President Charles Taylor’s top military commander is all for foreign intervention to end the brutal civil war here but he warned of more war if he is not ”treated right” in a post-Taylor scenario.
”The president may leave, but I am not going to leave this country,” Benjamin Yeaten said, warning: ”If I am not treated in the right way, there will still be war. I will not allow anyone to capture me. I have 7 500 loyal troops who are ready to die for me.”
Speaking on Tuesday as mortars and shells pounded the battered former auditorium that serves as his headquarters, Yeaten said: ”We can go into the bush. I will not submit to anybody.”
The 34-year-old general nevertheless swore undying loyalty to the embattled president, who is under tremendous international pressure to leave Liberia and pave the way for a caretaker government to serve until fresh elections are held.
Indeed, Taylor, a former warlord elected to office in 1997 following a bloody seven-year conflict, has accepted an offer of asylum from Nigeria but has refused to go until peacekeepers are deployed.
Now Taylor’s deputy chief of staff, Yeaten has guarded Taylor since 1990 and now wields enormous influence despite his relatively young age.
He said the world should not ignore Liberia just because they disliked his boss.
”The world should be aware that President Taylor’s life is not more important than the thousands of people who are dying. The international community is playing a sour game,” he said.
”In this condition, the war will never stop.”
The Liberian capital has faced the worst rebel onslaught ever over the past two weeks, with hundreds of civilians killed and some 200 000 people living without shelter amid an acute shortage of food, medicines and water.
Sanitation is next to nil in most parts of the city and deadly diseases such as cholera have surfaced.
The rebel-held northern section of Monrovia is out of bounds for humanitarian workers.
The United States has pledged to support a proposed west African peacekeeping force in Liberia and ordered three US warships to go to the region. But US President George Bush has said he will not put US boots on the ground until a ceasefire is in place and Taylor — who now controls only a fifth of the west African country and is struggling to defend his capital Monrovia — leaves power.
Taylor was last month indicted for war crimes by a United Nations-backed court in Sierra Leone for his alleged role in that neighbouring country’s barbaric civil war.
Yeaten, who received his military training in Israel, a country he remembers fondly, said: ”We are ready to receive American forces and to work along them and with them.”
Liberia has strong historical and cultural links with the United States, having been founded by freed American slaves in the early 19th century, becoming the first independent nation in black Africa.
Yeaten said his proudest achievement was the simple fact that he had successfully guarded Taylor since 1990. ”Liberia is unique in that there is no living ex-president. They all have been killed. I have protected the president and this is no mean achievement.”
Taylor started a bloody seven-year conflict — which led to the barbaric killing of his predecessor Samuel Doe and ended in 1997 with Taylor’s election.
The Liberian government and the rebels inked a much-applauded west African-brokered ceasefire which was broken immediately and now lies in tatters.
The Liberians United for Reconciliation and Democracy on Tuesday announced a unilateral truce but then qualified it by saying it would take effect only when the loyalist forces also ceased fire.
Another smaller group on Monday attacked the second port of Buchanan, while fighting is raging in Gbarnga, Liberia’s second largest city. – Sapa-AFP