Food Becomes Weapon of Bloody Civil War That Divides Liberia : Hunger: Starving citizens are helpless victims amid armies’ battles. Rebels spend as much time fighting each other as they do attacking country’s president.

The woman crouched alongside the road, slowly swaying back and forth, holding her baby loosely in her shawl.

The curfew was in force but she did not care. She had given up.

Her bare feet splashed in the rainwater puddle, stirring the sand. She was young. She was lost. The war had killed her spirit but she could not die.

“I can’t, I can’t. There’s nothing. I don’t want your money. Nothing to buy. Nothing to buy. I don’t want your money,” she said as she stamped her feet in the puddle.

The baby screwed up its red face. The woman was too tired to cry or even listen. She put the money given her on the pavement.

Hunger has almost emptied the streets. The only people left are too hungry to get off the road when the curfew starts. They don’t care what the soldiers might tell them or do to them, or that they might steal from them.

They don’t know when the curfew starts. The sun goes down and it’s just another night on the street.

Liberia’s civil war has become bloodier and more brutal each month since former civil servant Charles Taylor launched his drive to oust President Samuel K. Doe in February. Rival rebel leader Prince Johnson split from Taylor’s group and the two rebel armies encircled the capital.

But what began as a quick advance on Doe’s executive mansion bogged down and today the rebels spend as much time fighting each other as they do attacking Doe. Deep tribal divisions have resulted in several massacres of refugees and innocent civilians.

People have crossed the river to where Prince Johnson’s rebels have opened some of the warehouses and handed out rice. Up to 3,000 people wait in queues. They wait in the rain along the road. They wait and they beg and they faint from hunger. But they still wait.

Freddie from the Lebanese Embassy arrives at a foreigner’s house with ham, tins of milk, prunes, crackers and bottles of Amaretto and Cinzano. His prices are high but he doesn’t reveal them until after the purchaser makes his selections. Then he mutters about the sliding exchange rate.

The food Freddie sells is stolen. Some of it came from the Ashi supermarket. The owner of the Ashi was arrested by the rebels. He had been providing food for President Doe. Even the president is running short of food. The rebels arrested the supermarket owner and burned his supermarket.

The hungry people saw it burning. They knew what was inside.

Prince Johnson shot a man he said was profiteering from the war. The man, a Liberian called Bashi, was selling rice to refugees across the river from the city center. Johnson, though he had agreed to the sale as a way of preventing a stampede for rice, shot the man while he was handcuffed to a French aid worker who had been doing the same thing.

The rice belonged to the Firestone Rubber Co. The U.S. government had agreed to buy the rice from Firestone and then have it distributed.

Johnson is proud that he shot a profiteer. Now he is planning on selling the rice himself. He thinks it’s a good idea, a good way of stopping a stampede of hungry people. Some Lebanese people are going to arrange it for him. And, of course, they will take a cut of the money.

“Do you think it’s a good idea?” he asks, sitting back in his chair at the roadside cafe that is his field headquarters. Everybody nods. He swigs at a near-empty bottle of rum. It’s 10 a.m. He grins and puts his hand over his mouth in a slightly childish gesture, like a naughty boy somebody has given a war to play with.

His troops all clap in sincere approval.

A group of women come around the corner of the cafe. They plead and beg for rice. One of them becomes hysterical. Her high-pitch voice grates and infuriates Johnson. He hits her. Pushes her and the others away. They run, moaning, afraid he might shoot at them.

He empties his bottle of rum.

Now that the stores are empty of food, the government soldiers have taken to stealing the floor tiles, the shelves and the light fixtures.

Nobody really understands why. There is nobody to buy the goods. And everybody knows the soldiers probably will die when the rebels attack the palace and they realize at last that they have nowhere left to go.

Even the president will have nowhere to go. The U.S. Marine helicopter will not be able to take him out now. It would be too dangerous.

Instead, the troops loot the shops of what is left, while a few blocks away the rebels shoot at them. But they would rather steal and die than defend themselves. Steal until there is nothing left to steal and then die with a roomful of light fixtures, floor tiles and empty shelves.