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| Africa: West |
| Liberia is Haiti to the nth power + cannibalism |
| 2003-07-09 |
| The following account is the reason we should stay out of Liberia. A bad man in Africa By Anthony Daniels (Filed: 29/06/2003) Profile: Charles Taylor Few men in recent history have wrought as much misery and destruction as Charles Taylor, the elected President of Liberia. His ambition and greed have caused not only the displacement of a million of his own countrymen out of a population of a mere three million, and brought about the death of a tenth of the population, but he has provoked civil war in two neighbouring states, Sierra Leone and the Ivory Coast. Now his country is mostly under the control of two rebel movements that are besieging the capital, Monrovia, and it is only a matter of time before he is overthrown. At the beginning of this month, Taylor was indicted for crimes against humanity by an international court sitting in Sierra Leone, and a warrant was issued for his arrest. This will hardly have encouraged him to stand down as President, as he had shortly before agreed to do, to allow the setting-up of an interim government. Now he wants to fight to the finish, however much bloodshed this might entail. At the age of 55 he still relishes the trappings of power and likes to be seen on thrones in golden robes. He has at least one wife, Jewel, who lives in the Ivory Coast. His daughter, Edena, came to public attention two years ago, when aged 13, she was publicly caned at her school by her father for indiscipline. Taylor’s career cannot be understood without some knowledge of Liberian history. He was the third of 15 children of Americo-Liberian parents: descendants of the freed American slaves who established the Liberian republic, and who dominated Liberia politically and economically for 133 years from its foundation until 1980, despite being only 3 per cent of the population. He was sent to the United States by his father for university education and obtained a degree in economics from Bentley College in Massachusetts. To pay for his extravagant partying, he worked on the production line of a toy factory called Sweetheart Plastics. He was also involved in Liberian student politics of a radical nature, influenced by Marxist and Pan-African ideas, and at one time, advocated burning down the Liberian embassy in Washington. Back in Liberia, in 1980 the semi-literate Master-Sergeant Samuel Doe led a violent coup in which the former President, William Tolbert, was disembowelled in his bed. Seeing an opportunity for real power, Taylor returned to Liberia, where he was appointed head of the General Services Agency, the new government’s procurement organisation. This gave him not only cabinet rank but immense powers of patronage and possibilities for personal enrichment. Doe came to power claiming to be a representative of the tribal people of Liberia, in opposition to their colonial masters, the Americo-Liberians; but, in practice, he soon started to favour members of his own tribe, the Krahn. This led him to conflict with other leaders of the 1980 coup, one of whom, Thomas Quiwonkpah, a member of the Gio tribe, led an invasion from the Ivory Coast to overthrow Doe. Quiwonkpah nearly succeeded, but was captured in Monrovia, and his corpse, according to witnesses, was dragged through the streets and parts of it were eaten by Doe’s men. There were brutal reprisals in Nimba County, where many of Quiwonkpah’s fellow tribesmen lived. Taylor was believed to have been sympathetic to Quiwonkpah and, realising the danger he was in, he fled to the United States. Doe, then an ally of the US, claimed that Taylor had embezzled $900,000 from the General Services Agency, and Taylor was arrested in America at the request of Doe, who wanted him extradited to Liberia. He spent 15 months in a Massachusetts prison until, with four petty criminals, he sawed through his bars and escaped. No efforts were made to recapture him. His lawyer was Ramsey Clarke, a former Attorney-General, which is indicative of Taylor’s ability to form valuable connections. On his return to Africa, Taylor became the head of the National Patriotic Front of Liberia, dedicated to overthrowing Doe. He received the backing of Col Gadaffi, who was trying to extend his influence in Africa, as well as Blaise Campaore, the President of Burkina Faso, and Felix Houphouet-Boigny, the President of the Ivory Coast. In 1989, Taylor launched an invasion of Liberia from the Ivory coast and he soon came to control the entire country except the capital, Monrovia. A multinational West African military force prevented Taylor from taking the capital, but Doe was captured by a former ally of Taylor’s, the self-styled Brigadier-General Field-Marshal Prince Y Johnson. Doe was stripped naked and filmed having his ears cut off with a knife while Johnson, drinking beer, interrogated him as to the numbers of his bank accounts. Doe died soon afterwards, and the video of his torture was sold in large numbers in West Africa. Taylor’s forces included children, who were often dressed in bizarre costumes and blond wigs. Frequently under the influence of drugs, they were notable for their childish brutality and up to 200,000 people were killed in this phase of the war. A stalemate ensued, with an "official" government installed in Monrovia, while Taylor controlled the rest of the country and ruled from a town called Gbarnga. He was able to amass a huge fortune through the continued sale of Liberia’s plentiful natural resources such as diamonds, iron ore and timber.. Eventually, after about 15 failed peace conferences, elections were brokered in 1996, and the Liberian population realised that Taylor would seek the presidency by other means if they did not vote for him. Wanting an end to the war at any price, they voted for Taylor. This did not satisfy his ambitions, however. By the time he reached power, Monrovia was not an auspicious place from which to bestride the world. It had been more comprehensively destroyed than any capital in the world. Rubbish accumulated on the beaches, every important building was damaged by gunfire and thoroughly looted, the streets were potholed and no public services worked. A brief interregnum of reconstruction has been followed by another orgy of destruction. Still theoretically a Pan-African and in practice a kleptomaniac who pillaged the wealth of the nation, Taylor attempted to install puppets in Sierra Leone and the Ivory Coast by the same means that he had achieved power in Liberia. Most notoriously he backed and armed the collectively psychopathic Revolutionary United Front of Sierra Leone, whose murderous atrocities startled the world, and for whose arms he paid with the diamonds of Sierra Leone. Now he is getting his comeuppance. In 1999, a rebel movement called Liberians United for Reconciliation and Democracy (Lurd), backed by Guinea and based in Sierra Leone, invaded Liberia, using the same kind of tactics and soldiery that Taylor used. And the government of the Ivory Coast, exasperated by Taylor’s interference, backed the Movement for Democracy in Liberia (Model). These rebels have now all but conquered Liberia, and Taylor faces the same fate as Samuel Doe, 13 years ago. But the triumph of Lurd and Model will not bring peace to Liberia: without clear leadership, they have no policy beyond killing anyone who might be a supporter of Taylor. Taylor is not only a war criminal (he once attempted to sue The Times for suggesting that he was a cannibal, though the action was eventually struck out because of his unwillingness to appear in a London court), but he is also a Baptist preacher. Accused in the United Nations of being a gun-runner and a diamond smuggler, he dressed up in an angel’s white robe and spoke at a mass prayer meeting. Accused by a journalist of being a murderer, he stated that Jesus was also accused of being a murderer in his time. It appears, however, that he will soon receive his earthly reward. Anthony Daniels is the author of Monrovia Mon Amour published by John Murray |
| Posted by:Zhang Fei |