Stadium hosts football again after displaced people leave

A year ago, Liberia's national stadium sheltered thousands of displaced families fleeing rebel fighters, but last weekend, the sports complex threw open its dilapidated doors to throngs of football fans. "Because of the peace coming we have international football again! It's back! Liberia's back!" said Osman Kamara, one of an estimated 20,000 fans who turned up to see Liberia's national team draw play Togo in a qualifying match for the 2006 World Cup and African Cup of Nations. During his final years in power, former president Charles Taylor decreed that football matches should be held on Saturdays instead of the traditional Sunday so as not to interfere with church. But that initiative went with him when he fled to Nigeria last year. Sunday is once again the day to play big soccer games. Conditions are far from ideal at the Samuel K. Doe stadium, which was built by the Chinese in 1987 and named after Liberia's president at the time. The floodlights and the electronic score board stopped working three years later at around the time that a civil war broke out. The conflict lasted on and off for 14 long years, during which the 30,000-capacity stadium suffered increasing neglect and intermittent looting. "Before the war the stadium was well developed. It was during the war that the stadium got totally damaged, the pitch too," Kamara told IRIN. The stench of urine lingers in the halls and chambers that were used for months as a makeshift shelter by thousands of internally displaced persons (IDPs) who sought refuge in the stadium last year. They flooded in last June as fighters from the Liberians United for Reconciliation and Democracy (LURD) rebel group launched their first of three of attacks on Monrovia. Aid workers now believe that up to 14,000 people packed into the stadium's corridors and sports arena, although higher figures were mentioned at the time. Carrying all they could, the displaced families tried to stay ahead of the rebels who advanced through the northern and western outskirts of the capital to the edge of the city centre. The football stadium lies in Monrovia's eastern suburbs, which escaped most of the fighting. It became the biggest of several makeshift IDP camps to spring up around schools, government offices and other public buildings. Indeed, the stadium became a pit of human misery where women complained of being raped by child soldiers and where disease became so rampant that Medecins Sans Frontieres erected a cholera hospital in its carpark. The battle for Monrovia ended and a peace agreement stopped the fighting throughout Liberia following Taylor's departure in August. But some IDPs stayed on at the Samuel K Doe stadium until April this year. Today, it is still difficult to escape the legacy of 14 years of civil war at the stadium - even at a football match. Nigerian soldiers serving in the UN peacekeeping force in Liberia, helped to maintaind order during Sunday's game against Togo. "Hey! You're supposed to be neutral!" piped up one wannabe comedian from the crowd as a group of blue-helmeted soldiers jumped to their feet when Liberia looked close to scoring. And Nigerian soldiers stood guard at checkpoints on the edge of the city as fans streamed in to attend the game. Battered cars, each carrying up to a dozen people, including two or three crammed into the boot, brought supporters to the game. Many of them waved Liberia's the national flag - a lone star on a red and white-striped background. It was designed by the freed American slaves who established Liberia in the early 19th century. Some adventurous football fans on roller skates clung to passing vehicles to catch a free ride, or perched on the bonnet to cadge a lift to the big game. It was only the second time that Liberia's national squad, 'The Lone Stars', had played a major international fixture on home turf since Taylor left 11 months ago. Kingsley, wearing a woollen hat with U-S-A emblazoned across the front, was among several thousand fans to arrive at the stadium to soak up the heady atmosphere several hours before the mid-afternoon kick-off. "I'm here to see what's happening, but I can't stay for the game - I got to work later," he told IRIN. Wearing a smart yellow waterproof and matching sneakers, Kingsley is one of the lucky ones in post-war Liberia. He works as a waiter at one of several downtown restaurants that have sprung up or resumed operations since the fighting ended. The United Nations estimates that 85 percent of Liberians of working age don't have a proper job, but at least people no longer live in fear of arbitrary looting and killing by ragged an ill-disciplined gunmen. "As there is now peace, people are beginning to get on with a normal life," said a senior officer of the UN International Police Service, which contributed 27 police officers to the 200 security personnel on duty at Sunday's match. When the game ended in a 0-0 draw, frustrations ran high and blue-helmeted UN troops swung into action herding supporters away from the ground. Along the road leading away from the stadium, young men and youths briefly threw rocks. One fan explained that it was hard for them to contain their disappointment at the result, after paying a hard-earned US$2 to see the game. The majority of fans who packed the terraces could not afford to ride in an overcrowded car and faced a long walk home of up to 15km. The crowd snaked back into the city along an unlit road lined with wobbly telegraph poles, stripped of their cables by looters who sold the wire for scrap during the civil war. Before mains electricity can be restored to most of Monrovia, the infrastructure, the city's entire network of power lines will have to be replaced. The process of rebuilding the bullet-riddled and shell blasted capital, which straggles along a sandy peninsula separating mangrove swamps on one side from Atlantic beaches on the other, has begun. It will take time, but there are already some signs of progress, including the return of motor traffic to Monrovia's formerly deserted streets. "Things have changed a lot in the seven months I've been here," explained the UN police officer. "For instance, when I came here we could recognise every car on the street there were so few. Now there are too many to know them all - there are even traffic jams."