One of Africa’s most brutal regimes is due to end today when Charles Taylor steps down as president of Liberia, giving a war-ravaged region a fragile opportunity for peace.
Taylor has promised to hand over power at 11.59am and head into exile, raising hopes that west Africa can escape a decade-long cycle of violence and instability.
The warlord-turned president has bowed to pressure from the international community as well as rebels who control most of the countryside and much of the capital, Monrovia.
In a televised address last night he said he was the victim of a Washington-led conspiracy and would quit to spare his people further suffering. Comparing his plight to the persecution of Jesus Christ, Taylor said: ”I found myself in the same position. I am the sacrificial lamb, the whipping boy.”
His departure is supposed to consolidate a ceasefire, open Liberia to humanitarian aid for a population close to starvation and consign to oblivion the architect of much of the chaos in Sierra Leone, Guinea and Ivory Coast.
Indicted for war crimes by a United Nations-backed tribunal in Sierra Leone, Taylor (55) has refused to say when he will leave and there are fears that he will try to control events from behind the scenes after ceding power to the vice-president, Moses Blah.
Blah said he was ”100% sure” he could bring peace. But the rebels have rejected him as a Taylor crony and threatened renewed fighting unless a neutral figure takes over.
South Africa’s Thabo Mbeki and Nigeria’s Olusegun Obasanjo are among the African heads of state expected at today’s ceremony in an effort to lend prestige and dignity to Taylor’s resignation — and to encourage his departure.
Wearing a navy blue jacket and seated behind a desk, the former Boston security guard cast himself as the victimised father of the nation in last night’s broadcast.
He blamed sanctions and withheld World Bank loans for Liberia’s economic collapse and accused the US of sponsoring the rebels. ”They can call off their dogs now. I realised I could no longer see the blood of our people wasted. I must stop fighting now. I do not step down out of fear or fright. I step down out of love for you.”
He rejected allegations of mass murder and plunder as ”misinformation, lies, rumours, fabrications, a grand scheme of propaganda, a self-fulfilling prophecy”.
Relinquishing power was voluntary, he said, but the exile was driven by Washington’s refusal to help Liberia until he left. Looking tired, he said: ”God willing, I will be back.”
Very few Liberians were expected to see or hear the broadcast in the absence of electricity, batteries and diesel to run generators.
Interviewed on her way out from church, Jewel Taylor said her husband would soon leave. ”Maybe a day or two. We’re still packing. It’s been a rough couple of years but now we’re leaving. And by God’s grace we’ll make do in Nigeria.”
The president had no regrets. ”He’s not bitter, he’s not angry. In fact, he’s been keeping me going. When we get there, we’re going to rest.”
The bush rebellion Taylor launched in 1989 plunged Liberia into an anarchic war that left 200 000 dead and the country a ruin. He became president in a 1997 election most observers judged free and fair, though many voters backed him fearing the war would resume if he lost.
He has been accused of exporting insurgencies to neighbouring countries to build a criminal empire based on diamonds and timber. The rebellion in Sierra Leone was especially bloody, with drugged-up child soldiers mobilised to murder, rape and mutilate. Jacques Paul Klein, the UN special envoy to Liberia, has called Taylor a ”psychopath”.
Two rebel groups, allegedly backed by Guinea and Ivory Coast, control most of Liberia and Taylor, his Swiss bank accounts frozen, has also come under heavy pressure from the Washington and African leaders to quit.
Sporadic fighting has continued outside the capital but Monrovia has been quiet since Nigerian-led peacekeepers arrived last week.
Hundreds of thousands of displaced people are trying to survive amid the rubble, eating wild plants, snails and pet dogs.
In areas lacking medicine and doctors, patients are dying from gangrene. – Guardian Unlimited Â