Liberia’s main rebel group, which has battled its way to the edge of the capital Monrovia, is said to be guilty of the same massive human rights abuses of which it accuses President Charles Taylor’s government.
The Liberians United for Reconciliation and Democracy (Lurd), fighting to oust Taylor since 1999, has grown from a shadowy force to a movement controlling most of the west African country.
It was recently joined by another rebel group which emerged in the south-east of the west African country where almost uninterrupted civil war since the early 1990s has left an estimated 200 000 people dead.
The Lurd denies any links with the Movement for Democracy in Liberia (Model), but the Liberian government says they are one and the same, and many others share that view.
For the Lurd, Taylor, a former warlord who played a leading part in a previous seven-year civil war, encapsulates all that is wrong with this impoverished country of about three million people.
”The only means for Liberians to recover their dignity and peace is to chase out Taylor, and for that there is no other ways and means than force,” Lurd President Sekou Damate Conneh said in an interview last year.
Taylor, who was elected president in 1997, was last week indicted for war crimes by a United Nations-backed tribunal in Sierra Leone, Liberia’s neighbour to the north.
The court charged him with crimes committed in Sierra Leone’s brutal 11-year civil war, in which some 250,000 people died and many thousands had their limbs hacked off.
Taylor has also been accused of sweeping rights abuses by the international community and rights bodies, who also point out that the Lurd is guilty of the same excesses.
The Lurd, which Taylor says is backed by neighbouring Guinea, a view shared by the United Nations, claims to have some 7 000 soldiers.
The rebels make do with little. They don’t have uniforms and are equipped with light arms such as AK-47 assault rifles.
The force appears structured and disciplined but has no clear blueprint for a post-Taylor Liberia.
”The Liberians will have to choose their own rulers and institutions” when Taylor falls, Conneh said.
The rebels adopted a constitution in May 2001 that states their goals as the promotion of ”peace, reconciliation and national conciousness among Liberians; to ensure respect for human rights, justice, freedom and equality regardless of tribes, religion, or social status.”
The group’s vice-president is Chayee Doe, the younger brother of assassinated Liberian dictator Samuel Doe who was tortured to death in the last civil war.
The rebels stress that they are not tainted by trafficking in so-called ”conflict diamonds” nor in illegal logging, unlike Taylor’s regime which is widely accused of involvement in both. – Sapa-AFP