What's
Driving The Liberian Bloodbath
By
Noah Leavitt
Counter
Punch
03 August, 2003
Two
weeks ago, after 14 years of intermittent civil war, a rebel army composed
of teenagers with outdated rifles attacked Monrovia, Liberia's seaside
capital and have since taken control of a large portion of the country.
The battles have killed hundreds of civilians, filled refugee camps
and led to an outbreak of disease. As an indication of the international's
community's concerns about events there, on Friday, the UN Security
Council voted during an emergency session to send a multinational force
to calm the fighting while a new government is formed.
Despite various
"cease-fires" and ongoing peace talks in neighboring Ghana,
Liberia seems to be descending into chaos with no relief in sight. The
main rebel group behind the attacks, Liberians United for Reconstruction
and Democracy (LURD), has stated that it will fight any interfering
peacekeeping force.
Of even more concern,
the insurgents initial attacks seemed to be concentrated on the U.S.
embassy, where thousands of terrified civilians gathered. Frenzied Liberians
piled mutilated corpses in front of the embassy's shuttered gates.
Many have called
upon the U.S. to intervene, citing its "special relationship"
with Liberia--which was founded primarily by freed U.S. slaves who left
to create their own nation. Few accounts have detailed, however, precisely
what the nature of this "special relationship" has been and
why, from a moral perspective, it imposes obligations on the U.S..
In the following
pages, I will use a legal concept drawn from contract law to explain
the basis for the U.S.'s responsibility toward Liberia. The concept
is "detrimental reliance." A contract is an exchange of promises.
When one party breaks its promises, and the other has relied on that
promise and suffers as a consequence, the latter party is said to have
"detrimentally relied."
Liberia detrimentally
relied on a number of promises and representations--explicit and implicit--made
by the U.S. over the past century and a half. Historically, the United
States has acted in such a way as to represent that it will provide
for Liberia's economic well-being and security. But over history, it
has let Liberia down--at no time more conspicuously than now.
In a contract case
in which detrimental reliance was shown, the remedy would be damages.
In this human rights crisis, the proper remedy is aid; humanitarian
intervention; and the U.S.'s sending troops immediately to stabilize
Liberia and protect innocent persons there from further atrocities.
The "Special
Relationship" Between Liberia and the U.S. : Lengthy and Deep
As a review of Liberian-U.S.
ties will show, America's special relationship is based on its using
Liberia's resources to advance its security interests, and for economic
gain.
In the early 19th
century, Paul Cuffe, a wealthy African-American merchant from Massachusetts,
became convinced that the only way that American blacks could become
self-governing was to emigrate to Africa. To this end, he helped create
a transportation company called the American Colonization Society. With
the U.S. government's approval, the Society began to resettle free American
blacks in Liberia.
Those pioneers were
the original Americo-Liberians. In the small tropical nation, they quickly
became the ruling group, assuming all positions of power and influence.
Soon they constituted a U.S.-friendly elite. (It was also an elite whose
skin color was typically lighter than that of the original Liberians.
Sadly, then, the Americo-Liberians created a hierarchy that, in this
respect mirrored the racial hierarchy they had endured in the U.S..)
In the 1920's--in
large part because of the presence of this friendly elite, and that
of a considerable U.S. naval fleet just offshore--the U.S.-based Firestone
Tire and Rubber Company founded the largest rubber plantation in the
world in Liberia. The company installed Americo-Liberians in positions
of power, and the small elite rose to economic prominence.
Subsequently, Liberia's
president, William Tubman--who ruled from 1944 to 1971--allowed the
CIA to build the largest spy station in all of Africa within his borders.
During the Cold War, the U.S. sank billions of dollars into developing
surveillance equipment in Liberia. Liberia also functioned as a U.S.
outpost from which the U.S. sought to undermine national liberation
movements throughout the continent.
After Tubman's death,
his successor, President William Tolbert, angered the U.S. by courting
favor with China and Cuba. Tolbert also angered most Liberians by showering
privileges on his fellow Americo-Liberians. The ethnic and class conflicts
between the Americo-Liberians and the darker Liberians grew.
In 1980, Tolbert
was murdered by Samuel Doe--an illiterate warlord trained by the U.S.
Green Berets. Doe became the first "true" Liberian to rule
the country. Doe assassinated most of the former cabinet members as
well as his fellow insurgents, and unleashed a wave of ethnic-based
terror.
Doe also exploited
America's Cold War fears concerning Africa. Famously, President Reagan--who
handed Liberia more than $5 billion during the early 1980s--invited
Doe to the White House, addressing him as "Chairman Moe."
Charles Taylor's
Ascension to the Presidency
Around the same
time, Charles Taylor--an Americo-Liberian who had graduated from Bentley
College in Massachusetts, and was in prison there on charges of embezzling
part of the Liberian national budget--escaped, and returned to Liberia.
Taylor quickly became
Doe's main adversary. He led a ragtag group of boy soldiers who for
years hounded Doe's army and the civilian population from their countryside
hideouts. By the mid-1990s, that protracted civil war had claimed more
than 200,000 lives. In 1997--as a result of national presidential elections
that international observers concluded were essentially open and fair--Taylor
won, garnering more than 75% of the vote of the war-weary population.
Taylor used his
new power to foment instability in neighboring Sierra Leone, in large
part so he could mine diamonds there to fund other regional military
insurgencies. Indeed, over the past decade, Liberia has been at the
center of a complex web of regional battles in West Africa one
that has also consumed Sierra Leone, Ivory Coast and Nigeria--that has
involved not only such diamonds, but also illegal arms sales, massive
refugee flows, the use of child soldiers and unspeakable human rights
abuses.
When the world became
savvy to the problems of "conflict diamonds"--illegally mined
and traded diamonds that could fund arms trade and terrorism--Taylor
diversified his business interests, in ominous ways.
Recently, the Center
for Investigative Reporting detailed the links between illegal harvesting
of Liberia's tropical rain forests and illegal arms smuggling in the
area. The report noted that U.S. consumers are buying large volumes
of wood products from Liberia--though it has been repeatedly sanctioned
by the UN because of these sales. The report also noted that, unlike
many other countries, the U.S. has failed to ban the import of Liberian
wood, and thus to comply with the UN sanctions.
The Al Qaeda
Link: The U.S.'s Continuing Interest in Liberia
Currently, the United
States is particularly interested in the arms/wood trade in Liberia
because Al Qaeda has been funding many of its activities through income
sources such as diamonds and timber. Accordingly, Liberian intelligence
may offer some help in tracking the financial dealings of Al Qaeda.
In addition, the
U.S. fears that a destabilized Liberia could become a training ground
for other terrorist groups. Its porous borders, excellent natural wealth
and lack of any sort of government or control make Liberia, in some
ways, a perfect base of operations for terrorists.
The Recent Crisis
in Liberia
Though Liberia has
been troubled for a long time, the source of its current crisis is surprisingly
recent. Less than two months ago, on June 4, a U.N.-backed court in
Sierra Leone charged Taylor with "bearing the greatest responsibility"
for war crimes, crimes against humanity and other serious violations
of international humanitarian law. Shortly thereafter, Taylor promised
to leave office.
As a result, a cease-fire
among rebel groups was signed, and representatives of the surrounding
countries started to plan for a new Liberian government. But when Taylor
refused to set a date for his departure, the fighting quickly resumed.
Last month, Taylor
accepted an offer of asylum from the President of Nigeria--who said
he would shield Taylor from war crimes charges, but only if Taylor stayed
out of Liberian politics. On Friday, a group of West Africa negotiators
traveled to Liberia to try to arrange Taylor's departure, yet, ominously,
he disappeared shortly before their arrival.
The U.S. has demanded
that Taylor leave the country before it will decide on the deployment
of even a limited number of troops for a temporary mission, even though
they are parked just offshore in several large combat vessels. However,
Taylor has refused to leave until peacekeepers arrive--ironically contending
that if he did, Liberia would descend into chaos and "total destruction."
The result is a stalemate during which Liberians will continue to die.
Unsurprisingly,
without a credible threat that troops will soon arrive, the LURD and
other rebel groups are pressing ahead with their attacks. Yet the African
regional security body and the UN are hesitant to respond--and again,
the main culprit is the U.S.'s mixed signals.
For all these reasons,
it seems plain that the bombs will continue to fall in Monrovia. It
also seems plain that the U.S. is in large part to blame for that fact.
Liberia's Detrimental
Reliance on U.S. Support
The sources of the
U.S.'s responsibility to intervene in Liberia are twofold.
First, throughout
Liberia's history, its enduring relationship with the U.S. has brought
Liberians to count on the United States for financial support and security.
And that is only fair; the U.S. has not only interfered in Liberian
politics, but has enhanced its own finances and security greatly as
a result of its relationship with Liberia.
Under similar circumstances,
France and Britain stepped in and established peace when their former
colonies Ivory, Coast and Sierra Leone, were in turmoil. The U.S. should
do the same.
Second, right now
Liberians--as well as other West African nations, and the UN itself--are
relying, to their detriment on the U.S.'s specific promises to send
troops--promises that have yet to be fulfilled. Every day this reliance
creates greater damage--damage measured in human lives.
It is high time
for the U.S. to more fully intervene to help a country that has so long
relied on its reciprocal relationship with the U.S., and on U.S. promises.
If the U.S. fails to do so, especially when it could do so quite easily
compared to other military involvements, the rapidly growing chaos in
Liberia may well develop into a regional disaster. And that disaster
could itself develop into a human rights catastrophe.
It's important to
recall that it was only a decade ago, in Rwanda, that civil unrest led
to one of the worse human rights disasters of this century. The darker-skinned,
subordinate Hutus suddenly, brutally slaughtered the light skinned minority
Tutsis with machetes and other weapons. The U.S. not only failed to
intervene at an early stage when it could have stopped the fighting--it
also gave mixed signals to the U.N. and Africa security bodies, further
delaying any possible intervention. That conflict left half a million
dead and scattered a million refugees across the continent. The U.S.
owes it to Liberia to prevent a similar outcome there.
As I noted above,
a basic principle of U.S. contract law holds that if one makes a promise
to someone who is hurt by relying on it, one must account for the damage
one has caused. This simple legal and moral--principle explains
why the U.S. is responsible for stopping the Liberian crisis before
it becomes even worse.
Noah Leavitt,
an attorney, practiced refugee law in Cape Town, South Africa. He can
be contacted at [email protected]