Cubitt 2012). Lavali (2005) contends that
the introduction of the idea of formal NGOs and community-based
organizations (CBOs) has resulted in the creation of two publics: the
civic (modern civil society) and primordial (groups based on affective
ties) – evidence of the ‘continuing tension between the demands of
“civic” governance and “primordial” political loyalties’ in post-conflict
Sierra Leone (Fanthorpe 2007: 7).
However, much international attention (also using the TRC report to
legitimize their projects) in the post-war period focused on reforming the
state, economy and civil society along liberal lines. This witnessed, at the
end of the civil war, a wide range and comprehensive governance reform
measures being undertaken. These included the enactment of the Anti-
Corruption Act 2000 (and later a new Anti-Corruption Act 2008), The
Human Rights Commission of Sierra Leone Act, 2004; Anti-money
Laundering Act, 2004; a new Public Procurement Act, 2004; the Local
Government Act, 2004; the Budget and Accountability Bill, and an
Investment Code, 2005, and the Right to Access Information, 2013,
also known as the Freedom of Information Bill. In an attempt to improve
146 LIBERAL PEACE AND POST-CONFLICT PEACEBUILDING IN AFRICA
tax policy and administrations reforms that support private sector redevelop-
ment and fiscal stability, improved public expenditure management and
control, exchange and trade liberalization to strengthen competitiveness,
financial sector modernization and regulatory reforms, improvements in
governance, and more effective delivery of social services. (IMF 2002: n.p.)
In addition, the GoSL had to give in to the World Bank demands that it
produces Poverty Reduction Strategy Papers (PRSPs) – aimed at poverty
reduction and promoting development – as a prerequisite for obtaining
debt relief, grants, loans and new credits from the two leading international
financial institutions, the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund
(IMF) and donor countries. Economic liberalization continues to be on the
agenda of the international actors in Sierra Leone as reflected in the coun-
try’s three PRSPs: PRSP I (2005–2007), PRSP II (2008–2012, also called
An Agenda for Change) and PRSP III (2013–2018, also called The Agenda
7 BUILDING A LIBERAL PEACE IN POST-CONFLICT SIERRA LEONE 147
for Prosperity). The second PRSP which drew lessons from the PRSP of
2005–2007 emphasized economic growth, human rights, gender equality,
employment, poverty reduction, reforming the public sector, supporting
the private sector modernizing the financial sector (GoSL 2008).
Furthermore, it focused on the government’s four ‘strategic’ development
priorities from 2008 to 2012 which are energy, agriculture, transportation
and human development (GoSL 2008). The PRSP framework’s emphasis
on poverty reduction, broadened participatory consultation, empowerment,
national ownership and consensus building reflects a significant shift from
the structural adjustment prescriptions imposed on the country during the
pre-war period (Cooper 2008). However, as Cubitt (2012: 58) contends,
‘the purpose of consultation was to establish how best to implement an
already agreed template of reform not to encourage fresh thinking by locals
on the pressing issues facing the nation’. Such a template of reform has
emphasized the central tenets of the liberal peace – a free market economy, a
modern civil society and democratization. This reflects a ‘liberal peace
project’ of social transformation designed from outside in which liberal
ideas and practices are applied to the organization of the post-war Sierra
Leonean state and society with the aim of creating a certain kind of state and
society – a liberal state and society – thought to produce a particular kind of
peace – a liberal peace. As a result, local customs and traditions which can
significantly aid the peace and reconstruction process have not well been
considered by international peacebuilders in relation to this project.
Of course, this does not mean that international actors have not recog-
nized some of the customary institutions for social control and order in the
country, for instance, institutions of the Paramount Chief and chiefdom
police, and local level justice. Faced with the realities on the ground includ-
ing that most of the population in Sierra Leone has greater access to the
informal justice and governance systems than the formal ones, rather than
calling for their elimination, international actors such as the DFID and the
British Council have recognized the importance of Paramount Chiefs in the
governance of the hinterland communities. At the same time, such actors
have adopted strategies – via for instance, the Justice Sector Development
program – aimed at reforming the informal justice system in line with
international human rights norms and governance systems in order to
make them more relevant to the modern state that they are building in
Sierra Leone. Similarly, in its joint vision for Sierra Leone document, the
UN family for Sierra Leone noted the need to establish a justice system in
Sierra Leone that ‘incorporated more systematically the traditional court
148 LIBERAL PEACE AND POST-CONFLICT PEACEBUILDING IN AFRICA
“third way” between “row” and “kow tow”, between excessive military
interventionism and passive isolationism, and between neo-liberal and redis-
tributive economic policies’ (Cumming 2004:124).
As I have pointed out in the previous chapter, in May 1997 the
democratically elected government of Ahmad Tejan Kabbah was over-
thrown in a military coup and forced into exile in Guinea where he
established a government in exile, which the British government recog-
nized and supported. Peter Penfold who also had gone into exile in
Guinea developed a close relationship with the Kabbah’s exile government
supporting and consulting with it as well as playing an advocacy role.
Many people in Freetown viewed Peter Penfold as ‘as a protective, pater-
nal figure, in a climate where little protection was to be had from the state’
(Gallagher 2009: 14). However, five years after the end of the civil war and
the election of Kabbah into power, Sierra Leones frustrated about the lack
of progress in the post-war period could no longer see the British in such a
positive light (Gallagher 2009). Since the British and the DFID had been
deeply involved in the governance of Sierra Leone emphasizing, among
others, the building of effective government systems, ‘good governance’,
democracy, rule of law and respect for human rights, they became directly
implicated in the failures of the Kabbah government:
Five years after the end of the war, with much trumpeted levels of aid and
support, Freetown did not look very different from how it looked immedi-
ately after the war. People were angry that there was still no mains electricity
supply, little or no employment, and only rudimentary state services. The
motivations and effectiveness of the British, as key supporters of the govern-
ment of Sierra Leone, were beginning to be questioned and trust in British
intentions had begun to tarnish. (Gallagher 2009: 14–15)
ranking 181 out of 187 countries listed on the Human Development Index
(HDI) in 2015 (see UNDP 2015). Moreover, despite abundant natural
resources, poverty remains a serious challenge in the country. More than a
decade after the end of the civil war, most Sierra Leoneans continue to live
in conditions of endemic poverty and unemployment, and the country’s
infant and maternal mortality rates are among the highest in the world.
In addition, the Sierra Leonean state has remained polarized along
regional and ethnic lines, and continues to be highly dependent on
external aid, both post-war governments could not break away from
patrimonial politics, and the country has continued to experience growing
inequality and pervasive public sector corruption. The 2015 Transparency
International Perception Index, which evaluated the level of corruption in
168 countries, ranked Sierra Leone 119 out of 168 countries. In 2014, the
Audit Service Sierra Leone, in its report, Report on the Audit of the
Management of the Ebola Funds, noted a number of financial irregularities,
including the payments to thousands of ‘ghost’ health workers. Yet,
despite the existence of pervasive corruption in Sierra Leone, the convic-
tion rate of those accused of fraud and corruption remains very low.
The previous chapter has noted the role of disaffected subaltern youths
in rural areas and cities in the emergence of the civil war in Sierra Leone. In
addition, the conflict greatly affected the hinterland, especially, the eastern
and southern areas.4 Yet, international peacebuilders have tended to be
based in the capital city (Freetown), and have emphasized the building of
strong and effective state institutions. This is despite the fact that the state
is highly contested in Sierra Leone and ‘indigenous’ communities predo-
minantly occupy and control the ‘up country’ space, as opposed to
Freetown where the state has historically been the strongest, a result of
the heavy concentration of white and Creole settlers in the pre-indepen-
dence period. As such, the existence of multiple systems of power and
authority including informal networks and institutions such as chieftaincy,
women and youth associations, secret societies, kinship and ex-combatant
networks, and religious networks has allowed for the existence of multiple
systems of social ordering which either compete for space and power or
cooperate with each other or both. This has prevented the state from
providing a single dominant form of social ordering. Yet, in their endeavor
to establish a single sovereign, internationals fail to acknowledge such
non-state systems and institutions for social ordering in Sierra Leone.
International actors’ privileging of statebuilding over human needs and
welfare of most of the population in Sierra Leone is reflected in the World
152 LIBERAL PEACE AND POST-CONFLICT PEACEBUILDING IN AFRICA
difficult for young people from Imperi Chiefdom to attend the recently
established technical college, the Jackson and Devon Anderson Technical
Institute (JADA), as most locals had ‘no cash to pay for the tuition fees’
and in addition, scholarships were not being granted to the financially
needy, but to those connected or related to senior members of the mining
company and state elites (personal interview, town chief (b), November
2010). Further, the locals are bitter that the government sold away their
land to the mining company without first seeking their consent. Indeed,
poverty, economic liberalization and corruption are some of the reasons
why most people in the area lack education and skills, not laziness.
Meanwhile, mining activities have undermined local economies and
have also disrupted traditional land use practices. As such, there is a lot
of anger among the host communities that the state and their Paramount
Chief have failed to protect their interests and rights from Sierra Rutile
mining company, one of the largest foreign investors in the country.10 In
addition, there are also complaints that surface rent payments that land-
owners receive from the company are meager and that landowners are not
consulted, even when it comes to deciding how these funds are to be
shared between them and the state, the district council, the chiefdom
development committee and the Member of Parliament (group interview,
youth leaders, 21 November 2010).11 A youth leader pointed out that
‘The funds belong to us [landowners]’, however, ‘Much [money] goes to
the Paramount Chief, Chiefdom Council, the District Council, the MP
and the state, and little to the people. When extended families share cash
from surface rents each gets little’ (group interview, youth leader, 21
November 2010).12 He then noted that, ‘The mining company is using
our [landowners] money to satisfy the Paramount Chief, the MP, council
and government. It is policing the Paramount Chief and she is not raising
her voice’ (emphasis mine).13 In the absence of adequate government
regulation, transparency, accountability, consultation as well as the failure
to involve landowners in decision-making or in shaping mining agree-
ments, there is bound to be mistrust, suspicion, resistance and conflict.
Such complaints from host communities are direct challenges to the
legitimacy of the state since the state has failed in its obligation to promote
welfare and interests as well as protect the rights of its rural citizens against
investors. This failure of the state to promote welfare of its citizens can be
attributed to its continued dependency on foreign donors and its adoption
of a neoliberal agenda which requires it to create an enabling environment
for foreign investment including removing restrictions on them at the
7 BUILDING A LIBERAL PEACE IN POST-CONFLICT SIERRA LEONE 155
expense of welfare and rights of its citizens.14 As such, the state enters
business agreements with foreign companies in a weaker position. Yet,
international state builders want a strong liberal state in Sierra Leone that
is supposed to offer democracy and security to all its citizens.
Moreover, the erasure of welfare, rights and needs through the adop-
tion of neoliberal policies imply that the state will continue to favor
foreign extractive companies that will ‘help’ Mama Salone (Mother
Sierra Leone) move out of the least developed countries category over
ordinary people. In addition, the state regards strikes as threat to national
security (personal interview, ONS District Coordinator, November
2010). The state also views those who engage in strike action as attempt-
ing to sabotage the government as well as scaring away investors justify-
ing the use of coercion against them (personal interview, confidential
source, November 2010).15 This has effectively silenced the voices of
most of the citizens as well as undermined their freedoms including the
freedom of expression that the liberal peace is promoting in Sierra Leone.
Indeed, in the absence of consent, for instance, from landowners, state
institutions such as the police are called in to use force to suppress
resistance, further undermining the locals’ rights and access to traditional
land use.
Rather than reducing poverty and inequality, economic liberalization in
Sierra Leone has worsened the economic marginalization of most of the
population, particularly, the rural populace. Indeed, attempts at creating a
(neo)liberal economic order in areas where large-scale farming and mining
operations are interacting with small-scale communal farming in which the
(neo)liberal economic order is playing a dominant role will not promote a
stable economic peace. Rural farmers who continue to be marginalized from
mainstream economics have been resisting this. In this case, the failure of the
Sierra Leonean state to develop a self-reliant development policy and its
adoption of an ‘open door’ economic policy will leave Sierra Leoneans in a
‘state of economic dependence on the industrialised states [and IFIs such as
IMF and World Bank] for most of the satisfactions to which they aspire[ . . . ]’
(Cartwright 1978: 75).16 State elites’ acceptance of a neo-liberal economic
order could be a result of their strategic calculation based on their recognition
that the costs of resisting or rejecting it outweigh the benefits of accepting it.
For example, the withdrawal of the much needed national budget support
from IFIs, such as the World Bank and the weakening of their political power,
could far outweigh the costs of accepting it. In addition, a few state and
economic elites are using (neo)liberal peace and corruption as instruments
156 LIBERAL PEACE AND POST-CONFLICT PEACEBUILDING IN AFRICA
for their self-enrichment with most of the population turning to the informal
economy and resisting to pay taxes citing corruption and lack of development
in their communities.
Peace, in this case, will remain fragile in the country. As noted above,
the GoSL’s adoption of a neo-liberal agenda and its privileging of multi-
national corporations to ensure economic growth and development as
well as its attempt to create an investor friendly environment appear to
undermine the civil liberties, welfare, needs and interests of ordinary
people in communities such as Imperi Chiefdom. Despite attempts at
erasing local agency, welfare, interests and needs, the locals have
expressed agency through open forms of resistance, such as open strikes
as well as hidden forms of resistance, for example, workers who steal from
their employers. Further, they have also been able to take initiatives to
deal with challenges that are related not only to welfare and needs but
also to the re-establishment of community harmony and cohesion, and
the creation of a form of peace that is relevant to them as will be shown in
the next chapters.
As noted in the previous chapter, in Sierra Leone, the two dominant ethnic
groups are the Temne from the north and the Mende from the south and
east, and the country’s two main political parties, the APC and SLPP, have
often appealed to northern/Temne interests, and south and east/Mende
interests respectively. As a result, the re-introduction of multi-party democ-
racy and the existence of winner-takes-all politics in such a multi-ethnic bi-
polar political system have witnessed a fierce inter-ethnic (Mende-Temne)
and regional contestation as well as electoral violence between APC and
SLPP supporters. While the liberal peace has viewed political elites as poli-
tical engineers who can play a significant role in building an inclusive state
that is crucial for establishing and maintaining sustainable peace, the practice
of winner-takes-all politics in Sierra Leone has resulted in the opposite: it has
excluded the opposition and its supporters, and those who have not estab-
lished patron–client relationships with state elites. Since politics is based on
regional/ethnic lines, the politics of winner-takes-all has seen a segment of
the population feeling excluded from the state. For those in the southern and
eastern areas, the current APC-led government has become more synon-
ymous with Temne and northern interests than national interests.17 The
feeling of being under-represented in government has generated bitterness
in the southern and eastern areas. This has also resulted in the politicization
of Mende identity. The Mende complain about being marginalized and
excluded from political power, and are increasingly becoming uneasy over
what they view as the north/Temne political domination.
The general feeling among the Mende is that they have no stake in the
state. For instance, a TA pointed out that, ‘Whatever they do is their
business. We will take care of our own problems’ (group interview, 28
November 2009). A number of Mende respondents and journalists raised
concerns about the personalization of government, which according to
them has witnessed people being offered jobs based on political affiliation
or loyalty more than competence. In addition, there are concerns about
politically induced sackings of the Mende in the civil service sector. A state
official acknowledged that it is true that ‘many in the government are from
the north’ and justified this on the grounds that ‘the president has not
been in politics for long to know people all over […] he was born in the
north, went to school in the north and has businesses in the north’
(personal interview, December 2009). He further pointed out that when
President Koroma took over power he was in a dilemma about the people
to put in government and given his strong northern background, naturally
he called people whom he knew.18
158 LIBERAL PEACE AND POST-CONFLICT PEACEBUILDING IN AFRICA
CONCLUSION
This chapter has examined international peacebuilding and statebuilding in
Sierra Leone. The end of the civil war in Sierra Leone witnessed interna-
tional actors introducing a set of policies and programs that promote
democratization, human rights, rule of law, free market economics, a vibrant
160 LIBERAL PEACE AND POST-CONFLICT PEACEBUILDING IN AFRICA
civil society, and a stable and secure liberal state in post-conflict societies.
This could be viewed as a liberal peace project of social transformation
aimed at creating a certain kind of a political order and state – a liberal
democratic order and a liberal state – thought to be essential for creating
conditions for durable and sustainable peace in the country. Despite inter-
national efforts to build effective state institutions and durable peace, peace
remains fragile in the country, with both post-war governments failing to
deal with neo-patrimonial politics in the country, which political elites use to
entrench their political power. Despite this, there are peacebuilding activities
taking place in rural communities, which might produce positive hybridity at
the grassroots level. This will be discussed in the following chapters.
NOTES
1. The UN family for Sierra Leone consists of 14 UN agencies and programs
plus UN Integrated Peacebuilding Office in Sierra Leone and three financial
institutions – the African Development Bank, International Monetary Fund
and the World Bank.
2. UNIPSIL was established in 2008 by the Security Council Resolution 1829.
Its mandate included providing political support to national and local efforts
for promoting peace; promoting democratic institutions, human rights, and
the rule of law, supporting government efforts to stop illicit drug trafficking
and international crime; consolidating good governance reforms; support-
ing decentralization of government, supporting the constitutional review
process in the country (UN Security Council/Res/1829, 4 August 2008,
[3] (a)).
3. Its fragility was also reflected in the 2014 Ebola outbreak as the country’s
weak health system could not contain it without external support.
4. For instance, in its 2009–2011 development plan, the Kailahun District
Council notes that the 2001 vulnerability assessment stated that an estimated
80 per cent of the infrastructure in the district required reconstruction (2009).
It further notes that, ‘The general standard of living of the populace is very
low, with the majority having access to meals of poor nutritional status and
drinking water that is not safe’ and also in small communities people live in
substandard houses that have ‘become death traps and therefore dangerous to
live in’ (Kailahun District Council 2009: 8).
5. For instance, international actors privileged the Special Court for Sierra Leone
over the TRC, war victims and customary approaches to peacebuilding. Over
US$300 million was spent on the Special Court for Sierra Leone to prosecute
nine people who bore ‘the greatest responsibility for the commission of crimes
against humanity, war crimes and other serious violations of international
7 BUILDING A LIBERAL PEACE IN POST-CONFLICT SIERRA LEONE 161
Yet, the country has a high prevalence of hunger (in 2010, it ranked 79
out of 84 countries on the Global Hunger Index and in the 2015 Global
Hunger Index it scored 38.9, an alarming level). In addition, ordinary
farmers complain that the government has failed to support and protect
the already existing indigenous farmers.
10. Villagers in Imperi Chiefdom perceive their Paramount Chief as conniving
with the government and the rutile mining company. However, national
governing structures tend to supersede the authority of the Paramount
Chief (see Akiwumi 2011). For instance, part 2.1 of the 2009 Mines and
Minerals Act states that ‘All rights of ownership in and control of minerals
in, under or upon any land in Sierra Leone and its continental shelf are
vested in the Republic not withstanding any right of ownership or otherwise
that any person may possess in and to the soil on, in or under which minerals
are found or situated’ (Government of Sierra Leone 2009a: 8). This effec-
tively takes away land rights of rural farmers in mineral-rich areas. Yet, the
Provinces Land Act cap. 122 provides that ‘protectorate lands are vested in
the tribal authority (now chiefdom councils) to manage on behalf, and for
the benefit, of community members with land rights’ (Akiwumi 2011: 61).
11. In its 2011 Public Consultation and Disclosure Plan, Sierra Rutile Limited
provided the amount it disbursed as surface rent payment to affected
landowners in five chiefdoms in Moyamba and Bonthe Districts. For
instance, in Imperi Chiefdom the surface rent payment was disbursed as
follows – the payment rate was US$12.3 per acre (the figures are quoted
in Leones): (1) Bonthe District Development Fund – 126,546,329.70;
(2) Constituency Development Fund – 84,364,219.80; (3) Chiefdom
Development fund – 84,364,219.80; (4) Paramount Chief – 126,546,329.70;
and (5) Landowners – 421,821,141.30. However, the report does not state how
many landowners were paid and how much each landowner received.
12. The youth leader pointed out that due to the extended family system land is
not owned by a single person. This means that if six million leones is paid to
the ‘land owner’ as surface rent, ‘over 55 family members share [it], by the
end of the day each gets one hundred thousand leones’ (group interview,
youth leader, November 2010). During my fieldwork in 2010, a standard
50 kg bag of rice (the country’s staple food) cost 150,000 leones which is
66.7 per cent of such landowners’ annual surface rent payment, based on the
figures the youth leader gave me.
13. Yet, the same critics of the Paramount Chief are quick to point out that ‘we
do not disregard the Paramount Chief, though respect for her has been
reduced a bit’ (group interview, deputy youth leader, November 2010).
Further, such critics have acknowledged that she is good in some way, for
instance, in the absence of ambulance services in the chiefdom, she some-
times uses her pickup truck to transport sick villagers to the hospital, that she
7 BUILDING A LIBERAL PEACE IN POST-CONFLICT SIERRA LEONE 163
has established a good working relationship with the youths and also that
she knows how to talk to the people. In my interview with the Paramount
Chief, she pointed out that she supports the government of the day,
although some Paramount Chiefs resist this and also that she is working
on bringing her followers together (personal interview, Paramount Chief,
Imperi Chiefdom, November 2010). This (supporting the government of
the day), of course, sometimes comes into conflict with the interests of her
followers who despise central government. In addition, she noted that
payments from the rutile mining company for chiefdom development have
been used to build a guest house and a chiefdom cell. However, for critics
this is not enough and most of the funds meant for chiefdom development
are being abused by the ‘so-called figure heads’ – the Paramount Chief and
Treasury Clerk as well as senior men and women around them (personal
interview, confidential source, November 2010).
14. For instance, in the case of Sierra Rutile mining company, the state has
privileged the company’s ‘interests and profits [ . . . ] through legislation,
cheap pricing, tax holidays and reduced royalty payments’ (Akiwumi
2011:59).
15. The same source told me that he has secretly encouraged mine workers to
go on strike as he feared that if he openly encouraged them he would get
into trouble and at times, he encourages them to engage in hidden forms of
resistance, such as stealing from their employers.
16. For instance, a Paramount Chief noted that sustainable peace could only be
achieved in Sierra Leone if Sierra Leoneans were self-sufficient and accom-
modated each other (personal interview, Paramount Chief, Tikonko
Chiefdom, November 2010). He further pointed out that self-reliance is
important since it limits outside interference – which also could mean an
interest in local ownership and autonomy.
17. The same applies when SLPP was in power.
18. President Koroma could also have learnt a lesson from the previous SLPP
government whose demise an SLPP official partly blamed on its emphasis on
distributing political power evenly in order to avoid regional politics and a
return to conflict (personal interview, SLPP Official, November 2010). The
SLPP official further pointed out that this brought dissatisfaction within the
party since some party members felt SLPP leadership was not being grateful
to those who had fought for the party, leading to defections and also the
formation of a break away party, PMDC, under the leadership of Charles
Margai.
19. Ex-combatants who have faced marginalization in their communities have
moved to cities where they have established ‘new families’ consisting of fellow
ex-combatants. They have also established their own networks – often calling
each other ‘brother’ and ‘sister’ or ‘colleague’. In 2007 elections APC and
164 LIBERAL PEACE AND POST-CONFLICT PEACEBUILDING IN AFRICA
AUTONOMOUS MANEUVERING
Given the fortified nature of contemporary external peacebuilding that
tends to isolate international peacebuilders from extensive engagement
with the local, this has opened up room for autonomous maneuvering of
local actors such as CAPS, Fambul Tok and Hope Sierra Leone who have
been able to build considerable local-global networks. Local NGOs,
although not trusted by the local people compared to groups based on
affective ties such as secret societies (Lavali 2005), have managed to
incorporate some elements of the liberal peace such as human rights,
transparency, good governance, development and inclusion, and local
forms of peacebuilding as well as creating spaces for inclusion and con-
sultation such as the ‘peace hut’ and ‘peace tree’ which resonate with local
socio-political practices, and the creation of farms such as the ‘peace
mothers farms’ which make sense to local communities engaged in sub-
sistence farming. Initially, local NGOs tended to prioritize interventionist
models of peacebuilding which sought to establish a particular kind of
society (and state) – a liberal society and state. However, faced with
resistance from villagers who felt that NGOs were undermining the cus-
toms and traditions, and also who despised the imposition of the ‘white
man’s culture’ on them, some NGOs had to shift their approaches to
peacebuilding, and as such, making a tactical move to manage their
legitimacy. This has seen them reconciling international and local peace-
building agendas, advising and facilitating peacebuilding activities rather
than taking a leading role, which has allowed villagers to accommodate
them. This has also seen hybrid approaches to peacebuilding that are more
acceptable to the locals being implemented.
In post-war Sierra Leone, international donors have been involved in
transferring ideas and practices of civil society as found in Western liberal
democracies. A liberal civil society, it is believed, through monitoring and
advocacy can provide a check on the excesses of the Sierra Leonean state as
well as influence state policies and raise public awareness on liberal values
and practices such as democracy, good governance, human rights, devel-
opment and rule of law. This means that most international actors have
168 LIBERAL PEACE AND POST-CONFLICT PEACEBUILDING IN AFRICA
harvesting of forest products (as for example, nuts for making palm oil),
fishing and trade, carried out dispute settlements, and tried to regulate war
(as an arbitrator, but also as an initiator as for example, the role played by
the Poro in the Mende Rising in 1898 against the colonial hut tax) (Little
1965). Their current role and power is not as absolute and dominant as it
used to be, but these associations and the political and cultural life around
them mean that they still matter locally and often have considerably more
legitimacy than the local professionalized NGOs.
As noted in the previous chapter, the introduction of the idea of formal
NGOs and community-based organization in Sierra Leone has resulted in
the creation of two publics, namely, the modern civic and the traditional
local publics (Lavali 2005). The locals have developed terms to distinguish
them. For instance, the Mendes use the terms puu hindae (‘Whiteman’s
business’), which equates to the civic public, and kondi hindae (ʻour local
affairʼ), which relates to the traditional public (Lavali 2005). Many local
people view the puu hindae (NGOs) as corrupt and not worthy their
support (which may include refusal to provide materials for development
projects such as quarry stones and sand) (Lavali 2005).
The lack of legitimacy, trust and confidence in such NGOs also came
out during my fieldwork in the south and eastern parts of Sierra Leone in
2009 and 2010. For example, as noted in the previous chapter, TAs
pointed out that NGOs refuse to be accountable and transparent to the
communities and that they bring their own contractors (their ‘friends from
Freetown’), ignore local contractors, ‘most of the money is not coming for
us, [as] they are eating it’ and that state officials are part of the corruption
as contractors bribe them (group interview, TAs, 28 November 2009).
Furthermore, the TAs noted that district councils sometimes allow
NGOs to do projects in the chiefdoms without first consulting the chiefs
and this has often been met with resistance from the chiefs who feel as the
highest traditional authorities in the chiefdoms they need to be consulted
and respected. As such, chiefs often refuse to cooperate with NGOs
conducting peacebuilding and development activities in their chiefdom,
if they are not consulted.3 This has seen some projects failing largely due
to such power struggles between local councils and chiefdom authorities.
Moreover, conflicts have often emerged between NGOs and communities
who demand payment from the NGOs for construction material such as
sand and quarry stones that the community supply to NGOs for projects in
their community. There are suspicions that when NGOs apply for project
funds to donors they include costs of material such as sand and quarry
170 LIBERAL PEACE AND POST-CONFLICT PEACEBUILDING IN AFRICA
stones in their budget, yet communities supply such material to them for
free. In response to this, local communities demand accountability from
such NGOs and, at times, refuse to supply them with free construction
material and community labor. There are cases where NGOs have imposed
projects even when the community needs a different project.
For instance, NGOs have provided infrastructure such as crop drying
floors and grain stores in a community where people need say a mosque,
not crop drying floors, and in some communities, people have turned the
crop drying floors and grain stores into places of worship and ‘goat
shades’, respectively (Anonymous Project Officer, December 2009;
Interview, Anonymous, December 2009). And where the locals feel an
NGO imposed a project on them, they avoid it and identify it with the
name of the NGO. However, chiefs do not always resist as they have
allowed development projects in their chiefdoms even when NGOs ‘bull-
doze’ them on the communities, if this benefits them (TAs, group inter-
view, November 2009; Anonymous Project Officer, December 2009). In
addition to critiquing local organizations, the TAs dismissed the claim that
the locals lacked capacity and for them, this was an excuse to bring in
expatriates (‘their own brothers from Europe’) to do NGO work that
locals could do since there are local people who are better qualified than
some of the technical advisors. At times, local communities have openly
resisted the sidelining of the ‘indigenes’4 in holding key positions in
projects in their chiefdoms (Interview, Anonymous Project Officer,
December 2009). Moreover, local and international NGOs’ programs
and training workshops on issues such as gender equality, property rights
and some aspects of children’s rights that have targeted men and commu-
nity leaders have at times witnessed men resisting them by either walking
out of the workshops in protest or disagreeing with the NGOs (TAs,
group interview, November 2009). While women and children’s rights
issues are very important, men who resist them view such rights as an
imposition from outside (‘human rights are for whites’ or ‘its Western
culture’) and they also want to be consulted. Moreover, they feel that
women and children’s rights are being prioritized over theirs.
The initial approach of some local NGOs involved in peacebuilding
activities in post-war Sierra Leone was to prioritize interventionist models
of peacebuilding which sought to establish a particular kind of society
(and state) as people were told to adopt, for example, democratic values
and human rights, and to ‘put aside’ established cultural norms and
traditions as these had been attributed to the outbreak of the civil war
8 LOCAL NGOS AND AUTONOMOUS MANEUVERING 171
other Sierra Leone refugees, Hope-Sierra Leone was started with the
establishment of a ‘peace and reconciliation farm’ that brought together
ex-combatants and members of local communities. This initial work was
expanded in 2005 with the implementation of the ‘Moral Foundations of
Democracy’ program and the ‘Post-Elections Media and Governance’
project in 2008. As in the case of Fambul Tok, the agency of Hope-
Sierra Leone also rests on its local-global connections and its exposure
to the global consumers and supporters of (liberal) peacebuilding,
illustrated by various narratives it has produced concerning the alleged
transformations in John Bangura’s life from hatred to compassion and
reconciliation. One illuminating example is the tale told about him in
Michael Henderson’s book No Enemy to Conquer: Forgiveness in an
Unforgiving World that supposedly traces the personal and emotional
journey of John Bangura from a victim, a refugee harboring sentiments
of hatred and revenge to a person who has come to embrace forgiveness
and reconciliation as the only viable path forward for his war-torn country.
While Hope-Sierra Leone has stressed the value of indigenous culture
and values in enhancing societal reconciliation and solving political and
social challenges, the organization has also deliberately included interna-
tional peacebuilding agendas in its local peacebuilding activities. For
instance, Hope-Sierra Leone’s peace initiative, ‘Moral Foundation for
Democracy’, involved the use of main concepts in the liberal language
such as democracy, human rights and rule of law in its campaign to
promote tolerance, coexistence, nonviolence and respect for diversity
and cohesion, together with traditional ways of resolving conflicts includ-
ing paramount chiefs offering prayers to ancestors for peace, unity and
protection. In November 2010, Hope-Sierra Leone facilitated what it
called a ‘Heart to Heart Dialogue’ in Mattru Jong (Bonthe district),
which this author attended. This brought state officials, political oppo-
nents and ordinary people as well as traditional leaders from Bombali
district (northern Sierra Leone) and Bonthe district (southern Sierra
Leone) together to engage in a dialogue aimed at promoting peace and
reconciliation between the two regions as well as the local community.
At this ‘Heart to Heart Dialogue’, Hope-Sierra Leone pointed out that it
believed in tradition, that ‘we do not lose focus’, that ‘We are not Britain
or America’ and that ‘we need to deal with the issues between ourselves’
thus, placing the local community at the center of peace.
Yet, even though it allowed local leaders to take a leading role and used
traditional approaches to peacemaking, the peace initiative also brought in
174 LIBERAL PEACE AND POST-CONFLICT PEACEBUILDING IN AFRICA
joined rival militia groups, particularly the Kamajor warriors and the RUF.
Since the village was not close to the highway, villagers felt safe and decided
not to flee their village during the war. However, it became a battleground
between Kamajor warriors and RUF rebels who were inhabitants of
Sengema village. Local tensions continued in the post-war period, and
warring parties would fight against each other, even over minor issues.
When, in 2010, a group of young men from the village approached
CAPS for support, the organization visited the village and engaged in a
community dialogue in order to identify the root causes of the tensions.
Villagers identified the civil war and its consequences as the main causes of
tensions within the village. In addition, villagers attributed their problems,
including poor harvests, to angry ancestors. Ancestors are believed to act as
guarantors and the basis of peace and security. It is crucial to note that the
relationship of ancestors to the living is often described as ambivalent, ‘both
punitive and benevolent and sometimes even capricious’ (Kopytoff 1971).
In general, in order for ancestors to guarantee individual and social peace as
well as security, the living ought to maintain harmonious relationships with
fellow members of the community, ensuring that they do everything pos-
sible to address threats or breaches for the purpose of maintaining such
relationships. Moreover, it is vital for community members to respect social
norms and values. Failure to do so is believed to attract punishment from
ancestors. Peace in this case is conceived as a gift from ancestors.
Villagers in Sengema noted a causal link between social enmity and
misfortune. They believed that ancestors were punishing them for the
various violations that happened during the war, hence the poor harvests
and violence in the village. As such, for the villagers, the solution lay in
conducting a cleansing ceremony and reconnecting with the ancestors –
the custodians of peace and security. Doing so would mean replacing
social enmity with social harmony.
Various stakeholders attended the cleansing ceremony that CAPS facili-
tated, including the paramount chief, section chiefs, NGO workers and
women. The cleansing ceremony included perpetrators being asked to
publicly confess their wrongdoings, showing remorse and seeking forgive-
ness from their victims, appeasing ancestors and offering libation. For such
communities, forgiveness is prioritized, since it is essential for building
peace and the restoration of harmonious relationships.
Three months later, CAPS visited the village to assess the situation and
found out that tensions had ceased. Moreover, the villagers had established
a ‘peace hut’ where they would meet to discuss issues affecting them and
176 LIBERAL PEACE AND POST-CONFLICT PEACEBUILDING IN AFRICA
CONCLUSION
The combination of the questioning of some of the features of the liberal
peace with the increasingly fortified nature of contemporary external peace-
building which effectively isolates international staff from extensive engage-
ment with locals has opened up an agency of maneuverability for local
innovative actors such as Fambul Tok, Hope Sierra Leone and CAPS who
are able to build extensive local-global networks. The local and the global
embodied in the same organization provides for funding and agency, but it is
an agency that is constrained by the global connections, making them
organizations that can take a slightly different approach, slightly more in
sync with local realities and ideas, but still within the limits of what is
acceptable by the standards set by the globalized world of peacekeeping. It
is therefore an agency that is independent and subordinated at the same time.
As we have seen this provides for an agency that allows for some auton-
omy, but it is an autonomy that has to operate within certain boundary frames
of not only how the conflict, but also post-conflict peacebuilding initiatives
are to be approached. It is and has to be locally grounded as this is increasingly
asked for, but it also needs to have that touch of a globalized vision of a liberal
peace that promises a route to modernity that by and large is in sync with the
basic values of liberalism broadly defined. Local actors and organizations that
can accomplish this double role will thrive in the current climate and may also
gradually be able to enlarge their autonomy and scope of action, but never
beyond what their funders deem to be internationally acceptable. Thus, at
least in the case of Sierra Leone, the liberal peace may present itself in a slightly
less intrusive form, but it is still a far cry from enabling us to speak about a
8 LOCAL NGOS AND AUTONOMOUS MANEUVERING 177
post-liberal peace in this case. The following chapter goes beyond discussing
power relations existing between local and international actors, and local
responses to international peacebuilding by looking at the different forms of
power at the local level in the context of liberal peacebuilding as these also
have implications on the nature of peace to be produced.
NOTES
1. On tactical and strategic agency in Sierra Leone, see Bøås (2013).
2. On local responses to peacekeeping missions, see Pouligny (2006); Zanotti
(2011) and Mac Ginty (2011).
3. Article 24, section 2 of the Public Order Act of 1965, authorizes paramount
chiefs to disallow the convening or holding of a public meeting in their
chiefdoms.
4. The concept refers to those originated from the community in question.
CHAPTER 9
POST-WAR SENSITIZATION
Since a number of analysts have shown that there exists a close connection
between youth exclusion and the Sierra Leonean conflict, there has been a
serious concern among policy-makers that if the ‘problem of youth’
(especially youth marginalization and unemployment) is not addressed,
youth are more likely to be vulnerable to the forces that lead to violence.
In the post-war period, international organizations including the United
Nations and the World Bank, NGOs and the government of Sierra Leone
have promoted the rhetoric of youth empowerment, part of the liberal
peace agenda in the country that emphasizes issues such as human rights,
development, democracy, participation and inclusion. ‘Sensitization’ has
been seen as a viable vehicle to promote this.
Donors, international NGOs and the state, civil society organizations
have been involved in extensive ‘awareness raising campaigns’ or ‘sensiti-
zation programs’.1 A town chief stated that prior to the civil war, chiefs
abused power out of ignorance as ‘most [of them] did not know what they
were doing’ since no ‘sensitization’ and workshops were conducted
(Town Chief (c), personal interview, November 2010). A councilor talk-
ing about power struggles between Paramount Chiefs and district councils
182 LIBERAL PEACE AND POST-CONFLICT PEACEBUILDING IN AFRICA
also raised the issue of sensitization when he pointed out that chiefs view
the local government as a threat to their power, but ‘we are not taking
away their power’ and as such, ‘the national government needs to sensitize
the chiefs’ (Kailahun District Councilor, personal interview, November
2009). Talking about female genital mutilation, sexual abuse and women
empowerment, a local NGO, Advocacy Movement Network which also
promote youth empowerment, noted that ‘educated women should sen-
sitize other women’ so as to champion their cause (personal interview,
December 2009). A former civil defense forces commander pointed out
that it is crucial to ‘sensitize the chiefs in dealing with certain cases or
youths’ (personal interview, November 2010). Villagers’ resistance to
paying local tax is attributed to inadequate sensitization, yet at a leadership
training workshop that I attended, participants pointed out that their
refusal to pay tax was due to the government’s failure to provide basic
services: ‘Until we see development, then we will pay’ (participant,
Leadership Training Workshop, Kailahun, November 2010). The concept
‘sensitization’ has become a buzzword in post-war Sierra Leone, and as
Shepler (2005: 200) has stated, it ‘means a range of things in current
usage’. It is not just used by government bodies, the United Nations and
NGOs, but ordinary people and communities have also adopted it as they
deal with issues in their communities and the country. Sensitization, in this
context, refers to all efforts aimed at making individuals and communities
aware of a particular issue or issues.2 For Krech, in Sierra Leone, sensitiza-
tion refers to ‘community awareness raising but also implies social market-
ing’ as in the case of polio vaccination campaigns ‘Kick Polio Out of West
Africa’ (cited in Shepler 2005: 200). Although a number people whom I
interacted with in Sierra Leone, including the town chief cited above,
associated sensitization with ignorance, it should be pointed out that
sensitizing people is not necessarily about dealing with ignorance (though
in some cases people may be ignorant), but it may be an advocacy strategy
aimed at educating them or getting them change current practices that
they already know are, for example, oppressive, discriminatory or harmful
practices. For instance, communities or individuals may already be familiar
with the risks associated with female genital mutilation, but ongoing
sensitization activities may stimulate them to take action or change their
attitudes with respect to issues being looked at.
Post-conflict NGO sensitization in Sierra Leone is conducted via a
wide range of activities including radio jingles, cultural activities, com-
munity-level discussions, radio discussion programs, talks to schools,
9 YOUTH–TRADITIONAL AUTHORITIES’ RELATIONS . . . 183
The chieftaincy system has remained an integral part of the local govern-
ment system in the country with chiefs continuing to be central actors in
the chiefdoms and also having a lot of influence on daily lives of rural
Sierra Leoneans. Chiefs continue to play an important role in organizing
community development projects (for example, road maintenance), the
provision of security, dispensing justice, dispute resolution, the allocation
of land and control of tenure rights and so on. In addition, chiefs have
successfully integrated themselves in the post-war state and have become
partners with civil society organizations doing development work in rural
Sierra Leone. A recent study has shown that instead of ‘acting as a vehicle
for disciplining chiefs’, Paramount Chiefs have structured civil society
organizations to control society (Acemoglu et al. 2013). It is crucial to
point out that Paramount Chiefs have the power to block civil society
organizations from doing work in their chiefdoms, and this could be one
of the reasons why they have been able to co-opt them. Furthermore, a
number of civil society actors I interviewed claimed to be members of
chiefly ruling families and thus viewed themselves as ‘potential’ Paramount
Chiefs, and as such, such strong ties with traditional authorities and the
chiefdoms could also explain why chiefs have easily co-opted civil society
organizations. Rather than calling for the elimination of the chieftaincy
system, a coalition of Sierra Leonean NGOs called Partners in Conflict
Transformation with the support of Christian Aid as well as youth-
oriented civil society organizations and some scholars, notably Richard
Fanthorpe, are playing a leading role in campaigns for its reform. Youth
leaders whom I interviewed who have been ‘sensitized’ to this issue
supported the idea of democratizing the paramount chieftaincy as part of
reforming the chieftaincy system (group interview, youth leaders,
November 2010). This, for them, would include elections based on uni-
versal suffrage and the use of five-year terms for Paramount Chiefs.4 They
believe that doing so will make Paramount Chiefs more responsive and
accountable to their followers (group interview, youth leaders, 21
November 2010). As such, such youths are convinced that the democra-
tization of the chieftaincy system will enable them to have a voice in
decision-making processes in their chiefdom, although this is not always
the case as in most African states, democratization has not resulted in
responsive and more accountable governments.
Youth leaders,5 Paramount Chiefs and town chiefs pointed out that
intergenerational tensions have been on the decrease in recent years
mainly due to NGO ‘sensitization’ programs. In Imperi Chiefdom,
9 YOUTH–TRADITIONAL AUTHORITIES’ RELATIONS . . . 185
CONCLUSION
This chapter has examined power relations and forms of power that youths
and traditional authorities are exercising in their interaction in the post-
war context. Youths have drawn on the human rights discourse to create
spaces for resisting as well as negotiating with chiefdom authorities to
secure economic and political advantages. Youths who view traditional
authorities as corrupt and failing to protect their interests against politi-
cians are claiming accountability from below. Furthermore, youths have
used nonviolent resistance, especially, communal work boycotts to make
demands against traditional authorities. Since elders and chiefs need
youths’ physical strength they are forced to negotiate with them.
9 YOUTH–TRADITIONAL AUTHORITIES’ RELATIONS . . . 189
NOTES
1. The two concepts are often used interchangeably.
2. I appreciate Ezekiel Conteh for this idea.
3. For instance, the state has established programs such as the National Youth
Development Program that seek to mainstream, extend, mobilize and coor-
dinate youth-focused action as well as the country has witnessed the estab-
lishment of formal youth structures including youth-led organizations
addressing a wide range of youth-related issues, the National Youth
Commission, district and regional youth officers, chiefdom youth leaders,
chiefdom and district youth councils, the Ministry of Youth Affairs and a
Presidential Youth Aide.
4. The youth leaders would prefer successful candidates to come from ‘ruling
houses’ which they regarded as ‘our tradition’.
190 LIBERAL PEACE AND POST-CONFLICT PEACEBUILDING IN AFRICA
cash to paramount chiefs in return for their support and loyalty. For
instance, it has been observed that whenever chiefs fail to hand over
collected revenue to the district councils or come into conflict with
them, the central government has always sided with them since, ‘a
Paramount Chief can still deliver “40,000 votes” to a political party at
election time’ which a councilor cannot (Campaign for Good Governance,
Methodist Church in Sierra Leone and Network Movement for Justice
and Development 2009: 6).
As such, state elites’ preoccupation with consolidating the status quo
is resulting in a type of hybridity in which formal institutions are
accommodated with informal institutions. In this way, state elites are
attempting to reconcile their interests with those of non-state elites in
the country for their own benefit. This approach contradicts and is in
conflict with the Western notion of the modern state (that of a single
sovereign) that the British and other international actors want to create
in Sierra Leone. Indeed, state elites’ use of non-state elites is aimed at
protecting regime stability rather than promoting the welfare and needs
of ordinary people. In addition, state elites are aware of the struggle
between the liberal peace and traditional/local paradigms and are also
aware that it is impossible to dismantle entirely informal institutions and
customary practices without meeting stiff resistance from the hinter-
land. As pointed out in Chapter 7, despite traditional authorities’ role
in the outbreak of the civil war and their continued patron–client
relationships with government elites for their personal gain, recent
research has shown that the general feeling among Sierra Leoneans is
that the chieftaincy system is an important and legitimate local govern-
ment institution which should play a crucial role in the country’s future
(Fanthorpe 2005; Sawyer 2008). Although a number of rural intervie-
wees (especially youths and women) grumbled about chiefs and chief-
dom councils’ abuse of chiefdom development funds and their failure to
involve them in decision-making processes, they expressed more loyalty
and support to them than the local councils. A councilor pointed out
that rural people are more loyal to their chiefs than councilors since
chiefs are in office for life and councilors for four years so they had
rather maintain their relations with their chiefs than councilors (perso-
nal interview, November 2009). As Acemoglu et al. (2013) have
argued, the fact that traditional authorities enjoy considerable support
from their followers is not direct evidence that they are accountable to
them. Besides state elites accommodating local governing elites for
194 LIBERAL PEACE AND POST-CONFLICT PEACEBUILDING IN AFRICA
personal gain, they must accept the practices and institutions of the
liberal system to ensure continued international assistance and recogni-
tion. In fact, this system has always worked for state elites. Without
much local legitimacy, the state needs international actors for some
form of legitimacy.
The outcome of state elites’ facilitation of the institutionalization of the
Western model in the name of creating a modern Sierra Leonean state
while maintaining close ties with traditional formats is a hybrid political
order that is quite different from both traditional and liberal forms.
Although this is against the spirit of the liberal peace, it can enhance
regime stability, though it does not necessarily lead to a durable and
sustainable peace, given that it is promoting patronage politics which is
resulting in the marginalization of most of the population and, at the same
time, entrenching the power of local governing elites. This, of course, is
creating tensions between local governing elites and their followers and
has always been a bone of contention among the people. As such, this type
of hybridity – in situations in which patronage politics is entrenched –
should be viewed as regressive since state and local governing elites, and
their patrons tend to benefit from it and it fails to serve the interests of
most of the population. As a consequence, many ordinary Sierra Leoneans
have expressed frustration and disappointment with the post-war state and
its elites’ failure to represent their interests as well as their failure to address
notions of social and economic justice.
EMANCIPATORY HYBRIDITY
The third type of hybridity that Belloni identifies is produced when
violent non-state actors and institutions dominate liberal institutions.
This does not apply to post-war Sierra Leone, though it was the case
196 LIBERAL PEACE AND POST-CONFLICT PEACEBUILDING IN AFRICA
during the pre-war period and civil war (see Reno 1998). Instead, this
section discusses the possibility of a type of hybridity that can lead to
social transformation or emancipation which will be called here, emanci-
patory hybridity – an understanding of hybridity which challenges not
only the hegemony of the liberal peace, but also dominant local struc-
tures as well as dealing with marginalization and exclusion. This can
result in the overturning of structures of exclusion or oppression and
includes the customary, the promotion of the rights, needs and welfare of
most of the population including the politically and economically
marginalized.
The previous sections looked at types of hybridity that are emerging in
Sierra Leone and have shown that the two types of institutional hybridity
do not lead to positive outcomes given the existence of an entrenched
patronage system that tends to consolidate peace among elites. However,
it is crucial to note that a possibility of emancipatory hybridity exists. For
instance, local NGOs through their awareness-raising campaigns in rural
communities might create spaces for the realization of a form of hybridity
that is emancipatory which involves the coexistence of progressive ele-
ments of the local and the liberal, and may offer positive peace outcomes.
Although the populace appears not to understand what the liberal peace is
since it is a nonindigenous social construct, as discussed in Chapter 8, local
NGOs have adopted peacebuilding strategies that incorporate both inter-
national and local peacebuilding approaches.
In rural sites I visited, emphasis was placed on societal relationships,
welfare, human needs, love, patience and governance. At a two-day
leadership training workshop in Kailahun district, participants con-
ceptualized peace as patience, love, ‘cool heart’ or ‘heart controlled’
(‘inner peace’) as opposed to ‘hot heart’ (‘inner tension/chaos’), nor-
malcy, freedom, happiness, unity, stability and absence of conflict.2 In
this way, peace is largely understood in non-liberal ways, more on the
self and its relationship to its own self as well as others. For Lederach
and Lederach concepts such as ‘cool heart’ reflect ‘a deep understand-
ing that health and healing are inextricably linked to violence and
peace’ (2011: 240). At the Kailahun workshop, participants also
pointed out that peace could be promoted in their communities via
intensive community sensitization3 through the media, community
meetings, religious gatherings and so on, ‘through the gospel’, ‘justice
among the local people’, ‘dialogue/mediation’, ‘recreation at commu-
nity level’, unity, honesty, community development, cultural activities,
10 IN SEARCH FOR EMANCIPATORY HYBRIDITY IN SIERRA LEONE 197
reshaping social attitudes and beliefs in rural communities, and has seen
them internalizing certain elements of the liberal peace including democ-
racy, accountability, transparency and human rights (especially political
rights), although men tend to resist laws and local NGO campaigns aimed
at promoting and protecting women and children’s rights pointing out
that ‘human rights are for whites’ (TAs, group interview, 28 November
2009; Community leaders workshop, Kailahun district center, 11–12
November 2010). For instance, a town chief noted that the new gender
laws were quite problematic and ‘stupid’, and – pointing to his wife – he
stated while laughing that he could not have the same rights as his
‘property’. However, ‘since NGOs are pushing, we have to accept’
(Town Chief (e), personal interview, November 2010). In this case, it
appears that among chiefs, there is an acceptance of the new laws in public
which could be due to the existence of criminal legal sanctions for non-
compliance, and human rights committees in the chiefdoms and districts
that monitor and report noncompliance, though there is a lack of commit-
ment on the part of some chiefs in making this work.7 This leaves one
wondering whether such resistance to human rights is legitimate resistance
or it is just aimed at blocking the redistribution of resources or the
democratization of power at the local level, or whether it could be an
attempt by locals to engage in conversation with human rights.
Whereas the cotton tree was located closer to the bush, the ‘peace’ tree
is located in the middle of ‘town’. This could be viewed as an attempt by
local NGOs to remove such dialogues from close to or from the bush
which is associated with secrecy/secret societies. This could be for the
purpose of enhancing transparency, openness, accountability, inclusion
and participation of various stakeholders in the community including
women, the youth and children as understood in liberal terms. Here we
see the influence of local NGOs, on local communities since previously
marginalized groups such as the youth and children are being encouraged
to participate in community activities.8 However, there are certain tradi-
tions and practices that secret societies have refused to do in town, but
conduct instead in the secret society bush such as secret courts (if dis-
putants are members of a secret society) and conduct cleansing rituals in
the bush that are essential for reconciliation and social peace (TAs, group
interview, 28 November 2009).9 This could be an expression of such
locals’ autonomy and agency since it is difficult for non-members of such
groups to influence them when they engage in such activities in secret
society bushes.
10 IN SEARCH FOR EMANCIPATORY HYBRIDITY IN SIERRA LEONE 199
CONCLUSION
Emerging critiques on liberal peacebuilding have shown that the liberal
peace has never been universally embraced. Such critiques, via empirical
research, have concluded that in post-conflict societies, hybrid forms of
peace and politics are emerging as the liberal peace interacts with the
‘local’. Hybridity is increasingly becoming a common terminology in the
study of contemporary peace building in post-war societies. While the
literature on hybridity has offered us insights into the existence of ‘local’
agency in peacebuilding as well as the limits of the liberal peace, much of
the literature fails to engage with the types of hybridity that are emerging
in these contexts and their implications for durable peace. This chapter has
examined the types of hybridity that are emerging in post-war Sierra
Leone including the possibilities of hybridity that can result in emancipa-
tion. In this chapter, I have argued that the different types of hybridity that
are emerging in Sierra Leone do not necessarily lead to emancipation as
some of them result in ordinary people accommodating themselves to
their situation.
10 IN SEARCH FOR EMANCIPATORY HYBRIDITY IN SIERRA LEONE 201
NOTES
1. While I am aware that Paramount Chiefs in Sierra Leone are closely tied into
the Sierra Leonean state system via the 1991 Constitution and legislation,
chiefs and ordinary people I interviewed tended to view the institution of the
Paramount Chief as a non-state institution and prefer it to be autonomous.
2. By highlighting the ‘local’ understanding of peace the chapter attempts to
avoid replicating Western arguments that local actors cannot provide, for
example, peace, security, democracy, human rights and gender equality
without external direction.
3. Local NGOs are using this concept in regard to their work on sensitizing or
raising awareness to the community about such issues as human rights, good
governance, accountability and so on. It is not surprising that this came out
at the workshop since some of the participants were modern civil society
actors.
4. Some NGOs such as Hope Sierra Leone call them ‘peace and reconciliation
trees’. These ‘peace trees’ include cocoa, kola nut, cotton and mango trees.
5. Palava is a term that locals use to mean disputes.
6. A court barry is a building where the local court sits and official meetings
take place. Offices for chiefdom administrators such as the Paramount Chief
and chiefdom speaker are also housed at the court barry.
7. A human rights officer for the Human Rights Commission of Sierra Leone
noted that the commission provides human rights training to all Paramount
Chiefs as well as awards them certificates; however, 10 per cent of the chiefs
implement what the commission teaches them and most of them do the
opposite (personal interview, November 2010).
8. For instance, at peace dialogue between residents of Bonthe and Bombali
districts (facilitated by a local NGO, Hope Sierra Leone) held in Mattru
Jong on 20 November 2010, which I attended, a school girl was given an
opportunity to talk to the participants including Paramount Chiefs and
subchiefs on issues affecting children in her community which can be viewed
as an attempt to promote the rights and welfare children’s rights.
9. In rural Sierra Leone, secret societies remain significant ritual cleansing
experts essential for transforming the wrongdoer and the victim, thus allow-
ing individual/social healing to happen crucial for communal peace. This
does not mean to romanticize them, but to also bring out certain positive
aspects of them essential for peacebuilding.
10. Some of the program officers for these local NGOs are indigenes (originated
from the communities that such NGOs are involved) who know the local
culture and context.
CHAPTER 11
Conclusion
This book has examined the practical application of the liberal peace in
Africa, using Sierra Leone as a reference case study of liberal peace
transition. For the past two decades, external peace interventions in
war-torn societies have been liberal peace-oriented emphasizing political
and economic liberalization, and statebuilding with insufficient attention
to inequality, resource distribution, culture, localized forms of peace-
building and welfare, among others. The liberal peace has been trans-
planted from the West to troubled parts of the developing world with the
hope that it will create sustainable peace in these countries. Moreover,
international actors have exported the liberal peace model from the West
to societies emerging from civil conflict with the expectation that the
‘hosts’ would accept it as it is. They have used conditionalities to enforce
compliance by host countries to their peacebuilding agendas. Yet, as
I have highlighted in the case of Sierra Leone, such international actors
often have limited knowledge about the host country’s political and
social history, local peace agendas and complex local dynamics as well
as little day-to-day contact with the local populations they are supposed
to serve. Despite the liberal peace’s flaws, it merits study because today
we have violent internal conflict situations and liberal internationalists
who are willing and able to go in.
It is vital to point out that, in recent years, studies on contemporary
peacebuilding have undergone significant changes. In response to the
This was also evident as Sierra Leone was battling to control the
2014/2015 Ebola outbreak. Several actors, DFID included, still strug-
gle to find ways of incorporating figures of authority on the ground as
Paramount Chiefs and the secret societies as well as local populations in
their assistance strategies, preferring to bypass them as well as the state,
and work with the formal civil society sector and the private sector in the
construction of Community Care Units.1 In the haste to contain
the outbreak, a number of important local actors were ignored as their
simple presence seemed to be lacking from the plans the international
community is making for Sierra Leone.
NOTE
1. DFID also established a £5m Emergency Ebola Response Fund (DEERF)
which was managed by GOAL, an international humanitarian agency. Some
of the conditions for funding stated in the application guidelines prioritized
international nongovernmental organizations (INGOs) over the ‘local’: (1)
‘Direct funding to Government systems is not permitted’; (2) ‘Indirect
support to Government is permitted in partnership with an INGO. In this
case donation in kind of goods is the preferred mechanism’; and (3)
‘National NGOs may apply for funding only in partnership with an
International NGO’ (GOAL 2015).
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BIBLIOGRAPHY 231
Ethnic groups, 2, 14, 17, 25, 28, 29, GoSL, see Government of Sierra Leone
33, 36n5, 80, 120, 127, 129, Governance, 4, 5, 10–11, 15, 18, 21,
156–159 33, 45, 46, 49, 50, 53–56, 67, 68,
Europe, 23, 26, 57–58, 73, 106, 73, 77, 79, 83, 96, 98–101, 108,
115, 170 109, 111–114, 113, 123, 125,
European colonialism, 98 126, 134, 139, 143, 144–147,
Everyday, 3, 41, 50, 60, 84, 86, 92, 150, 152, 156, 158, 167, 168,
107, 153, 204 173, 179, 183, 186, 187, 192,
Everyday life, 2, 11, 14, 17, 84, 91, 193, 195, 196, 199, 201n3
92, 116 Government of Sierra Leone
Everyday resistance, 89, 91–93, 116 (GoSL), 18, 131, 135, 136, 139,
Exclusion, 84, 114, 131, 133, 134, 146, 147, 150, 162n10, 168,
153, 179, 181, 191, 195, 196 181, 194
Exercise power, 18, 88–91 Grassroots, 3, 7, 8, 59, 60, 83, 107,
chiefdoms, 91 109–110, 125, 158, 160, 168,
External actors, 22, 30, 31, 48, 57, 94, 180, 192, 197, 199, 205
101, 108 Guinea, 11, 13, 16, 27, 31, 47, 52,
114, 134, 136, 138, 140, 150
F
Failure, 1, 6, 26, 29, 46, 49, 60, 63,
H
68, 71, 72, 82, 84, 93, 94, 98,
Hope Sierra Leone, 7, 167, 171–174,
106, 119, 133, 140, 144, 150,
176, 201n4, 201n8, 206
152–156, 159, 171, 175, 182,
Human rights, 25, 34, 44–47, 49, 52,
193, 194
54, 67–68, 80, 99, 134, 139,
liberal peace’s, 159
144, 145, 147–148, 150, 160n2,
Fambul Tok, 7, 167, 171–174,
167, 170–174, 176, 179, 181,
199, 206
183, 187, 195, 198, 199, 201n1,
Farms, peace mothers, 167, 197,
201n3, 201n7
199–200
Human security, 41, 45, 54, 100
France, 19, 30, 55, 95
Hybrid forms of peace, 2–4, 6, 7, 86,
Freetown, 96, 121, 134, 136, 138,
94, 95, 102, 105, 107, 111, 179,
139, 150–153, 156, 169, 171
188, 189, 191, 200, 204
Fukuyama, F., 53–54, 69n3, 69n5, 72
Hybridity
institutional, 112, 196
G liberal-local, 111
Gallagher, J., 149, 150 local-liberal, 111
Ghana, 12, 14, 18, 23–25, 27, 31, understanding of, 114, 196
36n5, 37n13, 135 Hybridity and resistance, 4, 5,
Good governance, 45, 46, 49, 67, 68, 105, 117
98–100, 146, 150, 160n2, 167, Hybridization, 90, 94, 97, 148,
179, 183, 187, 193, 199, 201n2 199, 204
240 INDEX
Hybrid peace, 7, 87, 90, 91, 94, 105, Interference, excessive state, 32
108–114, 179, 180, 192, 205 Internally displaced persons
Hybrid peace governance, (IDPs), 34, 41
111–114, 192 International actors, 2, 3, 5, 6, 12, 40,
Hybrid political orders, 3, 5, 107, 43, 53, 57, 58, 60, 71, 73, 83,
111–112, 191, 194 86–91, 98, 110, 112, 113, 143,
144, 146–149, 151, 152, 159,
160n5, 165, 167, 168, 177, 179,
I 192–195, 203–205
IDPs, see Internally displaced persons International community, 26, 39, 53,
IFIs (international financial 79, 100, 149, 207
institutions), 32, 40, 47, 73, International donors, 2, 30, 32, 55,
146, 155 65, 108, 109, 132, 148, 152,
Illiberal, 2, 61–63, 76, 77, 112, 165, 167–168, 171, 176
145, 192 International peace
IMF (International Monetary new threats to, 43
Fund), 32, 33, 40, 66, 130, 146, threat to, 1, 63, 68
155, 160n1 International peacebuilding, 2–4,
Independent states, 24, 26 6, 7, 9, 47, 49, 53, 59, 62,
Indigenous, 11, 14–17, 20–22, 24, 63, 67, 71, 78, 82, 84, 87, 88,
27, 58, 65, 79, 82, 83, 88, 96, 91–95, 99, 105–117, 144, 158,
106, 112, 121, 123, 125–127, 166–167, 171, 173, 177, 179,
144, 151, 152, 158, 162n9, 168, 191, 204
173, 196 context of, 62, 87, 88, 91, 95, 105,
Indigenous African, 14–17 108, 179, 191, 204
Indigenous approaches, 82 International peacebuilding
Indigenous people, 22, 24, 96 interventions, 67, 109
Indirect rule, 20, 21, 96, 121, 122 International peace initiatives, 7, 94,
Informalization, 131–132 115, 156, 180
Infrapolitics, 82, 92, 93 International peace-support
Institutionalization, 43, 44, 56, 57, interventions, 88–91
75–77, 194 International relations, 13, 43, 61,
Institutional state-centric agendas, 96, 180
50, 59 International state builders, 86, 155
Institution building, 77, 144 Intervention, 2, 3, 5, 9, 30–34, 50–56,
Institutions 59, 67–68, 88–91, 98, 99, 101,
formal, 112, 113, 192–194 107–110, 115, 120, 140,
informal, 112–113, 192–194 148–150, 167, 170, 174, 203
local, 77, 112, 113, 125, 171, external, 5, 9, 34, 37n13, 101,
192, 199 107, 120
non-state, 88, 158, 192, 201n1 Intrastate conflicts, 1, 2, 5, 34–35, 39,
strong, 76, 77 40, 42–43, 50
INDEX 241
South Africa, 11–12, 23, 31, 36n7, Thomson, A., 25, 36n11, 37n12,
41, 79 57, 113
South Sudan, 41, 50–51, 54 Town chief, 153–154, 161n8,
Sovereignty, 21–24, 26, 27, 30, 45, 180–182, 184–187, 197,
59, 88, 107, 117n3 198, 200
Sriram, C. L., 77, 80, 81 Traditional authorities, 91, 96, 107,
State 133, 148, 169, 179–189, 193
building, 54, 57, 59 Traditional leaders, 12, 21, 36n3, 79,
failed, 26, 40, 53, 56, 111 96, 113, 122, 173
fragile, 11, 51–54, 149 Traditional peacekeeping
weak, 39, 53–54, 63, 69n5, 77, approach, 35, 39
134, 149 Traditions, 14, 17, 78–80, 121, 133,
State autocracy, 128, 136 147, 167, 170–172, 181, 198
Statebuilding, 3–5, 10, 27, 28, 39–69, Transparency, 45, 56, 151, 154, 167,
71, 78, 84, 86, 98, 105, 183, 186–187, 198
107–112, 115, 143, 144, TRC (Truth and Reconciliation
148–156, 158, 191 Commission), 121, 122, 135,
dilemmas of, 86 139, 144, 145, 153, 160n5,
Statebuilding and peacebuilding, 3, 171, 197
98, 111, 112, 143, 144 Tree, cotton, 197–199
State capacity, 75 Tribal Authorities, 141n3, 148,
State failure, 1, 6, 63, 119, 133 152, 186
State formation, 57, 58
State legitimacy, 29, 57
Stateless societies, 16–17 U
concentrations of, 16 Uganda, 11, 12, 24, 29, 37n13, 41,
State power, 18–23, 53, 66, 128 42, 79
State sovereignty, 21, 30, 59 UNDP, 54, 84, 109, 151, 166
Structural adjustment programs, see UNIPSIL, 149, 160n2
SAPs United Nations, 2, 13, 25, 45, 46,
Sub-Saharan Africa, 1, 14, 24, 32, 51, 55, 69n1, 76, 139, 149,
34, 73 181, 182
Sudan, 1, 16, 26, 37n13, 41, 50–51, United States, see US
54, 110 US, 53, 62, 132, 139, 160n5,
162n11, 172, 174
T
Taylor, I. C., 33, 67, 71, 77–78, 159 V
Tensions Villagers/communities, 197
civil war-related, 174 Violence
intergenerational, 184–185, domestic, 174
188–189 political, 75, 142n5
246 INDEX