Ecomog, the monitoring group of the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) has been hailed. Discuss the constraints and achievements of Ec

INTRODUCTION
The Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) Monitoring Group (ECOMOG) is a non-standing military force consisting of land, sea and air components, that was set up by member states of the ECOWAS to deal with the security problem that followed the collapse of the formal state structure in the Republic of Liberia in 1990. The force successfully restored an atmosphere that permitted the reinstatement of a functional state structure in Liberia.
The success of the force despite numerous shortcomings and some failures has attracted international attention. But in order to understand the operations of ECOMOG, it is necessary to provide a bird’s eye view of the nature of the political states that created the force, the type of security threat that faces them collectively and individually, and the external interests at play in the West African subregion.
There have been various constraints facing Ecomog in its operations to bring peace in West Africa as presented here below,
Firstly, the members of the regional organization were themselves involved in complex political transitions, with most of their regimes under considerable challenge from their own civil societies.
Secondly, the war generated huge resource demands economic, military, political and diplomatic that these states were ill-equipped to fulfill, and which the international community was disinclined to deliver.
Thirdly, the structural and political crises that sustained these rebellions economic stress, state decay and delegitimisation, the dislocation of youth were present among other states in the region. There was thus a real danger that the conflict would spread beyond the borders of Liberia and Sierra Leone.
Further more, in the course of their operations, ECOMOG troops have repeatedly encountered the constraint of civilian refugees fleeing towards their positions. In most cases, the forward units with whom they come in contact do not have the necessary food and medicine to take care of the large number of refugees. They are consequently forced to share their operational rations and medicines with civilians. Efforts to get relief agencies to take over the management of these refugees have always proven difficult. Relief agencies do not want to go to the frontline and ECOMOG usually lacks the transport facilities to move such large numbers of civilians to sites that are acceptable to relief agencies. In addition, relief agencies are reluctant to hand over their food and medicines to ECOMOG to administer to the refugees. This problem has been persistent and a solution has not yet been found by ECOMOG high command.
More still the geographic terrain of most parts of West Africa favours insurgency warfare and guerrilla operations. Experience in Liberia and Sierra Leone has proved that helicopters are crucial to operations in these areas. Unfortunately, West African armed forces have very few helicopters for combat and support operations. Hence this constraint hampered Ecomog operations.
Since member states of ECOWAS have limited capacity to manufacture military ordinance and equipment, it will remain difficult to standardise equipment, arms and ammunition. A possible solution is for member states to earmark specific units of their armed forces for ECOMOG service. Such units could be equipped with similar equipment, arms and ammunition. The training standards, doctrine and staff procedure of these ECOMOG earmarked units could be harmonised by an ECOMOG standing command staff whose headquarters would have to be designated and manned permanently.
However, these innovations would require more political will than what is currently in existence among member states.
The economy of most member states is poor, hence they rely on non-regional states to sponsor their contingents for ECOMOG operations. The level of political will in such sponsor states determines the extent of logistic support that will be provided to the units they are sponsoring. Sometimes, these sponsor states change their policy or experience budget problems which have a direct impact on the continued stay of contingents they are sponsoring in the mission area and/or their operational effectiveness thus posing a constraint to ECOMOG operations.
Nigeria remains the only member state of ECOWAS that has the capacity for heavy military air and sea lift. The country is thus in a position to support its troops effectively, but other member states often lack such capability. This is sometimes responsible for their reluctance to contribute troops for ECOMOG operations.

Finally there was a constraint of cynical disregard which was apparent among the states involved, on the one side, in the way in which certain Francophone states connived in the attack on Liberia and deliberately frustrated peace initiatives and, on the other side, in the way in which the intervening states (Nigeria in particular) acted unilaterally and resisted control by the regional political directorate. And as has been shown, the operation was bedeviled by linguistic and geopolitical rivalries, and undermined by questions about its legitimacy and format.

Despite the above constraints, ECOMOG operation was ultimately successful for several reasons as here below presented;
The first was the sheer political will and tenacity of ECOWAS. The organisation did not have the option of cutting and running, for reasons that were as much self-interested as humanitarian.
The second was the ability to combine three phases of conflict resolution: peacekeeping, peacemaking, and peace enforcement, thereby changing mandates of forces in the field as developments on the ground required (a flexibility due, ironically, to the autonomy enjoyed by the military command and as a result of the weak control exercised by the ECOWAS directorate). In addition, the subregional, regional, and international initiatives each brought different strengths and weaknesses to the peace process.
One of the more notable achievements of ECOMOG, in the long term, is its success in pushing the region from argument to consensus and from division to unity on matters of regional security. Prior to the Liberian crisis, as well as throughout the early stages of the intervention, ECOWAS members displayed little commitment to the ideals of regional security embodied in the 1981 treaty.
In December 1997, the Fourth Extraordinary Summit of the ECOWAS Heads of State and Government held in Lomé directly confronted these issues, approving the establishment of a regional mechanism for conflict prevention, management and resolution, and regional security. Following this, a meeting of experts in Banjul in July 1998 drafted a set of proposals for such a Mechanism for the approval of the ECOWAS Heads of State meeting in Ouagadougou in October. These proposals recognised that "... though the organization [ECOWAS] was established for the primary purpose of economic integration of the region, economic development can only be effectively pursued in a secure and stable environment", thus getting around the ‘constitutional’ issue that had earlier generated such heat.
These prescriptions are the result of a growing consensus within the region and between the various factions in ECOWAS that conflict is self-defeating. As a result, states in the region were able to demonstrate considerable flexibility, redefining their positions in order to promote consensus regarding the nature of regional security mechanisms. For the region, the conflicts in Liberia and Sierra Leone have been a traumatic experience, conferring both a sense of its vulnerability as well as its ‘regionness’. After years of myopic focus on national sovereignty and security, West African states now see the connection between domestic anarchy and regional political instability much more clearly. States are ready to concede that ‘my neighbour’s business is my business’ and, correspondingly, accepting the necessity of acting collaboratively within a regional framework to tackle these problems rather than attempting to seek favoured status and arrangements with external powers.
Notwithstanding this consensus, which helped to facilitate an end to the Liberian crisis, the ECOMOG experience teaches the important lesson that one should not conflate regional security and human security.
CONCLUSION
ECOMOG has created awareness among West African leaders, intellectuals and military experts that the force is a positive security development that requires some fine-tuning. Given the growing number of conflicts on the African continent, ECOMOG is a reminder of the fact that the right tool for conflict resolution can be found from within the continent, if African countries are prepared to pool their resources. ECOMOG is therefore a lesson which should not be forgotten, because it also points to the fact that there is no need to wait for outsiders to help if Africa itself can address its problems effectively.















References
1. Comfort Ero, ‘ECOWAS and the Sub-regional Peacekeeping in Liberia’, in The
Journal of Humanitarian Assistance, first posted on the web on 25 September 1995.
2. MA Vogt, ‘The OAU and Conflict Management in Africa, paper presented at the
International Resource Group Conference, Mombasa, Kenya, November 1996.
3. ibid
4. Emmanuel Kwesi Aning, ‘ECOWAS Evolving Conflict Management System’
5. ET Dowyaro, ‘ECOMOG Operations in West Africa: Principles and Praxis’,
published in Monograph No.44: Boundaries of Peace Support Operations, February 2000.
6. ECOWAS Peace Operations from 1990 to 2004: Synopsis of Lessons Noted and
Key Recommendations, A background paper for the ECOWAS ‘Lessons Learned’’
Workshop, held at Kofi Annan International Peacekeeping Training Centre, Accra, from
10-11 February 2005.
7. Emmanuel Kwesi Aning, op cit.