LIBERIA-POLITICS: Who Is In Charge?

By IPS Correspondents Reprint | | Print |

Analysis Melvis Dzisah

ABIDJAN, Apr 9 1996 (IPS) - In trying to assert its authority over a renegade warlord, Liberia’s interim ruling Council of State has not only exposed its weakness but has also undermined an already shaky peace process.

Fighting and looting in the capital Monrovia since the weekend has thrown the eight-month-old peace into disarray. An unknown number of people have died in the clashes between armed factions and more than 16,000 people have been forced to flee their homes with the United States embassy compound turning into a make-shift camp for frightened civilians.

The violence followed an attempt by an elite police unit, under the orders of the six-man Council, to arrest Roosevelt Johnson on murder charges. Johnson last month was sacked as minister for rural development after he was deposed as the leader of the Krahn wing of the United Liberation Movement (ULIMO).

He was able to flee his home in the posh suburb of Sinkoh along with his Krahn loyalists who went on a shooting and looting spree in the city centre before joining up with Krahn militia in the Barclay Training Centre. Heavy fighting, the worst Monrovia has seen since 1992, broke out Sunday when government troops tried to storm the barracks.

Liberia’s power-sharing transitional government emerged out of a peace agreement signed in the Nigerian capital, Abuja, in August 1995. Past peace initiatives had collapsed over the refusal of the rival factions to allow an interim administration to run the country and supervise a disarmament operation ahead of planned elections.

The Council headed by a neutral and therefore powerless university professor, Wilton Sankawulo, includes the three major faction leaders: George Boley of the Liberian Peace Council, Alhaji Kromah of the Mandingo wing of ULIMO and Charles Taylor, the leader of the National Patriotic Front of Liberia (NPFL), and arguably the most powerful man in Liberia.

The rest of the country’s warlords, like Johnson, had been bought off with ministerial posts.

The council is supposed to restore peace, disarm the some 60,000 gunmen, and organise elections culminating in a civilian government on Jan. 1 next year.

But the peace has been at best shaky, with Johnson’s soldiers involved in a major clash with troops of a West African peacekeeping force (ECOMOG) in December in Tubmanburg, 70 kms west of Monrovia, and disarmament is yet to begin. Taylor has repeatedly questioned the disarmament plan.

ECOMOG, led by Nigeria, is supposed to guarantee the peace process. However, in Liberia since 1990, the current force has been whittled down in size rather than built up to enable it to carry out its deployment across the country and ensure security.

At the height of Liberia’s civil war, with Taylor in control of the bulk of the country, ECOMOG turned peace enforcer and went on the offensive. Then it could call on more than 12,000 troops backed by Nigerian air and naval power which, according to some estimates, was costing Abuja more than one million dollars a day.

ECOMOG says it needs a similarly sized force now, but at a meeting of donors in New York in 1995, the largest contribution to the peace operation was just 10 million dollars from the United States. ECOMOG has been only able to muster 7,000-men which are short of basic equipment from radios to vehicles.

The Liberian government is penniless. When the council took over in September last year, it reportedly could only find 75,000 dollars in the Central Bank. Although the New York conference raised 150 million dollars for Liberia, much less than the government needs, the donors say the money will only be disbursed when there are clear signs of progress with the peace plan.

Johnson’s sacking as minister followed his inability to control his poorly fed soldiers, left to their own devises as he, along with the other warlords, moved into posh residences when they returned to Monrovia. Their indiscipline resulted in a series of small skirmishes in the capital in February that led to four deaths.

Taylor’s hand may also be behind the dismissal.

When he began the civil war in 1989 with a small band of Libyan and Burkinabe trained soldiers to topple former President Samuel Doe, his insurgency quickly turned into an ethnic conflict.

Doe sent his Krahn-based army into Nimba county in the north to stop Taylor and in the process unleashed a reign of terror on the Mano and Gio communities. They became willing recruits for Taylor’s NPFL and as they pushed south wreaked revenge on Krahns and their Mandingo allies.

Krahn soldiers, who still form the bulk of the government army, have not forgiven Taylor and they believe he wields considerable influence on the Council. As a result of controlling the greater part of Liberia for six-years and striking lucrative deals with foreign business, Taylor has amassed a small fortune to fight any future election.

Fear of Taylor meant that when Johnson was sacked, the Krahn militia at the Barclay Training Centre rallied behind him.

In the current stand off, ECOMOG has sat on the fence stressing that it is an internal matter between the government and Johnson. ECOMOG chief-of-staff, Gen. John Inienger, said Monday: “At the end of the day, all of us have to come to the negotiating table.”

A statement by Ghana, which holds the chair of the 16-member Economic Community of West African States under whose mandate ECOMOG operates warned: “All these unfortunate developments have severely endangered the peace process and increased the likelihood of ethnic and inter-factional hostilities in the capital.”

It called for an immediate ceasefire, and in a veiled criticism of Inienger, called on ECOMOG to immediately deploy and enforce security. The statement said that Johnson should contact the ECOMOG High Command which would ensure his protection.

Ghanaian President Jerry Rawlings acknowledged last week in Accra, “we shall encounter frustrations before we finally have peace in Liberia but we have no choice.”

The six year civil war has forced at least half of Liberia’s population of 2.5 million out of the country and has killed more than 150,000.

Despite misgivings from ECOWAS members over the Abuja agreement, as Rawlings stresses, it is the only peace formula available.

And equipment for ECOMOG is beginning to arrive. The United States has provided three helicopters, 35 vehicles are across the border in Cote d’Ivoire, a further 15 have been handed to the Ghanaian army and Netherlands at the weekend pledged another 75.

“More donors will respond if the Liberians do not spoil matters by fighting again,” said a hopeful Ghanaian Government official.

But, U.N. secretary general Boutros Boutros-Ghali has warned of a human catastrophe in Liberia if donors do not act quickly. According to U.N. statistics, the world body spends on Liberia in one year what it spends in Bosnia in five days.

Sankawulo says ECOMOG must be given the logistics to carry out its mandate. “We are determined that our council shall be the one to bring lasting peace to Liberia.”