LIBERIA: UN disarmament programme suspended till late January

Photo: IRIN

Last week's event has led the UN to postpone disarmament until late January 2004

MONROVIA, 15 December 2003 (IRIN) - The United Nations will suspend its campaign to disarm the warring factions in Liberia until late January, when it hopes to have more peacekeeping troops on the ground, the UN Mission in Liberia (UNMIL) has said. UNMIL said in a statement on Sunday night that its first disarmament camp at Schieffelin military barracks near the capital Monrovia had been swamped by more than 8,000 former combatants eager to surrender their weapons since it opened on 7 December. It was only intended to accommadate 1,000 at a time. Scheffelin, which was designed to receive fighters loyal to former president Charles Taylor, would stop admitting new entrants and would stop handing out a US $75 bounty for the surrender of each weapon on Wednesday, it added. UNMIL said the disarmament programme would resume on 20 January once conditions at Schieffelin had been improved. Arrangements had been made to start disarming fighters of the LURD and MODEL rebel movements as well. "The search is going on for the cantonment sites for LURD and MODEL, "UNMIL spokeswoman Margaret Novicki told IRIN on Monday." We are getting in over this month a large number of troops and this will continue into January. It is very important for us to have the troops on the ground and deployed to LURD and MODEL areas in order for the cantonment sites to be built and secured." Novicki said nearly 6,000 of the planned 15,000 UN peacekeepers had so far arrived in Liberia. UNMIL's originally planned to have at least 7,500 men on the ground before the process of demobilising and disarming an estimated 38,000 former combatants got under way. However, the mostly unpaid Liberian fighters have been idle since a peace agreement in August ended 14 years of civil war and have been widely accused of harassing, robbing and raping and killing civilians. Jacques Klein, the UN supremo in Liberia, decided to make an early start on disarmament to prevent these men and child soldiers from drifting away from their military units to form gangs of uncontrolled bandits. UNMIL plans to open its first cantonment site for MODEL (Movement for Democracy in Liberia) in the port city of Buchanan, 120 km southeast of Monrovia. But Novicki said UNMIL had not yet decided whether to open its first disarmament camp for LURD (Liberians United for Democracy) in fighters in Tubmanburg, 50 km north of Monrovia, or Gbarnga, 140 km northeast of the capital. She refused to say whether the first cantonment sites for LURD and MODEL fighters would be ready to open by the time disarmament resumes five weeks from now. LURD and MODEL accused the United Nations of poor planning and urged the UN peackeeping force to get its house in order before the process of demobilisation, disarmament and rehabilitation (DDR) resumed. Mohamed Sheriff, the head of LURD's Monrovia office, told IRIN: "UNMIL must use this period to carry out massive public awareness of DDR, including the incentives for the fighters. Secondly they need to go throughout the country to begin identifying and preparing cantonment sites instead of sitting in Monrovia." MODEL's chief military commander, Boi Blehjue Boi, said: "MODEL's position is whatever time the UN feels comfortable to start DDR again it should be properly arranged." UNMIL has plans to open up to 10 demobilisation camps across Liberia, where combatants will spend three weeks being registered and screened before receiving a demobilisation allowance of US $300. Last week soldiers in the former government army rioted in Monrovia to demand an up-front payment for handing in their guns, killing at least 12 people. UNMIL subsequently agreed to make a first payment of $75 to all combatants immediately after they surrendered their weapons. Some of those who mobbed Schieffelin barracks last week simply went home after receiving this first cash payment. An IRIN correspondent came across a group of 23 LURD fighters drinking beer in a northern suburb of Monrovia on Sunday with the money they had got from handing their guns. "Since our commanders are not ready for us to disarm in Tubmanburg we gave our weapons to UNMIL in Scheiffelin today so that we can get some benefit" said a former LURD soldier who called himself Marwolo, as he sipped a bottle of Club beer.