West Africa was the most peaceful sub-region in Africa until the end of the 1980s. Although the other African sub-regions faced devastating civil wars and severe interstate conflicts, apart from the Nigerian Civil War (1967-70), in the Cold War era West Africa underwent neither large-scale international conflicts nor prolonged civil wars which threatened sub-regional security. However, this starkly contrasted with widespread internal violence and military coups in the sub-region. Nearly a half of successful military coups in independent Africa took place in West Africa. The reality of Pax West Africana in the Cold War era can be characterised by negative and limited peace with domestic political instability such as military coups.
However this negative sub-regional peace was broken by the erupt of civil wars in Liberia and Sierra Leone. The Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) played a leading role in conflict resolution of the virulent civil wars, establishing the ECOWAS Cease-fire Monitoring Group (ECOMOG) at its own initiative and militarily intervening in the conflicts.
The aim of this article is to examine the root of ECOMOG. Although ECOMOG is labelled by ECOWAS as its own sub-regional peace-keeping force, the author believes that the root of ECOMOG is in the tradition of “armies on loan, ” which is one form of the use of military power in interstate relations of independent Africa. African states have often deployed elements of the armed forces in open support of foreign policy objectives on other African countries. ECOMOG is not a neutral peacekeeping force but multilateral “armies on loan” whose purpose is to provide military assistance to threatened regimes or governments in West Africa.

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