West African leaders move to break Gambia deadlock

Four African heads of state met with Gambia's embattled president Yahya Jammeh on Tuesday, to try and persuade him to accept his election defeat. The Gambia has been in a political deadlock since Jammeh -- who's been in charge for 22 years -- did a U-turn and said he would challenge the results of the December 1st poll.

Gambian president Yahya Jammeh (c) meets with leaders of Nigeria (first left), Liberia (second left), Sierra Leone (second right) and Ghana (first right), in Banjul, The Gambia, Tuesday 13 December, 2016 Nigeria president Twitter account

The Gambia's political crisis poses fewer challenges to ECOWAS (Economic Community of West African States) -- the regional West African block-- than previous conflicts.

There are no guns or bloody civil wars this time, unlike Liberia or Sierra Leone, but the West African delegation arriving in Banjul, will still be judged on their ability to deliver.

"This is all about a soft landing compromise I think," Alex Vines, director of regional and security studies at the London-based think tank Chatham House, told RFI Tuesday.

"My own reading of it is that president Jammeh became really afraid after reading in the UK's Guardian paper an interview with some of president-elect Barrow's delegation that they were going to prosecute the president within a year, and I think that's what triggered this reverse position."

Jammeh's shock U-turn to challenge the results of the December 1st poll sparked international condemnation and calls for him to cede power to president-elect Adama Barrow.

"It is unacceptable that there is an election and one person turns down the result," Liberia's information minister Eugene Nagbe told  French news agency AFP.

President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf (and also ECOWAS chairperson), flanked by three other African heads, along with AU and UN officials, is hoping to play a role in assuring The Gambia's smooth transition of power.

Mitigated track record

But ECOWAS' track record in implementing peace is not good.

"I personally documented serious abuses by  Economic Community of West African States Cease-fire Monitoring Group (ECOMOG) troops in Sierra Leone in 1999 and 2000," Corinne Dufka, West Africa director at Human Rights Watch, told RFI.

In 1990, ECOWAS took the unprecedented step of sending a peacekeeping force into Monrovia to end the bloody civil war there. At a high cost.

Its troops were accused of carrying out atrocities in both Liberia and Sierra Leone, and taking advantage of the countries' power vacuums.

"That said, since that time they haven't really intervened militarily, and have played a much more important role in pushing for justice," Dufka says.

"In Guinea, people actually forget that it was ECOWAS that pushed for a Commission of Inquiry into the stadium massacre," she says.

"The problem is ECOWAS often drops issues of justice and the rule of law once the guns have gone silent."

Different political agendas among member states also hampered the effectiveness of ECOWAS.

Moving forward

However, for Francois Ndengwe, director of the African Advisory Board, the past is the past.

"Had we not had this intervention, we can imagine that the war in Liberia would have continued again with many thousands of victims, the intervention may not have been perfect, all the more because this was the first time they were engaged in such a military intervention. But all in all we can say that ECOWAS was successful."

Will they be successful this time in The Gambia?

They were in 2003 Alex Vines adds.

"Charles Taylor left, there was then an interim administration, elections, and then a UN operation, known as UNMIL came in. They held the fort until the UN was ready to do so."

And why does The Gambia matter?

"Unlike other parts of Africa, where for example the African Union mandated an operation into Burundi which never happened, everybody seems to be aligned on the need to move this thing forward," argues Vines.

Immunity

For the moment,  the military have moved back in support of Jammeh out of fear of possible reprisals.

"Only in 2015, ECOWAS said it wanted a norm that presidents wouldn't stand longer than two terms, so everybody has been caught by surprise by this successful election of the oppostion and president-elect Barrow, so this is seen as a democratic reversal and you have a uniformed position in West Africa on this."

If ECOWAS leaders can assure Jammeh and his team immunity, they might get the smooth transition they're after.