UN peacekeepers arrive, but rebel gunmen stay on

There is not much left to loot in Buchanan. Residents recall ruefully how teenage rebels smashed their way through Liberia’s second city when they occupied Buchanan in July last year, stealing whatever came their way. Those with longer memories recall similar excesses by former President Charles Taylor’s National Patriotic Front of Liberia (NPFL) forces in the early 1990s. Gabriel Smith, who heads the Concerned Citizens Movement for Buchanan, and the surrounding Grand Bassa County, said his home city had been stripped bare. “Liberians living here will tell you: we have been looted down to the ground”, Smith told IRIN. Smith described his organisation as offering a bridge between the civilian population and the high command of the Movement for Democracy in Liberia (MODEL) rebel movement. Despite peacekeepers, residents don’t feel safe at night More than six months after taking Buchanan, MODEL is now meant to be retreating into the background, giving up any kind of administrative role. A peace agreement signed in August ended 14 years of civil war and UN peacekeeping troops are now supposed to be in charge of security. But it is far from clear who exercises control in this battered and rambling port city, whose outlying districts stretch far into the lush, swampy countryside. Civilians frequently complain that while Buchanan may feel safe by day, it becomes markedly more dangerous by night, with several no-go areas. Ex-combatants from different factions no longer carry arms openly inside the city and since very few of them have uniforms they are difficult for outsiders to immediately indentify. But they wander round Buchanan in small groups and at night they tend to mill around the few bars that have generators and can stay open late. There they cadge drinks and cigarettes and tell hard-luck stories. They also frequent gambling dens, which operate through the night. Locals warn of young women being used as agents, soliciting information as they tour the bars. A recent rash of unexplained house fires has increased tension. There is now a fledgling civilian administration in place, with a superintendent appointed by the transitional government in Monrovia. The United Nations Mission in Liberia (UNMIL) holds the peace. A column of 250 Bangladeshi peacekeeping troops drove into Buchanan on 31 December to establish a garrison in the city and the UN presence has since expanded. Locals talk excitedly of a UN Kenyan police contingent arriving later in the year. The Bangladeshis have taken up high profile positions. They occupy the former residence of Charles Taylor, which is surrounded by palm trees on the edge of Buchanan, and they control the nearby airstrip. Bangladeshi soldiers also camp out at Radio Gbezohn, one of Buchanan’s two new radio stations, offering both security and the loan of a much-needed generator to the broadcasters. There is no regular power supply in Buchanan and there hasn’t been since 1992. UNMIL checkpoints are scattered around the city, notably on Tubman Street, the main thoroughfare, and in the commercial district. These have been broadly welcomed by traders and shopkeepers. Many of the shops have only just reopened after being stripped by looters last year. Local shops and traders struggle to do business Many businesses on Tubman Street look to be closed for good. But others are making a go of it. Lorries from Monrovia come into town, parking outside the biggest, Lebanese-owned supermarkets. Women sell fish and vegetables. Young men hawk cassettes and containers of petrol. Away from the main road there are churches and meeting places. Smartly dressed school pupils carry their books and files to class. A cinema, showing ‘Action’ videos, is doing steady business. The owner of a hair-dressing salon explained how he has kept his doors open. His staff still offer the ever-popular ‘Satellite Dish’ and ‘On my Wedding Day’ styles to women customers. But there are few takers at present and the shop’s entire stock of beauty products was looted. Clothing seller Matthew Willie said conditions for business have markedly improved since UNMIL came in. He has high praise for the Bangladeshi peacekeepers. “The only security we know is UNMIL”, Willie told IRIN. “Besides UNMIL, we don’t want to see anybody with a gun or even a knife”. Willie said he had managed to keep his stock safe from the looters and was now getting new supplies from Monrovia, 120 km northwest. But there is little profit to be made for the moment. “I have had one customer today. There is no money here, no job, and I have got 11 children to support” he complained. Grocer Francis Onoma was less fortunate. A former teacher, who quit the profession after 10 years living on an impossibly small salary, Onoma was in his shop when the MODEL soldiers arrived. “Every door was opened in the area where I lived”, Onoma recalled. “They just move in freely and take anything against your will”. Onama says his suppliers have been slow to provide more goods, fearing he will be wiped out again. He himself is cautiously optimistic. “I see the light. People yearn for peace after all the suffering”, he said. Ungovernable fighters are still a menace Onoma stresses that Buchanan is a friendly city. “The majority of people act fine to each other”. But he acknowledged that there are “a few disgruntled ones.” He was referring to the young ex-combatants. They are still armed, but most are penniless, unemployed and resentful. Gabriel Smith of the Concerned Citizens Movement highlighted the same problem. He noted that some of the problems are caused by the gunmen who once fought for Taylor. But the MODEL soldiers are his main concern. Smith has had extensive dealings with the MODEL leadership, but he complained that while MODEL commanders readily offer guarantees of good behaviour they cannot always impose them on their fighters. “The commanders turn their backs and the soldiers go and do worse things than ever before”, Smith told IRIN. Other residents of Buchanan spoke of “good MODEL and bad MODEL”, saying there were some figures with authority who tried to rein in the more wayward elements. The more affluent MODEL fighters are easily identified. Ear-studs and bandanas are popular. On Tubman street, young commanders walk around with “bodyguards” in tow and locals warn it is best not to approach them. Smith said MODEL fighters were still preying on farmers and their families in the villages outside Buchanan. He cited the example of a recent MODEL raid on a village during which the fighters beat and tortured people who refused to hand over money, applying rat-traps to women’s breasts. For Smith, a swift and successful disarmament process is needed right now. He argues that the UN’s whole credibility in Liberia depends on this. But the civic leader said there was little sign of anything happening. He spoke with dismay and anger of continuing delays in restarting the UN-led disarmament, demobilisation, rehabilitation and reintegration (DDRR) programme. “If the UN is here to help us, they better help us and save us from these guys”, Smith emphasised. “We want redemption and we need the UN to do something as quickly as possible”. UNMIL’s Chief of Public Information, Margaret Novicki, said the United Nations was doing all it could to relaunch the DDRR programme on a firmer footing after a false start to disarmament in early December. She stressed that a series of pre-conditions had to be fulfilled before disarmament could resume and the armed factions were in full agreement on this. These conditions include the full deployment of UNMIL troops throughout Liberia, the construction of four disarmament camps where ex-combatants will undergo demobilisation – incuding one in Buchanan – and the completion of a countrywide sensitisation campaign to explain to ex-combatants how the disarmament programme will work. Frederick Owens, a local aid worker, specialising in child protection, has been trying to get the DDRR message across to young combatants. He said they were generally receptive. “Most of them are willing to be disarmed”, Owens told IRIN. “They are turning their back on the gun and want to go back to school. If UNMIL started to disarm today, these soldiers are willing to turn over thousands of guns”. Owens has some sympathy for these young men abandoned by their leaders who have secured cabinet posts for themselves in Monrovia, but have done little to help the gunmen they left behind. He rates Buchanan as “70 to 80 per cent safe”, but is reluctant to be on the streets after 8 pm. “We have a concept that once the UN is on the ground, everything is safe, but that’s not it”, he emphasised, adding that a high crime rate is inevitable in the current climate. “People are getting involved in stealing to earn their daily bread”. Foreign companies have left, machines and port stand idle Owens and his colleagues pointed out that Buchanan was a very different city 20 years ago, with regular electricity, a vibrant port, flour mills and factories. Many foreign companies were represented there. Now, the businessmen have fled, leaving only a handful of international relief organisations operating in the city; Medecins Sans Frontières, Concern, Merlin and others. However there has not been a huge influx of humanitarian aid. Owens said investors will want much clearer security guarantees before they return to Buchanan. Gangs of youths continue to plunder what remains of Buchanan’s rundown and rusting industrial belt. Bands of young men work stealthily around the old iron ore plant, looking for bits of scrap metal that they can sell on for the price of a few cups of rice. Their work, described by locals as “hustling”, is illegal, but goes largely unmonitored. Buchanan was once a major port. It exported iron ore which trundled to the coast in long freight trains down a 300-km railway from mines near the Guinean border. LAMCO, a Liberian-Swedish-American consortium, processed the ore at a plant in the port before it was loaded onto ships. In the 1970s and 1980s iron mining accounted for more than half of Liberia’s export earnings. Later, Buchanan became a key centre for Liberia’s highly controversial timber business. After eight years of fighting in the bush Taylor was elected president in 1997 during a lull in the civil war. But the fighting soon resumed and the UN imposed sanctions against his government for supporting insurrections in neighbouring Sierra Leone, Guinea and Cote d’Ivoire. At first the UN Security Council declared an embargo on Liberian diamond exports, but Taylor continued using revenue from uncontrolled logging to fund illegal arms purchases. Last year, the Security Council banned timber exports too. Some international timber companies were widely accused of complicity in arms deals, carrying out brutal deforestation campaigns and allowing illegal exports to neighbouring countries, particularly Côte d’Ivoire. The Oriental Timber Corporation (OTC), a Malaysian company which many people believe to be controlled from Indonesia, became one of the biggest local employers in Buchanan, setting up a US$40 million plywood factory and taking control of the port. Described by the former government as “a true and reliable development partner of the Liberian nation”, the OTC was much praised for its additional work in building roads and hospitals and sponsoring agricultural projects. However, OTC pulled out of Buchanan as MODEL began advancing towards the city last year. The OTC plywood factory stands idle. Large stacks of logs stand alongside the road to the port, which were still awaiting shipment when the city fell. As with most other things in Liberia, a huge question mark hangs over the future of the timber industry. The transitional government led by businessman Gyude Bryant, is keen to resume timber exports soon in order to create a source of tax revenue. However, environmental pressure groups warn that one of Liberia’s most valuable resources has already been decimated, while the revenues which it generated have not been accounted for.