TIME: Almanac 1993/TIME Almanac 1993.iso/time/061890/0618006.000

Text File | 1992-08-30 | 5.7 KB | 120 lines

                                                                              WORLD, Page 55

AFRICA

The Would-Be President



The man trying to end Doe's reign of terror might not be much
of an improvement for beleaguered Liberia


    President Samuel Doe claims that he has put down more than
30 coup attempts since he seized power, as Master Sergeant Doe,
in an army uprising ten years ago. But the dictator's string
of victories seems to have run out. A force of some 5,000
rebels last week captured the Roberts Field International
Airport; occupied the Firestone rubber plantation, the
country's largest private employer; and drew up on the
outskirts of Monrovia, the capital. Refusing to resign or flee,
Doe barricaded himself in the executive mansion with several
hundred members of his Israeli-trained elite guard. He vowed
that the insurgents would take the city "over my dead body."

    That is, of course, a real possibility in a rebellion as
bloody as this one. Aspiring to succeed Doe is Charles McArthur
Taylor, a former Liberian official who led about 150 guerrillas
across the border from the Ivory Coast last Christmas Eve.
Recruits flocked to the rebel ranks after the army, headed by
members of Doe's minority Krahn tribe, staged a series of
reprisal attacks on the villages of the Gio and Mano tribes in
Taylor's base area.

    Human rights organizations refer to Doe's decade in power
as a reign of terror. His government was brutal and corrupt;
the country is nearly $2 billion in debt and virtually
bankrupt. It is not certain, however, that Taylor will be an
improvement. While he talks about free elections, he does not
specify when they might take place.

    Short, stocky, bearded and a teetotaler, Taylor, 42, is the
son of a Liberian mother and an American father. He was born
and grew up in Liberia but attended Bentley College in Waltham,
Mass. After earning a B.A. in economics in 1977, he continued
to be active in emigre Liberian organizations and worked as a
mechanic in Boston.

    Doe's coup in 1980 made him the first head of state who was
not an "Americo-Liberian," the local term for descendants of
the freed slaves from the U.S. who founded the country in 1822.
Although Doe promptly executed many Americo-Liberians, Taylor
returned to Monrovia to volunteer his services. He was
appointed head of the General Services Administration, the
government's purchasing agency. In 1983, after hearing that Doe
was about to try him on charges of embezzling $900,000, he
fled to the U.S. He was arrested near Boston and held for
extradition but escaped from jail and found his way back to
Africa. In recent years he has lived in Burkina Faso and has
visited Libya, where he and his original group of about 15
rebels received military training.

    Because of those Libyan links and uncertainty about how
effectively Taylor might govern Liberia, Washington distrusts
him. All American citizens have been urged to leave. Four U.S.
warships are stationed off the coast to evacuate them if
necessary. Taylor says U.S. suspicions are misplaced. He
describes himself as "a cold-blooded capitalist" and has said
that his heroes are "Tricky Dick Nixon" and "good old Ronnie."
State Department analysts believe that there is in fact little
ideological difference between Taylor and Doe and that their
struggle is simply for power. The U.S. provided Doe with
hundreds of millions of dollars in aid over the past ten years,
but last week it turned down his pleas for intervention.

    Meanwhile, the war grows more brutal. In Buchanan, the
country's second largest city, the rebels are believed to have
killed at least 100; many were reportedly lined up and shot.
Most of the victims belonged to the Mandingo tribe, considered
a Doe ally by the guerrillas. The government's hands are also
bloodied: dozens of Gio and Mano tribespeople have been
abducted in Monrovia, and every day decapititated and
disemboweled bodies are discoverd in the streets.

    Although he is winning, Taylor may not firmly control his
own forces. Diplomats in Monrovia have detected splits in his
National Patriotic Front. There have been reports of fire
fights between rebel units, which are made up of poorly trained
and undisciplined volunteers. Making things even tougher for
Taylor, his principal military tactician, Elmer Johnson, a U.S.
Army veteran, was killed in a skirmish with government forces
last week.

    In spite of these setbacks to the rebel side, most Western
diplomats in Monrovia are convinced that Doe is finished. The
question is whether Taylor deserves to succeed him half as much
as Doe deserves his downfall.


By Bruce W. Nelan. Reported by Gerald Bourke/Monrovia and David
Cemlyn-Jones/Nairobi.


____________________________________________________________ The
Monroe Legacy


    Liberia, which means place of freedom, has enjoyed close
links with the U.S. since it was founded in 1822 by freed
slaves supported by the abolitionist American Colonization
Society. President James Monroe blessed the migration -- hence
Monrovia, the capital. The country's governors were white
Americans until Joseph Jenkins Roberts, a black born in
Virginia, took over in 1841 and declared Liberia an independent
republic in 1847. Though the number of arrivals from the U.S.
dwindled by the middle of the 19th century, freed slaves
continued to migrate to Liberia until the Civil War ended in
1865; even now a few black Americans move there each year. The
so-called Americo-Liberians became a dominant elite of about
50,000 (total pop. 2.5 million) and granted the vote to
indigenous people only if they were landowners. Their True Whig
Party held power for more than a century until Samuel Doe's
coup in 1980.