Hundreds of Liberian fighters handed in their guns to United Nations peacekeepers at Schieffelin camp, 35km southeast of the capital, Monrovia, as the formal disarmament, demobilisation and reintegration of an estimated 40 000 combatants got under way.
Jacques Klein, special representative of the UN secretary general in Liberia, said on Saturday that he was keen to start disarmament as soon as possible to avoid gangs of hungry and idle armed men drifting away from their commanders into totally uncontrolled lawless behaviour.
Hundreds of combatants suffering malnutrition and cholera, he added, were desperate to surrender their weapons and be taken care of.
”I am afraid that if we do not get moving, we will lose control of the process and you will get ad hoc gangs on the loose out there,” Klein said by telephone.
Speaking at the disarmament ceremony on Sunday, Klein blamed the main Liberian rebel group, the Liberians United for Reconciliation and Democracy (Lurd) for trying to frustrate the programme.
”We begin today at Schieffelin with former combatants from the government forces. We will shortly open a camp at Buchanan for Model [Movement for Democracy in Liberia] personnel. Our attempts to open a similar camp in the Lurd-held areas has been sabotaged by some of their leadership working personal agendas against the best interests of their own people,” Klein said.
”But I can assure you that starting this month, a cantonment site will be ready to receive Lurd combatants in Gbarnga,” he added.
”They [Lurd] are denying their own combatants food, health care, vocational training, financial remuneration and reintegration into society,” Klein told guests at the ceremony. ”One has to question their motives.”
”If I were a Lurd combatant, I would be asking the question of those leaders who are never here: now that you have taken care of yourselves, what about us? Who is actually going to take care of us? And why are you undermining the international community’s efforts to do so?” Klein added.
Klein had earlier said that the UN mission had decided to establish the first camp for Lurd fighters in Gbarnga rather than Tubmanburg because facilities there were better and UN access to Gbarnga was easier.
Klein noted that a battalion of Bangladeshi peacekeepers, due to arrive in three weeks time, would have be headquartered in Gbarnga.
Klein confirmed there were still only 5 000 UN peacekeepers on the ground in Liberia and admitted that reinforcements were taking longer to arrive than he had expected. But he was hopeful of having three disarmament camps open by Christmas.
Gbarnga, a military and political stronghold of former president Charles Taylor, is one of Lurd’s military bases in central Liberia, about 150km north of Monrovia.
”The UN mission in Liberia will continue building cantonment camps … up to 10 as we progressively deploy our troops around the country; until we have disarmed, demobilised, rehabilitated and reintegrated every last combatant in Liberia,” Klein said.
Castigating ”some of the misguided leaders” who have tried to ”hamper and undermine” the process by tabling ”unreasonable demands” for jobs for themselves and by walking out of meetings, Klein said on Sunday: ”These people are not only breaking the promise they made when they signed the Comprehensive Peace Agreement, they are betraying their own soldiers and the Liberian people.”
Lurd chief of staff General Aliyu Sheriff, however, denied his group were frustrating the disarmament.
”UNMil [the UN mission] is welcomed to come and open the camp for our fighters to disarm. We could not disarm yet because the UN should have deployed to Tubmanburg but have not done so,” he said on Sunday.
Thomas Nimely, chairperson of Model, said that Model would join UNMil forces on Tuesday in Buchanan, 120km southeast of Monrovia, to assess cantonment sites for Model rebels.
”We see this exercise as a beginning for a dawn of a new day in Liberia. We do not want war to continue forever,” Nimely said.
The chairperson of the Liberian transitional government, Gyude Bryant, told the disarmament ceremony: ”We expected that there would be hurdles and hurdles there will be. Nonetheless all the parties — the Lurd, Model and the government are fully committed to disarming.”
Sunday’s ceremony was attended by traditional chiefs, leaders of Lurd, Model and the former government of Liberia, diplomats, UN and humanitarian aid agencies. — Irin