POLITICS-LIBERIA: Armed Militias Call for Resignation of Interim Leader

By IPS Correspondents Reprint | | Print |

Abdullah Dukuly

MONROVIA, Feb 21 2004 (IPS) - Liberia’s war-wearied civilians fear a return to hostilities as politicians squabble within the transitional government and the United Nations takes its time in deploying peacekeepers around the country.

At the centre of this concern is the jostling for government posts. The scramble continues ever since the businessman-turned politician Gyude Bryant was sworn-in as chairperson of the power-sharing transitional government last October under a peace agreement signed in Ghana in August.

The accord allows the country’s three armed factions – the Liberia United for Reconciliation and Democracy (LURD), the Movement for Democracy in Liberia (MODEL) and forces loyal to former president Charles Taylor – to take posts in the government with the mandate to run the country until elections in 2005.

But Bryant stands accused of making unilateral appointments in the government without allowing the parliament to vet the individuals concerned under the agreement.

The most powerful rebel movement, LURD, and the new eastern armed group, MODEL, which took arms against Taylor, have demanded the resignation of Bryant. They have accused him of “lack of transparency and failure to build confidence among the warring parties”.

The rebels’ demand raised fears that the early disarmament of the country’s estimated 40,000 combatants were not likely. And that Liberia might slide back into another round of turmoil reminiscent of the days when former faction leaders – scrambling for power and wealth – clashed in western Liberia in 1993 and the capital, Monrovia, in 1996, leaving scores of civilian deaths.

“What those fighting did – besides causing unnecessary death and property loss when the peace process was thought to be progressing – was donor fatigue which forced Liberians to accept half-baked solutions to the leadership questions,” said Joseph Dennis, a political scientist in Monrovia.

Moses Jarba, the chairperson of the Commission on Disarmament, Demobilisation, Rehabilitation and Reintegration (DDRR), said the militias were treating the issue of the DDRR with a grain of salt: “threatening this or that unless this or that happens.”

But the International Contact Group, a US-based think-tank comprising the United States, the United Nations, the African Unity (AU) and the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), has rejected the demands. They say they would “not allow any amount of threats and intimidation to impede the Liberian peace process”.

ICGL representatives in Liberia met at the Ghanaian embassy near the capital, Monrovia, to discuss the peace process. In separate remarks, they expressed their “unswerving” support to Bryant and the peace process and pledged to work together to end the 14-year brutal war.

U.S. ambassador John Blaney said Liberia’s peace process was “irreversible”.

“This, we think, should send a clear signal to all warring parties who will want to continue holding the Liberian people hostage through the barrel of the guns,” he said.

For Jacque Klein, UN secretary general Kofi Annan’s special envoy, “There is no linkage between the DDRR process and the scramble for jobs in the Transitional Government. Whether a handful of people from different groups get government positions is far less important to me than the fate of more than 3.6 million Liberians who have suffered enough and are tired of war”.

Faction leaders – Sekou Damate Conneh of LURD and Thomas Yaya Nimely of MODEL – “have broken the promise they made when they signed the comprehensive Peace Agreement. They are betraying their own soldiers and the Liberian people,” Klein said.

Ghanian ambassador Ernest K. Amoa-Awua, speaking for ECOWAS, said he did not see the reason for Bryant’s removal. “The peace process remains irreversible as lots of efforts and resources have been put together to resolve the crisis,” he said.

Amoa-Awua warned the warlords “to end their politics of threats and intimidation”.

Donors met in New York recently to try to raise some 500 million dollars for Liberia’s reconstruction. The United Nations is currently flying in 15,000 peacekeepers, 1,100 international police and 250 military observers to undertake the biggest UN operations in the world.

EU representative, Geoffery Ludd reaffirmed EU’s support to Bryant’s “efforts to give Liberians a better way of life”.

But Ludd warned that the failure of the warring factions to play “a constructive role in the peace process” would trigger “the withdrawal of the international community support to peace in Liberia”.

With such a cohesive support from the international community, civil society groups have called for the speedy deployment of the UN forces throughout the country to disarm the factions.

They believe that further delay in the disarmament process would create more rooms for demands by armed factions, thereby subjecting Liberians to further suffering.

“We want to return to our towns and villages and start a new life. But we cannot do so now while the warlords and their agents of death and destructions still carry arms around the country,” says Rebecca Karnue, a displaced woman with 14 dependents.