New Role for African Powers

Despite rebel troops’ ouster of the elected president, democracy may not be dead in the West African country of Sierra Leone. At the request of President Ahmad Tejan Kabbah, troops from Nigeria, Ghana and Guinea have come in to turn the tide.

This powerful intervention, now the rule rather than the exception in the troubled region, could ultimately restore civilian rule, which would be an irony because Nigerian leader Sani Abacha himself is a military dictator. Nevertheless, Abacha and his army get credit for suppressing civil conflicts along the bulge of West Africa. Nigerian troops were dominant in the African force that quelled Liberia’s vicious civil war, for instance.

The intervention in Sierra Leone was endorsed Tuesday by leaders of the Organization of African Unity meeting in Harare, Zimbabwe, underlining the OAU commitment to democracy on the continent, whether it be protected by democratic armies or military dictatorships. This may be a politically difficult course--Washington has waffled on support of intervention--but it appears to be the choice of African leaders.

Despite the May 25 coup by Sierra Leone’s Revolutionary United Front, power in Africa resides with the big countries, which seem increasingly prepared to use it. The post-independence days of rigid non-intervention are over. Sierra Leone was already weakened by a five-year civil war that ended last November. An estimated 10,000 people were killed and more than 100,000 were left homeless. Poverty remains widespread and per capita income is but $160 per year, according to the United Nations.

Whoever prevails in Sierra Leone, the country will need foreign assistance to pull itself back to a solid economy. The March 1996 election of Kabbah, a former U.N. officer now in exile in Guinea, resulted in a tripling of foreign aid. If the rebels succeed, that help will dry up.