He began with dreams of an empire, but in his final hours Charles Taylor is little more than President of the republic of downtown Monrovia.
Taylor’s 14-year career as one of Africa’s big men is due to end at 11.59am tomorrow, when he bows to his enemies and cedes power. He plans to address the nation today, but there is no electricity and, in any case, most televisions and radios are destroyed or looted.
But the Liberian leader could just as well shout from the balcony of his Executive Mansion, since much of his domain would be within earshot. Lurdland, the territory controlled by the rebel Liberians United for Reconciliation and Democracy (Lurd), begins a stone’s throw from central Monrovia.
Yesterday, council workers cleared weeds from a street that had seen the apocalypse, the buildings blackened shells, the cars rusting carcasses. It was an incongruous attempt at normality, which the crowds of refugees foraging for snails and flower bulbs – anything edible – watched in disbelief.
Taylor’s resignation may not signal the end of his era, because the fragile ceasefire hinges on his promise to leave the country. Fresh arms shipments from Libya suggest that he could be preparing for a fight.
The Presidents of South Africa and Nigeria are expected to fly into Monrovia to try to coax Taylor (55) to the air-conditioned house in Nigeria that has been earmarked for his exile.
But that might not be enough to prevent more fighting. The rebels reject the designated successor, Vice-President Moses Blah. ‘Tell me the difference between Taylor and Blah. They are the same. If Blah takes over, we will fight back,’ said Sekou Fofana, a top Lurd official.
The rebels spent three years fighting in the bush and for two months they have besieged the capital, launching three onslaughts that the traumatised residents call world wars one, two and three.
Some 2 000 civilians died: the survivors are battling hunger and cholera.
The arrival of a Nigerian-led peacekeeping force last week silenced Monrovia’s guns and unleashed jubilation, but fighting continues in the towns of Buchanan and Gbarnga. Vaani Passawe, Taylor’s spokesperson, issued a stark warning: ‘Once the President leaves, our boys might be stigmatised. If that is the case, you must expect chaos. Hell might just break loose.’
With Taylor still holding the initiative, anything could happen. It usually does.
Anarchy started in 1989 when Taylor launched a bush rebellion that evolved into civil war. After 200,000 deaths, an exhausted electorate, fearing more bloodshed if he lost, voted him President in 1997.
The new President’s dreams involved money and influence rather than territorial conquest. Accused of sponsoring insurgencies in Sierra Leone, Guinea and Ivory Coast, he amassed hundreds of millions of dollars through diamonds and timber. The Swiss bank accounts are frozen and now he has rebels at his gates. His family was yesterday rumoured to be preparing to flee to Johannesburg.
Monrovia has been devastated. Taylor has cancelled interviews because, his aides say, the Executive Mansion has no diesel for generators. Nor does the Liberian Communications Network, the television and radio stations he founded. Yesterday staff lounged on the grass outside the studios, wondering what happens next.
‘When Taylor leaves, we’ll not have the kind of support that we have been getting,’ said Jimmy Wessehtues, programmes director.
An understatement. When Taylor leaves, the network risks the sort of mobs that ransacked Milosevic’s television station in Belgrade.
Taylor’s fighters, many having spent their childhood in his army, are bracing for uncertainty. ‘General’ Cairo Pupu, 29, a checkpoint commander in a black velvet jumpsuit whose hair twirls into a cone, professed eternal loyalty: ‘He is my leader. I’ll cry like a baby the day he leaves.’ But, out of his comrades’ earshot, he says: ‘When Taylor goes, I’ll be happy. I want my life back.’
The rebels in Lurdland are also looking ahead. As their leader, Seko Damate Conneh, toured Europe last week, they showed journalists around the areas they control, a moonscape of destruction.
Crowds chanted support and commanders politely asked photographers not to show child fighters smaller than their AK-47s.
It did not occur to them that leaving streets littered with naked corpses, their hands bound, was not the best way to shake off a reputation for atrocities. Yesterday the bodies were still there, but had been covered in a white powder, as if they died rolling in flour.
The putrefying corpses on Taylor’s side have been buried, some in mass graves like the sandy pit at Sheflin barracks into which 65 dead men, women and children were dumped last week.
Aid trickles rather than streams into Monrovia, but, for the 450 orphans evicted from Daniel Hoover Children’s Village, a little helps.
Their bicycles, clothes and food having been stolen by rebels, their home sequestered by Taylor’s forces, they walked for two days without food until finding sanctuary in an abandoned three-storey government office where Taylor briefly worked in the 1980s.
Handful Harris (14) shepherded two of the younger children to safety. Born the year Taylor started his rebellion and with both her parents lost to the war, Handful’s dream was for the peace to hold and to return to the orphanage.
‘And,’ she added, ‘to practise my singing again.’ – Guardian Unlimited Â