SIERRA LEONE: Liberia Aids Former Junta Rebels, ECOMOG Says

By Lansana Fofana Reprint | | Print |

Lansana Fofana

FREETOWN, Apr 13 1998 (IPS) - A commander of the West African Peacekeeping Force (ECOMOG) in Sierra Leone has accused neighbouring Liberia of supporting the destabilisation campaign of the former junta forces.

ECOMOG Commander of the 26th Infantry Brigade, Colonel Buhari Musa, who is in charge of the Southern and Eastern regional capitals of Bo and Kenema respectively, said Charles Taylor’s government in Liberia is backing the former Armed Forces Revolutionary Council (AFRC) junta, which is still carrying out armed attacks in several parts of the country.

“Junta forces are receiving support from Liberia where they are being trained and armed,” Colonel Musa said, adding that “15 Kamajors (members of a pro-government militia made up of traditional hunters) who were recently abducted by the rebels are currently being held in Liberia”.

Colonel Musa also told journalists in Bo recently that about 3000 former fighters of Taylor’s National Patriotic Front of Liberia (NPFL) are believed to be helping the junta strike back at ECOMOG positions in the South and East of Sierra Leone.

Liberia’s Minister of Defence, Daniel Chea, however, has denied the allegations, which he said give Liberia a bad name. “The Liberian government has no interest in getting involved in the Sierra Leonean crisis. It is a local problem and we prefer to keep it that way,” he told the BBC African Service.

Chea charged that the accusations are “the imagination of someone who wants to win international sympathy”.

However, some Sierra Leoneans have joined the ECOMOG Commander in pointing a finger at Liberia.

“Charles Taylor is the man who bankrolled the rebel war in this country and he seems not to be satisfied yet,” said former civil servant Sia Jatta of Freetown, the Sierra Leone capital city.

“Who can doubt the fact that Taylor is supporting the rebels? Have we forgotten his promise in 1991 that Sierra Leone will taste the bitterness of war for allowing ECOMOG to use this country as a base?”, recalls Morie Goba, another Sierra Leonean.

During ECOMOG’s battle to topple the nine-month old regime of Major Johnny Paul Koroma in February, Liberian fighters were reportedly helping the military regime and its allies, the Revolutionary United Front (RUF), to resist the West African intervention force.

ECOMOG officials have confirmed the reports. “We don’t know their casualty figures, but what we are sure about is that a good number of them (Liberian soldiers) are currently in the net as war prisoners,” an ECOMOG official told IPS.

President Taylor of Liberia also has been one of the main campaigners for the release of the RUF leader, Corporal Foday Sankoh, from a Nigerian jail. Sankoh’s RUF supported Taylor’s NPLF when civil war broke out in Liberia in 1989.

And when the RUF launched its offensive against the Sierra Leone government in March 1991, its initial fighting force was made up of mostly Liberian NPFL fighters, and was launched from NPFL-controlled territory in Liberia.

Some diplomats in Freetown also have expressed fears about the potential destabilising power of Taylor next door in Liberia. “The attitude of the Liberian leadership constitutes a serious threat to the stability of the sub-region and something ought to be done about that,” said one western diplomat, who asked not to be named.