A day after being sworn in as Liberia’s interim leader, Gyude Bryant embarked on Wednesday on the uphill task of rebuilding a country battered by more than a decade of war.
His first job is to disarm former fighters in the two wars the west African country has suffered since late 1989, leaving it with a generation of youths whose dominant culture is that of the gun.
”We must reintegrate all combatants into normal life in society and help them acquire a stake in Liberia’s future,” Bryant said on Tuesday in his inaugural address.
The number of combatants — rebels or supporters of the exiled former president Charles Taylor — has been estimated at between 15 000 and 25 000, up to 70% of them child soldiers, according to the United Nations.
Many have never had a real job, having come of age in the early 1990s when Taylor launched a rebellion against former leader Samuel Doe, plunging Liberia into seven years of brutal civil war that destroyed its once exemplary economy.
Two years after that war ended in 1997, when Taylor was elected president, a new conflict gripped the country, as the rebel Liberians United for Reconciliation and Democracy (Lurd) rose up against the former warlord.
Seeking to exorcise his ghost, Bryant’s government — which includes Taylor loyalists, rebels, the political opposition and civic groups — will not only have to reconcile Liberians but also make peace with the country’s neighbours.
In June, just as a first round of peace talks for Liberia got under way, a UN-backed court in Sierra Leone announced that it had indicted Taylor for war crimes committed during that country’s 10-year civil war, which ended in 2001.
The disgraced Taylor, who has been in exile in Nigeria since he quit in August, has also been accused of backing mercenaries fighting in western Cote d’Ivoire, which itself war ravaged by civil war from September 2002 to July this year.
”Under our leadership, Liberia shall be a nation of peace: at peace with herself, at peace with its neighbors, and at peace with the international community,” Bryant said on Tuesday. ”We shall restore an harmonious relationship with our neighbors in the Mano River Union (comprising Liberia, Guinea and Sierra Leone), la Cote d’Ivoire, and the wider neighbourhood.”
He also pledged ”zero tolerance for corruption,” but the task is monumental in a country where government workers are poorly paid, if they are paid at all, and tend to work only a few hours a day.
Lawmakers are owed 25 months’ back pay.
”We must work diligently and passionately to eradicate corruption from our personal and national lives,” Bryant said.
Liberian politicians under Taylor were easily identifiable because, unlike most people in the impoverished country, they had cars and cellphones and could extort money from anyone placed under their authority.
In July, Switzerland froze 1,3-million euros ($1,5-million) in bank accounts of two Taylor associates at the request of Sierra Leone’s war crimes court.
Members of the new government, many of whom are drawn from the ranks of armed factions and rebel groups opposed to Taylor, are expected to set an example and change the national mentality.
”If no government before ours has served you well, this government will,” Bryant said. ”We are here to lay the solid foundation for many transitions:
”A transition from the denigrating politics of patronage and tribalism, to the empowering politics of diversity and inclusiveness;
”A transition from recurrent civil conflicts and decisiveness to reconciliation and national unity;
”A transition from harmful vices of lies, deceit, sycophancy, treachery, intolerance and indiscipline, to the noble virtues of truthfulness, honesty, adulation, fairness, kindness and discipline;
”A transition from secrecy, inordinate greed and corruption, to openness, modesty, transparency and accountability in national governance;
”A transition from the practice of pursuing personal interest in government at the expense of the people, to a new attitude of promoting and seeking the general welfare of our people.” – Sapa-AFP