U.S. Boosts Liberia Mission

About 200 Marines were to land today on Liberian soil in support of West African peacekeepers, in an effort to move humanitarian aid to this desperate capital after the troops take control of the port from departing rebels.

Though fewer in number than the international community had sought, the troops, from three U.S. warships floating a few miles off Liberia’s shore, would be the first significant U.S. force sent to help end the strife in this war-torn country. It is also the largest U.S. military move in Africa since the disastrous intervention in Somalia in 1992.

The current U.S. role is not expected to include combat. The U.S. arrival also depends on the rebels’ making good on their agreement to leave the area by noon, Lt. Gen. Norton Schwartz, director of operations for the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said Wednesday at the Pentagon. The rebels occupy the port and at least half of Monrovia.

The U.S. troops would include a “quick-reaction force” of 150 or more Marines to provide combat power in the event the African peacekeepers “get in trouble,” Schwartz said. The balance of the force would include troops serving as liaisons to African peacekeepers, Navy SEALs to secure the waterway and clear it of obstacles, and engineers to ready the port for delivery of humanitarian aid, Schwartz said.

Pentagon officials said the ground troops could be withdrawn within several days if the operation goes smoothly.

The main insurgent group, Liberians United for Reconciliation and Democracy, or LURD, pledged to withdraw, but there were fears that there wouldn’t be enough food to distribute because of looting.

Some aid officials said there was evidence that LURD was helping the last-ditch looting of Monrovia’s storehouses, accelerating the free-for-all that has been raging for more than a week. Along Monrovia’s main industrial strip, Freeport Street, long lines of people poured out of United Nations warehouses and strained under the weight of rice sacks, gasoline canisters and cartons of cooking oil.

In some cases, ragtag rebel soldiers made vain efforts to stop the theft of badly needed food supplies, battering looters with rifle butts and firing shots into the air. But just as often, the rebels were seen selling stolen goods or loading them into their own vehicles.

Just a few feet away from a group of rebels who were kicking and beating people who were taking cornmeal sacks emblazoned with “USA,” a man calling himself Col. Fire Force loaded his Honda with so much booty that the muffler scraped along the ground.

Commander Sekou Fofana, a senior rebel official who was dressed in a T-shirt, shorts and flip-flops, denied that any of his troops were engaged in the looting and said they were trying to maintain order. “We don’t approve of the looting. We don’t condone stealing,” he said. “Anyone who does this is arrested and punished.”

Then he drove away in a United Nations World Food Program truck.

The extent of U.S. involvement in Liberia, founded by former slaves from the United States, has been unclear since the world community called on the U.S. to take a major role. Liberians, who viewed U.S. intervention as crucial, called for up to 5,000 U.S. peacekeeping troops.

In recent weeks, even as the fighting escalated in Liberia and casualties mounted, President Bush continued to resist international pressure to dispatch U.S. troops here to help stabilize the West African country.

Bush insisted that, before any Americans would be sent, Liberian President Charles Taylor would have to step down and that troops from other West African countries would have to be on the ground to enforce a cease-fire. Taylor went into exile this week, turning power over to his vice president until elections are held.

Speaking to reporters at his ranch near Crawford, Texas, on Wednesday, Bush said he would defer to the African nations on the question of whether to turn Taylor over to an international war crimes tribunal, which has indicted the former Liberian president for alleged war crimes.

“But my focus now is on making sure that humanitarian relief gets to the people who are suffering in Liberia,” Bush said. “Obviously, one place we’ve got to make sure is secure and open is the port,” he said, adding that he would await specific recommendations from the Defense Department “as to what is necessary to fulfill the mission.”

U.S. Marines were to secure the airport this morning and afterward dispatch Cobra helicopters to escort West African peacekeepers’ vehicles as they drove 30 miles into Monrovia. U.S. commanders have told rebel leaders that they must move their forces from the northern Monrovia area of Bushrod Island by noon.

U.S. military officials warned the rebels Wednesday that any armed fighters on the island area after noon today might be fired on.

The plan now calls for more U.S. troops than the “handfuls” Pentagon officials had a day earlier suggested might be deployed. Schwartz said the number of troops had risen after the Nigerians, as well as Liberian officials, asked for a heftier force. Pentagon officials emphasized that the U.S. troops would not be directly involved in peacekeeping duty.

“The objective is to let the Nigerian forces continue with stabilizing key areas of the city” that are needed to provide humanitarian relief, said Lawrence Di Rita, the acting assistant secretary of defense for public affairs.

Schwartz said the reaction force is designed to stay only until the Economic Community of West African States moves an additional battalion of peacekeepers into Monrovia in the next week or so.

There were few skirmishes around the country Wednesday, most of the violence having settled down since Taylor’s departure for exile in Nigeria. Random bullets and reckless drivers posed a greater threat than any orchestrated fighting.

Andrew Tulay, a nurse operating a makeshift hospital at an abandoned brewery, said the rebels had sustained only a dozen or so casualties in fighting since Taylor left. But he estimated that dozens of people had been killed falling out of speeding trucks or in pedestrian accidents in rebel-controlled areas.

At one point, a number of teenage LURD fighters and their commander, self-styled Gen. Dragon Master, chased looters around the country’s main petroleum storage facility with their AK-47s blazing. One of the fighters said they were chasing away civilians because they were afraid someone might light a cigarette in the gas-drenched yard -- apparently not considering the danger of bullets among the massive oil tanks.

Try as the rebels might, the looters returned and formed a long line that led all the way north to an old neighborhood called New Georgia Estates. Monrovians recently re-christened the district New Georgia Graceland, because it is the only way most people can get food from rebel-controlled areas into the more heavily populated, but less provisioned, government territory.

Carrying bags of food in wheelbarrows and on their heads, their slow trek often lasts more than three hours and takes them off the asphalt street and onto a dirt road that becomes slicker and narrower with every step. After so many days of rain and thousands of feet, the path has become a muddy creek.

At the end of the trail is a swamp with three streams. At least five people have reportedly died in the largest of these tributaries over the last two weeks.

On one side of the swamp, rifle-toting rebels levy a toll of $3, a hefty amount for a Liberian. On the other side, government soldiers demand two cups of rice and one cup of beans.

The rebel toll collector makes sure that the people cross the streams single file.

“Go so!” he shouted at one struggling boy, indicating with his machine gun. “Or I will kill you!”

Still, the traffic continued, including an indignant Peatrice Frederick, 43. She sat on a tree trunk with her sacks of buckwheat resting as others filed past. “I bought them from LURD,” she said.

“I have to cross this river every morning so that my children don’t starve.”

Moore reported from Monrovia and Schrader from Washington. Staff writer Edwin Chen contributed from Crawford.