POLITICS-LIBERIA: President Taylor’s Days Numbered

By IPS Correspondents Reprint | | Print |

Abdullah Dukuly

MONROVIA, Jul 8 2003 (IPS) - For Liberia’s 3.5 million people, there is not much doubt about it: Charles Taylor, the strongman or common enemy, is nearing his end in office. With the capture of the seaport of Monrovia, the rebels belt the Liberian leader a strategic and psychological blow.

A rebellion that started four years ago as a small-scale guerrilla expanded – after surviving a grim period of massive offensives – into what is today a series of sudden devastating onslaught in which Taylor’s forces are driving out of their heavily fortified garrison around the country.

The Guinean-backed Liberians United for Reconciliation and Democracy (LURD) rebels were poised to take the sprawling city when U.S. President George W. Bush demanded Taylor’s resignation – a key rebel demand – to "spare further bloodshed".

The rebels pulled back from the capital. Now all that remains with the government is approximately one-fifth of the country, including Monrovia, aid workers say.

Taylor also faces domestic pressure. In the latest episode, thousands of anti-government demonstrators – mostly displaced seeking safety in school buildings, churches, mosques and unfinished structures in the city – defied the guns for the second time running last week when they took to the streets demanding "Taylor Must Go".

The protesters carried banners and waived the American flag – in apparent support of President Bush’s stance on Taylor – as they filled the air with freedom songs and anti-government slogans.

Security forces broke up the demonstration, but the anti-Taylor protest grew larger in one street and sprung up into another, out-weighting a small group of government sympathisers who marched the street few kilometres away.

The pro-Taylor demonstrators, about few hundreds gathered at a sports stadium in the city centre to decry the growing demand for Taylor’s resignation, saying "it will complicate the fragile situation in the country."

Led by Fredrick Baye, a civil servant, the pro-Taylor marchers requested that Taylor be allowed to stay on until Oct. 14 to ensure an orderly transition of power.

They also demanded the withdrawal of the war crime indictment against Taylor, a former rebel leader who won an election in 1997 after a seven-year bloody war. He was in Ghana on Jun. 5 for the opening of the Liberian peace talks when the UN-backed court in Sierra Leone issued an indictment against him for his alleged roles in the Sierra Leone war.

Taylor was consulting with the country’s religious leaders in Monrovia Friday when anti-government protesters blamed him for being the source of the problem in Liberia and in the sub-region. Taylor accused the politicians for using "the children to create chaos and confusion". He warned parents to take their children off the street.

The police drove rough to chase away the protesters. And armed men believed to be government loyalists fired warning shots to disperse the crowd. No death or injury was reported.

Despite the pressure against Taylor’s leadership, he said he would not step aside unless a U.S.-led peacekeeping force was deplored to end the war in Liberia.

"It makes lot of sense for peacekeepers to arrive in this city before I transit," Taylor told the clergy.

Many are encouraged by Taylor’s ultimatum. The country is on the brink of collapse, says an observer. "If Taylor abruptly departs now, there will be a power and security vacuum. He already has thousands of nervous-wracking militia who see him as a symbol of their future. They will surely cause great havoc if their principal was to quit unceremoniously and leave the scene. So we need the peacekeepers now to protect us," a human rights activist told IPS on Tuesday.

West African mediators, brokering the peace for Liberia, have announced their readiness to deploy 3,000 troops to Liberia but are waiting for the United States to lead the force.

But the U.S. government, which is still considering leading the force, wants Taylor – who faces both UN and U.S. travel sanctions – to go before they can deploy any force to Liberia.

Meanwhile, a team of 17 U.S. military experts landed in Monrovia Monday to assess the U.S. troops’ deployment in Liberia, founded in the 19 century by free black American slaves as a haven of liberty.

The mandate of the much delayed force is to secure Monrovia and its environs and protect more than half of the country’s population in the city and pave the way for humanitarian relief operation.

"It will be a robust force capable of overwhelming any aggression and protecting the civilian population," said Mohammed Ibn Chambas, the secretary-general of the 15-nation Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS).

The suspended talks resumed in Ghana on Friday with delegates given until Jul. 15 to form a transitional government without Taylor.

In the same vein, Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo arrived in Monrovia on Jul. 6 to discuss his offer of asylum in Nigeria with Taylor, who has promptly accepted the deal.

It is not yet clear when Taylor will leave the country into exile in Nigeria. President Obasanjo hopes that the transition from Taylor will be orderly without any confusion.

With the intense political and military pressures – couple with the UN indictment hanging over him, analysts say Liberians are now counting the number of days in which Taylor will continue to serve them. "The days of President Taylor are numbered," a university student says.

Apart from the over 60,000 deaths in the 1990, thousands of civilians have lost their lives in the ongoing crisis and 250,000 others have been wounded and displaced, causing humanitarian disaster. Aids workers, including those from United Nations have fled the country, leaving the population to die of cholera and diarrhea-related diseases.