A REALISTIC COMMITMENT: BALANCING NATIONAL INTERESTS AND AMERICAN IDEALS IN LIBERIA

(A Response to Martin Sieff)

j. peter pham 

Last year – before the first international television news crews began arriving there to cover the military assessment team dispatched by President George W. Bush to scout out what is shaping up to be latest front line of the America’s global police beat and certainly long before many Americans heard of the place – The Economist, in its annual survey of the world, awarded Liberia the dubious distinction of being “the worse place to live in 2003.” With a negative GDP growth rate of 5 percent for 2002 (with another 8 percent dip forecasted for 2003) and a life expectancy of just under 48 years, the 2.9 million Liberians who have not yet fled their homeland are among the worse off people in the world by almost any quantifiable measure of economic or social well-being. 

However, it is not so much the underdevelopment of its economic and social structures that distinguishes Liberia from its neighbors – in this respect it is not much different from neighboring Guinea and Sierra Leone – as the poverty of its political and legal system.  Since the end of its fratricidal eight-year civil war in 1997, Liberia has been ruled by Charles Ghankay Taylor, whose last known address before launching that war with the support of Libya’s Muammar Ghaddafi was the Plymouth House of Corrections in Massachusetts.  And it is largely due to the personal contributions of “Doctor Taylor,” as he likes to style himself, rather than any other factor, that his country earned the not-so-coveted title from The Economist. 

Even by the flexible standards employed by some African heads of state, Taylor sets some new lows with his record on human rights.  Although he did lift the “state of emergency” late last year and a token political opposition is allowed nowadays in Monrovia (the only part of the country the Taylor regime effectively controls), critics of the Taylor government have been routinely harassed, the more articulate among them being subject to arrest, torture, and imprisonment.  This was the case with prominent human rights lawyer Tiawan Gangloe and Hassan Bility, editor of the independent Analyst newspaper, both of whom were jailed in 2002, the latter allegedly for communicating via e-mail with the Guinea-based Liberians United for Reconciliation and Democracy (LURD) rebel movement that advanced within fifteen miles of Monrovia in early 2002 before being beaten back and that now shares control of two-thirds of the country with its Ivory Coast-based offshoot, the Movement for Democracy in Liberia (MODEL). 

At the same time, Frances Johnson Morris, director of the Catholic Justice and Peace Commission and former Chief Justice of Liberia, was arrested after she presented a paper at a public forum questioning the “state of emergency” declared by Taylor.  She was detained at the central police prison among male inmates until international protests brought about her release.  The official excuse that Taylor’s police chief, Paul Mulbah, gave to diplomats was that it was a case of “mistaken identity.”  Sure. In any event, Morris fared better than Henry Cooper, an official of the opposition Unity Party, who was taken into custody at the same time:  his body was later found riddled with bullet holes.  Contemporaneously, five members of the National Human Rights Center of Liberia, an umbrella organization of nine non-governmental human rights organizations, were arbitrarily arrested on Good Friday 2002.  When they managed to get a court to rule several weeks later that their arrest without charges went against the Liberian constitution and to order their release, they were immediately arrested again by the Taylor government on the charge of “criminal malevolence” and “resisting arrest.”  The basis of the latter charge was that they contested the previous arrest! 

Nor are the abuses limited to political opponents. In its desperate fight for survival, the Taylor regime has taken once more to pressing children into combat units, using its ironically named Anti-Terrorist Units (ATUs) to sweep whole neighborhoods.  Missionary groups and other non-governmental organizations have had to scramble to establish “safe houses” for the boys, many as young as ten or twelve years old, fleeing from being “volunteered” to do their “patriotic duty” of defending the regime. 

The forced induction of children into the military is reminiscent of the now-defeated Revolutionary United Front (RUF) in neighboring Sierra Leone’s just-concluded civil war.  The RUF’s leader, Foday Sankoh, is presently on trial for war crimes before the United Nations-sponsored Special Court for Sierra Leone.  Among the charges that will figure in his indictment will be the use of the infamous “child soldiers” to mutilate over 100,000 people in a terror campaign.  Before being defeated by a British-led UN force, Sankoh and the RUF were supported by Taylor, who also facilitated RUF sales of the so-called “conflict diamonds” by providing false certification of origin in Liberia.  Observers believe that up to 5,000 former RUF fighters, rather than be disarmed by the UN peacekeepers, have taken service with Taylor as members of the ATUs.  The Special Court, citing the Liberian leader’s role in the Sierra Leonean conflict, recently issued an arrest warrant for Taylor, making him only the second sitting head of state to be indicted by an international criminal tribunal.   

All these facts are, of course, compelling reasons for the international community to insist on “regime change” in Liberia.  Taylor and his minions have not only terrorized their own people, but have been a destabilizing force complicit in regional instability – fomenting insurgencies in Sierra Leone, Guinea and the Ivory Coast – for over a decade.  Nonetheless, Taylor’s abuses do not directly impinge upon the principal strategic interests of the United States and do not, in themselves, constitute enough justification for committing the might of the American military – and risking the lives of the men and women in our armed forces – to a long simmering cauldron of complex ethnic, social, economic and political grievances.   

The complexity of the situation should not be underestimated by the media’s “policy analysts,” who have shown themselves to be – if the “talking heads” of the last week are any indication – generally bereft of any real familiarity with this normally-all-but-ignored part of the globe.  The crowds chanting outside the fortress-like U.S. Embassy in Monrovia for his forced ouster notwithstanding, Taylor was elected president in 1997 with over 75 percent of the vote in a poll that was generally free, if flawed.  And, whatever his crimes, he has until recently been successful at trying to bridge the cultural gap between the descendants of the freed American slaves and the indigenous population – a feat that eluded his predecessors.  Hence, one should be careful about painting the scene with just black and white brushes. 

In America’s war against terrorism, U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld enunciated the doctrine that “the mission dictates the coalition.”  In the case of Liberia, the only reasonable principle should be “the interests dictate the mission.”  That is, as America, already well stretched with the ongoing war against terrorism and peacekeeping in Iraq and with the specter of North Korea’s unpredictable dictator never to be forgotten, can ill-afford to become embroiled in an African conflict that neither directly affects its strategic interests nor lends itself to quick resolution.  That being said, there are some national interests at stake in Liberia which, balanced with traditional American ideals, suggest a strategy involving a limited mission with well-defined objectives, to be undertaken by the U.S. on the own authority and under its own flag, in response to these interests and ideals as well as the heart-wrenching appeals of the Liberian people.  However, the commitment, balancing interests and ideals, must necessarily be characterized by realism.  Hence, its objectives should be carefully delineated and strictly limited to: 

Facilitating regime change.  There is no doubt that President Taylor and his closest collaborators will have to be removed from power, either by accepting the voluntary exile in a third country such as that offered by Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo or forced deportation to the Special Court for Sierra Leone. General elections are scheduled for this October.  Hence, regime change can be accomplished by removing the Taylor government from power and then allowing the constitutionally mandated process to take place.  In the case of Liberia, the U.S. should neither dictate the transition nor attempt any sort of Iraq-style civil administration or Balkan-style “nation building” – there are no significant strategic interests worth that effort.  

Assisting humanitarian relief.  The recent fighting has added to the burdens of already-strained UN and NGO relief missions which had been coping with the hundreds of thousands internally-displaced persons.  Many relief groups have had to cease operations during the fighting for security reasons and will need protection to carry out their work as well as additional supplies.  This much we can do in homage to our ideals.        

Eliminating terrorist elements and overseeing the interdiction subversive groups.  There is evidence that the Taylor regime has recently allowed Middle Eastern terrorists to launder their funds through Liberia in exchange for payoffs.  These subversive elements can be eliminated swiftly through military intervention in Monrovia.  The ex-RUF fighters recruited into Taylor’s ATUs will need to be repatriated to the UN-sponsored disarmament program in Sierra Leone.  An international force, drawn perhaps from the regional group of the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), will need to secure the borders to prevent the flow of destabilizing forces as has happened in the past. 

Preventing a rebel takeover.  The greatest danger of a quick downfall of Charles Taylor is that his despotic government would simply be replaced by an equally despotic regime, this one comprised of the LURD/MODEL rebels, who have stained hands of their own and who, in time, might prove just as problematic despite the lip service that rebel military chief Sékou Konneh has occasionally paid to human rights.  The rebels will need to be disarmed or at least prevented from seizing the capital – an easy enough task given that LURD is poorly armed and most Monrovians would be loathe to see them – and then drawn into a national dialogue.  A rebel takeover would be a humanitarian as well as political disaster. 

Having facilitated the removal of the Taylor regime, assured the passage of humanitarian assistance, rooted out the terrorist and other subversive elements presently hosted in Liberia, and prevented a rebel takeover, the objectives of American interests will be met.

Dr. J. Peter Pham served as a senior international diplomat in Liberia, Sierra Leone, and Guinea, from 2001 through the end of 2002. He is the author of a forthcoming book on the regional conflict, Child Soldiers, Adult Interests: The Sierra Leonean Tragedy.