Liberia History & Information

By Tarty Teh

[Washington, DC, January 11, 2001] — The intervention force such as what the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) employed in Liberia and Sierra Leone in the ’90s is still not a bad idea. But no one is waiting to book ECOWAS’ Economic Community Monitoring Group (ECOMOG) for the next conflict in the West African neighborhood. The reason for the hesitancy is that whatever is wrong with Africa generally, and West Africa particularly, is pretty much reflected in the make-up of our political and military units.

What fuels the continuing problems for Africa is that most African militaries are raised like free-range livestock – they mostly scrounge for themselves.

But the fact that African armies are headed by generals with chests full of metals belies their lack of both structure and discipline. And so any response to conflict outside each garrison’s own station is an opportunity for robbing civilians to feed their own brood. Yet, we cannot decry the armies’ conduct without acknowledging their responsibility to their families who depend on them for, at least, part of their survival.

That is the general situation, so let’s plug in the relevant examples. Before I went to Sierra Leone and then Liberia as a United Liberation Movement for Democracy in Liberia (ULIMO) official in 1993, I had already heard a warning about Nigerian servicemen crating cars in Liberia and shipping them back home to Nigeria.That warning was delivered in November 1990 in Washington, D.C., by Ms. Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf. It was meant to underscore what appeared to be the transplantation of Nigeria’s criminal elements into Liberia through the Nigerian military. I had dismissed Ms. Johnson-Sirleaf’s charge without denying its validity, and that’s because, for me, the only thing worth protecting in Liberia, at the time, was life.

Less obvious at the time was the plowing of the Liberian countryside by 

Nigerian soldiers in search of plantains.

Less obvious at the time was the plowing of the Liberian countryside by Nigerian soldiers in search of plantains and other staple for shipment back to Nigeria. Soon there were scheduled departures from Liberian ports by Nigerian vessels with goodies bound for home. Even then, our gratitude to the intervention force still exceeded our need to complain about some of the indignities we suffered at the hands of our saviors. So the disassembling of Liberia for shipment abroad continued, and the number of complainers multiplied.

One of the broadcast towers for a religious group in Liberia was meticulously taken apart, crated, and sent to Nigeria. The dish that had crested the tower in Liberia reappeared atop a structure somewhere in Nigeria, with the calling sign of the tower’s last transmission in Liberia still intact – ELWA. It was the American missionaries complaining this time.

Some citizens of Burkina Faso didn’t need an excuse for going to Liberia, and so they felt no need to apologize. They went to Liberia to loot, and did. They carried away power plants, railroad tires, and other industrial equipment. As soon as a conduit for transferring diamonds from Sierra Leone through Liberia to the world market was established, the South Africans came in. But through it all, the biggest concern was not the rogues who came to rob, but the angels who took to stealing – the ECOMOG.

There were moments of pride, however. At the Sierra Leonean international airport, I watched two Nigerian airmen in their 20s climb into the cockpits of their Alpha Jets, and moments later they unzipped the African sky on their way to the Liberian warfront. There were racial, regional, and continental prides all mixed up inside me as tears welled in my eyes. The pilots would fly back to their hotel rooms or commodious staff quarters in Sierra Leone after their bombing runs. But the foot soldiers in Liberia had their noses to the ground in search of survival. Whatever discipline they had would break down against the uncertainties of their mission and the need for survival. And when they came in contact with civilians, it was easy to tell who the predators were. The ones with the guns got what food was available.

So the question is not about African intents toward other Africans. The intent can always be adjudged as being good, but it cannot stand much longer in the face of pressing needs which are often satisfied by rationalizing criminal conducts.

The corruption bred this way is often already present when the African soldier or civil servant takes his next assignment. But this corruption, which was at first need-based, forms part of the character when an affected African migrates to bigger responsibilities. This is why most African presidents steal. This provides a neat perspective for viewing the conduct of African soldiers who, from what we have seen, have a need to steal.