Taylor Holds Out on Departure

Beleaguered President Charles Taylor on Saturday reaffirmed his commitment to leave Liberia but warned that the nation had not seen the last of his administration.

“We are not a vanquished government,” Taylor told a cheering crowd that had braved pouring rain to attend the rally in Monrovia, the capital. “This government remains the government of Liberia. And let me say to you that the Constitution of Liberia will prevail.”

Taylor’s comments raised questions about his departure, a precondition for the U.S. to send peacekeepers. Opponents believe that his words are cosmetic and are convinced that the president’s supporters and political “inner circle” are trying to devise ways for him to stay.

“Traditionally, it is an abomination for a traditional leader to live in exile,” said Cyril Allen, chairman of the ruling National Patriotic Party. “It is an abomination under our culture for a traditional ruler and leader to live outside of his mother’s land.”

Peace negotiations to create a new executive are underway between rebels and Taylor’s government. But many citizens, traumatized by 14 years of war, do not expect a recent cease-fire to hold.

Most Liberians continue to hope for the deployment of U.S. peacekeepers. Wrapping up a five-day trip to Africa on Saturday, President Bush said the U.S. would be “active” in Liberia. However, he reiterated that he had not decided whether to send American troops to the West African nation -- where rebels have threatened to fight peacekeepers -- if Taylor fails to depart before any U.S. troops arrive.

Taylor has accepted a Nigerian offer of asylum but wants an international force in place before he leaves. On Saturday, he described his prospective departure as necessary for the sake of peace in Liberia.

“I have decided to be the sacrificial lamb [so] that you our people would live,” Taylor told the animated crowd. However, he has not given a date for his departure.

Analysts say that Taylor’s closest allies will go to any extreme to keep him in power.

“He has his henchmen who, without him, are nothing,” said Twaplayfano Dohr, an associate professor of political science at the University of Liberia in Monrovia.

A U.N.-backed war crimes tribunal indicted the Liberian president last month on charges of helping to fuel a protracted and brutal civil war in neighboring Sierra Leone. Since then, several of his followers say they have become victims of assault.

“There has been a series of attacks and harassment on most of our members,” said K. Johnson Borh, national secretary of the War Veteran Assn. of Liberia. “People say that we are fighters -- and we brought war to Liberia and carried out destruction. Now that Charles Taylor has been indicted, they say it is their time to pay back.”

Ghana has pledged 1,000 troops for an international peacekeeping mission, and Nigeria said it was ready to field two battalions. But many Monrovians believe that a West African peacekeeping force would serve to prop up Taylor’s regime and that some soldiers might be easily bribed.

Nigeria led a highly criticized peacekeeping mission in Liberia in the early 1990s.

“Even if they send Africans, we want the Europeans to supervise them,” said Dohr, the political scientist. “We [Africans] are greedy. We are not patriotic. We allow ourselves to be used by people who have money.”

Foreign analysts based in West Africa said the ideal scenario would be for U.S. forces to secure Monrovia and gradually spread its military tentacles throughout the country. Then the United Nations would step in and work parallel to the American forces.

A key step would be to provide border security along the frontiers of Ivory Coast, Guinea and Sierra Leone, nations that the Taylor government has accused of sponsoring rebel insurgencies in Liberia. Secondly, the ports and airstrips would have to be sealed off in order to deter importation of arms.

The process of disarmament should get underway before American troops leave the country, foreign observers said. And Washington should plan to keep its troops in Liberia for six to eight months.

“The U.S. presence should not be a half-baked mission,” said Comfort Ero, West Africa project director for the International Crisis Group, a conflict prevention think tank.

Although Taylor has promised international peacekeepers safe passage in Liberia, many proponents saw comments he made Saturday as provocative.

“This land of liberty must never ever become a protectorate of the United Nations,” Taylor said. “That we should give our blood, sweat and tears that it should never happen, that this sovereign people must no longer be slaves, that the cotton field days are over, and that we are free at last.”

With the number of guns on the streets of the capital, many of them in the hands of youths, many residents here feel that they are sitting on a tinderbox.

“Until [Taylor’s] forces are disarmed, we cannot reasonably say that the peace process is irreversible,” said John Richardson, Liberia’s national security advisor. “There are thousands armed on both sides. People will only give up their guns to someone they trust, who will give them some kind of assurance of life beyond a gun.”

Hopes for success of peace negotiations in Accra, the capital of Ghana, are tenuous, as members of Liberian warring factions struggle to come up with a power-sharing deal that accommodates all sides.

Ero, of the conflict prevention group, said that creating a new government with untainted personalities would be difficult.

“They are all compromised in some way,” Ero said. “You’ve got people who Taylor has been able to buy off. You’ve got people who have worked for Taylor.”

Government supporters are eager for those responsible for creating the new administration to adhere to the constitution, which would give Taylor’s vice president the nation’s top job.

But rebel leaders accuse Taylor and his cronies of running Liberia into ruin and turning it into a pariah state.

Basic public services -- water, electricity and proper sanitation -- have been defunct for years. Schools are rundown, and hospitals have few supplies.

Unemployment is soaring, and the vast majority of civil servants who still bother to show up for work haven’t been paid in 16 months.

“Liberia itself is at the bottom. I don’t think it can sink any further,” said Gen. Joe Wylie, a military advisor for the rebel Liberians United for Reconciliation and Democracy.

But Taylor blames international sanctions, slapped on his government for its alleged trade in illegal weapons and diamonds, for his country’s demise.

“Liberia cannot even export one diamond,” he said in a recent interview with foreign journalists. “Now we cannot even export a chair, or a piece of plywood, or a piece of veneer. You shut industry down, you put a million people out of work, and then you say, ‘Well, Taylor, you have 40% unemployment.’ Well, what do you expect me to do? Am I God?”