TIME: Almanac 1993/TIME Almanac 1993.iso/time/102990/1029005.000

Text File | 1992-08-28 | 7.9 KB | 174 lines

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                                                            WORLD, Page 62

LIBERIA

In the Land of Blood and Tears


A TIME correspondent finds herself on both sides of the fighting
in a civil war that has taken 10,000 lives and shows no sign
of ending

By MARGUERITE MICHAELS/MONROVIA


    The murderous civil war in Liberia has reached so volatile
a state that on my first day in Monrovia, the capital, I found
myself on both sides of the fighting without ever having
changed position; suddenly the struggle swirled around my
companions and me and engulfed us. President Samuel K. Doe, the
man whose ouster rebel forces sought when they began fighting
10 months ago, has been dead for six weeks, but violence,
hunger and general chaos continue to hold Liberia in a bloody
embrace. An estimated 10,000 Liberians, most of them civilians,
have been killed since the war began -- and more are dying
every day.

    I went to Liberia at the invitation of rebel leader Charles
Taylor, the man who last December launched the campaign to
topple Doe, a former army master sergeant who had seized power
a decade earlier. In January part of Taylor's National
Patriotic Front of Liberia (N.P.F.L.) broke away and formed a
separate faction led by Prince Yeduo Johnson, an army captain.
Johnson and about 400 of his rebels captured, tortured and then
killed Doe on Sept. 10, but about 1,000 of the slain President's
followers still hold the executive mansion in Monrovia and are
fighting on. A 6,000-man, five-nation West African peacekeeping
force, strangely named the Economic Community Monitoring Group
(ECOMOG), began to  arrive in Liberia in August but has been
unable to stop the shooting. In fact, it has become actively
involved in the war, mounting, in conjunction with Prince
Johnson's forces, air and ground attacks on Taylor and his
rebels.

    We arrived in Monrovia in the middle of the night aboard a
creaky Fokker civilian plane flown by Burkina Faso air force
pilots. Also aboard were four military advisers to Taylor's
forces from Burkina Faso and two other journalists. When we
touched down at Robertsfield, the national airport, the plane's
window shades were pulled down by the crew, and the airport
lights were doused as soon as the aircraft's engines were
switched off.

    We were taken to see "President" Taylor in his newly
proclaimed capital, Gbarnga, a small town in central Liberia,
then a four-hour drive from the fighting lines in Monrovia.
Inside his headquarters, formerly a Doe country residence that
is guarded by female soldiers, Taylor, 42, appeared wearing an
ECOLOGY NOW T-shirt, fatigue pants and a pistol in a shoulder
holster. Despite setbacks suffered by his 10,000-strong forces
in skirmishes with ECOMOG troops, he vowed that he would not
give up the fight. "Look here," he said, pointing to a map of
Liberia. "This is all ours -- except for this little piece
called Monrovia, and we are going to keep on fighting as long
as one foreign ECOMOG soldier remains on our soil." The damage
inflicted on Liberia by ECOMOG artillery fire and aerial
bombing, which is carried out by Nigerian air force planes, he
claimed, amounts to $4.5 billion. "The Liberian people are
going to be bitter against their neighbors for a long time,"
he continued. "They are finding it hard to accept being bombed
by Nigerian planes."

    Later we moved by car and then by foot into Monrovia to see
how far ECOMOG troops on the ground had advanced behind their
air and artillery attacks. We were walking past a small airport
called Spriggs Payne, held that morning by Taylor's rebels,
when we suddenly discovered ourselves, with our N.P.F.L.
bodyguard, behind ECOMOG lines. A group of Guinean and Ghanaian
soldiers ordered us to accompany them to their base camp just
west of Spriggs Payne. "Look what we've got!" shouted one.
"Taylor's writers -- and we got us a rebel!" As more  ECOMOG
soldiers gathered, the scene turned ugly. The soldiers began to
push us toward the rear of the camp, their rifles in our backs.
One trooper grabbed my arm. I pushed it away, saying, "Get
your hands off me." He took hold of me again and shouted, "You
aren't a journalist, you're a spy!"

    The soldiers disarmed the N.P.F.L. guard and stripped him
to his underpants and socks. They tied his hands behind his
back, threw him to the ground and began kicking him
unmercifully. The assault was interrupted by a barrage of
N.P.F.L. gunfire nearby. The unit commander, a Ghanaian
captain, said accusingly, "You see? You've brought us an
ambush."

    Eventually the firing stopped. After an hour of high
tension, the captain ordered us taken to ECOMOG headquarters
in the Free Port area of Monrovia. There, for the next day and
a half, together and separately, we were politely interrogated
by a team of ECOMOG military police about where we had come
from and what we had seen. We slept for two nights on the floor
of the M.P. headquarters, ate military rations and were given
soap and buckets of water to wash with.

    The next day I was told that another "President," Prince
Johnson, wanted to meet "one of those people who was with
Taylor," and so I was taken the following day to his "executive
mansion," which is located in an office building near the
harbor. Parked outside was the late President Doe's silver
Mercedes. Dressed in military fatigues, Johnson punctuated his
pronouncements by waving a cigar in one hand and a can of beer
in the other. Though his troops had occasionally fought
alongside ECOMOG against the N.P.F.L., Johnson was nearly as
hostile to the peacekeeping force as he was to Taylor. "They
told me to move my people out of Monrovia," he said. "I took
that territory. It's mine." As for the differences between him
and Taylor, said Johnson, "I want civilian rule and democracy.
That rogue wants socialism."

    On a quick tour of territory north of Monrovia that was
recently taken from the N.P.F.L., Johnson posed for his own
video cameraman and shouted to his troops, "Where is Taylor?"
"Nowhere," the soldiers  shouted back. After returning to his
headquarters, Johnson, accompanied by a background quartet of
two guitars, a Casio keyboard and a hand-held African drum,
strummed religious songs on his own guitar. Dozens of soldiers
joined in, dancing and singing, "Oh, I love Jesus, because he
loved me first."

    In the past few weeks Monrovia had turned relatively quiet,
as ECOMOG troops set up checkpoints to keep the Johnson and
Taylor factions apart. But death hovers over the city.
Virtually no food shipments have arrived since rebel forces
first entered Monrovia in July, and hunger is taking lives
every day. The starving look as if they are sleeping, curled
up on the sidewalks, but their eyes are open; they simply lack
the strength to stand. Sam, 8, who approached me with his
brother John, 11, pleaded, "Missy, we haven't eaten in three
days." I took them to the flat where I was staying and gave them
each an orange and some rice. Their parents were missing,
probably dead -- and there were thousands like them in
Monrovia.

    Even if the war were to end tomorrow, recovery would take
years. Monrovia's power plant has been severely damaged. The
iron-ore mining industry, which earned Liberia more than $200
million a year in peacetime, will never recover; the cost of
processing low-quality ore with out-of-date equipment is
prohibitive. The rubber industry, Liberia's other main money
earner, can be revived, but because of growing competition from
Southeast Asia, it will never be as profitable as it was.

    The psychological damage to Liberia's population of 2
million cannot be fathomed. What does it do to people to walk
along Monrovia's sandy beaches and have to step around skulls
and rib cages that are only half submerged in the sand? Taking
stock of the toll, a Monrovia cleric said simply, "I weep for
this country." If only tears could start the healing.