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UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs |
LIBERIA: Looting spree at port of Monrovia as rebels prepare to withdraw
MONROVIA, 13 August 2003 (IRIN) - Rebel fighters joined thousands of hungry civilians on a looting spree in the port of Monrovia on Wednesday. They burst into warehouses and containers to carry off sacks of maize and wheat, one day before rebel forces were due to surrender the port and its fast dwindling food stocks to Nigerian peacekeepers.
Several helicopters from a US naval task force lying offshore with 2,300 marines on board flew overhead to observe the melee. But they made no attempt to land or intervene.
The Liberians United for Reconciliation and Democracy (LURD) rebel movement, which is due to withdraw from Monrovia by midday (1200 GMT) on Thursday and hand over the port to Nigerian peacekeeping troops, said it had given up trying to control the situation.
Sekou Fofana, the top official of the rebel movement in Monrovia, told IRIN by telephone: "we can not control the civilians from looting the port. We earlier stopped them at the main entrance, but later they used bye-passes to enter."
However, dozens of LURD fighters and even some of their commanders joined in the looting spree.
An IRIN correspondent at the port saw LURD soldiers firing their automatic weapons at the doors of containers to burst them open, while others loaded food sacks onto pick-up trucks. One rebel commander drove off in a brand new Toyota Landcruiser loaded with tins of World Food Programme (WFP) vegetable oil.
The food warehouse belonging to the Firestone rubber plantation, which had held stocks of rice, was empty.
The main target of the looters appeared to be the WFP warehouses. These had contained over 9,000 tonnes of food before rebel forces captured the Freeport on July 19 and began carrying away supplies, some of which were distributed to hungry civilians in rebel-held areas of the city.
Thousands of people hurried out of the port carrying sacks of maize meal, yellow split peas and bulghur wheat on their head, while more rushed in to grab what they could.
The scenes of chaos caused dismay to relief workers stranded in the government-controlled city centre. They had been hoping to gain rapid access to food stored in the port and start distributing it to up to 450,000 displaced and destitute people in the beleaguered city.
Many of those camped in schools, abandoned buildings and the Monrovia's main sports stadium have not eaten not a square meal for several weeks.
Speaking at the end of a two-day visit to Monrovia, the UN Deputy Emergency Relief Coordinator, Carolyn McAskie described the humanitarian situation as "appalling." She called for more Nigerian troops to be moved into Liberia quickly.
"Extra security is needed. We also want sufficient peacekeepers to ensure that we can move out of Monrovia", she told reporters. "We as humanitarians are insisting that the job of peacekeepers is not just to deal with the rebel action, but to also provide security for humanitarian delivery."
McAskie said the immediate priority for relief agencies was to gain secure access to the port.
"If the port is opened and we can get access, we are fairly confident that we can start food distribution within a couple of days. We have UNICEF, WHO and the WFP bringing in medical supplies as well as food within the next 48 hours", she said.
Speaking before word of the looting spree in the port filtered out, McAskie said: "It is our hope that we still have several thousand tonnes of maize meal in tight within the port. We know there has been looting, we lost equipment and food items. We know we are going to have to supplement that maize meal by high protein food and oil that we have on hand in neighbouring countries like Sierra Leone that can be brought within hours".
The scenes of chaos at Monrovia Freeport unfolded 48 hours after the departure of former president Charles Taylor to exile in Nigeria. The United States and many West African governments held Taylor responsible for causing 14 years of civil war in Liberia and supporting rebel movements in neighbouring Sierra Leone, Cote d'Ivoire and Guinea. Washington in particular had pressed for his departure to facilitate a peace settlement.
But the United States, with heavy military commitments in Iraq and Afghanistan, has been reluctant to put troops ashore in Liberia to assist the advance party of nearly 800 Nigerian peacekeepers, which has arrived over the past 10 days.
Diplomats said Washington had hoped that the sheer presence of three large warships lying within view of Monrovia would have been sufficient to deter Liberian government and rebel fighters from causing trouble while Nigerians peacekeepers took control of the city of over one million people.
Nigerian military commanders in Liberia have been complaining privately for days that they do not yet have sufficient manpower in place yet to take full control of Monrovia. It has been the scene of heavy battles between LURD and government forces since early June.
But Nigerian reinforcements were due to arrive on Thursday. In Abuja, an army spokesman said a second batallion of 770 men would be flown in from Sokoto, a city in Northwestern Nigeria. "They are all prepared and set to go first thing on Thursday morning," Colonel Chukwuemeka Onwauamaegbu told IRIN.
He declined to say how these troops would be transported to Liberia, but Nigerian military sources in Monrovia said the United States would make available heavy lift aircraft to fly in much of their equipment.
The Nigerian troops are the vanguard of a West African peacekeeping force called ECOMIL that is due to number 3,250 men by the end of August. It will include contingents from Ghana, Mali and Senegal.
On Wednesday, Nigerian force commander, General Festus Okonkwo, and US task force commander, General Thomas Turner, negotiated a deal with LURD commanders that should see rebel forces withdraw to the Po river on the northern outskirts of Monrovia at noon on Thursday.
The Nigerians and Americans had earlier negotiated a similar deal with Moses Blah, Taylor's vice-president, who took over as provisional head of state following Taylor's departure.
General Benjamin Yeaten, the government's military chief of staff, said on Wednesday that all government soldiers and militiamen would retreat from Monrovia, although the police force would stay behind to help the Nigerian peacekeepers maintain order.
Yeaten told IRIN: "We discussed that with ECOMIL and we will remove our soldiers from the streets and take them to the various barracks outside Monrovia...it was also agreed that only a select task force, comprising police officers and other security personnel, would patrol along side with ECOMIL in the city."
Blah is due to stand down in October to make way for a civilian president who is due to be appointed shortly by a Liberian peace conference in the Ghanaian capital Accra.
Diplomats following the talks closely said the new head of state had been due to fly to Accra on Wednesday for a summit meeting with the leaders of Liberia's two rebel movements to iron out the last remaining obstacles to signing a comprehensive peace agreement.
However, although LURD chairman Sekou Conneh had arrived, Thomas Nimley, the leader of the Movement for Democracy in Liberia (MODEL), which controls the east of the country, and Blah, who controls little more than half of Monrovia and a few nearby towns, failed to show up, they said.
The sources said all sides had agreed that an interim government to organise fresh elections in two years time should be headed by an independent civilian with no links to any of the three warring parties, but some factions of LURD were still insisting that LURD should appoint the vice-president.
"The agreement is ready to sign. It is just this main sticking point which is the executive branch of government," one source said.
However, the three warring factions and 18 political parties attending the peace talks, brokered by the Economic Community of West African States) have still not decided who the interim president should be. The sources said that as of Wednesday there were still 10 candidates in the running.
Those regarded as the most serious contenders are: Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf of the Unity Party, a former UN official who was runner-up to Taylor in the 1997 presidential election; George Toe Washington, a retired army officer who was military chief of staff in the 1960s; Togba Nah Tipoteh of the Liberian People's Party; Marcus Jones, President of the Liberia Bar Association, who describes himself as an independent; Harry Fumba Moniba who served as vice-president to Samuel Doe in the 1980s; Wesley Johnson of the United People's Party' and Bishop Marweh, representing the Liberian Christian Churches.
The president and vice-president of the interim government are due to be chosen within a week of the peace agreement being signed.
Themes: (IRIN) Conflict, (IRIN) Food Security, (IRIN) Governance, (IRIN) Refugees/IDPs
[ENDS]
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