A nation’s capital melted down last week in an orgy of lawlessness. Perhaps the most disturbing thing of all about Monrovia’s descent into anarchy was that most of the killers and rapists weren’t greedy civilians, but hopped-up soldiers armed and ostensibly under the command of the factional leaders who supposedly run Liberia. “My God – Liberia is worse than Lebanon,” said Shafi Nidal; Lebanese expats dominate retailing in Monrovia and suffered most from the looting. “Something has to be done – otherwise it’s going to be another Somalia,” said missionary Johnson. But these analogies somehow fell short: even the private and U.N. agencies that serve as paramedics to the world’s most forlorn places pulled up stakes, at least for the duration, after their headquarters were sacked and their employees menaced. “It’s a big jungle there,” explained a spokesman for the Red Cross.
By the weekend nearly 1,500 foreigners – most of those at risk – had been evacuated by helicopter to neighboring Sierra Leone. But 60,000 homeless Liberians roamed the capital. Many packed into Mamba Point, the seafront embassy district, where most relief agencies maintained headquarters – and once served to restrain lawlessness. “We are dying here. The children are dying. Where is the international community?” refugee Joseph Johnson demanded of a U.S. official at the embassy’s residential complex, where 20,000 Liberians huddled in makeshift huts. Two refugee children died Friday of dehydration and two others died of injuries. But there was precious little help. The outside world’s sole functioning representative in Liberia was the U.S. military.
“We can’t leave Liberia,” said State Department spokesman Nicholas Burns. The country’s unique history – it was founded in 1847 by former U.S. slaves – gives Washington a special burden there. In the past six years Washington has spent more than $400 million trying to patch things up. And the U.S. troops weren’t in Liberia to quell the violence. President Bill Clinton was compelled to act forcefully to save U.S. lives. He deployed a five-ship flotilla with 1,800 marines aboard from the Adriatic and 900 troops in West Africa, including navy SEALs and Green Berets in Monrovia. U.S. Ambassador William Milam, who took part in U.S. planning sessions over Easter weekend via satellite hookup, wanted massive firepower available in case rescue missions were needed. If violence still rages when the ships arrive this week, broader evacuations may be unavoidable.
Just a few weeks ago Liberia seemed saved. After six years of civil war that killed 150,000 people and dispossessed an additional 750,000, the warlords who had held the country ransom since 1989 submitted to a peace plan signed in Abuja, Nigeria, last August. A six-member State Council was appointed; the presidency was to rotate among warlords representing distinct tribal and regional fiefdoms. Monrovia was declared a weapon-free zone, with security left to members of a West African peacekeeping force. But the Liberian leaders smuggled in many of the their teenage fighters from the hinterlands. And, disastrously, the revolving presidency left out warlord Roosevelt Johnson, a former government soldier and power within the Krahn tribe. While serving as rural-development minister, he waged a power struggle with the peacekeeping forces over control of illicit diamond mines; 20 peacekeeping soldiers died in the fighting. The State Council last month ordered his arrest; on the Friday before Easter a party of police was sent to bring him in. Instead, his armed supporters broke through a police cordon and headed downtown; Monrovia descended into chaos.
Many foreigners had prepared for such a crisis. Though more random, the violence mirrored a 1992 assault on the capital by rebel leader Charles Taylor. This time most expats kept updated on the latest “popcorn” – gunfire – by radio, using pseudonyms like Bald Eagle and Domingo for security. And once the U.S. military began a helicopter airlift to neighboring Sierra Leone, radio helped them assemble for the pickups. U.S. Embassy security chief John Frese personally brought about 200 people to safety by driving to their homes in outlying areas during the worst of the violence.
Survivors seemed less indignant over outrages by the young militiamen than by the 12,000 West African peacekeepers’ unwillingness to intervene. “They have done nothing,” said a Lebanese businessman in Mamba Point. He said peacekeepers had looked on impassively as gunmen forced one group of businessmen to surrender their watches. Ziad Blell, a Lebanese student, said his family had to give peacekeepers its car in return for an escort to the U.S. Embassy. “It was the only way we could get out,” he said. Within sight of the walled U.S. Embassy compound Saturday, two peacekeepers watched as gunmen in track suits drove up to a building that housed U.N. military observers and dragged out mattresses, fans, a telephone, a copier and rolls of toilet paper. After they drove off, another group of looters arrived in a pickup truck and handed the peacekeepers soft drinks before setting to work.
Envoys sent by Ghanaian President Jerry Rawlings tried to negotiate a ceasefire. But members of the government still wanted warlord Johnson arrested. Exhaustion, not politics, seemed to be quieting the violence – hardly a hopeful sign for Liberia’s prospects. “I feel sad that the people here have to live in fear,” said Pat Lindsey, a teacher from Kansas City. “There’s nothing I can do but pray for them.”
