Liberian Killings Increase as Insurgency Becomes Major Threat to President Doe : Africa: The rebels’ success has provoked a wave of indiscipline in the army that has increased disarray in the country.

Liberian government troops and rebel soldiers have been engaging in widespread killings of civilians in what has deteriorated into a series of attacks on each force’s tribal supporters, according to refugees interviewed by an international human rights group.

The refugees with whom the Washington-based Africa Watch spoke were mostly settled in rural districts of Ivory Coast, just across the border from parts of Liberia most affected by the rebel insurgency.

The insurgency, which was begun Dec. 24 by a ragtag force armed with machetes and spears, has developed into a roughly organized and better-armed revolt against the 10-year rule of President Samuel K. Doe.

The report comes as the Doe government faces its most severe social, economic, and political challenge. The rebels have lately claimed to have advanced to within two hours’ march of Monrovia, the capital.

Foreign schools in Monrovia have closed as expatriates and their families flow out of Liberia. But the U.S. State Department said Friday that the rebels this week had kidnaped an American Peace Corps volunteer and two European relief workers who entered Liberia from Guinea.

The account was based on information provided by a Guinean who was abducted with the group Tuesday, but later released. The Guinean told Peace Corps officials that the rebels promise to release the three, probably in Ivory Coast or Guinea.

A spokesman for a French relief group called Doctors Without Borders identified the American as David Kelley, age and hometown unknown. The Westerners were checking water sanitation at refugee centers along the border when they were kidnaped, the spokesman told the Associated Press.

The success of the rebels, led by a one-time government official named Charles Taylor, has provoked a wave of indiscipline in the army that has only increased disorder in the countryside. Armed soldiers are taking to the roads to shake down travelers.

Many of the soldiers were hastily conscripted from among convicts in prison and then armed without any real training, according to Africa Watch and other sources.

Meanwhile, the Doe government has come under criticism from the United States, its principal supporter, for a history of human rights abuses that includes numerous executions without trial, torture, severe repression of free speech and indefinite political detentions.

Among recent incidents was a suspicious fire that severely damaged the headquarters of the Observer, an independent newspaper, March 17. The offices had been burned once before, in 1986, the day after the paper’s editor and publisher, Kenneth Y. Best, was released from detention.

At the same time, however, Doe has moved to reverse some repressive actions that had brought scorn from Western aid donors. He released two leaders of the banned Liberian Unification Party who had been jailed for several years on charges of conspiring to overthrow his government, and he has lifted the bans on two newspapers, Footprints and the Sun Times, as well as on the Roman Catholic Church’s radio station, ELCM, all of which had criticized the government.

Doe now faces an ultimatum from the International Monetary Fund, whose approval is needed if Liberia is to continue to receive World Bank loans and other foreign aid. The fund said March 30 that if Liberia “does not resume active cooperation . . . in seeking a solution” to its millions of dollars in arrears to the IMF by Aug. 30, it will be ejected from the IMF program.

With Doe apparently unable to control rising disorder throughout the country, the U.S. and British embassies have begun evacuating civilians and diplomats from Monrovia. The United States has also suspended all Peace Corps activity in Liberia because of the lack of security in the countryside.

Refugees interviewed by Africa Watch spoke of army and rebel troops alike entering villages and separating the residents into groups by tribe.

“Many refugees spoke of relatives or friends being killed (by the army) just because they were Gio or Mano” tribesmen, the report states.

On the other hand, rebel troops have been seen to cull from among villagers any members of the Krahn tribe, of which President Doe is a member, and execute them.

One village menaced by both sides, the refugees said, is at a rubber plantation called Cocopa, where townspeople of the Mano and Gio tribes provided food to a detachment of rebel soldiers.

A few days later, government troops entered the village in search of collaborators. When the Mano and Gio were pointed out by Mandingo and Krahn townspeople, the Mano and Gio were shot and killed. A few days after that, the rebels returned and in reprisal shot and killed several Mandingo and Krahn men.

BACKGROUND

Liberia, on the western bulge of Africa, was founded in 1847 as a haven for freed American slaves. Descendants of these “Americo-Liberians” form a small Westernized elite, but most of the country’s 2.3 million people are divided among 16 principal tribes. English is the official language. Iron ore and rubber are major exports. The economy also benefits from the Liberian “flag of convenience”--red and white stripes similar to the U.S. flag, but with only one large star on a blue field--flown on more than 2,000 of the world’s merchant ships. Economic and political turmoil in the late 1970s culminated in a military coup April 12, 1980. President William R. Tolbert Jr. was killed, and Master Sgt. Samuel K. Doe took power. After military trials, 13 former officials were publicly executed by firing squad.