Taylor loyalist recruits Liberians to fight in Guinea - ex-combatants

Tragen Wantee, a comrade-in-arms of former Liberian President Charles Taylor, has been recruiting former members of Taylor's armed forces for the past two months in order to launch an insurrection in neighbouring Guinea, former combatants in the Liberian frontier town of Ganta said. They told IRIN that Wantee had recruited about 100 former combatants in Taylor's militia forces in Nimba county since July and was spiriting them over the border to a forest training camp that was believed to be somewhere near the Guinean town of Dieke. Each recruit had been offered a bounty payment of between US$150 and $200, they added. "I have seen some of my friends being recruited right here in Ganta in late July and August," said Master Sargent Jacob Saye. "We know that some of our friends who fought in Nimba were given cash payments of $200 and secretly moved into Guinea, mostly during the night time. All those I knew who were recruited have not returned," Saye said. "This is a serious campaign being carried out secretly. We fear that a possible rebel attack could take place in Guinea and that is why we are not afraid of leaking it out," he told an IRIN correspondent visiting Ganta at the weekend. Ganta is one of the main towns in Nimba county, which is situated in north central Liberia and borders on both Guinea and Cote d'Ivoire. It was a stronghold of Taylor's forces for most of the 14-year civil war, during which it saw heavy fighting. Saye, who walks with a limp after his knee was smashed by a machine gun bullet during the conflict, said he personally was opposed to the moves that were apparently afoot to destabilise the government of Guinean President Lansana Conte. His stories of clandestine recruitment were echoed by another former fighter in Taylor's armed forces, Cyrus Gonzhan. "We are tired of fighting" "Some of our friends always said that ex-combatants were being paid from $150 to $200 to go into Guinea by night. Many of them had refused the offer. We are tired of fighting and have no need to carry any war to Guinea," Gonzhan said. He declined to reveal the names of those who were behind the recruitment drive, saying only: "Those engaged in recruiting are now afraid to walk in public, because they know most of us ex-combatants are not happy with them." However, Saye named the man behind the clandestine recruitment as Tragen Wantee, a man from Nimba county who underwent military training with Charles Taylor in Libya during the late 1980s before Taylor launched a rebellion in Liberia in 1989. After Taylor became president in 1997, Wantee was appointed as Liberia's ambassador to Guinea. However, he was expelled by the Guinean government in 2001, after being accused of complicity in the attempted invasion of Guinea by bands of armed men who crossed the border from Liberia in 2000 and early 2001. Since then he has been out of the public eye. Guinea accused Taylor of backing the insurgents, who were successfully repelled by the Guinean army. Taylor himself was forced to resign as president and go into exile in Nigeria in August 2003 as rebel forces seized control of the interior of Liberia and began to battle their way into the capital Monrovia. His departure cleared the way for the signing of a peace agreement a week later. Several civilians in Ganta told IRIN that it was common knowledge in the town that former members of Taylor's armed forces were being recruited to go and fight in Guinea. Night movements across the border Cassius Dahn, a trader who travels frequently into Guinea to buy clothing and footwear for resale in Liberia, said many of these men had been caught by the Guinean security forces as they were sneaking across the border.

Fighters on UN truck

"Something suspicious is going on. It is usual to see ex-fighters travelling into Guinea for no reason and never making their way back home. News of Liberian fighters being recruited into Guinea is all over Guinea," he said. One local elder who asked not to be identified, said some chiefs on the Guinean side of the border had informed him and his Liberian colleagues about Liberian fighters moving across the border in apparent preparation for staging an attack. "We are finding out who are those involved. Mano (tribal) chiefs in both Liberia and Guinea have agreed to prevent any action to destabilize Guinea by exposing those behind it," he told IRIN. "The first information we got was that some of our former fighters were exchanging their weapons along the border with unknown persons in Guinea for motorbikes. We told the UN about this and since then they have stopped it," he added. General Joseph Owonibi, the deputy commander of the UN peacekeeping force in Liberia, said publicly in July that weapons were being traded for motorbikes across the Guinean border. But Major Alam Ruhul, the commander of the Bangladeshi detachment of UN peacekeepers stationed in Ganta, dismissed the tales of Liberians being recruited to fight in Guinea as "rumours." "There has been no concrete evidence to prove the reports," he told IRIN. Last July, Liberia's Independent Commission on Human Rights said that about 500 former child soldiers had been recruited by unidentified persons in the capital Monrovia and sent to a training base in Guinea. Complaints about the disarmament process The latest reports of clandestine recruitment in Nimba county have surfaced at a time when many former combatants there are complaining that UN peacekeepers are refusing to register them for disarmament because they do not have a weapon to hand in. Major Ruhul, the UN commander in Ganta said the process of disarming an estimated 7,000 former combatants in Nimba county was going smoothly. By the end of last week, 4,930 had been registered for demobilisation and a total of 1,764 weapons and over 10,000 rounds of ammunition had been handed in, he said. "The process is going smoothly and fighters are eagerly and happily being disarmed," the Bangladeshi officer said. "We have completed the exercise in Ganta and Saclepea and now the process is going on in Saniquellie. We are doing it town by town." However, Samuel Guannue, who described himself as the former deputy commander of Taylor's militia force in Nimba county, said many of his men were being rejected because they did not have a weapon to hand in. "We had a situation where about one in five fighters was assigned to a gun," he told IRIN. "Because of this situation of insufficient arms, over 2,000 of our former fighters were rejected by peacekeepers at the disarmament site since they did not carry weapons or ammunitions. We have complained to the National Commission on Disarmament, Demobilisation and Reintegration and Rehabilitation, but have no response yet." Molley Passaway, the spokesman for the Commission in Monrovia, confirmed that a complaint had been received from ex-fighters in Nimba county whose application for disarmament benefits had been rejected. "The commission is aware of this report and we have communicated to the relevant commanders in Nimba to compile a list of those affected fighters and we will seek ways of perhaps absorbing them into the programme," he told IRIN. Lots of ex-fighters, but few weapons Each demobilised fighter qualifies for a cash resettlement grant of US$300 and assistance in education or training and there have been persistent reports of civilians who never fought in the civil war signing up for disarmament simply to claim these benefits. Fewer than one in three reporting for disarmament have actually handed in a gun. The United Nations estimated last year that Liberia's three factions together had about 38,000 combatants who were likely to come forward for disarmament. However, more than 72,000 have been registered so far and a report by the International Contact Group on Liberia, released in New York last week estimated the final tally would be 80,000 to 100,000 by the time the disarmament exercise finishes on 31 October. Despite Guannue's protestations that guns were in short supply during the conflict, many residents in Ganta said they were convinced that a lot of the sophisticated weaponry they had seen during the civil war was being hidden. Many of the weapons being handed in by ex-fighters were just crude hunting guns, known locally as "single barrels," they said. "We cannot see the types of heavy guns they were using, only a few AK-47s and machine guns. A lot of the ex-fighters are now disarming with single barrels and there is even news that some fighters are attempting to smuggle hunting guns in from Guinea so that they can disarm," Melvin Voker, one resident of the border town 250 km northeast of Monrovia, said. An IRIN correspondent visiting Ganta saw several UN military trucks taking former combatants to the disarmament camp. These mostly contained men brandishing hunting guns. However, Major Ruhul said not many were being handed in. "There are a lot of rocket-propelled grenades, machine guns and mortars being handed in, but there are few reporting with hunting guns," he said. Despite the constant talk of weapons changing hands for money and secret armies being formed just across the border, Ganta itself is a quiet and peaceful place these days and cross-border trade is arriving. Many buildings in the town are still riddled with bullet marks from the civil war and some have been destroyed completely by artillery shells and local officials said Ganta still only had half its pre-war population of 100,000 people. However, the days when aggressive gunmen robbed ordinary citizens in the streets with impunity are long gone and at the weekend people party at nightclubs in total safety until the wee hours of the morning. One immigration official said movements across the Guinean border are also picking up. About 50 refugees per day were returning spontaneously from Guinea and about 30 people a day were coming across the border to trade, he said. Most of these were Guineans, but there were also a few Nigerians and Ghanaians, he added.