Desperation Turning to Hopelessness for Liberians Ben de Pear

Opinion, July 2003, www.aljazeerah.info

Desperation Turning to Hopelessness for Liberians

Ben de Pear

The Guardian, Arab News

MONROVIA, 31 July 2003 — Locals call it world war three, and agree that it is by far the bloodiest of the three battles in Monrovia in the past two months. But it is not a world war, because the world wants to keep it as Liberia’s, and America will not be coming to stop it. Desperation is turning to hopelessness for more than a million Liberians waiting for the long promised arrival of the peacekeepers.

The city’s population has doubled and is rising by the hour. Hundreds of thousands are wandering the streets looking for shelter, food and — most important — safety. People have given up asking when intervention will come, but not why the peacekeepers have stayed away. Most of them, in a country founded by freed American slaves, lay the blame at the firmly closed gates of the US Embassy.

“There is no hope,” says Samuel Nymangwe, who is cut off from his family by the fighting. “My family are stranded, I’ve got no way to get them out so I’m just walking on the street.... I want an immediate answer; Bush made promises to us, and from his utterances we thought he was going to take action .... Now we are turning against him.”

At Old Bridge, one of the three front lines, marijuana smoke is in the air as men and boys wait for their turn in a mad game of do or dare. Zigzagging forward from their cover and cheered on by fellow fighters, they fire off a few rounds at the unseen enemy across the water.

“Are you scared man? Are you scared?” a fighter shouts.

“Yes.”

“There ain’t no point being born if you ain’t prepared to die.”

But untrained, largely undisciplined, and often high on drugs and alcohol, the militiamen attacking and defending the city are more of a threat to their fellow citizens than their opponents. With their rifles held aloft rather than fired from the shoulder, bullets tend to go up and can land half a mile away, making neighboring areas of the city a deathtrap for anyone who ventures outside. Meters from the front line the three-storey waterfront market has become home to hundreds of local people. On the ground floor children jump between the empty stalls to avoid stepping in what has become a huge toilet for the hundreds of people packed in the floors above, unable to leave the building because of the danger beyond. “We’re dying here,” says Martin Somah, a father of eight who brought his family here 10 days ago. “There’s no food, no water, we’re just waiting for Ecomog (the west African bloc’s military wing) or the Americans to come and save us. People are dying all the time from the stray bullets and the rockets but this is safer than my home. There’s nowhere else to go.” A woman adds: “This place is dirty, cholera could come and get the people any time.”

Throughout the city Liberians exhausted by days without food nestle in whatever shelter they can find from the almost relentless rain and intermittent shelling. Schools, hospitals and ministries find every centimeter at a premium, their floors a patchwork of blankets and bodies. With no electricity, high humidity and packed humanity, most exist in dank conditions. Others make do with makeshift shelters.

Meanwhile President Charles Taylor remains in his mansion. Nothing has been seen or heard of him since a weekend Independence Day ceremony, when he reaffirmed his commitment to step down when the peacekeepers arrive. “No man is more important than the people of Liberia,” he said. Also unseen, the US ambassador, John Blaney, remains in his compound, his peace plan for a withdrawal of the main rebel faction, Lurd, redundant without peacekeepers. Marines in the gatehouse stare through bullet-proof glass at the thousands milling outside.

An armed convoy of US soldiers did briefly leave the compound recently, and was filmed returning minutes later with cases of beer. Lurd declared a new unilateral cease-fire yesterday, saying it would pull its troops back to the port until West African peacekeepers arrived.

Meanwhile in the Ghanese capital Accra, Ecomog officials continue to plan a mission without a date and haggle over the $10 million America has offered to help pay for it.

“That’s a lot of money,” one Liberian says to his friend. “No it’s not,” comes his reply. “They spending over a billion a week in Iraq.”

Earth, a planet hungry for peace

The Israeli apartheid (security) wall around Palestinian population centers (Ran Cohen, pmc, 5/24/03).

The Israeli apartheid (security) wall around Palestinian population centers in the West Bank (Ran Cohen, pmc, 5/24/03).