POLITICS-LIBERIA: Fighting Closes in on Capital

By Lansana Fofana Reprint | | Print |

Lansana Fofana

FREETOWN, Jun 26 2003 (IPS) - "We know that the insurgents are not just rebels of LURD, but a force backed by Great Britain and the U.S. to remove this (Liberian) government," claimed Reginald Goodridge, information minister of the embattled government in Monrovia, Thursday.

Goodridge was reacting to rebel advances into the heart of the Liberian capital, which has seen days of rebel onslaught and the displacement of hundreds of thousands of civilians fleeing the fighting.

The main rebel group, Liberians United for Reconciliation and Democracy (LURD) and Movement for Democracy in Liberia (MODEL) are seeking to topple President Charles Taylor’s government.

The fighting, according to eyewitnesses, has left dozens of people dead.

"We are simply defending our positions and fighting to take back those captured by Taylor’s forces," said Counsellor Kabineh Janneh, a senior LURD spokesperson.

The latest round of fighting comes barely a week after Liberia’s warring factions signed a truce in Ghana to end the four-year conflict. Throughout the week, what is left of foreign aid workers and foreign nationals have been rushing off to get out of the besieged capital.

Civilians, on the other hand, have been streaming into the city centre as gun battle and the exchange of mortar fire wreaks Monrovia’s suburbs.

President Taylor has insisted that he will not back down. "We shall fight to the last. I am prepared to die with my troops," he said.

In the Ghana peace deal, an interim government was to be set up in a month and Taylor was to abdicate his power. But Taylor now says he will not quit until his term of office ends in Jan. 2004. One of his aides even blames the UN-backed special Court for Sierra Leone, which openly indicted Taylor last month for alleged "war crimes".

According to the authorities in Monrovia, the objective is to remove Taylor and take him before the Freetown court. But a Taylor aide, Sam Jackson says nothing can run the government out of Monrovia.

The humanitarian situation in Monrovia is growing bad from day-to-day. With no aid workers left in the war-torn country, death and suffering have become the lot of the desperate civilian population. "Hundreds of civilians are now rushing to foreign embassies and UN buildings for safety and they remain quite vulnerable," an eyewitness told IPS by telephone on Thursday.

Children are even more in trouble because of the lack of food and medicines.

Neighbouring Sierra Leone, Guinea and Cote d’Ivoire are now bracing themselves for an influx of refugees from Liberia. Hundreds, according to Sierra Leonean authorities, have crossed into their country. "We are not surprised at this flow of (Liberian) refugees. The only thing we are worried about is that our resources are overstretched, but we will accommodate them; they are our brothers and sisters," an official of Sierra Leone’s National Commission for social Action (NaSCA) told IPS Thursday.

The upsurge in fighting has virtually crippled the peace talks in Ghana and made nonsense of the ceasefire deal signed a week ago, although regional mediators deny this.

"We are still working hard to salvage the peace process," remarked Chief Mediator Gen. Abdul Salami Abubakar, former Nigerian military leader. "The issue now is not about Mr. Taylor’s indictment; it is about the long suffering of the ordinary Liberians."

There are calls for the deployment of an international peacekeeping force. Britain’s Ambassador to the UN Jeremy Greenstock has called on the United States, which has traditional ties with Liberia, to take the lead and intervene in the deteriorating situation in the embattled West African country.

The rebels have insisted they will not stop fighting until Taylor is removed.

The Monrovia government blames Sierra Leone for what it describes as their backing of the insurgents, but the Freetown authorities have denied this. A spokesperson for the Freetown government told IPS Thursday: "we have nothing to do with the conflict in Liberia. After all, we have been doing our best to broker peace in Liberia."

It is not clear how long the battle for Monrovia will last, but there are fears the humanitarian crisis may worsen if a ceasefire is not brokered soonest.

There are concerns that the Liberian instability risks spiralling to much of West Africa.

The latest fighting in Liberia’s long history of conflicts began in 1999 when the LURD accused Taylor of dictatorship and launched a rebellion in the north which has spread to 11 of the country’s 15 regions.

The fighting has affected half the country’s estimated three million people, according to the UN High Commissioner for Refugees. Liberia also hosts around 17,000 Sierra Leone refugees, at least 38,000 Ivorian refugees and nearly 44,000 returning Liberians who fled conflict in neighbouring Cote d’Ivoire. These too have been endangered by the fighting