FREETOWN (AFP) - UN peacekeepers handed over responsibility for security for Freetown to Sierra Leone's nascent police and armed forces, the latest step in a staggered withdrawal after a five-year mission to restore calm to the west African state.
At a colorful ceremony on the steps of the State House, Vice President Solomon Berewa stood solemnly next to top UN military and police commanders as the country prepared to assume responsibility for its own security.
"We are confident in their abilities, we have tested them and seen what they are able to do and we know how to help them improve on their weaknesses," Hudson Benzu, the UN civilian police commissioner, told AFP.
"We are not going away, though -- we will be hanging around to continue to help them, to continue to train them and to reassure the public that they are ready."
At its peak, the UN mission in Sierra Leone (UNAMSIL) following a decade of savage conflict was the world's largest, involving more than 17,000 peacekeepers in the disarmament and stabilization of the country no bigger than Scotland.
But five years and hundreds of millions of dollars later, the mission is winding up its peacekeeping operations, though it will maintain a presence at least through June 2005.
Some 7,800 police officers have been trained by a cadre of international police to take over internal security responsibilities, including manning checkpoints around the diamond-rich country.
Another 410-strong class of police cadets at the Hastings police academy, including 109 women, is expected to be out in the field within weeks, Banzu said.
"Our forces are ready to enhance their capacity to coordinate actions and activities to provide national security countrywide," said national security coordinator Brigadier Kellie Conteh.
"It is good we are taking over now while UNAMSIL is here so they would see where there are lapses and we shall benefit from their experiences."
National police chief Brima Acha Kamara has begun deploying his forces nationwide, sending a squadron in August to the eastern Tongo Fields area to fill a vacuum left by the departure of a battalion of Zambian soldiers.
Their training includes basic computer skills, fingerprinting, human rights and community policing. Other more experienced officers have undergone courses to qualify as police trainers and mentors.
UNAMSIL troops have pulled back from the north, south and east of Sierra Leone since May, to leave 8,851 troops in country as of September 7 according to a new report by UN Secretary General Kofi Annan.
"As planned, by the end of December, the strength of the mission will be reduced to fewer than 5,000 troops," Annan said in his report to the UN Security Council.
"By the end of February 2005, it is expected that the force strength will be 3,250 troops... accompanied by a concomitant reduction of civilian staff."
The withdrawal of UN troops has been met with mixed views around Sierra Leone from civilians worried that their own security forces are ill-equipped to handle the potential conflicts that may arise among a population crippled by unemployment and rising prices on staple goods.
"It is the right time for the security forces to take over their responsibilities as after all they are being paid with taxpayer money," noted Yenor Senessie, who watched the ceremony at the state house.
Fears of weapons passing over the porous borders with neighbors Guinea and Liberia, itself emerging from 14 years of nearly-uninterrupted war, are also breeding a lack of confidence.
"Oh, what a blunder. UNAMSIL should have waited a little longer," Freetown pensioner Alimamy Kabia said.