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UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs |
LIBERIA: Taylor still looms large as election countdown begins
[ This report does not necessarily reflect the views of the United Nations]
ZWEDRU, 30 Jun 2005 (IRIN) - It's Sunday afternoon and the ramshackle cinema is packed to the rafters for the matinee showing -- 'The Rise and Fall of Charles Taylor'.
A cheer goes up from the Liberians watching the film in this onetime rebel stronghold as the former president boards the plane that will take him out of the country and bring the 14-year civil war to an end. "Bye Bye," one woman yells, frenetically waving her hand at the screen.
Sporting his trademark white suit, Taylor went into exile in Nigeria in August 2003, casting himself as a "sacrificial lamb" and shrugging off international accusations that he fomented civil wars across West Africa.
But nearly two years later as Liberia prepares for presidential and parliamentary elections and a return to democracy, the former warlord still looms large in the nation's psyche and diplomats and international researchers say he continues to pull political strings from abroad.
In Zwedru, the former headquarters of the Movement for Democracy in Liberia (MODEL) rebel group, hundreds of men, women and children crammed onto the creaking wooden benches of the shack-cum-cinema to watch Taylor's life story unfold with fuzzy images and broken sound.
After training as a guerrilla fighter in Libya, Taylor launched a bush war on Christmas Day 1989. His faction gained the upper hand and he was finally elected president in 1997 but it was to be another six years before the war finally ended.
Most people in this eastern town, which lies just 30km from the Ivorian border, were glad to see Taylor go, but some worry that his departing words "God willing, I will be back" may prove prophetic.
“We are happy that he’s not here. He’s a terror," said Zwedru resident Sam Nuah. "He ensured there was no future for young people. Kids that should have been in school were out fighting."
Even in Gbargna, in the middle of Taylor's former heartland, it is not difficult to find people who agree. Many admit to fighting alongside him and calling him "Pappy", but say they have now turned against him after experiencing two years of peace.
“I do not want to see that man again. If he came back, so would the fighting. He’s a bad person but he's good at fooling people," said 27-year-old Mustapha Konneh.
Power to mobilise
Zwedru residents expressed similar worries about the power that this teacher-turned-warlord could exert from abroad.
“Taylor has charisma, he’s able to mobilise people. Just talking on the radio, he can move people in Liberia," said Ernest Freeman.
These preoccupations are shared by some of the biggest names on the diplomatic stage.
"Concerns about former President Charles Taylor's continued interference in the political process in Liberia have increased," UN Secretary General Kofi Annan said in his latest briefing to the Security Council two weeks ago.
Any such interference would flout the terms of Taylor's exile deal -- an agreement which is currently protecting him from standing trial in Freetown on 17 charges of crimes against humanity committed during Sierra Leone's decade-long civil war.
The main charges laid against Taylor in the UN-backed Special Court in Sierra Leone are that he supported the brutal rebellion waged by the Revolutionary United Front (RUF) from 1991 to 2002, supplying its leaders with guns and ammunition in return for smuggled diamonds. He is also widely believed to have supported an abortive invasion of Guinea in 2000.
But prosecutors say Taylor has continued to play his destabilising games since going into exile in the remote town of Calabar in the Niger Delta.
They allege the former president wired US $160,000 to his supporters in the Liberian capital Monrovia last October to help start riots that killed 16 people and injured hundreds of others, and that despite Nigerian government assurances that he cannot leave his heavily-guarded and luxurious compound in Calabar, Taylor moves freely around West Africa,
Meanwhile, a report this month by the London-based research group Global Witness accuses Taylor of controlling or helping to finance as many as nine of the 30 or so political parties that have thrown their hat into the ring for Liberia's elections on 11 October.
"He seems to be trying to ensure he has control over Liberia in the future," Natalie Ashworth of Global Witness told IRIN on Thursday. "It would obviously be extremely worrying if someone backed by Taylor ended up winning the elections. It is critical that his influence on the upcoming polls is curtailed."
Continued meddling?
Taylor's party, the National Patriotic Party, has chosen Roland Massaquoi to be its presidential candidate. Some party members have said that Taylor, who picked Massaquoi to be the Agriculture Minister in one of his cabinets, made telephone calls during the nomination process to influence the voting.
Taylor is also accused of continuing to meddle in affairs beyond Liberia's borders. The Special Court publicly named him as being involved in a January 2005 assassination attempt on ailing Guinean President Lansana Conte, and warned he would probably try to topple his long-standing rival again.
Diplomats and aid workers say Conte provided arms and rear support bases for the Liberians United for Reconciliation and Democracy (LURD) rebel movement which swept into Monrovia in 2003 and hastened Taylor's departure.
In spite of all the allegations, Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo has so far refused to expel Taylor until he has concrete proof that the terms of his asylum agreement have been violated. But the pressure on him is mounting.
A coalition of some 300 African and international groups, including Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch, is the latest to bang the drum. It issued a statement on Thursday calling on the African Union, of which Obasanjo is currently president, to take action.
"Taking a stand will not only bring justice to the countless victims of Charles Taylor and their families but also show that the AU is serious about combating the disastrous cycle of impunity in West Africa," the statement said.
A UN Security Council resolution last week stopped short of asking for Taylor to be handed over to Sierra Leone's Special Court, but Britain's UN ambassador told reporters that there were sensitive discussions taking place in Africa on the subject.
"Taylor cannot avoid coming to justice and at some stage his impunity will have to end. The only question is how do we do it. We didn't believe this (resolution) was the vehicle to achieve that," Emyr Jones Parry said, declining to elaborate further.
Where should justice be done?
Liberians seem divided about whether Taylor should stand trial before the UN-backed Special Court in Freetown, a war crimes tribunal which has a mixed panel of international and Sierra Leonean judges.
“For the time being he should not go to Sierra Leone because I do not think he would get a fair trial in Freetown. Maybe he should be tried at the Hague," said one resident in Zwedru, who would only give his name as Charles.
Other Liberians want him to face justice on home soil, where his worst crimes were committed. Several hundreds of thousands of people died in Liberia's civil war, which began when Taylor launched a rebellion against the then president Samuel Doe.>
"He should be brought here and judged here," said 23-year-old Tuboy Mulbah, who lives opposite the burnt-out shell of Taylor's old residence in the central town of Gbargna. "But it's not just him. If he faces justice then a whole lot of other people have to face justice too."
The 2003 peace agreement which ended Liberia's civil war, provided for the creation of a Truth and Reconciliation Commission to shed light on past atrocities, but said nothing about establishing a war crimes tribunal to try those responsible for committing them.
Obasanjo has promised to send Taylor back to Monrovia to stand trial, should a future elected government in Liberia ever decide to press charges against him and demand his extradition.
With just a little over three months before the crucial elections, there is no chance of Taylor disappearing off the agenda.
Oliver Jellu, the cinema manager in Zwedru, says he screened the Taylor documentary to educate voters in his own small way.
"We’ll soon be having elections in Liberia and it’s a reminder of what happens when there’s a bad person in power," the 25-year-old told IRIN. "This time we have to be careful not to choose another warlord.”
Taylor won a landslide victory in Liberia's last presidential election. The unofficial slogan accompanying his 1997 campaign was "You killed my ma; you killed my pa; I'll vote for you".
Although many people voted for Taylor out of fear he would restart the war if he lost the election, the war continued after he won. Taylor's government failed to invest in national reconstruction and idle and impoverished ex-combatants were sucked back into fighting and looting.
"Of course we are worried about things repeating themselves," said Stephen Musa, the head of one the camps for internally displaced people that are still home to about 140,000 Liberians. "But we are hoping that a truly new government will make a difference, and will think about the whole country from head to toe."
[ENDS]
This material comes to you via IRIN, a UN humanitarian information unit, but may not necessarily reflect the views of the United Nations or its agencies. If you re-print, copy, archive or re-post this item, please retain this credit and disclaimer. Quotations or extracts should include attribution to the original sources. All materials copyright © UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs 2005
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