Sir, - In his Irishman's Diary of January 15th, Kevin Myers took issue with comments made by my colleagues, Toireas Ni Bhriain, about the current conflict in Sierra Leone. Toireas has now returned to Sierra Leone to try to pick up the pieces of our programme there and to provide humanitarian assistance to the victims of the war. In her absence I would like to address some of the points raised by Mr Myers.
He is, I think, correct in assuming that there would be great reluctance to putting a non-African UN peacekeeping force into Sierra Leone. Public opinion in most Western countries would be against it. As he points out, there was a very negative reaction at home to the loss of US lives in Somalia. Where there is no strategic interest, involved people will generally not want to support ground-force peace-enforcing missions in Third World countries. Even where there is a perceived strategic interest, US public opinion will allow only air power intervention as in the case of Iraq.
Generally speaking, Concern would take a cautious approach to the use of UN military forces in a peace-enforcing role. In certain cases this could make it more difficult to carry out humanitarian work and we have never advocated the use of such forces to protect humanitarian aid workers. But there are situations when appropriate and proportionate UN military interventions can save many lives. The Canadian general in charge of the UN force in Rwanda is on record as saying that one brigade of 5,000 men would have enabled him to stop the genocidal killing of 800,000 innocent men, women and children in 1994. The world will have to live with its failure in this case for a long time.
Mr Myers derides the idea of UN interventions in any of the African countries in which there is conflict at present. He also attributes to Toireas Ni Bhriain opinions about white neutral international forces which she did not in fact express. Why is it that he did not say anything about UN interventions in non-Third-World countries such as Lebanon, Cyprus and the Balkans? Who can say that these interventions have not been important and necessary and represent reasonable success for the UN? But is the UN to be used only in parts of the world geographically or strategically important to the developed world?
To refer specifically to Sierra Leone, Toireas was making the point that a predominately Nigerian ECOMOG force is not seen as being neutral in the conflict. This does not mean that a better balance of numbers of troops from the countries that make up the ECOMOG contingent would be more effective. It is, I submit, an entirely rational argument based on her first-hand experience of the country and its people.
I do not believe that military intervention by white soldiers is a panacea for Africa's problems. I do believe that much could be achieved by an effective organisation of African Unity (AOU) supported by a properly resourced United Nations. As I see it, the tragedy of the current world situation is influenced more by considerations of economic self-interest that of wishing to strengthen either the OAU or the UN. - Yours, etc., David Begg, Chief Executive, Concern,
Camden Street, Dublin 2.