August 3, 2003

STOP RIGHT THERE MR. PRESIDENT, DON’T SEND THE NATION’S MEN INTO LIBERIA TO SHOW OFF YOUR COMPASSION

THERE IS NO NATIONAL INTEREST THERE

Now they use AK-47s, RPGs, and mortars, but it’s been going on since man’s creative genius discovered new uses for sticks and stones and since strong men discovered that they could push weaker men around.

Even after civilization began, the killing of one people by another did not stop. The Romans killed the Christians, the Christians killed the Moslems, the Catholics killed the Protestants, and they all killed the Jews.

Then in the last century civilized man learned about big-time genocide and the Bolsheviks eliminated their Ukrainian enemies—seven or eight million of them—through collective starvation. The Japanese killed and raped Nanking. The Germans killed six million European Jews. The Northern Sudanese Moslems have killed millions of Southern Sudanese Blacks. In 1994 it was the Hutus and the Tutsis. And then the Angolans, and on and on with mind-numbing predictability, until now…Liberia and its tragic predicament.

What is it about Liberia that is different from all of the other massacres, crimes, and catastrophes that have plagued the miserable peoples of the world—the impoverished, ignorant, uneducated, innocent peoples stuck in the jungles, deserts, and garbage dumps of South America, Asia, and Africa? Why should the United States intervene in Liberia?

Those calling for U.S. intervention are calling for armed intervention, not humanitarian assistance (because the latter has been forthcoming for decades—hundreds of millions of dollars). They want American boots on the ground to rescue the innocent people of Liberia from the numerous armies that are fighting a war for the control of the country.

There are four loud choruses calling for armed intervention. The American liberal press, led by the New York Times; the liberal wing of the Democratic Party, especially the Black Caucus; Kofi Annan; and finally, some segment of the Monrovian population who have child-like illusions about the “real” relationship between their country and the United States.

The American people and their representatives are not yet stirred by the Liberian tragedy. Nor do they see America’s role or responsibility in this foreign entanglement. And for good reason. Since its formation in 1822 the Liberian-American connection has been both superficial and tenuous.

Under the auspices of the American Colonization Society, a private group of idealist do-gooders—God save us poor sinners from the mischief of do-gooders—organized themselves to transport freed Negroes from the United States and settle them in Africa; this despite the fact that the Negroes themselves were not so crazy about abandoning their native land for the African coast.

Beginning on a small piece of coastal land, the new arrivals expanded their activities and control until Liberia became a sovereign state in 1847. The émigrés from America—never amounting to more than about 11,000 people—called themselves Americo-Liberians and brought with them values and attitudes from America which were both politically superficial and economically deep.

They adopted the form of the U.S. Constitution, the colors of our flag and the motto on their seal, which read “The love of Liberty brought us here.”

In fact they loved liberty so passionately that they refused to share any of it with the native indigenous peoples who made up 95 percent of the population and had been living in the land since the 12th Century. Although they had acquired a taste for the comforts of American life, and the habits of American plantation owners—their dress, their architecture, even their attitudes towards servants—they had not acquired the principle of one man one vote, or the principle of the rule of law. In fact Liberia is an anomaly among developing African countries. All the rest were colonized by white people and ruled by foreign governments. Only Liberia was colonized and ruled by an alien minority whose habits and values were solely those of black people.

Irony of ironies—it didn’t matter. From the outset, the Americo-Liberians saw themselves as elite and superior to the indigenous population. They referred to the latter as “uncivilized” and “aborigines” who lived in tribal settings with “primitive” traditions. And just like the European colonizers around them, they treated the native Liberians with contempt and abuse. They encouraged the natives to stay in their tribal enclaves in the interior of the country while the Americo-Liberians occupied and exploited the coastal regions in which towns and cities began to flourish. And when they needed cheap labor to work in the iron mines and on plantations the elites resorted to transportation and forced labor, if necessary. The government of Liberia was, in fact, charged with and convicted of the use of slave labor by the League of Nations in 1931.

When the 1847 constitution was formulated it made citizenship dependent on being black, but stipulated that the native population be designated as “aborigines” who were excluded from citizenship and economic life. This split remained in place and contributed to a low-level chronic spirit of alienation between the elite Americo-Liberian minority and the native indigenous population until it came to its catastrophic fruition 133 years later.

Although formally a republic, Liberia remained a corrupt oligarchy well into the twentieth century, dominated by a handful of mulatto and black Americo-Liberian dynastic families who remained rich and powerful until 1980 when their chickens came home to roost.

Government of, by, and for the few came to an end early on April 12, 1980, when a group of noncommissioned officers stormed Monrovia's Executive Mansion and carried out a successful coup d'etat against the government. The president and some two dozen members of his security guard were killed in the event. Ten days later 13 other high government officials were executed publicly after having been tried by a special military tribunal for a variety of offenses. The body that assumed control called itself the People's Redemption Council (PRC) and was led by a 28-year-old army master sergeant named Samuel Doe. The PRC proceeded to rule by decree after suspending the constitution and abolishing the legislature. Doe and his compatriots announced the immediate goals of ending the country's political and economic domination by a few Americo-Liberian families, stamping out corruption, and building a "new society" in which the republic's wealth would be distributed more equitably. Noble thoughts indeed.

But as soon as he felt safely in power Doe murdered or imprisoned his co-revolutionaries and promoted himself from master sergeant to five-star general, commander-in-chief, and head of state.

On October 15, 1985, pressure from the international community forced the military government, under Doe, to schedule an election that was to return Liberia to civilian rule. Unfortunately, General Doe reneged on his promise, and formed his own political party. The campaign, which was reportedly marked by intimidation and vote rigging by Doe and his supporters, naturally ended in his victory.

On November 12, 1985, one month after the election, a former colleague, supported by about 24 heavily armed men from the Gio nation, covertly entered Liberia through Sierra Leone and launched a putsch against President Doe. In a massive campaign of retribution against the coup plotters and their supporters, General Doe and his army went on a national killing spree, especially against innocent civilians who were associated with Gios and the ethnically related Mano people.

Despite the bloodletting that ensued, General Doe was sworn in as President of Liberia on January 6, 1986, and thereby set the stage for Liberia's national nightmare.

The Liberian civil war began three years later. In December 1989, when the National Patriotic Front of Liberia (NPFL), an insurgent organization led by Charles Taylor, a former official of the Doe Administration, invaded Liberia from the Ivory Coast with the assistance of regular soldiers from Burkina Faso. NPFL forces obtained their training from Libya, and received their financial support from Libya, Burkina Faso, Ivory Coast, and Liberian opposition groups abroad.

But Taylor (who is now President) was no better for the Liberians than Doe—just as murderous, just as ruthless, just as brutal and just as self-serving. According to Amnesty International and reports by the United States Department of State, the NPFL committed massive human rights violation against the Liberian people.

From that time until today Liberia has seen thousands of political murders committed by a rogues gallery of kleptocratic political criminals and a throng of acronyms promising freedom and justice but delivering anarchy and starvation; big men/boss/thugs like Charles Julu, Prince Yormie Johnson, Samuel Doe, Charles Taylor, Alhaji Kromah, Saigbe Boley, Roosevelt Johnson; and their acronymic gangs: NPFL, INPFL, ULMLD, ULIMO-K, LTNG, ULIMO-J, LPC, ETC, ETC, ETC.

None of these gangsters and their respective militias represented any political agenda or social vision. They had no interest except in maintaining their own economic and power status. One of the motivations for the warlords to reject an early transition to normalcy was their exploitation of Liberia's natural resources. According to testimony given by Acting Assistant Secretary of State William H. Twaddell to the United States Congress on June 26, 1996, the "warlords [were] wantonly exploiting their country's resources to keep themselves and their ragtag forces in weapons with virtual impunity, and in some cases complicity." The primary sources of revenue for these warlords were Liberia's diamonds, timber, rubber, gold, and iron ore. From 1990 to 1993, Secretary Twaddell reported that the warlords stole approximately $422 million of the country's resources, and sold them to Belgium, France, and other European countries. Arms were then purchased in Europe, and transported to Liberia through Burkina Faso, Ivory Coast, Guinea, and Nigeria.

The Liberian civil war had horrific consequences for the Liberian people. Over 10 percent of the population (300,000), mostly innocent civilians, were murdered; about three-quarters of the population became either refugees or displaced people; out of the 60,000 rebel fighters recruited by the warlords, about 60 percent were "child soldiers," and most of them are now suffering from drug addiction. Women and girls were reported to have suffered the most: they were raped and murdered with impunity by all the warring factions.
This crisis is occurring in one of the poorest countries on earth,with 80 percent of Liberia ’s approximately three million people living in poverty. Severe unemployment, amounting to 80 percent of the workforce, is the norm. Corruption is widespread. The capital, Monrovia, is without functioning electricity, water and sewerage systems. All basic human needs are supplied through the international donor community or through church groups. The U.S. has remained active diplomatically and has spent hundreds of millions of dollars in humanitarian aid and in aid to the West African peacekeeping force.

Liberia is widely seen as one of Africa's preeminent "failed states" in which the central government has ceased to provide essential security and services. In the absence of state authority, territory is, in effect, ceded to contending militia groups that operate lawlessly and with impunity for crimes against civilians. For the past three years there has been an oscillating stalemate on the ground with tens of thousands of combat-related fatalities.

Although much is made of a so-called “special relationship” that exists between the United States and Liberia, except for the hundreds of millions the U.S. has provided the government in aid, it has no economic interests in the country. France, Belgium and other European countries do however have economic interests in Liberia and would benefit greatly if America pulled their chestnuts out of the fire.

According to Jack Burns at the Wasshington Dispatch, Michelin already owns four rubber plantations in Nigeria and is negotiating for a loan from the European Investment Bank for $25 million to establish a 10, 000 hectare new rubber plantation in Liberia; Michelin will graciously provide $10 million. Now, Societe Financiere des Caoutchoucs (SOCFINAL) owns three quarters of Liberian Agricultural Company (LAC) and is a Belgian holding company with agricultural, real estate, banking, and financial interests, and major holdings in rubber throughout the world. The International Finance Corporation (IFC) has signed agreements to help develop another rubber company in Liberia and will lend $3.5 million to the Liberian Agricultural Company (LAC), in the first large-scale private venture in Liberia's rubber sector since the civil war.

The interventionists would like the public to believe that the problem is essentially a Liberian problem, and that what is Liberia’s problem is America’s problem. Nothing could be further from the truth. The problem is a regional one. The Liberia conflict is interwoven with and indistinguishable from violence in neighboring states.

West Africa now bears most of the traits of Central Africa in the growing tendency of its leaders to sponsor rebellions abroad to protect their positions at home. Burkina Faso, Guinea, Liberia and Côte d'Ivoire have all employed rebel groups either to get rid of their domestic enemies or to remove neighbouring leaders they do not like.

President Taylor increasingly employs rebel troops in western Côte d'Ivoire, which he treats as a second front against the Liberian insurgency that threatens his rule. Ivorian President Laurent Gbagbo has been paying and arming just about anyone to balance Taylor's support for his foes.
Western Côte d'Ivoire has become a magnet for mercenaries of many nationalities. The failure to devise a regional disarmament program has given the hard-line Sierra Leone fighters who fled to Liberia another chance to sell their skills.

The essential points in this tangled mess are these. The do-good lobby asserts that rescuing the hapless victims of decades of anarchy and centuries of discrimination and injustice trumps the blood of our military. They talk ambiguously about supporting an ECOWAS force. The latter is an incompetent and unreliable army made up of West Africans which has committed rape and looting in the past and is not welcome in Liberia. In this circumstance what could “support” mean except fighting in a war that is the most difficult kind of war for our forces to fight: an unconventional war in which no one knows who the good guys and the bad guys are—they look alike—with no goal and no exit strategy.

Our army would be fighting ten-year-old kids on drugs who are probably better with machine guns and RPGs than our troops because they’ve been doing it longer. “MARINES MASSACRE EIGHT-YEAR-OLDS IN LIBERIA”—how’s that for a human interest story in the New York Times?

Such a war would involve the nationals of five or six West African nations and be bankrolled and weaponized by powerful Arab nations who have every reason to keep America busy in West Africa.

The United States has no national interests to protect in Liberia whereas France, Belgium and others do have economic interests at stake let them spend French and Belgium blood to protect their rubber.

Sad as its predicament may be, the United States bears no more relationship to Liberia than to any other African nation. Its rulers were racists and abusers of black men long after America began to correct its civil rights injustices. Its founders never grasped basic democratic principles and aped only the vilest aspects of America—greed and corruption.

George W. Bush has sworn to protect the national interests of America and must resist the narcissistic pleasure of indulging his Christian conscience to be compassionate at the expense of the nation’s military.