Very magnanimous as the United Nations Mission in Liberia (UNMIL) has remained in the short years in its security decisions on Liberia, with continuing progress realized and immensely contributing to the enabling environment in which productive activities are now being gradually realized under the Unity Party-led administration of President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, the total involvement of the citizenry and residents into processes intended to maintain the stability thus far achieved in the full realization of the national and international objectives becomes an increasing imperative.

Thus, whilst few may hold pessimistic views that as the electioneering season draws nigh, there is the likelihood that some disgruntled elements may attempt to set in discordant tones and injure the democratic environment without consideration for the gains made, adequate structuring of the security sector therefore takes precedence as deterrence mechanism to the peaceful co-existence that must and not should subsist.

Precisely against these backdrops and astringent as it may be evolving from the mandate provided UNMIL by the United Nations Security Council (UNSC), the Special Representative of the Secretary-General to Liberia, Ambassador Ellen Margrethe Loj, recently provided an overview of progress and challenges facing the multinational peacekeeping force for the year 2010, among which its gradual draw-down arrangements coupled with the repositioning of its remaining 8,000 military personnel, maintenance of the strength of the organization's police had in the last two years and requirements for the local security sector were outlined, aside its joint-involvement with government in undertaking infrastructural and other development programs.

Calculatedly occurring at a time that the United States government, under President Barack Obama, had just dispatched a 60-man military team to Liberia, in fulfillment of that government's promise to help train personnel of the new Armed Forces of Liberia (AFL), accentuates a no-turning-back to volatile environment that impedes progress.

Heroic performances as UNMIL personnel who have and are now slated to return home, having begun the exercise last September, it would surely be recorded in the annals of Liberia's history, with those of the Bangladeshi Battalion expected between March and April 2010, having had 800 personnel of the Ethiopian contingent to have since departed, Liberians must remain grateful for the substantial impact being made by the remaining peacekeepers by equally adjusting to the modes set in the respective locales that is making them become more participatory in their decision-making process under cordial atmosphere.

Having since embarked upon the restructuring of the local security sector, through its Security Sector Reform program (SSR), affecting the military and paramilitary units with appreciable results, although still requiring finishing torches specifically by fully reactivating and empowering the latter unit, through adequate training and availability of logistics as underscored by Ambassador Loj, there is the overwhelming view in many professional quarters that effective decentralization of activities of the local security sector be strengthened to gradually augment the strength of the reduced personnel of UNMIL.

Liberia's peace and democracy, after all, is the most expensive thus far amongst developing countries that have experienced war in more recent decades and can therefore not be considered lightly in its full sustenance. Howbeit the negative inventions by some individuals and institutions to create discord at the gross exploitation of the democratic concept, at times disregarding the existence of the rule of law as an effective regulatory mechanism, rigid enforcement therefore becomes the only alternative to ensure compliance.

From the military standpoint and as maintained by the current leadership, supported and being implemented by Defense Minister J. Brownie Samukai, post-crisis Liberia now requires a small but very sophisticated army, considering its population.

Besides, given the experiences of the sub-region in recent decades that have made leaders to modify protocols, conventions, treaties and agreements quite responsive to existing conditions, with the maintenance of peace and security reigning high, the increased level of cooperation amongst sub-regional and regional leaders is glaring.

It is worth telling all personnel of the security sector Happy and Prosperous New Year, unemployed though, however remembering, in the salient words of Ambassador Ellen Margrethe Loj, that "There is no development without peace and there is no peace without development."