BEFORE Leonardo DiCaprio set foot in Sierra Leone for the Hollywood film ‘Blood Diamond’, and Kanye West’s “Diamonds from Sierra Leone’ hit record, the West African country have had its share of gruesome conflicts and horror. Most of the rebels, aggressive fighters, conniving instigators and innocent victims are dead and gone. Charles Taylor is alive, and he falls somewhere in that spectrum, except that proving his involvement beyond any reasonable doubt is become somewhat of an awkward chess game.If anyone told me 10 years ago that former Liberian President Charles Taylor will be sitting in front of any tribunal, The Hague included, I would have written them off as completely loony. My only reason being that African presidents had historically escaped anything close to tribunals and justice, no matter the magnitude of their misconduct. Of couse, long before Taylor was president, he was a militant, and not the kind you want your son using for a role model.
The gruesome images from Liberia and Sierra Leone during one of West Africa’s most bizarre civil wars shook the entire continent, and apparently shocked the world into action. Liberia (more so) because I remember the chilling images (Samuel Doe’s execution especially), as if they were from yesterday.
The Liberia and Sierra Leone civil wars led to widespread murder, brutal rape cases, and unimaginable crimes against humanity. The conflict ended in 2002 (started somewhere in 1991), but as in any such fracas, the question of guilt and innocence largely depends on who you ask. For a continent that has suffered so many political upheavals and military unrests, you can bet The Hague is doing their best to using Charles Taylor’s storyline as an example to the rest of the potentially rogue African leaders who are yet to grasp the concept of justice.
Well, many years down the line, Charles Taylor will swear he is innocent. Why am I not surprised? Fast forward to 2008 in Sudan where President Omar Bashir is accused (more like loathed) of funding the Jinjaweed militia to literally crucify the ethnic Darfur tribes. I am in no position to judge who should take the blame for the atrocious war crimes and the tortures that all of us frowned upon, but you will be hardpressed to make a solid argument to Charles Taylor's innocence. Memory is fickle, but the images of a gun-touting militant like Charles Taylor don't just vanish from our minds.
The truth of the Sierra Leone crisis (as is the case for all these African conflicts), there are so many people involved, African neighbors and foreigners alike. Many people exploit the social instability and war, from gun merchants, sex traders, and diamond smugglers, down to the French and Dutch businessmen writing the checks, all in the name of capitalism. I am sure that is really what Charles Taylor is dying to tell The Hague, except that it is the kind of allegation that you will never have a hard proof to back your story up.
In my completely baseless analyses, no matter how this trial turns out, (I mean end up), the implications are more so directed to Africa’s future than it is to its past. On the same continent that South Africans established a ‘Reconciliation Commission’ instead of hanging apartheid perpetrators, you can bet that example is not forgotten that easily. Regarding this Sierra Leone and Liberia process, all of us will wish we know more than pseudo-factual allegations and rumors, but unfortunately that is what most of us know. Am I suggesting therefore letting sleeping dogs lie? Well, not exactly but that’s not a bad idea either. The Hague and UN can probe Charles Taylor all they want, there still remains a school of thought that will rather hope they turn their attention to ongoing events and the present drama unfolding across Africa. Zimbabwe, Rwanda, Sudan all has mega issues, and many more countries are still in the hallucinating phase. That probably won’t be a bad place for international organizations to expend their energy, but that’s just a thought. However guilty or innocent, why did it take this long?
I don’t know if Charles Taylor is innocent, frankly, I don’t care too much if he is guilty either; I just hope we execute international justice in the truest sense, honestly and fairly. There is heavy pressure from all sides of the international community to make words like ‘accountability’ and ‘responsibility’ a little more potent in Africa, but that cannot override the fact that all of us will hope this prosecution is not a global propaganda, and a political circus to fry people to prove a point.
