A shattered nation on a long road to recovery

Liberians, impatient for better times ahead, have begun the slow process of rebuilding their country, shattered by 14 years of intermittent civil war that ended one year ago. The guns have fallen silent, 15,000 UN peacekeeping troops patrol the country's main towns and highways and tens of thousands of refugees have spontaneously begun to return home. “Thank God we are no longer running around, hiding from bullets or escaping fighters' checkpoints,” Archie Kromah, a displaced student, told IRIN. “A year ago we were going through all that human suffering: sleeping in the open air with no food to eat or clean water to drink.” Liberia's national football team, the Lone Stars, are playing international fixtures again in the Samuel K. Doe stadium that 12 months ago sheltered 15,000 displaced people driven from their homes by rebel attacks on the capital. Cars and trucks noisily ply the main streets of Monrovia, where Lebanese-owned shops once more offer a full range of imported goods to the privileged minority wealthy enough to buy them. This time last year, most of their supermarkets and warehouses were shuttered, empty or looted and the only noise on the streets was the quiet shuffle of pedestrians. But Monrovia remains a city of one million people with no piped water or mains electricity. And it is surrounded by camps for internally displaced people (IDPs) who are still too afraid of gunmen lurking in the bush to return to their villages in the interior. Although millions of dollars of aid money have flowed into Liberia with the advent of peace, the country's economy remains in tatters. Last February, the international community pledged US$520 million to help rebuild Liberia, but less than half that money has been forthcoming and the attention of donors has been distracted by the emergence of a new more pressing humanitarian crisis in Sudan's Darfur province. As a result, the UN World Food Programme has just been forced to cut food rations for nearly 740,000 Liberians to just over two thirds of the normal level. The authority of the power sharing transitional government, charged with organising fresh elections in October 2005, barely runs beyond the capital and what remains of its shattered bureaucracy is as corrupt as ever. UN officials and relief workers complain that the key ministries have been hijacked by the three former warring factions, which are now busy helping themselves to the little money that flows into government coffers. Their leaders still show more interest in squabbling over the spoils of power than genuine national reconstruction. "Coalition of the unwilling" Jacques Klein, the UN Secretary General's Special Representative in Liberia, told IRIN recently: “We have here the coalition of the unwilling, that is a government that is quite often not interested in what we are.” “We’re supposed to have an election in October 2005 and some people are thinking, ‘Why next year? I like being in my government job - what’s the rush?" On the 18 August 2003, representatives from the two rebel groups and the former government of Charles Taylor, as well as representatives from civil society, came together to sign a peace deal in the Ghanaian capital, Accra. The peace accord was signed exactly one week after Charles Taylor, the warlord who plunged Liberia into conflict on Christmas Day in 1989, resigned as president and fled into exile in Nigeria. His departure and the signing of the peace agreement raised hopes that Liberia would help bring stability to the entire region. Diplomats predicted that the end of the civil war in Liberia would consolidate the peace in Sierra Leone, stop the conflict in Cote d'Ivoire and prevent Guinea from tipping over the edge.

Donors pledged US$520 million to rebuild Liberia, but less than half has turned up

That may have been over-optimistic, but in Liberia itself, the guns have fallen silent. Joseph Nyantee, a Liberian businessman, spoke for many when he told IRIN with great conviction that this time the fighting was over for good. “I am confident that nobody will even fire a bullet again, we are all tired of war - 14 years and no peace! This time around the peace is here to stay. Liberia has to move ahead,” said Nyantee who remained in Liberia throughout the years of conflict. Nyantee owns a small supermarket in downtown Monrovia that sells everything from powdered milk to ladies' cosmetics and several cement depots that are doing a roaring trade as people start to repair their war-damaged houses or build new ones. Now he is planning to open a printing press to produce government documents. “Life is better now than in past years and the business climate is far more conducive than before," Nyantee said. "More goods are being imported, several new businesses are coming and even more investors are waiting to come in - they just want the disarmament process to finish,” said Nyantee. But who will keep this import-fed boom going once the donor money runs out? The United Nations recently renewed its ban on Liberia's exports of timber and diamonds, saying the government still did not have proper control over the diamond mines and forests of the interior. The country has few other resources with which to generate foreign exchange other than its international shipping register. But for now everything from big bright new Cadillacs from the United States to battered old commuter mini-buses from Guinea are streaming into Liberia to feed the demand for private and commercial vehicles as the country’s roads become safer. UN officials say many former combatants are taking their weapons to Guinea and bartering them for new motorcycles. One year ago, there were rebel checkpoints on all the main trade routes to the borders with Sierra Leone, Guinea and Cote d’Ivoire. UN peacekeeping forces for the United Nations Mission in Liberia (UNMIL) have swept them away and set up their own security control points. “The only checkpoints we encounter on the highways are controlled by UNMIL. We do not see fighters with guns on the roads as was the case a year ago, extorting money and interrogating passengers - they are all focused on the disarmament. Really the country is opening up,” said Musa Sarnor, who drives an 18-seater bus around Liberia. Rebels in control at main border crossings But ominously, fighters of the LURD (Liberians United for Reconciliation and Democracy) and MODEL (Movement for Democracy in Liberia) rebel movements still control the main frontier crossings. Government officials have not yet arrived from Monrovia to take charge. That makes the outflow of Liberian guns and contraband diamonds into neighbouring countries virtually impossible to control. And although UN forces have secured the half dozen main roads that sparsely criss-cross the country, vast tracts of Liberia remain beyond the reach of the peacekeeping forces. Just outside Monrovia, the huge Guthrie rubber plantation that extends for 15 km along the main road to the Sierra Leone border, is occupied by several hundred LURD gunmen who are harassing the local population and have resisted all attempts so far to make them hand in their weapons to the UN disarmament centre in nearby Tubmanburg.

Ordinary Liberians are trying to pick up the pieces after 14 years of civil war

In some remote parts of Liberia, the disarmament process, relaunched in April after a false start in December, has yet to begin. Residents of Grand Kru, Sinoe, Maryland and Rivercess counties in the southeast and Lofa and Gbarpolu Counties in northwestern Liberia who fled to Monrovia during the war, say they are still too frightened to return home because of unpaid gunmen who continue to prey on the local civilian population. “I am from Lofa County,” said Kpehe Korto, a village elder and former cocoa farmer, “But I can’t return there and settle because the fighters with their guns are still there.” “We do not want to continuously live in Monrovia. Since the peace accord came into force, UNMIL has deployed in most of the counties and because of this our focus is getting back to our towns and villages,” he added. UNMIL has the largest peacekeeping force in Africa at its disposal, but force commander General Daniel Opande told reporters recently that his troops could not be everywhere at the same time. “There is an eagerness among the local population to see us deploy in every town or hamlet - but that would overstretch our 15,000 troops. What we can do is ensure that peace and stability is maintained everywhere through regular patrols,” the Kenyan general said. Opande said preparations were under way to open new disarmament camps in the north-west and south-east soon, but he was unable to give a date. Part of the problem in extending UNMIL’s reach is that the transitional government has yet to fulfil its mandate to appoint civil servants to regional government jobs. In their absence, former fighters still control a very rudimentary civil administration in the interior. “Appointing county superintendents and other civil authorities will be done soon. Chairman Bryant has embarked on consultations with signatories to the accord to appoint local officials,” a senior government official close to Bryant told IRIN. Slow pace of disarmament But many ordinary Liberians are concerned over what they see as the slow pace of disarmament. “The fighters are eager to disarm quickly and most of them are becoming impatient as the UN has not fully established more cantonment centres around the country," said Martha Tweh, a government employee in Monrovia.

UNMIL Force Commander Daniel Opande

UNMIL boasts that it has so far disarmed and demobilised more than 65,000 fighters loyal to former president Charles Taylor and the LURD and MODEL rebel groups. "The number of fighters who have disarmed is almost double the initial UN planning figure of 38,000 fighters to be disarmed,” said Molly Passaway of the National Commission on Disarmament, Demobilisation and Reintegration. But critics point out that while every former combatant gets a $300 cash handout, only one in three of those disarmed so far have actually handed in a weapon. They suspect that many civilians are simply posing as former combatants in order to grab the cash and claim other benefits such as education and training. Preparations are under way for elections next year to return Liberia to constitutional rule, but Frances Johnson-Morris, the chairwoman of the Electoral Commission, said poor security in the interior was making this process difficult. “The civic education process has already begun, but our assessment is that for free, fair and transparent elections to be held, the country must be freed of armed groups and a total disarmament must have taken place,” she told IRIN. “Security in all parts of Liberia must be conducive and this will allow all of the refugees and IDPs to resettle,” Morris Johnson stressed. However, she saw no reason why elections could not still be held in October 2005 as planned. It is still unclear who will stand for the presidency, although Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, a former UN official who came runner-up to Charles Taylor in 1997, has announced her interest and LURD leader Sekou Conneh is widely expected to run. Conneh, however, must first overcome a challenge to his leadership from a powerful dissident faction within the rebel group, which would like to see him replaced by Justice Minister Kabineh Janneh. All those currently serving in the transitional government are banned from running for elected office in the poll. Vast reconstruction hill to climb But whoever emerges as Liberia's new leader, the task of reconstruction he or she faces will be immense. The electricity supply network was destroyed in 1990 at the start of the civil war, so the entire country now depends on private generators. These create a constant drone in the Mamba Point diplomatic quarter of Monrovia, where the offices of most UN agencies are situated.

A whole generation of children, like this 10-year-old boy knew only war up until last year

These office blocks and the hotels, restaurants, bars and nightclubs which have sprung up around them, are brightly lit by night, but most of the rest of Liberia remains in silent darkness. Every hospital, school and public building has been stripped bare by war-time looting. Some of the street vendors selling soft drinks in Monrovia keep their bottles cool in special refrigerated boxes that were originally intended to preserve vaccines. The port of Monrovia is choked with wrecks and has been ransacked to the point that it barely functions. A whole generation of youngsters has been brought up without education. They have only known violence and warfare, often as a fighters in the conflict themselves. Liberia is one of the few countries in Africa where most parents are more literate than their children. For communities to recover and work together to rebuild Liberia, mutual trust needs to be re-established, as Michael Dolo, a former combatant and Secretary General for Liberian Ex-Combatants Anxious for Development, told IRIN. “Our organization unifies all ex-combatants. We are planning a series of peace marches all over the country appealing and begging our people for forgiveness,” said Dolo who was a former senior commander in forces loyal to Charles Taylor. “We beat, killed, raped and burnt down villages. But we were misled to fight and we beg them to accept us back as brothers and sisters,” he added. "It is only appealing for mercy that we can find true reconciliation. The war days are over and we all now realize our mistakes.”