POLITICS-LIBERIA: Taylor Resigns, Flies into Exile in Nigeria

By IPS Correspondents Reprint | | Print |

Badia Jacobs

JOHANNESBURG, Aug 11 2003 (IPS) - Embattled Liberian President Charles Taylor ceded power to his deputy, Moses Blah, on Monday and flew into exile in Nigeria, 14 years after leading a rebellion that triggered a bloody civil war which spilled over into Sierra Leone, Guinea and Cote d’Ivoire.

Rebels, seeking to overthrow his government, had threatened to resume violence if 55-year-old former guerrilla leader reneged on his promise to leave Liberia immediately.

Taylor, who won 1997 elections after emerging as the strongest warlord during seven years of civil war, handed power to Blah in a colourful ceremony in Monrovia, the capital, witnessed by Presidents Thabo Mbeki of South Africa, John Kufuor of Ghana and Joachim Chissano of Mozambique.

In a defiant speech, Taylor said: “I am stepping down from this office of my own volition. No one can take credit for asking me to step down. I did not want to leave this country. I can say I have been forced by the world’s superpower”.

In a similar farewell speech on Sunday, he said: “I have decided to leave because for the first time in history, almost, of the world, the United States is using food and other things as a weapon against Liberian people.

“As President (George W) Bush says, (American peacekeepers) will not step on this soil . as long as I’m here. This further threatens your survival as a people and as I have said I can no longer see you suffer.”

An American ship, carrying 2,300 marines, is waiting off the Liberian coast for orders from Washington to intervene in Liberia.

African leaders, especially Mbeki, played a major role in persuading Taylor to step down. In what is seen as a top-heavy African-inspired move to assert the relevance of the African Union, the presence of Mbeki has not only raised expectations of Taylor stepping down, but it has also raised the stakes of home-grown African solutions to the continent’s conflicts.

Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo is Taylor’s neighbour and has offered the former Liberian warlord political asylum once he stepped down. Kufuor in June ignored the request to arrest Taylor, who has been charged with war crimes by a special tribunal for Sierra Leone. And Mbeki has been deafeningly silent on whether Taylor should go or not.

After U.S. President Bush’s African safari in June, the continent’s two economic powerhouses, Nigeria and South Africa, have been vying for the top position of “honest broker” to conflicts in Burundi, Zimbabwe, Democratic Republic of Congo and Liberia.

The New Partnership for Africa’s Development (NEPAD), the brainchild of Mbeki and Senegalese President Abdoulaye Wade, needs an estimated 60 billion U.S. dollars to get off the ground. Mbeki and Obasanjo, while running the richest states in Africa, are not in a position to bankroll this Marshall Plan, which is designed to wrench Africa out of its devastating levels of poverty and secure good governance.

Mbeki, Obasanjo and Wade need the buy-in from the United States, Britain and other G-8 members – Italy, Germany, France, Japan, Canada and Russia – if they are to pull off the partnerships needed to get NEPAD up and running. Liberia needs the political approval of Mbeki and Obasanjo for the country to receive the financial and infrastructural support from the United States once Taylor had left. Mbeki, for his part, needs to be seen to be at the forefront of sorting out the multiple crises in Africa.

Liberia has a population of 3.3 million and its main exports are diamonds, iron ore, rubber, timber, coffee and cocoa. It is also the only country in Africa that was “colonised” by black Americans who returned to Africa, and hence the accents, the appeals for U.S. help and the overtly consumerist and vicious culture of money, arms and deals that grips the West African state.

Taylor was educated in the United States, returned to Liberia and got a top job with Samuel Doe, the former president. He fell out with Doe, started a civil war that got Doe assassinated in 1990, militarily outmanoeuvred Doe’s army and other factions, and was elected the country’s president in 1997.

Six years later, the people of Liberia continue to reel under the jackboot of state terror, rebel terror and a leadership that has pushed the self-destruct button.

Kofi Annan, the United Nations secretary-general, appears less-than-generous in his approach to Taylor. While acknowledging Nigeria’s offer of asylum, the UN head has insisted that international law – for what it is worth now that the United States has taken the law into its own hands through its invasion of Iraq – must take its course and if Taylor is to be tried for war crimes, then so be it.

Taylor’s government, for its part, had requested the International Court of Justice in The Hague to intervene over the indictment.

The United States’ lacklustre commitment of seven marines sent to Liberia has been described by Obasanjo as sending a fire engine to the scene of the fire but only promising to help once the fire is out. The problem is that Taylor, together with Obasanjo, Kufuor, Wade and Mbeki, seems to need Bush and his buy-in into Africa’s future more than he needs them.

Liberia needs to be more comprehensively understood. The roles of the United States, its Central Intelligence Agency, Nigeria, Guinea, Ghana, Sierra Leone, in the making of West Africa have to feature in Taylor’s departure deal. If not, Africa will not know why he has been forced out of his country. Already, people are asking whether Taylor is the first of many “regime changes” in Africa, under the jackboot of the United States.