.My first encounter with General, as I used to address him, was in the late 1998. He had sent a message to the office of The Chronicle that he wanted to see me. I had never met him, though I knew he was a member of the military regime of the National Redemption Council, led by General I. K Acheampong, which overthrew the Second Republic. To many Ghanaians then, he was associated with peace keeping in the Middle East. Expectedly, the subject matter for his invitation was peace keeping.
The wish of Lt. General Emmanuel Alexander Erskine to make his ideas for peace protection in Africa heard was the foundation for our friendship. He had reservations about the 1996 United States sponsored Africa Crises Response Initiative (ACRI) whose stated aim was to address the challenges of conflict management and peace keeping on the continent in the wake of the ethnic massacres in Rwanda, and he found The Chronicle, which I worked for, the appropriate platform
To the General, the contours of ACRI were not very clear in as much as it looked suspicious in its intentions. “Mohammed, what do the Americans know about peace keeping? Look at what happened with their Multinational Force in Lebanon and the tragic bombing of the US base there which left over 270 American soldiers killed. Again, see the role the American soldiers, supposed to be on peace keeping, played in Somalia’s internal affairs which led to the downing of their helicopter and death of 19 US servicemen,” he recalled with obvious sadness in his voice..
To pre-empt wars in Africa, the General offered a new paradigm which gives precedent to the deployment of African Union peace keepers in conflict spots, in or between member countries, in the hope that their presence would prevent the break out of war and, thereby, hasten the pace of conflict resolution through diplomacy.
In his view, the United States should demonstrate sincerity in its commitment to the maintenance of peace in Africa by providing training and logistics, including transport, to an African Union force for their quick deployment to areas that had been assessed by the AU or regional bodies, such as ECOWAS, SADCC and EGAD, as posing imminent threat to peace. This, according to General, would be their contribution to protection of peace on the continent.
A novel idea, however, General was under no illusion about the challenges posed to the operationalization of this idea by the African Union given what could be the apparent reluctance of many member countries to buy into this novel dynamic of conflict resolution in and between them.
A few times after the publication, he invited me to do stories about donations that the retired Ghanaian staff of the United Nations, of which he was a member, made to needy communities and organizations.
In 2001, General and I found ourselves working together at the National Reconciliation Commission, he, as a Commissioner and I, Public Affairs Officer. Before its public sittings, the Commission undertook engagements with various publics to sensitize them on its functions, processes and expected outcomes for national reconciliation. One of the first public engagements was with the military in Takoradi to which I accompanied the General.
On our way back to Accra, a lively conversation ensued during which he related his difficult relationship with members of the National Redemption Council government in which he served. He said he saw military intervention in politics and coups as an aberration and did not hide it from his colleagues.
“Mohammed, I told them I do not approve of the coup that toppled the government. All of them knew my position,” he said.
And was it to get him out of the government that he was sent to the Middle East? I asked politely.
The General said in 1974, he was called by Gen. Acheampong and informed of the decision to release him for an assignment in the Middle East as the Chief of Staff and the Deputy Force Commander of the United Nations Emergency Force in Cairo. Respectfully, he thanked him, but politely refused the offer of the appointment, he added.
My eagerness to listen to what he had say to say next made me nervous, especially the consequences of refusing to comply with orders from his Commander in Chief and Head of State. General went on: he had learnt that two other officers (one was among the eight Generals executed by the Rawlings AFRC in June 1979) had refused the assignment to the Middle East If they had refused, why him?
But, he said, he was later advised by a friend to accept the appointment which he did. That decision turned out to be a huge destiny-changer, not only in respect of the honours and international recognition that were to accrue from it: from Chief of Staff and Deputy Force Commander, United Nations Emergency Force 2; Chief of Staff, United Nations Truce Supervision Organization; first Force Commander of the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon; and United Nations Secretary General’s Representative for UN Peacekeeping Operations in the Middle East.
What was miraculous, that decision was also to save him from imminent death that awaited him five years later. For he had been penciled for execution by firing squad at the Teshie Military Range by architects of the “June 4 Revolution” as confirmed by Major BoakyeGyan (rtd), a member of the AFRC, when he appeared before the National Reconciliation Commission.
When President Kufuor assumed office, he set up a committee to locate the graves of the executed generals, exhume their remains and hand them over to their families for decent burials to assist in their healing and closure. Chairing the committee was General Erskine.
On the day of the exhumations, General said, he told some of those present, “My remains would have been among those being exhumed today had I not gone to the Middle East.”
In 2000, he presented me with his book Peace Keeping Techniques for Africa’s Conflict Management with the following autograph:
“To my old friend and brother, Mr. Mohammed Affum.
With my respect and sincere best wishes.”
My old friend and Uncle, fare thee well.
To God we belong, to Him shall we return.
Rest in peace, General.
By Mohammed Affum
Read Full Story
Facebook
Twitter
Pinterest
Instagram
Google+
YouTube
LinkedIn
RSS