Former rebel fighters riot to demand promised cash

A group of 200 former rebel fighters rioted in Gbarnga, a town in northern Liberia, earlier this week to protest at the United Nations' failure to pay them the second half of their US$300 resettlement allowance, eyewitnesses told IRIN. UN peacekeepers intervened quickly to restore order, they added. The pre-dawn protest on Wednesday followed recent admissions by UN and government officials that the authorities had run out of money to fund the rehabilitation of more than 100,000 former combatants who were disarmed last year following a 14-year civil war. Earlier this month, about 500 ex-fighters were expelled from secondary schools in the capital Monrovia because the National Commission for Disarmament, Demobilisation, Rehabilitation and Reintegration had failed to pay their fees. The disturbances in Gbarnga, 200 km northeast of Monrovia were staged by former soldiers of the Liberians United for Reconciliation and Democracy (LURD) rebel movement, which had a strong presence in the Gbarnga area before the civil war ended in August 2003. “Before 5 am on Wednesday morning, the protesting fighters had already set tyres a-blaze and had burnt some market stalls on the main street in Gbarnga,” one eyewitness of the protest told IRIN by telephone. A second eyewitness told IRIN that besides demanding the second half of their resettlement allowance, the ex-fighters were protesting at their failure to receive a $30 per month subsistence allowance which had been promised to all those who enrolled on skills training and formal education programmes. “A UN armed police unit has apprehended five of the rioters and they are currently undergoing police investigations,” a UN police officer told IRIN by telephone on Thursday. A local aid worker in Gbarnga said many market stalls, shops and businesses remained shut throughout Wednesday since traders were frightened of further attacks and looting. In any case, they added, the trouble had been expected. “The lawlessness of the former combatants was not so strange as most of them had been saying that they would cause trouble in Gbarnga if their money was not given to them,” one Gbarnga resident said. On Monday, Gyude Bryant, the head of Liberia's power-sharing transitional government, said in his annual state of the nation address to parliament, that the country urgently needed an additional $58 million dollars to keep its DDRR programme on track. Funding problems have been looming for months. In July 2004, Jacques Klein the UN Special Representative to Liberia, told IRIN that the mission was not receiving promised funds from donors. And in December the UN Secretary General, Kofi Annan, made an urgent plea for US$60 million. Meanwhile frustrated gangs of former bush-fighters continue to terrorise communities. “They can do any thing harmful without any remorse or conscience,” said the relief worker based in Gbarnga. The Liberian DDRR campaign originally set out to disarm between 38,000 and 53,000 former fighters. In the event, some 100,000 men, women and children joined the programme. This promised each person US$ 300 – paid in two parts - as well as education or skills training and other practical assistance to enable them to reintegrate into their communities.