Now
Liberia has a president,
time to send Charles Taylor for trial
By
Jonathan
Power
TFF Associate
since 1991
Comments to JonatPower@aol.com
November 16, 2005
LONDON - No one is whiter than
white in Liberia. Certainly not the new president-elect,
Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf, who at one time lent her support
to Charles Taylor, Africa's most bloodthirsty and
notorious warlord. But, as one Liberian I talked to in
Monrovia's market said, "we have more than paid for our
sins". Finally after mass murder, mass rape and mass
economic destruction the human spirit has shown its
amazing ability to somersault and become non-violent. Not
a shot has been fired during this election; barely a bad
word word uttered, at least until the results came in.
Somewhere the good words of the
Christian book that the liberated slaves brought back
with them from the United States are being recalled and
remembered. It is a time for forgiveness, repentance and
rebuilding. The churches, at least those still standing,
are packed.
But this begs the question what to
do about Charles Taylor, whose evil deeds probably bare
comparison with Pol Pot? He lives on a comfortable estate
in the seaside city of Calabar in Nigeria, a gift of
Nigerian president, Olusegun Obasanjo. Until now the
international community has given this arrangement the
benefit of the doubt. Indeed the Bush Administration from
time to time has extended its protecting arm when
Congress wanted to push for an opening of the can of
worms.
After all it was a deal that at the
time met with widespread approval. In return for agreeing
to exit his hand-made killing machine and turn his
personal rule over to an interim government that would
welcome West African peacekeepers supported by U.S.
troops, Obasanjo, the deal's negotiator, agreed to give
Taylor refuge.
But the deal had its elements of
ambiguity. The War Crimes Court established by the UN in
Sierra Leone in 2000, continued to demand his presence
for trial on charges incurred during the parallel civil
war in Sierra Leone, which the diamond-hungry Taylor
funded and supported. The court argued that Taylor was
using his exile to stir up further mayhem in neighbouring
Guinea and the Cote d'Ivoire and must be sent for trial
immediately.
President Obasanjo himself opened a
window of uncertainty when, two years ago, he told me in
an interview that if a future freely elected government
of Liberia requested Taylor's return to the country it
had the right to try him at home or send him to Sierra
Leone.
A month ago I asked the
president-elect if she was going to request Nigeria to
extradite Taylor. She replied, "It is better he be sent
straight to Sierra Leone. That's where the trial will be.
There is no need for him to come here first". But
Obasanjo sticks to his original position, arguing to me
that he gave Taylor his word, that word ended the carnage
in Liberia and only a request of Taylor's home government
can override that.
This seems fair enough. It is a
nettle that Johnson-Sirleaf will have to grasp in the
next few months. Better to get it over quickly than to
allow it to linger and become a festering sore. Obasanjo,
with his immense leverage in Liberia as the
peacemaker-in-chief and the provider of the largest
contingent of peacekeepers which will remain in the
country, can persuade the president-elect to act.
Certainly Bush will have no further reason to quieten
Congress on the issue, which has threatened to cut off
all aid to Nigeria and will be reticent to approve the
funds to help rebuild Liberia if the deed is not
done.
Assuming this happens then a
watershed for Africa will have been crossed. After a
decade and a half of rampant civil war and economic
decline a new Africa is finding its feet. And the
extension of international law is playing a large part in
it. Now that governments (the Sudan), rebel leaders
(Uganda, Sudan and the Congo) and presidents-cum-war
lords (Liberia) are being or about to be indicted by
either the International Criminal Court based in the
Hague or the Special Court in Sierra Leone, the initial
legal effort begun with the war crimes court set up a
decade ago in Arusha, Tanzania to deal with the genocide
in Rwanda, is now gathering an immense head of steam.
In present day Africa with a large
number of democratically elected governments and its
increasingly free press the word is getting around that
one can no longer expect to get away with this kind of
brutal savagery. Even in "retirement", as with Taylor,
you can't expect to live peacefully on your looted wealth
for ever, your crimes lost and forgotten in the political
haze.
The worm has turned in Africa.
Copyright © 2005 By
JONATHAN POWER
I can be reached by
phone +44 7785 351172 and e-mail: JonatPower@aol.com
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