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UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs |
LIBERIA: Uncontrolled gunmen could torpedo fragile peace process
MONROVIA, 28 August 2003 (IRIN) - The flare-up in fighting between Liberian government fighters and rebels in several parts of the war-ravaged West African nation this week, underscores the extreme fragility of Liberia’s peace process.
The government and the two rebel groups - Liberians United for Reconciliation and Democracy (LURD) and the Movement for Democracy in Liberia (MODEL), accuse each other of renewing the fighting.
Interim President Moses Blah described the clashes as “madness” in an address to the nation on Thursday. He blamed the LURD and MODEL rebel groups for ignoring a peace agreement signed in Accra, Ghana, on 18 August.
The Peace Agreement, which paved way for a broad-based Transitional Government to replace Blah on 14 October, demands that all Liberian warring factions stay in their present locations.
It also calls for an immediate ceasefire throughout the war-ravaged country, to allow immediate humanitarian access to vulnerable people - the overwhelming majority of Liberia's three million population.
“This madness only makes our already destitute people more destitute,” the President told a gathering of top government, political and military leaders at his Executive Mansion in the capital, Monrovia.
From Sunday until Wednesday, intense fighting continued near Gbarnga, 150 km north of Monrovia in Bong County, a former stronghold of ex-President Charles Taylor but now controlled by LURD.
At the same time, MODEL launched attacks in Bahn, 240 km northeast of Monrovia, in Nimba County and in the southeastern Grand Bassa County, near Roberts International airport. The latter attacks sent 8,000 civilians fleeing for safety towards the town of Harbel.
Liberian state radio reported that MODEL killed hundreds of people in Bahn. Information Minister, Reginald Goodridge, told IRIN the killings were “tribal revenge killings” by the Krahn tribe who dominated MODEL against Gio and Mano tribes, who supported Taylor.
MODEL issued a statement denying that it had killed civilians. However eyewitnesses told international journalists that the rebels hacked at women and children with knives, opening up their stomachs. They burnt also down whole villages.
The skirmishes between LURD and government troops around Gbarnga in north central Liberia sparked off a massive influx of thousands of displaced people, walking in driving rain to seek refuge in Monrovia.
This dilapidated city of more than one million people is already overstretched by the presence of an estimated 300,000 displaced people sheltering in virtually all its nooks and corners. Of these, up to 50,000 took shelter in the national sports stadium following attempts by LURD to overrun the city in June and July.
Many of the displaced civilians thronging Monrovia, had been living for years in camps of mud huts on the city's outskirts, forced to leave their original homes by a civil war that has festered on since 1989.
They fled into the relative safety of the city centre as the rebels advanced into the northwestern suburbs and began shelling the city centre.
“The security situation is still very fluid in many parts of Liberia and this hampers efforts by relief workers to reach vulnerable people,” Ross Mountain, Special United Nations Humanitarian Coordinator for Liberia told IRIN.
The ebullient Liberian Defence Minister, Daniel Chea, blamed by many for sanctioning atrocities by government troops, said he was also concerned that renewed skirmishes would affect the activities of relief workers.
“Renewed clashes have a very big impact on humanitarian work. It stops relief workers from doing their job. We don’t want that to happen,” Chea told IRIN in an interview.
Civilians caught up in the clashes have found themselves missing out on rations because relief workers cannot reach them or because gunmen grab what they have been given.
“There is no point giving us food when we are on the run. The armed fighters simply loot it from us,” Robert Sulu, a local clan chief at Totota, 109m km north of Monrovia, told IRIN.
The gunmen have also helped themselves generously to the property of relief organisations. More than half of the World Food Programme's (WFP) food stocks in the port of Monrovia disappeared during the recent fighting in the capital and LURD rebels stole about 70 vehicles, including most of the truck fleet of WFP and the UN refugee agency UNHCR. As a result, they are now struggling to undertake food distribution.
“The rebels are attacking us and slaughtering civilians. We need to compel LURD and MODEL leaders to ensure they order their men to stop fighting,” General Benjamin Yeaten, Liberian army commander told IRIN.
Relief workers in Monrovia said there were so many undisciplined, unpaid often drunk gunmen roaming Liberia’s villages and towns that it is difficult to tell which gunman belonged to which group.
Last weekend, drunken government militias set up roadblocks near the airport to extort money. The airport is near MODEL controlled-areas. Soon tension built up, but on that occasion a patrol of Nigerian troops from the West African peacekeeping force ECOMIL diffused it.
“The problem is West African peacekeepers deployed in the country are only 1550," one military expert in Monrovia said. "A few hundred Malians are expected on Thursday, but still the force lacks the manpower and other resources to police the whole country.”
The defence minister said the onus was on ECOMIL, to put pressure on rebel leaders to stop the fighting.
“It is like a game of football. When you miss the ball, you try to get it from between somebody else’s legs. The rebels are trying to distract us from the ultimate goal of pacifying Liberia, but we shall not lose sight of our goal,” Chea said in an interview.
ECOMIL spokesman, Major Ogun Sanya, told IRIN that while the force was gradually spreading out, it was trying to persuade the various rebel leaders to reign in their fighters. “We are in contact with their Commanders,” he said.
Out in LURD controlled areas, north of the capital, drunk and drugged up fighters with red bands tied around their heads, commandeer vehicles and race them up and down, oblivious of civilians.
They mete out instant retalliation to any civilians who try to answer them back or to deny them a favour. Lives have however been saved because ECOMIL disarms the fighters before they enter Monrovia city centre.
The fighters, many of whom are children, are still itching for a fight. “If government troops attack us, we will pursue them to where they came from,” General Aliyu Sheriff, LURD Chief of Staff said.
At Tubmanburg, a LURD-controlled town 50 km northwest of Monrovia, local civilians said LURD had pushed them out of their buildings. They also blamed the rebels for
raping women and girls.
In areas under government control, such as central and eastern Monrovia, the militias belonging to the different fighting groups formed by former President Charles
Taylor have not been paid for months. Looting for them has become a way of life.
On Monday, fighters who were fleeing from fighting in Gbarnga looted a vehicle driven by the Medical Superintendent of Phebe hospital, the only major health centre still operational in Bong County. They beat up the doctor.
Yeaten said he rigorously enforces discipline among his fighters: “My soldiers know that if you rape or kill, we execute you. I have executed over 10 so far - in front of the public,” he told IRIN.
But relief workers say very few of the guilty have been so punished.
Themes: (IRIN) Conflict
[ENDS]
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