ECOMOG

The Economic Community of West African States Monitoring Group (ECOMOG) was a West African multilateral armed force established by the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS). ECOMOG was a formal arrangement for separate armies to work together. It was largely supported by personnel and resources of the Nigerian Armed Forces, with sub-battalion strength units contributed by other ECOWAS members — Guinea, Sierra Leone, The Gambia, Liberia, Mali, Burkina Faso, Niger, and others.

Nigeria and other ECOWAS members agreed a Protocol on Mutual Defence Assistance, in Freetown, Sierra Leone, on 29 May 1981. Among other organs such as a Defence Committee and Council, it provided for the establishment of an Allied Armed Force of the Community (AAFC) as needed.

Anglophone ECOWAS members established ECOMOG in 1990 to intervene in the civil war in Liberia (1989–96). Nigerian scholar Adekeye Adebajo wrote in 2002 that "there was merit...in the argument that the establishment of ECOMOG did not conform to the constitutional legal requirements of ECOWAS". The Standing Mediation Committee, the body that established ECOMOG at its meeting in Banjul, Gambia on 6–7 August 1990, was 'on shaky legal foundations.' Adebajo concludes that the arguments used to establish ECOMOG had more solid grounds in politics than in law. The Defence Protocol's guidelines were not followed, and ECOMOG was justified largely on humanitarian grounds.

Within Africa, ECOMOG represented the first credible attempt at a regional security initiative since the Organisation of African Unity (OAU) tried to established an 'Inter-African Force' to intervene in Chad in 1981.

Anglophone members of ECOMOG acted because several Francophone ECOWAS members strongly opposed the deployment. The leaders of Burkina Faso and Cote d'Ivoire supported Charles Taylor in his attempt to depose Samuel Doe. Unlike the typical UN mission of its day, ECOMOG's first deployment entailed fighting its way into a many-sided civil war, in an attempt to forcibly hold the warring factions apart.

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