Credit Rawlings with ECOWAS stability - Col. Aboagye

A former ADC of the late former president, Jerry John Rawlings, Col. Festus Aboagye, has said that much of the regional stability being enjoy in the ECOWAS sub-region should be credited to the late president.

He said that while the accreditation cannot only be that of his former boss, there is no denying the fact that his contributions to particularly peacekeeping and conflict resolution put him above many in that regard.

“So we start with Liberia where compliments of Charles Taylor, the country descended into a very long civil war from the eve of Christmas 1989. At the time you’d know that the PNDC was still in power. Unfortunately, this was at the time when he was under pressure to transition from revolution to democracy.

“Now because of the economic constraints, that I have alluded to, the Ghana Armed Forces were not very well endowed and yet he managed together with Nigeria, together with Gambia whose leader Jawara Dawda was the chair of ECOWAS at the time to mobilize what became known as ECOMOG to intervene with or without Charles Taylor’s consent,” he said.

He explained that, concerning the situation in Liberia for instance, what people thought was Rawlings’ plan to evacuate Ghanaians living in the country, it turned out that he was only there to broker peace.

“Of course the pretext was that Ghana was going to evacuate Ghanaian citizens and therefore the grounds were humanitarian, but of course in the absence of a ceasefire or cessation of hostilities or peace agreement, Ghana and ECOMOG ended up undertaking a peace enforcement role. And in spite of many challenges including difficulties with Nigeria, Ghana still stuck with ECOMOG, until his chairmanship of ECOWAS 1994,” he said.

He added that it was such contributions from Rawlings that pushed to the establishment of ECOMOG, leading to the temporary ceasefire in Liberia, and as such, he needs to be given credit for that.

He stated further that Rawlings’ insistence on using negotiations instead of military action to address the conflict in Liberia ultimately led to several Peace Accords which brought some peace to Liberia.

It was after this that the ECOWAS crafted the revised treaty of 1993, establishing the protocol relating to the mechanism for conflict prevention, management, resolution, and peacekeeping in 1999.

“Now 1994 is very critical, Ghana all along subscribed to the doctrine of engaging with the players in Liberia to find an exit centered on elections. And Nigeria’s approach was to use the military option in order to defeat Charles Taylor on the battlefield.

“It took all those years from August 1990 when ECOMOG went into Liberia until about 1994, 1995 during the chairmanship of Rawlings as ECOWAS chairman for ECOWAS now to realize that the military option was not going to work. So the only option then was Ghana’s belief in the doctrine of engagement.

“So we would recall that about 1994 1995 1996 we had the Accra and Akosombo series of meetings which created the conditions now but of course regional politics come in and Nigeria was not very happy that a small player like Ghana was going to take the credit for ending the conflict in Liberia and so it continued slightly into 1996 when he had left the scene for the Abuja Accord now to cement peace,” he said.

Col. Festus Aboagye explained that “without Ghana, I should say Nigeria’s legitimacy which was questioned as a Pariah state might have had implications for the conflict resolution effort within Liberia, so Ghana’s role was pivotal…So a bit of the credit also goes to JJ Rawlings.”

He stated categorically too that it is the lessons from the war that helped shape the ECOWAS’ strategy when it came to peacekeeping and maintaining order and stability within the sub-region.

“But at the end of all of this, lessons had been learnt during the conflicts in the Mano River area that laissez-faire attitude that was in the 1975 charter where we needed to establish allied armed forces of the community that we had paid blind glimpse of now encouraged the leadership of ECOWAS to craft even during the conflict, the revised treaty of 1993 and immediately after the conflict in 1999 to establish the protocol relating to the mechanism for conflict prevention, management, resolution, and peacekeeping.

“Now this mechanism, since its time till date has been the instrument that ECOWAS has used to troubleshoot conflicts in Cote D’Ivoire for instance, in the Gambia, and of course Guinea Bissau and so on so forth.

“So a lot of the credit about regional stability as we have it in the ECOWAS region today must be credited to Rawlings. Of course, not in isolation but in conjunction with other leaders of the member states of ECOWAS,” he said.

Dr. Festus Aboagye, who is now a security analyst, was speaking on Newsfile on the JoyNews channel, stressing that all these also culminated in the great humanity and personality that JJ Rawlings had.

Flt. Lt. Jerry John Rawlings died on November 12, 2020, at the Korle Bu Teaching Hospital after a short illness and was buried on January 27, 2021, at the new Military Cemetary in Accra.