Eighteen-year-old Alfred Kamara likes learning to be a carpenter, but he also liked the power his gun used to give him.
A former child soldier in Liberia’s 14 years of on-off civil war, he is one of more than 100 000 ex-combatants disarmed and offered education or practical training under a United Nations-backed plan to cement peace in the devastated West African state.
In a shed in the straggling town of Gbarnga, a potholed 180km drive north-east of the capital Monrovia, he and a handful of other young men are learning to plane wood.
Kamara said he was forced to join government forces when he was 13, and feels bad about the people he killed. But the war, which became a byword for brutality, also had its attractions.
”I was feeling good and bad,” he said. ”When you have a weapon you can enjoy life.”
Liberian and United Nations officials say the demobilisation of the country’s multiple armed factions has gone well since a 2003 peace deal that sent former warlord and president Charles Taylor into exile, but there is no room for complacency.
UN peacekeeping troops disarmed about 101 500 fighters — nearly 11 000 of them still children.
Many have taken the chance to go back to school. Others are learning skills such as carpentry, tailoring, agriculture or computing. Attendees receive a UN stipend of $30 a month.
”Knowing how hard jobs are to come by, it’s positive,” said UN programme officer Masaneh Bayo. ”But these people are hardened, they don’t change overnight. There are some problems.”
Legacy of violence
Liberia has changed dramatically since the war, when drugged-up fighters terrorised the country and rotting bodies littered the deserted streets. Around 250 000 people were killed and a million — about a third of the population — fled their homes.
Now it feels more like a normal West African nation, albeit desperately poor and with a shattered infrastructure. Languid life has resumed in once-empty villages. Markets bustle, and Monrovians complain about the traffic.
Taylor is in the Hague awaiting trial on international war crimes charges, and a year ago President Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf was voted in as Africa’s first elected woman head of state.
But security remains fragile. The war tore up Liberia’s social fabric and ethnic tensions persist. Formal unemployment is 85%, and rape and other violent crime is commonplace.
”Driven by the degree of human insecurity, hunger and unemployment, and skilled in handling weapons … many young people are easily predisposed to committing violence when given the slightest opportunity,” the government’s National Human Development Report said this year.
Liberian and UN officials say the eight- or nine-month training courses are giving ex-combatants a major leg-up so they can start to earn a living and reintegrate into society.
In Monrovia’s ”World Trade Centre”, the dingy semi-basement of a derelict bank, ranks of self-employed clerks offer computer services in a tangle of perilous wiring. Many are ex-fighters.
”I do letters, certificates, things like that,” said Thomas Wilson, who fought for Taylor. ”Thank God I can earn something.”
But some officials worry what will happen when the courses — and the stipends — come to an end. They say many ex-fighters are already quick to turn to violence if payments arrive late.
”For us to have sustainable peace there has to be a serious focus on sustainable livelihoods for these people,” said Jervis Witherspoon, who heads Liberia’s National Commission for Disarmament, Demobilisation, Rehabilitation and Reintegration.
”You must have them engaged, you must have them focused and make them feel a part of society.”
Slow combustion?
Some ex-fighters are bitter at what they see as prejudice.
”They say we killed their mother, their father, their brother, but they killed our mother, our father, our brother too,” said Cooper Koumamene, an ex-commander in Taylor’s forces.
Tempers have flared this month over official attempts to evict him and more than 700 other Taylor loyalists, many of them disabled, who live in the ex-president’s party headquarters.
Flanked by a heaving crowd, some blind or crippled and many clearly drunk or drugged, Koumamene said they could return to war if the government did not treat them better.
”It’s slow combustion. If they don’t do something for us there will be a big fire,” he shouted.
Most Liberians dismiss this as empty talk and few seriously countenance a return to war. But they say they are very glad the 15 000 UN peacekeeping troops are staying put for now.
With neighbouring Sierra Leone also recovering from civil war and Ivory Coast torn by conflict, the region is awash with weapons, despite UN efforts to mop up stashes of small arms.
Some warlords such as Prince Johnson, who personally oversaw the killing of ex-president Samuel Doe, are now in Parliament.
Witherspoon said it was especially important that the few dozen key commanders of the warring factions, who played a vital role in getting their fighters to disarm, should also feel they have a material stake in postwar Liberia.
”We believe the 48 generals could still command the boys if they still want to,” he said.
”We hope that doesn’t happen. But if you don’t provide incentives for them, anything could happen. It’s going to be our responsibility as a nation after the UN packs up and leaves.” – Reuters