POLITICS-LIBERIA: UN Team Assesses Deteriorating Security Situation

By IPS Correspondents Reprint | | Print |

Abdullah Dukuly

MONROVIA, May 5 2003 (IPS) - A U.N.-backed team began a five-day visit to Liberia on May 4 to assess the country’s deteriorating security situation, diplomats say.

Led by Taliameni Kalomoh, U.N. Assistant Secretary General for Political Affairs, the seven-member team, comprising officials from the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) and African Union (AU), "will hold talks with all stakeholders" in the Liberian conflict "before travelling to neighbouring states for similar talks".

The visit coincides with the worsening security situation with its attendant looming humanitarian consequences in the country – causing cracks in communities and displaced centres.

There have been demands by civic organisations and individuals for an "international stabilisation force to step in and stem the country’s violence and ensure confidence in the fragile security situation".

Such a stabilisation force, they believe, will avoid "a replica of the Rwandan massacre which occurred 10 years ago and led to the United Nations to apologise for its failure to intervene in the conflict".

But the government of President Charles Taylor is opposed to an intervention force in Liberia, saying "it construes the lack of sovereignty".

Although there has been no response from the international community, UN secretary-general Koffi Annan has urged the Security Council "not (to) lose sight of the urgent need to find a solution to the Liberian conflict."

Annan said Liberia’s dire and volatile security situation has "made it extremely difficult to reach internally displaced persons and third-country refugees who have fallen victim to abductions, conscription and various gross violations of human rights".

Observers say Annan’s assessment appears to have emanated from the growing concerns that the Liberia United for Reconciliation and Democracy (LURD) rebels have stepped up their assaults in western Liberia – threatening to attack the capital, Monrovia.

Then in the southeast, a new group of rebels – calling itself Movement for Democracy in Liberia (MODEL), has reportedly taken a large chunk of territory from government forces.

Latest reports from ECOWAS and other international agencies closely monitoring the fighting indicate that 60 percent of the country is now under the control of the rebels.

A U.N. official says the assessment mission "should be seen as a measure deriving from the growing concern on the part of the United Nations over the worsening situation in Liberia, as well as an abiding political commitment to work out a durable solution".

In the past, Western diplomats have said ending the Liberian crisis – which has taken a sub-regional dimension – will ensure stability in the region.

The Mano River Union – an economic cooperation body, grouping Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea – was relatively calm until Christmas Eve 1989 when Taylor’s Libyan-trained guerrillas invaded Liberia from neighbouring Cote d’Ivoire with the aim of overthrowing former dictator Samuel Doe.

The war quickly spread across the country and spilled over into Sierra Leone in April 1991. It briefly snowballed into Guinea in 2001 with claims and counter claims of cross border raids between Liberia and Guinea which stands accused of supporting LURD rebels. Then what started last September as a mutiny by Ivorian soldiers soon degenerated into a full-scale rebellion in Cote d’Ivoire with the government of President Laurent Gbagbo accusing Liberia of funding rebel movement in his country – an allegation Taylor denied.

The International Crisis Group (ICG), a Brussels-based think-tank, says the conflicts have become so interrelated that they should be seen as a regional war with Liberia at the helm.

While in the country, the U.N.-backed team is also expected to review the progress of the three-year-old sanction against Liberia for its alleged involvement in the guns for diamonds trade with Sierra Leone rebels. Taylor and his officials are also under UN travel restrictions for allegedly fuelling the Sierra Leone war.

Opinion is divided on whether the sanction should be lifted or extended. To the chagrin of political opponents and the U.S. government, ECOWAS wants the sanction to be lifted as a way of alleviating the suffering of the Liberian people.

However, the International Crisis Group urges the U.N. Security Council to renew and extend its sanction on Liberia, and also to threaten the Presidents of Cote d’Ivoire, Guinea and Burkina Faso with sanctions if they continue to help rebels just outside their borders.

For months now, Taylor has been exerting efforts to lift the sanction. But with the rebels intensifying their assaults against the government, it appears that Taylor’s patience with the United Nations has run out.

Speaking at a displaced camp, 24 kilometres west of Monrovia, moments after rebels attacked there last month, Taylor said: "We have ordered arms into this country, and we’ve informed the United Nations that we’ve ordered and what we’ve ordered them for".

He said, "As a sovereign nation under military aggression, Liberia (was) going ahead to import arms to defend its territorial integrity."

He warned that any country that opposes Liberia’s rights to self-defence could be accused of "engaging in genocide against the Liberian nation".

Taylor – flanked by heavily armed guards – blasted at countries that, in his views, "are using their powers and vetoes at the UN to maintain sanctions against Liberia".

As Cote d’Ivoire stands accused of "funding" MODEL, the new rebel movement in Liberia, ICG says "The international community need to work better together to prevent the battlefields spreading out further across the region".

It says Britain is heavily involved in Sierra Leone and France is playing a leading role in Cote d’Ivoire. But the United States, which is historically linked to Liberia, is doing too little. ICG says both sides of the borders between Liberia and Cote d’Ivoire "are now pitched battlegrounds, inaccessible even to humanitarian workers".

With no end in sight to the hostilities in the country, many have ruled out the possibility of holding elections in October.

Catholic Archbishop Michael Francis says it will be practically impossible to hold elections in October. "I am concerned about the preparation for the election in the country. The war is still going on, and there’s no end in sight. Insecurity is widespread, and the population is being harassed and intimidated by the security apparatus. No serious and adequate preparation has been made for elections," he laments.