Liberians fight to go to school

MONROVIA, Liberia - Violent protests continue to rock this crumbling capital as dozens of former soldiers who turned in their guns for American dollars and the chance to go to school demand that the transitional government deliver on its promises.

“Every day in Liberia, there is rioting because the combatants want to get into school, but we don’t have the money,” said Molley Paasewe of the National Commission on Disarmament, Demobilization, Rehabilitation and Reintegration.

Since a peace deal was signed last year, the commission has taken weapons and ammunition from 83,000 former combatants. In exchange, the soldiers are supposed to receive $300, a basic education plus training in skills such as carpentry or electronics.

So far, the program has paid 30,000 former combatants and, although 12,500 of them were to start school this month, tuition has been paid and placements secured for only 2,500. The ex-soldiers, mostly men ages 27 to 29, hold daily demonstrations and picketing that turn into rioting and looting. U.N. aid agencies have warned staff to limit their travel in Monrovia.

Money promised by the Norwegian, Swedish and U.S. governments, the European Union and two international aid organizations has not materialized. Of $43 million pledged, about $10 million has reached Liberia, and Mr. Paasewe said it already has been spent.

“The tension is there,” he said. “There is real apprehension that if the funding is not there, we could slide right back to ground zero.”

Liberia is at a crucial stage in its slow recovery from civil war.

Once ruled by descendants of freed American slaves, Liberia’s indigenous population seized power in a 1980 military coup by Master Sgt. Samuel K. Doe. He became president in a crooked 1985 election. His government was notorious for corruption and became the target of coup attempts. Thousands of Liberians fled to Ivory Coast and Guinea.

Late in 1989, Liberia was invaded from Ivory Coast by rebels led by Charles Taylor, who declared himself president. Sgt. Doe was captured the next year by another warlord, Prince Yormie Johnson, who killed him on videotape and fled to Nigeria.

The Economic Community of West African States sent a Nigerian-led peacekeeping force to Monrovia and installed an interim government.

Mr. Taylor’s forces began a siege of Liberia in 1992. Truces were negotiated in 1993 and 1994, but full-scale factional fighting resumed in the capital in 1996. Disarmament began late that year and internationally supervised multiparty presidential and legislative elections in July 1997 brought Walter Taylor to power.

The Taylor government was accused of selling guns for diamonds to Sierra Leone, where a civil war rife with child soldiers and mutilations was raging. The United Nations in 2000 imposed a ban on the international sale of West African diamonds, and in 2001 imposed sanctions on Liberia, where guerrilla attacks against the Taylor government intensified.

In August 2003, Mr. Taylor resigned and went into exile in Nigeria. Vice President Moses Blah succeeded him, but in a matter of weeks Gyude Bryant became chairman of a power-sharing government of the former rebels.

[The British Broadcasting Corp. reported this month that the first of about 100,000 Liberian refugees who fled 14 years of war have returned to Liberia a year after the fighting ended. The U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees is starting to repatriate those who escaped to neighboring Sierra Leone and Ghana. Those in Guinea and Ivory Coast are set to be sent home later.

[An estimated 400,000 Liberians fled the war, the BBC said, but some already have returned home, without the help of the UNHCR.]

Elections are planned for October 2005, and the United Nations, which has secured only four of Liberia’s 15 counties, could leave shortly thereafter.

Nearly 200 refugees returned to Liberia from Ghana and Sierra Leone in the past two weeks, the first phase of a three-year repatriation effort. It is the third time refugees have returned since the 1980 military coup. On previous occasions, many of the same refugees fled the country when fighting flared.

“This is our last opportunity, and if we miss this opportunity, we’re doomed,” said Wesley Johnson, vice chairman of the transitional government.

Returning refugees will face an uphill battle in Monrovia. The capital city lacks running water, has only a partially repaired electrical grid and retains an unemployment rate near 85 percent.

The UNHCR will provide household items such as tarpaulins, blankets, pots and jerry cans, but not money.

That worries Alvin Kpoto, who has to feed his wife, Jeannette Browne, and their two children, Massa, 12, and Teddy, 5. The couple fled Liberia in 1990 after rebels torched their home, and returned in 1997 only to flee again when the fighting became too intense.

Mr. Kpoto ran a foreign-exchange bureau and sold rice before the war. He sold fish and fresh water at a refugee camp in Ghana. He is not sure what he will do now.

“If they give me a loan, I’ll be able to pay back the loan,” he vowed.

Rebecca Krahn traveled from Ghana back to Liberia with her three children, two daughters ages 3 and 15, and a 17-year-old son. The boy left school in fifth grade.

Mrs. Krahn said she is returning to Liberia for the sake of her children’s education, though she is uncertain how she will feed them, let alone pay school fees, because she hasn’t heard from her husband in years.

Finding work for Monrovia’s hungry is a top priority for groups working to bring peace to the West African nation.

“The tendency for people to regroup is very high and the country is still going through a transitional phase,” Mr. Paasewe said.

“A combatant who has spent five days in a [disarmament] camp, his mentality has not changed. You can take away his gun, but he’ll find other means,” he added.

“What they know best is holding guns.”