But the message coming out of those churches this week is not one Taylor and the cronies who make up his repressive, nasty regime ever expected to hear. “Nobody wants him to stay,” says Pastor Joseph Johnson of the fearsome warlord turned president who formally handed his resignation to the country’s Congress yesterday.
The Baptist pastor has personal experience of dealing with Taylor. About three weeks ago, he conducted the burial service for the president’s mother, who, unlike many other Liberians, had the luxury of dying of old age. After the service, a group of Taylor’s thuggish bodyguards “borrowed” Johnson’s car to return to the capital. He hasn’t seen it since.
But despite the crushing poverty in which he lives, the pastor no longer cares about his lost vehicle. He just hopes the man who sped off in the heavily protected motorcade, fresh tears still trickling down his cheeks, will disappear just as quickly. Like most Liberians, however, Johnson is worried that his dreams may not come true. Taylor has promised repeatedly that he will leave the country, but his timetable still remains unclear. “I am afraid of what [Taylor] is hoping to achieve if he decides to stay on,” Johnson told NEWSWEEK. He has people who are loyal to him and who are programmed to believe that if he is in the country and not president then it is not in the natural order of things."
Nonetheless, the mere fact that Liberians are becoming less afraid to criticize Taylor’s despotic rule is a telling sign of change–and hope–in the embattled country. Since Nigerian peacekeepers began arriving to an ecstatic welcome from residents this week, ordinary Liberians have become increasingly outspoken about wanting a new leader.
Just to underline that message, a church choir recently broke into “Lord, Let Thy Servant Depart in Peace” as Taylor’s wife, Jewel, was spotted in the Lutheran congregation sitting alongside her sister. “It has been a rough ride and we all want peace,” the First Lady told NEWSWEEK. But, she admitted, she had no idea when she might be moving into the new luxury villa her husband is rumored to have bought in the Nigerian capital of Abuja.
Even Taylor’s own militia fighters now say they want him to go. “What he is hanging around for? This thing has dragged on too long. I wanna go to school, and learn read and writing. As soon as I see a peacekeeper I gonna give ’em this gun,” says “Skinny”–a 20-year-old manning a roadblock with an AK-47 at his side. Skinny started fighting for Taylor when he was 10 and proudly shows two bullets lodged in his back just above the shoulder blade. But like other fighters in the country’s ruined capital, he is tired, hungry and demoralized.
It is easy to understand the frustration. After 14 years of almost nonstop conflict, Liberia is in ruins and its people are suffering. Most recently, weeks of shelling and fighting have left hundreds of thousands of people without food, water or other basic amenities. Sanitary conditions are appalling; disease is rampant.
Ordinary Liberians appear broken and at the end of their tether. A tiny cup of rice, which used to cost 10 Liberian dollars, is now nearer 80 (almost $1.50 in U.S. currency)–far beyond the means of some of the poorest people in the world. The rebels of the Liberians United for Reconciliation and Democracy (LURD) control the port and will not give it up to the peacekeepers or clear the way for humanitarian deliveries until Taylor has left.
In the imposing Masonic Hall overlooking two strategic bridges leading into Monrovia from the rebel-held suburbs, a woman held up a badly malnourished month-old baby. “No food, no nothing here,” says the mother, Sano, who has been sheltering in the building with hundreds of others for more than a month.
Every corner of the dank and dingy building is occupied. It is almost impossible to move around without stepping on a hand, foot or even a sleeping naked child. There is little light, as all the windows have been blocked with sandbags to try to block the stray bullets that have killed dozens in recent weeks. Smoking charcoal fires add to the fetid Dickensian atmosphere.
But winkling Taylor out of office was never going to be easy, and, sure enough, this week “Chuckie” was back up to his old tricks. Yes, he would hand over power as agreed next Monday, Aug. 11. But to whom? Constitutional problems may prevent the vice president, Moses Blah, from taking over as planned. After all, Blah was never properly sworn back in after a brief spell in jail for plotting a coup. Power may therefore have to go to the speaker of the parliament, but that would require a vote and because of the war there is not currently a quorum. So it goes on.
Then there is the question of Taylor’s dignity and security. The dictator he has been indicted for complicity in war crimes committed by his buddy Foday Sankoh in neighboring Sierra Leone, where Sankoh’s rebel fighters were notorious for chopping off people’s limbs. Sankoh died last week before he could face his accusers. Many would like to see Taylor, who met Sankoh in Libya in the late 1980s, up there in his place. Taylor wants the indictment lifted before he goes into exile.
The prospect of Taylor handing over power to some tame lackey and then pulling the strings from the background terrifies the international community, including Washington, which is in something of a quandary over what to do in Liberia. The Bush administration, which is providing logistical and financial support to the peacekeeping mission, has made it clear they will not put any troops on the ground until Taylor has gone. Last week, the Defense Department would not even allow three U.S. warships anchored over the horizon to float into sight.
To keep up the pressure, Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo–the man who has guaranteed Taylor a safe haven if he leaves the country–and South African President Thabo Mbeki, current chairman of the African Union, have decided to fly to Liberia on Monday to witness the scheduled handover-of-power ceremony. Liberians are hoping Obasanjo will take Taylor back with him. If history is any guide, they could well be disappointed.
