POPULATION-LIBERIA: Human Tragedy in the Making as Thousands Flee Conflict

By IPS Correspondents Reprint | | Print |

Abdullah Dukuly

MONROVIA, Feb 10 2003 (IPS) - A major human tragedy is in the making in the Liberian capital Monrovia, where thousands are seeking refuge after fleeing the conflict between government and rebel forces.

The sight at the displaced camps in Monrovia resembles a crowded market. There, the newcomers, comprising mainly of the young, the old and the elderly – all clustered in makeshift shelters – wait to be registered.

They have fled the heavy clashes that have erupted in bitterly contested towns of Bopolu and Tubmanburg, some 96 kilometres west of Monrovia.

Aid agencies estimate the number of Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) in Liberia at around 200,000. The majority are located in Monrovia and were displaced by fighting between Liberian army and the rebel group known as Liberians United for Reconciliation and Democracy (LURD).

The displaced, although anxious to return home, cannot do so now for fear of the guns that have taken over their towns, villages and life.

In western suburbs of Monrovia, the displaced – who are determined not to return home until fighters disarm – are building a labyrinth of huts as their new dwellings.

Moving among them is like combing through thick savannah grass.

Some of these camps also host thousands of refugees from neighbouring Sierra Leone and Cote d’Ivoire.

Refugees officials say more than 1,000 newcomers, many of them with babies strapped on their back, join thousands, who fled their homes after rebels of former warlord, now President Charles Taylor, invaded the country from neighbouring Cote d’Ivoire in Dec 1989 to topple former dictator Samuel Doe.

Chris Wilson, the head of the sprawling Jolotown Displaced Camp, says the camp – now filled to a capacity – is no longer taking newcomers.

As a result, hundreds of unregistered displaced are staying in school buildings. Others spend the night in the open air, while others have joined relatives in Monrovia’s deprived but densely populated communities like West Point, Soniwen, Newkru Town, Slipway and Logan Town. They look visibly exhausted and pale after trekking for more than 160 kilometres. One of them says, ”We have not eaten for three days”.

Wilson cannot say how soon the newcomers will get their rations. ”We have already requested for supplies but we don’t know when they will bring them,” he says.

Aid agencies say the level of care being given the displaced has deteriorated tremendously in the last few years.

As a result, epidemic, malnutrition and despair are rampant among the displaced. For some, life has become a nightmare. Many are afflicted with scabies, ringworm and respiratory tract infections. Chiggers are widespread with many of the inhabitants suffering infestation.

”Although we entertain strong hopes and desire to return home,” says James Moore, another displaced from Mecca District, ”we cannot do so now because of the prevailing insecurity and bloodletting in our home areas by feuding militia.”

The displaced persons roam the nearby forest to forage for cassava (manioc) and other edibles to eke out a living. Children, oblivious of their conditions, some perhaps not knowing any other life other that in the camps use the open field for a game of ‘hide and seek’.

Near the Blamassie Displaced Camp is a sprawling market, an example of entrepreneurship of people even under distress. Items on the market are mostly imported relief food, complimented by an assortment of local products. Patiently they sit in a scorching sun waiting for buyers.

The camp structures are covered with tarpaulin. Around them are mats, torn clothes or anything capable of protecting the inside from rain or scorching sun.

The crisis continues to split families, leaving once proud and productive farmers to seek shelter in environments befitting wild animals. And for them, the sun has imposed additional hardship. They are victims of scorching heat and accompanying mosquitoes that feed on them.

Boakai Zinnah, 52, is a father of 16 children. Ten of them managed to escape with him. The six others, he says, are behind the enemy lines. Zinnah, a successful subsistence farmer, in Mecca District, says: ”I used to produce enough food to supplement my family income”.

Now they live on handouts from the first batch of displaced who had arrived there earlier.

In a rubber jacket, in which he looks comfortable with its open zipper, Zinnah began a series of appeals: ”We want the international community to come to our aid. We want food and we want scholarship for our children to learn trade, while we are here”.

Recounting the ordeal of fellow displaced persons, he says ”We sleep on the bare floor, no mattresses”. In his hometown, he used straw for mattress. In Monrovia, there is no straw, and a mattress is unaffordable.

Zinnah’s description of the harshness of life at the centre is mild. Most of the nation’s disgruntled civil servants who have not taken pay for more than ten months, must consider themselves guests of a five-star hotel, to put it mildly. Despite their precarious plight, at least two or three persons are ”entitled” to a room in Monrovia.

At the camps, the displaced are settled in rooms designed as closets like sardines. The minimum number of persons to a room is ten.

Sometimes six families live in a room, depending on the size. Every family has its own area, ”no one is allowed to cross the next man’s boundary”. The areas referred to by a displaced, known only as Johnson, are nothing more than few feet divided by mats and blankets.

Within their ”private areas, families cluster with their infants in protection of their areas”.

”I’ll like to return home. The day God soften the hearts of the fighters to ceasefire and disarm, I will go home. It is only the guns that frighten us. In my home, I had everything for myself. We live well in our homes. But now, everything we worked for since our youth is gone. Here, I live with six children. The others are behind the enemy lines. I’ve not seen them, heard of them,” says Johnson.

Alhaji Dagosseh, 63, a respected elder, supported by a walking stick, says ”we cannot go home. The war brought us here”.

In Bomi County, his native land, his movements were unhindered. But he is now confined like a man held hostage with the annoying bamboo roof structure resembling nothing his natural habitat in the woods of Bomi can offer.

”Everything depends on God. God will help us,” he says with a look of confidence. ”God can do anything”.

For Alfred Jones, a 43-year old farmer from Bopolu, a rebel stronghold, his seven children and their mother must consider themselves lucky. ”At least we survived the attack,” he says.

The displaced persons have organised a susu (collective contribution) for their own benefit. ”We collect our supplies every week. We give the supplies to one person. That person sells the supplies to help his dependents…,” explains Zinnah.

This is what the displaced people, who left their towns and villages, have developed means of purchasing the things that the relief organisations cannot provide.

Momo Dorley, who has just arrived in Monrovia, says he finds it hard to make ends meet at the camp. ”I pay for everything that we eat here, unlike our home in Bopolu where we used to get everything free of charge,” says Doley, a father of four children. He begs the international community to come to their aid.

Meanwhile, the government has vowed to retake territories captured by the LURD recently, while the rebels have threatened to take Monrovia in days.

The war also has driven Liberians beyond their border. Neighbouring Sierra Leone, for example, hosts some 60,000 refugees who have fled fighting in Liberia, with 46,000 arrivals this year alone. About 38,000 are in camps, 16,000 awaiting transfer at the border, and a further 8,000 living in the urban areas, according to the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR).