The rebel group besieging the Liberian capital Monrovia for the past week appears to have little political agenda beyond ousting President Charles Taylor, according to analysts.
Liberians United for Reconciliation and Democracy (Lurd) emerged from the north of the country four years ago and other than fight its way to the gates of the seaside capital, has done little to state its vision for the nation should it seize power.
When asked this week to articulate Lurd’s agenda, even its leader, Sekou Damate Conneh, simply told the BBC: ”We want to liberate the country, we want Taylor to go.”
Reports by the respected think-tanks the International Crisis Group (ICG) and the Royal Institute of International Affairs suggest Lurd’s politics go little beyond this.
”Lurd is no different from those it seeks to replace in Monrovia,” says ICG in its most recent report on Liberia. ”Lurd is ruthless and interested only in grabbing power.”
”They haven’t really had much of a vision except for the removal of Mr Taylor,” Alex Vines of the Royal Institute told the Voice of America last week.
”When I’ve been in Lurd areas earlier this year, I was struck that these rebels didn’t really have any long-term vision and I think that’s been reflected in the behaviour pattern that we’ve seen over the last five days,” said Vines, a former member of a UN expert panel on Liberia.
Lurd forces have launched fierce but indiscriminate mortar attacks on Monrovia in recent days, with rounds landing throughout the city centre killing numerous civilians. This was despite pledges by its leaders that they did not want to take Monrovia by force and had ordered troops to observe a ceasefire.
Like most 21st-century rebel groups, Lurd has used the internet to put forward its manifesto. One of its commanders, General Joe Wylie, describes Lurd as ”an armed, political organisation dedicated to the building of a genuine democracy in the Republic of Liberia through the removal of the repressive Taylor-led government.”
It pledges to uphold the constitution, respect human rights and restore basic services to the crippled country.
Analysts say Lurd gets military support from the government in neighbouring Guinea — where its leader Conneh is based — as payback for Taylor’s support of Guinean rebels. Lurd also receives ”tacit support” from the US and Britain, according to the Washington-based watchdog group Global Security.
Lurd was formed by an uneasy alliance of the Mandingo and Krahn ethnic groups, who dominated the country during the 1980s under the military ruler Samuel Doe, whose regime fell to Taylor’s rebellion.
But a splinter group of Krahns recently broke off to form the rebel Movement for Democracy in Liberia (Model), backed by the government in neighbouring Ivory Coast and now controlling much of the southeast.
Lurd still appears riven by disagreement among its leadership, with Wylie publicly denouncing Conneh and the pair contradicting one another over the group’s stance on a ceasefire and peace talks.
”They are not united, have no clue what reconciliation is and wouldn’t recognise democracy if it bit them in the face,” says Theodore Hodge, a journalist with the US based newsletter The Perspective, run by exiled Liberians.
Human rights groups have also alleged that Lurd uses child soldiers and is guilty of the rape and harassment of civilians.
Meanwhile, West African leaders met on Monday to discuss a long-promised and long-stalled peace force for war-gripped Liberia, with Nigeria’s army saying the first troops could deploy by Tuesday.
In Monrovia, shelling persisted overnight as Taylor’s forces and rebels battled at bridges leading to Taylor’s stronghold in downtown.
One rocket, fired by Taylor’s forces from a high building, fell short and plowed into the bedroom of a home on the government side, injuring eight civilians inside, eight workers said.
Residents have blamed both rebels and government for bombardments that has killed scores of civilians in neighbourhoods around the bridges, as rebels press their now 9-day-old siege of Monrovia.
Insurgents are driving home their three-year-old war to force out Taylor, a former warlord blamed in 14 years of nearly constant conflict in this once prosperous West African nation, founded by freed American slaves in the 19th century.
In Accra, Ghana, Nigerian military leaders were to meet with Ghana President John Kufuor to wrap up plans for deployment for the first peacekeepers to Liberia, Nigerian army spokesman Colonel Chukwuemeka Onwuamaegbu said.
Nigeria, West Africa’s military power, has promised two battalions with a total of about 1 300 men. The fighters would be a vanguard of what West African leaders say should be another, 3 250-strong peace force to enforce any ceasefire between Liberia’s warring sides.
One Nigerian battalion is to peel off from a UN peace force already in Sierra Leone. The second, a mechanised infantry brigade, is to come from Nigeria.
Onwuamaegbu said deployment could come on Monday or Tuesday. Any decision on timing is up to West African leaders, however, he said.
Deployment of a peace force is seen as crucial to ending two months of deadly fighting at Monrovia. Battles for the city have killed hundreds of civilians. With the port in rebel hands, the city of more than 1,3-million is badly short of food, water and aid, and hunger and disease are building.
West African leaders have promised a peace force since attacks on Monrovia began in early June. Deployment has been repeatedly stalled amid debates over paying for it, with debt-strapped Nigeria saying it cannot afford to pick up the tab.
West African leaders have asked the United States for help. The United States has contributed about $10-million, but that amount would cover only a few days’ of deployment by any sizable force.
Taylor, offered asylum by Nigeria, says he will leave only when peacekeepers arrive. Taylor since June has repeatedly held out promises that he would step down, only to later hedge on timing or renege outright.
The United States has ordered troops to Liberia’s coast to stand ready to give still-unspecified assistance to any West African-led force.
US Deputy Defence Secretary Paul Wolfowitz on Sunday repeated US insistence that any American role in the peace force would depend on the West Africans deploying first, and on Taylor leaving.
Meanwhile on Monday, Liberian Defence Minister Daniel Chea was reported to have left Monrovia for the country’s second-largest city, Buchanan. Liberian forces there in recent days have battled a renewed offensive by Liberia’s second, smaller, rebel group, based in the southeast.
The group, Movement for Democracy in Liberia, is allegedly backed by neighbouring Ivory Coast – Sapa-DPA