Life in Buchanan getting better but help still needed

Walking through the streets of Buchanan, Liberia's second largest city, it is difficult to believe that they were a battlefield just two months ago. The town fell quickly to the MODEL rebel movement at the end of July after only a few days of fighting. The only bullet ridden walls and burnt down buildings date from an earlier stage in Liberia's 14-year-old civil war, when former president Charles Taylor fought his way to power between 1989 and 1997. There is none of the heavy destruction that is all too evident in Monrovia, 120 km to the northeast. The capital was devastated by three months of heavy fighting before a peace agreement was signed in August, as LURD (Liberians United for Reconciliation and Democracy), another rebel movement, tried unsuccessfully to capture the entire city. "We had an easy ride into Buchanan that is why you do not see much destruction," one MODEL fighter told IRIN. But Buchanan is only a shadow of its former self. Most of the 100,000 people that formerly lived in this spacious port city that was once a gateway for exports of timber and iron ore have fled. And only a handful of shops selling batteries, beer, cigarettes and used clothing have reopened. Kai Farley, MODEL's military commander in Buchanan, reckons there are only 10,000 inhabitants left in the city. And like Monrovia, Buchanan has no electricity or running water. Fighters belonging to the Movement for Democracy in Liberia (MODEL), most of whom are only identifiable by T-shirts with "MODEL" printed on the back, still roam the streets. But they no longer carry arms and have started to mix with local people. The fear and tension that characterised Buchanan between July and early October, when the movement of civilians was severely restricted, has eased. "Life is getting better. We are now freer," one resident told IRIN. But things are not quite back to normal yet. Some residents complained that MODEL soldiers still harass them. "We still experience some form of night harassment by MODEL rebels. If you are not a friend to any of them, you will be detained and released the next morning," one civilian told IRIN. When MODEL captured Buchanan, it imposed a strict night-time curfew and prevented civilians from leaving the city. Those trapped included more than 6,000 internally displaced people who had taken shelter in the Saint Peter Claver Catholic Mission compound. They were only allowed to leave in early October, nearly two months after the signature of the 18 August peace agreement, between the MODEL, LURD and the rump of Taylor's government. And it was only last week that MODEL, which has resisted the deployment of UN peacekeepers inside Buchanan, agreed to lift its curfew. "When our national chairman Thomas Nimely Yaya came here last week, he ordered that the curfew be lifted," said Farley, the MODEL military commander. "We had imposed the curfew as a security precaution to prevent the infiltration of Taylor's remnant fighters into Buchanan to attack us," said Farley, who was dressed in denim shorts with a thick gold chain round his neck. The curfew had made food and safe drinking water difficult to find. Relief agencies began arriving in Buchanan in late September found many starving people and the Nations World Food Programme sent some food to ease the situation. Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) which runs a therapeutic feeding centre in Buchanan, said that since last week it had been receiving 40 new cases daily as malnourished people drifted in from LAC, a logging settlement to the north of the city. Health workers meanwhile found many wells in Buchanan contaminated with the rotting bodies of dead fighters which had been thrown inside them. The World Health Organisation (WHO) has since removed these human remains and has poured chlorine into the wells to make their water safer. In September, eight people died in a cholera outbreak which infected 213 people, but the relief agencies responded quickly and brought the situation under control. Locally grown food and provisions brought in from Monrovia, are easily available in the market located on the city's main Tubman Street. But a cup of rice, Liberia's stable food, sells for 10 Liberian dollars (25 US cents) a cup in Buchanan - double the price in Monrovia - and many local people cannot afford it. "We have got plenty of food here, but our problem is money. (It is) only the top fighters that you see handling money," Worimonger, a petty trader selling plastic sandals said. An official helping 1,000 people still displaced at the Louise Hotel in the western outskirts of the city told IRIN that Catholic Relief Services distributed food to the shelter last month, but it was running out. "We still need more relief food," he said. The city's main hospital meanwhile is still without electrify. Aggrey Bategereza, a Tanzanian doctor working for British charity, Medical Emergency Relief International (MERLIN), said. "There is no generator to provide electricity and at night we use kerosene lanterns." "Without electricity we have difficulties in sterilizing our equipment," he added. However, Bategereza said UNICEF, WHO and MERLIN had provided the hospital with sufficient drugs. On Wednesday, the heads of UN agencies in Liberia visited Buchanan to assess the humanitarian conditions there.