A woman and three small children emerge from gloomy bush at a sunlit river bank marking Ivory Coast’s western border. On the far shore — 50 metres of swirling brown water away — is Liberia’s dark rainforest, and long-running civil war.
Behind Rose Eshun and her family is another war, a new one, in which they and thousands of Liberian refugees like them are targets.
”This used to be a good place, we had no troubles,” says Rose (34) in the soft accent of America’s deep south, brought to Liberia by freed American slaves. ”Now, they’re beating us, killing us. Even our neighbours, people we lived with for years.”
The change came three months ago, when rebels rose up in western Ivory Coast, backed by fighters from Liberia. ”When Ivorians see us, they see rebels,” says Rose, as nearby a gang of Ivorian youths watches in silence.
Their faces are smeared with charcoal in the belief that this will protect them against bullets; in their hands, they carry shotguns and clubs.
According to refugee reports, local militias such as theirs have murdered hundreds of Liberians in recent weeks, as Ivory Coast, formerly one of the Africa’s most harmonious countries, fractures along tribal lines.
”They have to leave,” says one 21-year-old warrior, Lucien Sery, of the hundred-odd Liberian refugees preparing to recross the Kavali river. ”They came to Ivory Coast to kill our people.”
A lurching canoe ride later, and Rose clambers back into the country she fled a decade ago. ”It feels good,” she smiles, brushing down her blue polka-dot dress.
But her eldest daughter, Grace (13) looks troubled. She remembers nothing about Liberia; prefers French — Ivory Coast’s main language — to English; and says she will miss her friends. ”Just say you’re happy,” Rose teases her, ”because we’re staying.”
Rose and her children face a few weeks in a transit centre run by the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), while she tries to locate her mother and seven sisters.
Her husband, Francis, faces greater danger: stuck 160 kilometres into Ivory Coast, surrounded by roadblocks mounted by charcoal-coated fighters. ”By the grace of God, he’ll make it, and we’ll be together again,” says Rose. ”Then we’ll be happy.”
Five months into Ivory Coast’s war, which began with a rebellion in the north by longstanding migrants from Burkina Faso, the government is making no obvious effort to end it.
It has reneged on a French-brokered agreement to share power with the rebels, though it controls barely 40% of the country. As it delays, meanwhile, small ethnic conflicts are flaring, mainly aimed at Ivory Coast’s more than 4-million refugees and economic migrants.
”Where you have local wars fuelled by international ingredients you have a recipe for a humanitarian catastrophe,” says UNHCR’s Astrid van Genderen-Story.
To escape the killing, thousands of Ivorians are fleeing south from the rebel-held north, while thousands of migrants from Mali and Burkina Faso are fleeing north.
Last week, the UN World Food Programme began delivering emergency aid to Bouake, the northern rebels’ headquarters, though its population of 500 000 has almost halved since the war began.
In the west, the extent of the disaster is unknown because most of the area is considered too dangerous for aid workers to enter. ”But we know there are 8 000 Liberian refugees missing in Grabo zone,” says Anne Dolan, UNHCR’s field officer for western Ivory Coast of a district just 65 kilometres north of her headquarters in Tabou, close by the Kavali river. ”We’re assuming they’re being killed up there.”
In a crowd of desperate Liberians outside Dolan’s office, Christopher Sankon (21) has a missing right hand to justify her fears.
Two weeks ago, militiamen in nearby Tarariye accused him and seven other Liberians of being rebels, and bundled them into the forest. Four were shot dead; three were wounded and left for dead. Christopher was badly beaten and his right hand blown off. ”What can I do now?” he mutters, hunched over his ban daged stump. ”I can’t go back to Liberia; there was no work there when I had two hands.”
Even as he limped towards Tabou, Christopher was attacked by the militiamen again, he says, showing a fresh stab-wound in his shoulder-blade. Asked where he will go now, he simply shrugs.
Other refugees, several thousand of them according to Dolan, cannot return to Liberia because they would be killed there.
Atolphus Ivy (38) is one. His father and two uncles were murdered by fighters loyal to Charles Taylor, the former rebel who is now Liberia’s besieged president, for being senior officials in the previous administration.
”The minute I’m in Liberia, I’m dead,” he says.
Last week, Atolphus left his wife and seven children hidden in the forest outside Tabou, to visit the American embassy in Ivory Coast to discuss resettlement. Now he is too scared to travel the 320 kilometres to Abidjan, Ivory Coast’s commercial capital.
”My appointment was last week,” he says, showing a letter from the US immigration agency to prove it. ”But with all these militiamen, the roads aren’t safe for Liberians. I’m fearing for my life.”
Meanwhile, across the swirling Kavali river, Rose and her three children take up their pathetically few possessions, to venture further into violent Liberia.
”There’s war here too, but I thank God,” she says. ”At least we’re home.” – Guardian Unlimited Â