Incubent President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf
The presidential runoff election scheduled for November 8, 2011 will take place with only one candidate; Ellen Sirleaf-Johnson, the incumbent. The opposition party, the CDC, has announced it is boycotting the election. The CDC has made formal complaints to the Electoral Commission of massive rigging of the first election. These claims have not been examined by the Electoral Commission in depth and they have not reported on their findings. The candidates of the CDC, Winston Tubman and his Vice-Presidential partner, George Weah, are widely popular in the country as has been seen in the campaign and Mrs. Sirleaf-Johnson a great deal less popular.
However, Mrs. Sirleaf-Johnson has several things going in her favour. She has access to a lot of money which she is freely spreading around. Local sources estimate that she has spent almost US$30 million so far on the election, about $150,000 of which is said to have gone to Prince Johnson, a failed candidate in the first election who threw his support behind Johnson-Sirleaf. Prince Johnson was famous in Liberia for his hacking away with a machete at the late President Doe on a video available on You Tube and later, it is said, eating some of the organs of Doe. This prompted the best one-liner in Africa. “Where is Sam Doe? Something he disagreed with ate him”
Some of Mrs. Sirleaf-Johnson’s money was made available from grants from the US, the European Community, the UN and some from the oil companies who are her major sponsors.
Her major support comes from the US, who was instrumental in rigging the Nobel Prize to be given to her just a week before the election. Mrs. Sirleaf-Johnson, who returned from her flight from Liberia to the US during the civil war, returned to serve Charles Taylor in a direct capacity. Not to fall into the error of judgement made by Adam Clayton-Powell, she “arranged things” for Taylor until he left the country and settled many of his problems. Oddly enough the ‘independent observers’ sent by the US to observe the election found that they were fair and transparent. In the words of the State Department yesterday “The CDC’s charge that the first-round election was fraudulent is unsubstantiated. As evidenced by international and domestic observers, Liberia’s October 11 first-round presidential and legislative elections were fair, free and transparent.” This is despite documented cases of fraud and rigging at least about 35% of Liberia’s 4,800 polling places (most of whom were not observed by the observers) as reported by the CDC.
The problem is that Tubman and Weah are playing against a stacked deck. Liberia is an occupied country and has been so for many years. It is occupied by the US and to a smaller degree, by the UN peacekeepers that fall under US military ‘guidance’ and control. Right now the UN Peacekeepers include:
9,216 total uniformed personnel
7,775 troops
133 military observers
1,308 police (including formed units)
476 international civilian personnel (that is private military contractors)
1,000 local staff
240 UN Volunteers
Country contributors
Military personnel
Bangladesh, Benin, Bolivia, Brazil, Bulgaria, China, Croatia, Denmark, Ecuador, Egypt, El Salvador, Ethiopia, Finland, France, Gambia, Ghana, Indonesia, Jordan, Kyrgyzstan, Malaysia, Mali, Moldova, Montenegro, Namibia, Nepal, Niger, Nigeria, Pakistan, Paraguay, Peru, Philippines, Poland, Republic of Korea, Romania, Russian Federation, Senegal, Serbia, Togo, Ukraine, United States, Yemen, Zambia and Zimbabwe.
Police personnel
Argentina, Bangladesh, Bosnia and Herzegovina, China, Czech Republic, Egypt, El Salvador, Fiji, Gambia, Germany, Ghana, India, Jamaica, Jordan, Kenya, Kyrgyzstan, Namibia, Nepal, Nigeria, Norway, Pakistan, Philippines, Poland, Russian Federation, Rwanda, Serbia, Sri Lanka, Sweden, Switzerland, Turkey, Uganda, Ukraine, United States, Yemen, Zambia and Zimbabwe.
The UN presence is dwarfed by the presence of the US military in the country (some of whom are included above). The Department of Defense is represented in Liberia by the Office of the Defense Attaché and the Office of Security Cooperation.
According to the Department of Defense:
Office of the Defense Attaché
The Defense Attaché represents the Secretary of Defense; other top military officers and the Commander-in-Chief of the U.S. Military. The Office of the Defense Attaché provides military and political-military advice, assistance, and support to the U.S. ambassador. The Office of the Defense Attaché has the full authority and responsibility inherent in the position on any military organization commander except the authority to administer military justice.
Office of Security Cooperation
The mission of the Office of Security Cooperation (OSC) is to provide U.S. Department of Defense Security Assistance to the Republic of Liberia on behalf of the Defense Security Cooperation Agency, U.S. Africa Command (AFRICOM) and U.S. Embassy Monrovia in order to further U.S. strategic goals and objectives and to improve military-to-military relations. Within this mission, OSC’s primary objective is to build, equip and train a professional, apolitical 2,000 soldier Armed Forces of Liberia (AFL) under the Security Sector Reform for National Defense program. Included in this force is the development of a 50-100 person Liberian Coast Guard (LCG).
Current Activities
- Operation Onward Liberty, U.S. Uniformed Mentor program, which includes 50+ mentors in wide range of skills working side-by-side with AFL. Funded by a Foreign Military Sales (FMS) Case.
- Provision of U.S. Military Training Teams (MTTs) to train on specific topics within Liberia. Recent examples include outboard motor maintenance and small boat operations for the Liberian Coast Guard.
- Continuation of International Military Education and Training (IMET) program, which sends approximately 40 AFL/LCG personnel to training in the U.S.
- Coordinate military-to-military events in which the AFL can engage with the U.S. on specific topics such as warehouse management and logistics procedures. This has recently been enhanced through the State Partnership Program with the Michigan National Guard.
- Mentoring at the Liberian Ministry of Defense (MoD) staff level using the Defense Institution Reform Initiative (DIRI).
- Continued development of the Liberian Coast Guard funded via a FMS case.
- Funding support for equipment and limited base operations and maintenance through on-going FMS cases.
- Development of armoires and ammunition control points along with proper policies and procedures funded by an FMS case.
- Incorporating the AFL in humanitarian assistance missions and projects funded by the DoD Humanitarian Assistance Program.
- Encouraging healthy relationships with other nations and organizations and taking advantage of skill sets and training opportunities such as with UNMIL.
- Defense HIV Awareness and Prevention Program (DHAPP).
In short, when you add the number of trainers of Dyncorp and the other active private military corporations to the US troops and policemen in Liberia there is a healthy array of force available to the President of Liberia; no doubt an advantage to an incumbent. One can add to this the positive goodwill towards Mrs. Sirleaf-Johnson by the US Ambassador to Liberia, Linda Thomas-Greenfield; one of a number of Black-American female ambassadors to Africa named by Condoleeza Rice. She has been Ambassador to Liberia since 2008 and played a role in the Nobel Prize arrangements. Local sources say she will soon be returning to the US to leave the State Department to return to Liberia as an agent for Chevron Oil.
Challenger Winston Taubman
The key to the importance of Liberia to the world is that substantial amounts of oil have been found nearby (in Ghana, Sierra Leone, etc.) There are signs of large quantities of oil within Liberian offshore water. In 2005 the Liberian Government, through the National Oil Company (NOCAL), entered into a “Production Sharing Contract” with three foreign oil companies to undertake oil exploration in Liberian territorial waters. The three companies include the Joint Consortium of Regal Liberia Limited, Broadway Consolidated, and Orantoe Petroleum Limited. They were among five companies awarded blocks as a result of the Bid Round… Subsequently, most of the oil majors have sought a place in Liberia’s industry. In August 2010 Liberia selected one of the world’s largest oil companies as lead partner to explore potential offshore reserves. The government said that a three-year exploration agreement with the Chevron Corporation involving three deep-water concessions in Liberian waters “has been approved by the Executive and submitted to the Legislature for consideration and ratification.” “We are delighted to welcome Chevron as a partner for Liberia to explore our oil and gas assets,” Johnson Sirleaf said in the Executive Mansion statement. “Energy is one of my top priorities, and with Chevron’s technical skills we will be able to build our own capacity in the sector making a meaningful contribution to economic growth and job creation. “
Local sources say that it is very important for Chevron to finish the deal by getting the required legislation passed and, to that end, would like to see Mrs. Sirleaf-Johnson as President once again… Other oil companies are waiting in the wings. Chevron has already paid out a lot of money for the Liberian acreage and commissions. It doesn’t want to have to do it twice.
Wherever there is oil the level of transparency diminishes. Winston Tubman is doomed to face the financial might of Chevron and the military might of the US Department of Defense. If Mrs, Sirleaf-Johnson rigged the first election there is no reason why she not be expected to rig the runoff. Hence, the boycott. Africa seems doomed to repeat its mistakes over and over. If the lessons of the UN Peackeepers and the French next door in the Ivory Coast are not an example to the Liberians what can happen when foreign armies and oil companies decide on how a country should be run, then no example will suffice.
Yet again the hand-wringers and chancers of ECOWAS repeat the litany of support for this sustained attack on African sovereignty, just as they did in Abidjan. What future for Africa when it continues to cosy up to international bullies for short-term cash advantages?
By Dr Gary K. Busch
Gary K. Busch is an international trades unionist, an academic, a businessman and a political affairs and business consultant for 40 years, and has traveled and worked extensively in Africa.
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President Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf Photo: Wiki-Commons
The most likely ex-President of Liberia has been given a share of one of the western worlds most prestigious awards, the Nobel Peace Prize yet the residents of the capital Monrovia have not had running water for the full 6 years of her term in office.
Think about it, if after six years and $100’s of millions of western aid the residents of the capital have no running water how desperate must it be in the rest of Liberia?
Access to clean drinking water is the first of the fundamental human rights, including food, shelter and medical care, that make up the most primary of all human rights, the right to life itself.
Lack of clean drinking water has killed more people in Liberia, as a part of the world as a whole, than all the violence and wars combined.
The UN may only have recognized clean drinking water as a right last year but for so many in the third world it is the most pressing daily need.
While the western human rights corporations may preach so vociferously about human rights being elections and freedom of the press, they some how neglect to rate the worlds leaders by how well they are making sure all their people have the first of the basic human rights to life, clean drinking water.
It is little wonder why the Liberian President is so unpopular in Liberia? She has been an utter failure in the human rights department as far as her citizens are concerned, no matter how many Nobel prizes she may receive from her overlords in the west.
Again, think about it, how is a modern city supposed to function without running water? And this utter failure of an African leader got the most prestigious award the west bestows on its vassals?
As for the Liberian Presidents peace building credentials it was just this year that Liberian based paramilitary death squads, armed and supported by the French, helped invade the Ivory Coast to overthrow the Gbagbo government, and in the process murdered untold thousands of Ivorians, with 800 massacred in just one town.
One hell of a peace builder wasn’t she, but then it maybe unfair to blame her for everything gone wrong in Liberia for many claim that she is little more than Mayor of Monrovia and its environs, that warlords, paramilitary militias and bandits actually control most of the country.
Crisis Management is the USA’s preferred policy in Africa as in create a crisis and then manage the subsequent chaos, the better to loot and pillage west Africa’s resources. Liberia has long been a poster child for murder and mayhem, though much hope had been placed in Africa’s first “democratically elected woman President”.
But after 6 years, beau coup millions of dollars and still no running water in the capital of the country one should expect a Nobel prize, at least? For a job well done as far as the western banksters, Firestone Rubber and their minions in the media are concerned.
So remember, its a No-bel Prize for Liberia’s President and No-water for Liberia’s residents, all thanks to an unhealthy dose of western style “democracy”.
By Thomas C. Mountain
Thomas C. Mountain is the only independent western journalist in the Horn of Africa, living and reporting from Eritrea since 2006. He can be reached at thomascmountain at yahoo dot com.
]]>The US is at war in Africa. It has been at war as an integral part of the Cold War. It has had practical experience in African wars. America has been fighting wars in Africa since the 1950s – in Angola, the DRC, Somalia, the Sudan, Ethiopia, Somalia, Morocco, Libya, Djibouti to name but a few counties. In some countries they used US troops, but in most cases the US financed, armed and supervised the support of indigenous forces. In its support of the anti- MPLA forces in Angola, it sent arms and equipment to the UNITA opposition. In the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Larry Devlin of the CIA was an unofficial branch of Mobutu’s government; the US ran its own air force at WIGMO. US airmen supported the South African forces in Kwando, Fort Doppies and Encana bases in the Caprivi from WIGMO. At these bases one could also find soldiers from Southern Rhodesia (in their DC3s) and German, French, Portuguese and other NATO troops.
One of the largest of these bases was at Wheelus Field, in Libya… Wheelus Air Base was located on the Mediterranean coast, just east of Tripoli, Libya. With its 4,600 Americans, the US Ambassador to Libya once called it “a Little America. During the Korean War, Wheelus was used by the US Strategic Air Command, later becoming a primary training ground for NATO forces. Strategic Air Command bomber deployments to Wheelus began on 16 November 1950. SAC bombers conducted 45-day rotational deployments this staging areas for strikes against the Soviet Union. Wheelus became a vital link in SAC war plans for use as a bomber, tanker refuelling and recon-fighter base. The US left in 1970.
Another giant base was Kagnew Field in Asmara. The base was established in 1943 as an Army radio station, home to the U.S. Army’s 4th Detachment of the Second Signal Service Battalion. Kagnew Station became home for over 5,000 American citizens at a time during its peak years of operation during the 1960s. Kagnew Station operated until April 29, 1977, when the last Americans left Kagnew Station.
However, with the end of the Cold War, the US has found itself fighting a much more difficult and insidious war; the war with Al Qaida. This is much less of a war that involves military might and prowess. It is a war against the spread of drug dealing, illicit diamonds, illicit gold and the sheltering of Salafists (Islamic militants) who use these methods to acquire cash which has sustained the Al Qaida organisation throughout the world. The political dichotomy between the Muslim North in Africa and the Christian/Animist South is not only a religious conflict. It is a conflict between organised international crime and states seeking to maintain their legitimacy.
There are now several ‘narco-states’ in Africa. The first to fall was Guinea-Bissau where scores of Colombian Cartel leaders moved in to virtually take over the state. Every day an estimated one tonne of pure Colombian cocaine is thought to be transiting through the mainland’s mangrove swamps and the chain of islands that make up Guinea-Bissau, most of it en route to Europe. As reported by Johnathan Miller[i]
“Western narcotics and intelligence agencies believe that up to two small twin-engine aircraft carrying up to 800kg of cocaine are landing on airstrips in Guinea- Bissau every night, having crossed the Atlantic from South America. The street value of a tonne of cocaine on the streets of European capitals is roughly £50m.”
Guinea-Bissau’s Interior Minister, Major Baciro Dabo, and the head of the navy, Jose Americo Bubu Na Tchutu, are alleged to be key facilitators of the trade.
This was equally true of Guinea under President Lansana Conte whose wives (and her brother) were shown to be kingpins in the Guinean drug trade. Many in the National Army were compromised and active participants. This drug trade has spread to Senegal, Togo, Ghana and Nigeria. There are very few jails anywhere in the world which are not home to West African ‘drug mules’ tried or awaiting trial or execution. This drug trade is spreading like wildfire in West Africa, offering remuneration to African leaders, generals or warlords well in excess of anything these Africans could hope to earn in normal commerce.
In countries like Nigeria there are several important businessmen, with many legitimate businesses and deep political attachments, who also deal as ‘druggies’ in this international exercise. The authorities know who they are but find it difficult to proceed against them. In West Africa, as in most area of the world, lots of money buys immunity and, often, impunity from the law. The ‘mules’ are picked up and punished but the ‘big men’ go free.
This burgeoning drug business was an offshoot of the political, economic and military connections which were made by Al Qaida in pursuit of their takeover of the “Blood Diamond” business in West Africa.
During the civil wars in Sierra Leone the Revolutionary United Front (‘RUF’) took over the diamond fields in the country; initially at Koon. The diamonds were mined by RUF rebels, who became infamous during Sierra Leone’s civil war for hacking off the arms and legs of civilians and abducting thousands of children and forcing them to fight as combatants. The country’s alluvial diamond fields, some of the richest in the world, were the principal prize in the civil war, and they have been under RUF control for the past four years.[ii] Small packets of diamonds, often wrapped in rags or plastic sheets, were taken by senior RUF commanders across the porous Liberian border to Monrovia, where they were exchanged for briefcases of cash brought by diamond dealers who flew several times a month from Belgium to Monrovia, returning to Pelikaanstraat in Antwerp.
The man in charge was by Ibrahim Bah, a Libyan-trained former Senegalese rebel and the RUF’s principal diamond dealer. After fighting with the Casamance separatist movement in Senegal in the 1970s, Bah trained in Libya under the protection of Col. Moammar Gaddafi. He spent several years in the early 1980s fighting alongside Muslim guerrillas against Soviet forces in Afghanistan where he participated in the creation of Al Qaida. He then left to fight alongside Hezbollah in Lebanon. He returned to West Africa, to Ouagadougou, where he is sheltered and protected by the President, Blaise Campaore. Campaore was already using Burkina Faso as a depot for arms to the RUF, Liberia and the rebels of the Ivory Coast. He took, and takes, his share of the blood diamond money whether they are sold to Al Qaida or Hezbollah.
The involvement of principal figures of Al Qaida in the blood diamond business is well documented.[iii] The Al Qaida and Hezbollah involvement in the illegal trade in diamonds, gold and other gemstones has tied in organised criminal activities with Islamic fundamentalism in the region, provoking a clash between the Islamists and the Christian/Animists. It has sparked civil unrest, as with Boku Haram in Nigeria and created a criminal enterprise which has taken over the Ivory Coast.
With the French-inspired and funded rebellion against the government of Gbagbo in 2001 the country was divided. The legitimate government of Gbagbo ruled in the South but the country was divided by a military line provided by the French Force Licorne and the United Nations peacekeepers. The North was free and protected to get on with its own businesses. It was run by tin pot warlords who drew their strength from their marauding bands of mercenaries, misfits and sociophobes who created little kingdoms of their own which they ran with rapacious style. They paid no taxes, they paid no rents; they paid no duties and they provided no social services. They stole everything they could find and shipped it out, usually via their home base in Burkina Faso.
In Burkina Faso, under the aegis of Blaise Campaore, they were introduced to the buyers from Hezbollah and Al Qaida. Ivory Coast has diamond mines. Illicit diamond mining in the northern part of Ivory Coast still continues and provides a healthy stream of diamonds to Al Qaida, especially Al Qaida in Islamic Maghreb (AQIM).
There are four big mines – Bobi, Diarabala, Seguela and Tortiya. The US sent a CIA team in to discover what was happening, now that Ouattara is notionally President. They attempted to trace the origin of around 300,000 carats produced locally last year and which generated earnings of roughly USD 25 million. The business is mainly controlled by two warlords, Issiaka Ouattara AKA “Wattao” and Herve Toure AKA “Vetcho.” The diamonds are smuggled out mainly through Mali and Guinea before ending up on the international market in Tel Aviv. These warlords are the backbone of the new Ivory Coast Army and tied closely to the Prime Minister, Soro.[iv] With the support of Campaore and the needs of the new Army, it is very unlikely that Soro will heed the call of his feeble President to stop the sale of blood diamonds to Al Qaida or to stop paying Campaore.
This thievery was repeated in the cotton and timber businesses. It was the Lebanese of Hezbollah who provided the motor scooters which the rebel irregulars imported duty-free to the Ivory Coast. Outright theft, as in Ibrahim ‘IB’ Coulibaly, who broke into a warehouse belonging to the United States agri-giant Archer Daniels Midland on the northern outskirts of Abidjan last month and sent at least 3,000 tonnes of cocoa to Ghana, was not a unique event. President Ouattara’s troops killed Coulibaly.
This litany of crime, corruption and the funding of Al Qaida and Hezbollah by the rebels in the Ivory Coast north was well known to everyone. Now they are in charge. Blaise Campaore is still in business. The cause of Al Qaida has been promoted on the basis of a notional anti-Muslim bias by the Gbagbo government. The reach of AQIM is now further south as all of the Ivory Coast is added to its reach.
The question one is bound to ask is what imp of the perverse overtook the US Government to support such a program. The US actively intervened to push the UN to take an active role in the military offensive against Ivory Coast civilians. It encouraged the amoral weasels of France to attack and kill civilians. The US has been in Africa, dealing with Africans since 1945. Agencies like the DEA are fighting a brave fight in trying to suppress the drug trade and the selling of blood diamonds. What perverse instinct of self-destruction has created a US policy which rewards its deadliest enemies and punishes its most loyal allies?
Words cannot express the utter stupidity and self-destructiveness of US policy in allying itself to the rabble of Ouattara and his friends. What government in Africa will ever trust or deal openly with such a maniacal formulation of national interest on the part of the US. The US is at war in Africa. To win, or survive, requires helping one’s friends and punishing one’s enemies. What imp of the perverse can have gotten things so wrong; and so often?
By Dr. Gary K. Busch
[i] Miller, Johnathan, “Drug barons turn Bissau into Africa’s first narco-state”, Independent 18/7/07
[ii] Farah, Douglas, “Al Qaeda Cash Tied to Diamond Trade” Washington Post 2/11/01
[iii] For a good, detailed account see “Global Witness “For a Few Dollar$ More: How al Qaeda moved into the diamond trade” April 2003.
[iv] Africa Miining Intelligence 31/5/11
Gary K. Busch is an international trades unionist, an academic, a businessman and a political affairs and business consultant for 40 years, and has traveled and worked extensively in Africa.
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The matter of Charles Taylor of Liberia, warlord, ex-president and indicted war criminal, which had been simmering for nearly three years, suddenly and briefly became the globe’s lead story last month.
For more than two years, Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo had resisted international pressure to terminate the asylum he had provided Taylor in the Nigerian city of Calabar. The dynamics shifted two months ago when Liberians inaugurated the first female president in Africa. Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf demanded Nigeria surrender Taylor. With ill grace, Obasanjo responded, “Fine; come and get him.” Almost immediately, Taylor took to his heels and disappeared.
International outrage ensued. Even soft-spoken U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan, a diplomat’s diplomat and fellow African, criticized Nigeria. Following the withering international firestorm, Nigerian security officials hastily found and arrested Taylor. Within hours, they had delivered him into the custody of the U.N.’s Special Court in Freetown, Sierra Leone. The storm began to subside.
So all’s well that ends well, right? Not quite.
Certainly, it’s great news that Taylor, a true African dictator, is finally facing justice. For too long, cushy exile has been the worst fate of those who abused power in Africa. Their external sponsors fared even better—foreign complicity is little publicized, much less criticized. Idi Amin of Uganda, who was aided and abetted by Muammar Gaddafi, died peacefully in Saudi Arabia. Ethiopia’s Mengistu Haile Miriam, supported in his heyday by Cuba and the former Soviet Union, is alive in Zimbabwe. In 1981, the Reagan administration and the Mitterand government financed and armed Hissene Habre, who duly reignited Chad’s civil war. Where is he? You guessed it, in exile—in Senegal. Taylor’s trial signals a new era of accountability in Africa.
It is even better news that Nigeria swiftly captured Taylor when he tried to flee. A desperate Charles Taylor, armed and dangerous, roaming free in West Africa, would have destabilized the whole region. New wars in his name would have flared up. In a very real sense then, Taylor’s capture was an act of conflict prevention.
But the best news of all, for my money, happened in Monrovia in August 2003. At the time, Taylor’s desperate army battled rebels tightening the noose around the capital. The air was so thick with stray bullets that walls were little protection. Every day innocent Monrovians fell. The international community dragged its feet sending in troops to stop the fighting. Disgusted relatives, blaming the absence of U.S. peacekeepers, piled shattered corpses in front of the U.S. embassy.
In stepped Obasanjo, assisted by Thabo Mbeki and other African leaders. He persuaded Taylor to go into exile in Nigeria. The action unquestionably saved countless innocent African lives. It bears stressing that Obasanjo did precisely what President George Bush, British Prime Minister Tony Blair, the African Union and the rest of the international community explicitly requested. Taylor’s asylum thus formed the central core of a complex international deal that stopped the killing and ended Liberia’s 14-year civil war.
So if Taylor’s 2003 exile, capture last month, and upcoming trial are all good news, what is the problem? This: the trial as currently planned, poses two big risks. First, it could destabilize Liberia. Ponder what President Johnson-Sirleaf herself told the U.N. security council last month, “Liberia is still a fragile state. . . . Whatever decision is taken . . . must ensure that the safety of the Liberian people and the stability of our nation is not undermined.”
Fortunately, this risk has been recognized. And it is being partially addressed with arrangements to move the trial to The Hague from West Africa. Despite the loud opposition of prominent African democracy activists, on balance, I believe relocation is sound. It should squelch any bright ideas Taylor’s accomplices— known and unknown—and his militias (on the loose in a fragile Liberia still without army or police) might have about springing him. In addition to relocation, U.S.-backed projects to rebuild the country’s army and police must be put on a fast track and infused with extra resources.
Still, there is a second, more dangerous risk that the Taylor trial poses. Alarmingly, it is being overlooked. African warlords may read a different message than the one the international chorus believes it is sending. Instead of “No more impunity”, the warlords may hear “The international community cannot be trusted; their asylum and other promises are merely tricks to induce you to surrender and to be humiliated later.”
Consequently, Africa and its international partners could soon confront a situation not unlike Liberia in 2003, in one of the five current conflicts raging on the continent or in new conflicts: In order to save thousands of innocent lives— not to mention further destruction, devastation and refugee flows—they may have to offer asylum to an African warlord clinging to power, abusing rights and waging war. What if such a leader says: “No, thanks. Better to fight on. So what if I lose and am killed in combat? That was Jonas Savimbi’s fate in Angola. It is preferable to the humiliating Taylor treatment.”
All who care about Africa must stop for a moment and contemplate the additional killing, destruction and suffering that such recalcitrance will inflict on an already devastated African country. To re-state, Taylor’s trial also carries the risk of making it harder to save innocent lives and avert further suffering and destruction in Cote d’Ivoire, Darfur, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Somalia or Northern Uganda by persuading warlords to go into exile.
How then to address this grave second risk? Should the Taylor trial still go forward? Yes, but it must be accompanied by a number of additional steps. The most important is to publicize the full and precise conditions of Taylor’s 2003 asylum deal. If such airing shows that Taylor was neither deceived nor betrayed, it will go a long way to deny future warlords and conspiracy theorists an excuse and a crutch. But what if this critical first step is not taken? What if the Taylor asylum deal is not aired? Or what if, even after its airing, reasonable doubts still remain that Taylor was betrayed? Such failure will carry dire implications. They must be clearly recognized. Bluntly put, not erasing all suspicions that Taylor was duped will likely mean more African innocents dying. These avoidable deaths will occur in the future when an African war criminal, fearing that he will also be betrayed, rejects an asylum deal that would have silenced the guns and ended hostilities.
Preventing the future slaughter of African innocents is therefore the all important reason why we must fully know what Taylor was promised in 2003.
Working to prevent African conflicts is a critical, if longer-term, step. Increased international support is badly needed here. The specific hope is that last month’s international coalition will now bring similar passion to proactively addressing the causes of African conflicts. When they are effectively addressed, no new Charles Taylors will emerge. And no asylum deals will have to be cut.
By Nii Akuetteh
Nii Akuetteh is a member of the Scholars Council at the TransAfrica Forum.
]]>Suffering and damage from the war always takes much more time to heal than the duration of the conflict itself. It takes an exceptional human spirit for any artist to maintain a positive will to become successful and to remain creative during, and after, the war. One of the people who proved that a positive human heart can not be destroyed by tragedy is Lessie Lumeh, a Liberian artist who had to leave Liberia during civil war but who returned with his family 8 years later in 2005, at end of the conflicts, where he opened the Monrovia’s first Art gallery he named Art of the Heart. He strongly believes that the Art has an important and positive influence on healing of the Liberian people.
L. Lumeh in the front of his artwork - © leslie-lumeh.rlhub.com
Born in 1970 in Dambala, A. Leslie Lumeh is a self-taught artist who holds a diploma in architectural drafting from the Booker Washington Institute (BWI) in Kakata, Liberia. Presently Leslie is one of Liberia’s leading painters. He also works as illustrator and cartoonist for the Liberian Observer in Monrovia. Leslie discovered that his paintings were very positively received following the civil war. He started recreating scenes from the war, first in simple pencil sketches, and later in watercolors on drawing paper, then finally onto canvas. These early works attracted an unexpected number of people, not only Liberians but foreigners as well, including international journalists. Soon he was able to get commissions from private collectors as well as institutions. More of his work can be seen here and here.
This gallery spells peace. True peace… I decided to do this for the artists, not just for me, so we can have a place where we can showcase Liberian culture.
Leslie Lumeh
Leslie Lumeh’s example proves to all of us that we alone play possibly the greatest role in overcoming the odds we face but also that we should always willingly acquire positive influences from others, including our mentors and friends, who can play a constructive role in molding us. Feel free to read this article in which Leslie writes about one of his friends and mentors, Aaron Fallah Brown.
Artists can change any society positively if they work collectively
Aaron Fallah Brown
As seen on the poster below, including a graphic arts exhibition in an entertaining day for the whole family seems to be a current standard in Monrovia.
- Poster announcing activities during the Bastille Day celebration in Monrovia, Liberia – © bp.blogspot.com