LIBERIA

Punished for sins from her past: President Johnson-Sirleaf

President Johnson Sirleaf faces an uncertain future over the decision of her country's truth commission to ban her from holding political office for 30 years.

Hanging in the balance; this aptly describes President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf's political future as the Liberian parliament mulls over the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) recommendation to ban her from holding public office for 30 years. The commission's final report proposed the ban on Johnson Sirleaf and 51 others for helping form and finance warring factions during Liberia's 16-year-long civil war.

The Truth and Reconciliation Commission was established in 2003 to identify the root causes of the war and determine those who committed domestic and international crimes against the Liberian people.

Sirleaf had been part of a group of exiled Liberians who lent their support to then rebel leader Charles Taylor, currently on trial for war crimes at The Hague. Such support included bringing food supplies and financial assistance to Taylor.

At the start of Liberia's civil war in 1989, she and a few other members of the US-based Association for Constitutional Democracy in Liberia (ACDL) then operating in Washington DC "did try to be of assistance to Mr. Taylor when his rebellious activities seemed headed in the direction of a strong response to protect people in Nimba County from an overreaction of the Doe regime to their invasion of the country...We raised the grand sum of $10,000, hardly an amount that could do very much. In fact, it was a mere drop in the bucket. The fact that the sum was so paltry explains why we had so little leverage over Taylor and why he paid so little attention to us, especially when we started raising questions about reports of human rights violations by his troops. Initially, we had committed ourselves to try to do more. But within six months or so, that is around the middle of 1990, we had withdrawn any support and any connection with Mr. Taylor and his group on account of the serious atrocities which were taking place, some affecting long standing political allies of ours," Johnson Sirleaf had said in 2000.

Johnson Sirleaf had survived the Tolbert regime because she was perceived as leaning towards the opposition. She stood up to Samuel Doe, Tolbert's successor, and went to jail before being freed after international pressure.

Like many Liberian opposition leaders then, she had believed that the overthrow of Doe's regime would open the way for democracy in Liberia. Little did she know that she would again be forced into exile, just as she was during most of the tenure of Samuel Doe.

During the days of intense peace negotiations between Liberia's Interim Government of National Unity (the IGNU) and the NPFL, many blamed her for siding with Taylor's faction at the UN. She was said to have been instrumental to the appointment of Gordon Somers, who, somehow, botched the peace process in favour of the NPFL. At the beginning of the war, she allegedly said that Taylor should flatten Monrovia and it would be rebuilt. She was also said to have boasted later that Taylor would not act foolishly as to touch her; but that made the NPFL so angry that she had to postpone her return home.

She eventually did come home to contest the Liberian presidency with Taylor. Although she only campaigned for three months in 1997, she achieved the greatest support among opposition leaders. Thereafter, she was thrown into exile, like many who had opposed or voiced contrary opinions to those of President Charles Ghankay Taylor.

Nevertheless, NRC's ruling on Johnson Sirleaf was not wholly unexpected, since she had, at her last February testimony to the commission, admitted, and apologised for her short-lived support for Taylor, saying she had been "fooled" into believing that his incursion was a revolutionary struggle against the tyranny of the Doe regime..

However, since one of the ideas behind a truth commission is that people responsible for past errors show remorse, the commission may have come hard on her for undermining its process and for not going far enough to show remorse, thereby denying her own culpability. In fact, those who disclosed their misdeeds in greater details and backed that up with a genuine show of remorse were not recommended for further censure or prosecution. For instance, Milton Blayi, alias 'General Butt Naked', admitted his culpability for as many as 20,000 deaths. But, he now speaks often and publicly about repentance.

No doubt, the TRC report has a lot of potential to wreak havoc on Liberia. The peace in the country is still fragile such that the uncertainty and chaos caused by the commission's recommendations may foreshadow even more trouble ahead.

As it is, Liberians' reactions have been that of anger which, given the country's recent history, can easily bubble over into violence. Ominously, TRC officials began receiving death threats immediately after releasing their report. Nimba County Senator Prince Johnson, a former warlord of the rebel group Independent National Patriotic Front of Liberia, warned of violence if there any attempts are to arrest him based on the TRC recommendations.

It is not though that Sirleaf would be forced out of office before her term ends in 2011. The president's position has been strengthened by the merger between her Unity Party and two other major groupings, the Liberia Action Party and the Liberia Unification Party. The merger had been designed to present an unbeatable bid for power in 2011. But, it will give the president increased support in the legislature, and could thus prove extremely useful if and when opposition parties and individuals seek to embarrass her with the TRC findings.

As yet, however, there is no sign that opposition groups such as the Congress for Democratic Change headed by a former footballer George Weah, are proving able to capitalise on any disillusionment caused by the TRC report.

The next step now is to create a separate human rights commission to implement all the recommendations, including investigating individuals further and following through with prosecutions. Even in the best of circumstances none of this will happen immediately. The TRC act calls for a quarterly report on the progress of the implementation of its recommendations. But a major impediment to the implementation of TRC's recommendations is Liberia's justice system, which would need a complete overhaul for proper investigations to take place. The court system is dysfunctional, due to a lack of qualified personnel, and unpaid salaries of judges, prosecutors, and court staff. Also, the penal system would need to be revamped. At the moment, prisons are overcrowded and offenders are frequently freed for lack of space. Moreover, it is often possible to bribe one's way out of jail, making it likely that even if accused war criminals were prosecuted they'd be out in no time.

Nevertheless, President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf finds herself between a rock and hard place. To condemn the TRC report would look self-serving, but to accept its findings would seem as though she agrees with its recommendations against her. Right now the best thing Sirleaf can do is hold tight and begin implementing some of the less contentious, peace building recommendations-like declaring a memorial day for the dead and rebuilding communities that were destroyed by the war.

In the longer term, though, the president faces significant challenges, even without the TRC pronouncements. Consolidating peace and democracy, rebuilding and developing the Liberian economy are immense tasks, while Liberians have high expectations and hope to see their quality of life improved quickly. Although Sirleaf currently has widespread support, both at home and internationally, this could dissipate if she fails to deliver tangible improvements in the standard of living. Patience with the administration as regards corruption is already starting to wane because of the lack of progress in prosecuting those accused of graft or reducing its occurrence.

The Liberian civil war began on Christmas Eve 1989, when Charles Taylor led some 168 lightly armed men of his National Patriotic Front of Liberia (NPFL) into the country's Nimba County from their base in neighbouring Ivory Coast.

In addition to seeking Johnson Sirleaf's ban from public office, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, which began actual sitting three years ago, also recommended the prosecution of all former warring faction leaders and 98 other associates, including Charles Taylor, Prince Yormie Johnson, Alhaji Kromah, George Boley, Saah R. Gbollie, George Dweh, Aldophus Dolo and Moses Blah, Taylor's last deputy, for gross human rights violations and war crimes.

The commission, mirroring the South African Truth Commission, is expected to do for post-civil war Liberia what its forerunner did for post-apartheid South Africa. But unlike classic Greek drama plots that often develop from crisis to catharsis, the Liberian Truth and Reconciliation Commission may yet not provide the catharsis to Liberia's cycle of crises.

On trial at the Hague: former President Taylor

Sour-grapes from Taylor

Former Liberian President Charles Taylor has said he was duped by Nigeria into being arrested there in 2006. Taylor told judges at the Sierra Leone War Crimes Tribunal sitting in The Hague that then Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo had reneged on a promise to let him leave the country freely. He also claimed a plot involving Britain and the United States led to his indictment.

Taylor is accused of backing rebels, who committed widespread atrocities throughout the 1990s in Liberia's neighbour Sierra Leone.

He was living in exile in Nigeria in 2006 when US pressure to put him on trial for alleged war crimes intensified. According to Taylor Obasanjo, currently United Nations peace envoy for the Great Lakes region, told him lies that caused him to be arrested.

"He lied to the world when he said I was escaping, and he knew nothing about it," Taylor said. "Why he lied? I don't know, but as a brother and a friend, I think he ought to speak and tell the truth about it." Taylor's arrest was a dramatic and, till date, a mysterious affair. After Obasanjo said Liberia's new government was free to take Taylor into custody, the former Liberian leader suddenly disappeared while Obasanjo was on his way to Washington to meet his US counterpart, George W Bush.

Then, equally suddenly, the Nigerian security announced that they had arrested Taylor for trying to escape. He was captured, allegedly with huge sacks of cash, on the border with Cameroon, some 1,000km (600 miles) from the southern city of Calabar, where he had been living in exile.

Taylor had been given asylum in Nigeria as part of a deal to end Liberia's civil war, though human rights groups accused him of breaking the terms of the deal by continuing to interfere in Liberian politics. On what was the final day of his testimony, a defiant Taylor told the judges in The Hague that he hoped he would live to look Obasanjo in the face one day and ask him to tell the truth about what happened.

He claimed he was a victim of an intelligence plot involving the British and US governments that supplied weapons to the region in an attempt to topple him, as part of a plan by Washington to gain control of west African oil reserves. The US position was that "we cannot have anyone in Liberia that we don't think is going to dance to our tune," he added.

He also said he was a peace broker and repeated denials that he had supplied arms to Sierra Leone rebels in exchange for blood diamonds.

Taylor had escaped just days after Obasanjo reluctantly agreed to hand him over after resisting calls to deliver him to the UN-backed war crimes tribunal in Sierra Leone. His subsequent arrest in Nigeria followed an intense diplomatic arm-twisting in Washington where Obasanjo, then on a visit to the country was warned that he risked the cancellation of a scheduled meeting with US President George W Bush if Taylor, who had just slipped away from the Nigerian villa where he had been under house arrest since he left Liberia in 2003, was not found.

And just hours before Obasanjo's White House meeting, it was announced that Taylor had been recaptured. l