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Conflict in Liberia & West Africa
PEOPLE IN Liberia are emerging from years of hell. They have
been caught in the middle of armed conflict between rebel and government
militias – both sides relying on drug-crazed child combatants. Around 2,000 have
been killed in June and July (up to 200,000 since the late 1980s). Four out of
five people have had to abandon their land and homes. People in the capital,
Monrovia, survived on snails, frogs, dogs, leaves and seeds. Aid workers, cut
off by the fighting from the city’s cemeteries, buried victims on the beach.
In June, 14 years into the civil war, the biggest rebel
group, Liberians United for Reconciliation and Democracy (Lurd), launched a
major offensive, splitting Monrovia in two. Militias loyal to President Charles
Taylor held half the city. Besieged, on 2 August, Taylor agreed to resign. On 4
August, Nigerian peacekeepers arrived. And on 11 August, Taylor handed over the
presidency to his deputy, Moses Blah. After failing to negotiate immunity from
prosecution for war crimes, Taylor fled to Nigeria where the government has
furnished him with a three-house luxury retreat.
A power-sharing deal is being brokered in Accra, the
Ghanaian capital. The idea is that Blah will continue as president until an
interim government – drawn from opposition parties, Lurd and the other main
rebel force, the Movement for Democracy in Liberia (Model) – is set up in
October. Gyude Bryant, leader of the small Liberian Action Party, should then
take over until elections in October 2005. Fighting, however, continues outside
the capital. A Financial Times editorial summed up the instability: ‘There is
also some question as to how far Mr Taylor’s militia forces – which have taken
the place of a national army – will maintain their loyalty to a successor
government. Mr Blah cannot be anything more than a stop-gap. His administration
has lost what legitimacy it had – and most of its power.’ (12 August)
The Economic Community of West African States (Ecowas – made
up of 15 states) has sent a military force, led by the Nigerian army. It is
expected to number 3,000, with Ghana, Senegal and Mali each sending 250 troops.
The US promised $10m towards the operation, and has positioned three warships
off the coast near Monrovia.
Anger has been directed against the US. On 21 July,
Monrovians dumped dead bodies outside the fortified US embassy. A few days
later, dozens of people in wheelchairs demonstrated for food. Insult was heaped
on the injury when US soldiers were seen leaving the embassy and filmed minutes
later returning with cases of beer. Such is the level of desperation, however,
that there were reportedly widespread demands for US intervention. Evidently,
some illusions exist that the US will use its power to bring about peace. That
can soon turn to anger against US inaction.
George W Bush’s hesitancy in committing troops on the ground
reflects unease and division within the US administration. Commanders fear
military overstretch. Their memory of the debacle in Somalia in 1993 is bitter:
a bungled military intervention, ignominious retreat and 18 troops dead. They
are still smarting from that blow against the superpower’s prestige.
The timing of the latest upheavals in Liberia was bad for
Bush. He was conducting a whistle-stop tour of five African states: trying to
deliver a message of US capitalist ‘compassion’. Money was promised to fight
Aids and trade deals were proffered. It was an attempt to reinforce US power and
prestige on a world stage – without using weapons of mass destruction, this
time.
Yet it exposed the falsehood behind the claim that the US is
the defender of the ‘free’, ‘democratic’ world. When Samuel Doe, a sergeant,
seized power in Liberia in 1980, his regime received millions of dollars of US
aid, despite clear evidence of violence and corruption. Liberia was a
communications centre for the US in the cold war rivalry between the two
superpowers, the US and Soviet Union. The vicious nature of the regime was
therefore conveniently overlooked. With the collapse of the Stalinist system in
the former Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, however, it lost much of its
strategic importance.
When faced with a humanitarian disaster in a state it now
considers unimportant, the US looked the other way. But US imperialism can also
be undermined if it is perceived as being indifferent to the plight of tens of
thousands of civilians, in this case, caught up in a bloody civil war. So,
precariously balanced, Bush tried to sound concerned while doing the strictest
minimum.
Nonetheless, the Bush regime’s zeal in prosecuting its ‘war
on terror’ and increasingly aggressive approaches by mining, agricultural and
pharmaceutical multinationals (among others) have raised the continent’s
economic and strategic importance once again. Oil is centre stage. New reserves
have been discovered in the Gulf of Guinea and West Africa. The US wants to
increase its oil imports from Africa from 15% of its needs today to 25% over the
next ten years, shifting the balance away from the volatile Middle East.
But West Africa’s volatility is set to continue, too. The
last time regional armed forces (then Ecomog, again under Nigerian leadership)
were involved in Liberia was in 1995/96. They armed ethnically-based rebels
against Taylor, plunging the whole country into war. Kenneth L Cain, a UN human
rights officer in Liberia at the time, observed that troops prioritised guarding
diamond mines and timber, rather than people. The UN reported Ecomog forces
looting, drug dealing on a massive scale, and forcing young girls to trade sex
for food. (New York Times, 8 August)
Ecomog and the UN eventually helped organise the elections
in which Taylor terrorised people into voting him president in 1997. It was
hailed as a success for the ‘international community’, a ‘peacekeeping victory’.
Throughout the 1980s and 1990s, conflicts rumbled on between and within West
African states, with tangled webs of outside involvement. The US armed Guinea
against Taylor. Guinea armed and trained the anti-Taylor Liberian rebels, Lurd.
Lurd recruited Sierra Leonean militiamen. Meanwhile, Ivory Coast backed Model.
In Sierra Leone in 2000 British and UN forces managed to
impose a ceasefire, again highly-praised by capitalist commentators. Today,
peace hangs by a fragile thread held by UN troops. The Economist commented on
the capital, Freetown: ‘But the boom is driven largely by the presence of 17,500
UN peacekeepers, the largest such operation ever. If they leave, as scheduled
next year, the boom could end, and Sierra Leone’s security will be left in the
hands of the army… A coup attempt in January was put down, but its leader, a
former army chief, escaped. In private, British officers charged with training
the Sierra Leonean army are less optimistic than when they began, three years
ago.’ (5 July)
An army mutiny in September 2002 exploded into civil war in
Ivory Coast. Rebels from the north, reportedly backed by Burkina Faso, were
pitted against the government based in the south. Three thousand French troops
stopped them marching on the capital, Abidjan. A ceasefire was declared in
January and a national unity government formed. But the country is split in
half, with French and West African troops keeping the two sides apart. The war
continues on the western border with Liberia. The government says that 3,000
people have been killed in this latest conflict. Over a million people have fled
their homes. Expatriates, mainly French, contributing roughly half the country’s
taxes, have left in droves. If the economy collapses it would devastate Burkina
Faso, Mali and Niger, which all depend on remittances from migrant workers in
Ivory Coast.
It is the political machinations of the former colonial
powers, exploitation by profit-hungry multinationals, and complicity by corrupt
leaders, which are responsible for West Africa’s instability. The capitalist
system opens up vast wealth inequalities, mass unemployment and impoverishment,
raising brutalised youth with no future. These lie at the base of the
desperation, devastation and violence we are witnessing today.
Manny Thain
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