Posted on 03/25/2003 1:52:20 PM PST by knighthawk
TOTOTA, Liberia: Clustered around cheap transistor radios, thousands of hungry Liberians who have fled into yet another camp from the latest fighting between government and rebel forces devour war news from Iraq and wonder if American troops will one day liberate them from their misery.
Many Liberians wish that America would focus its attention next on their war-riven west African nation and halt years of mass destruction that has killed thousands and uprooted nearly a third of the country's 3 million people from their homes.
"We are frustrated. Our children are not in school and in this country, only a few people are enjoying life," says George Paywalah, a pastor and one of about 8,000 people who have crammed since Friday into this camp, 100 kilometres east of Liberia's capital, Monrovia.
"America has the power and should intervene to end our suffering," says Paywalah, as camp residents squat around the tinny, handheld radios that deliver world events to keenly interested, but often illiterate Africans.
The people of Liberia, founded in the 19th century by freed American slaves, have endured massive human-rights abuses during a decade of almost continual and largely untelevised fighting among government troops, rebel factions and unallied soldiers of misfortune.
In the past week, rebels fighting for three years to oust the warlord-turned-president, Charles Taylor, have opened a new front, sparking another exodus toward the country's vast archipelago of camps.
"We are running from fire," says one middle-aged woman, as she entered camp here with a jerrycan of water balanced on her head and a wide-eyed baby bound to her back.
On Monday, the United Nation's High Commissioner for Human Rights, Sergio Vieira de Mello, expressed "profound concern" over the recent fighting and its toll on the civilian population.
Credible reports show both sides violate humanitarian laws with "extrajudicial killings, torture, rape, deliberate targeting of civilians, abductions, and forcible recruitment of children and displaced persons in camps," de Mello said in a statement issued in Geneva.
The United Nations estimates that fighting has forced 1 million Liberians to flee from their homes in recent years. The country's last census in 1984, before war came, showed 2.7 million Liberian citizens.
"We are living in our own land like refugees," says Lorpu Sumo, another new arrival to the camp at Totota, displaying the Liberian's familiarity with the nuances of humanitarian-worker parlance.
Refugees come from other countries. Liberians in these camps are "displaced."
Already swollen Liberian camps are now further taxed by an influx of tens of thousands of people on the run from a six-month civil war in neighbouring Ivory Coast, aid officials say.
A global diversion of humanitarian assistance toward Iraq could spell disaster for people here, they say.
Pleas to the international community to increase funding for West Africa's camps have been largely ignored or obscured in the run-up to a more-publicized military engagement. Support for camps around Africa has already been cut this year.
There's no indication that fighting in Liberia will cease anytime soon, and suffering continues unabated for the people of Liberia.
In the camp at Totota, where wells are drying up and people eat leaves and wild cassavas foraged from nearby forests, the US-led campaign in Iraq is closely followed.
Liberians speak English in an accent reminiscent of Margaret Mitchell's antebellum South, their capital, Monrovia, is named after former US President James Monroe and greenbacks are widely used.
So, many Liberians feel a real connection to and interest in the United States feelings they recognize are little reciprocated.
Big news in America is big news in Liberia.
"This war (in Iraq) is getting more serious that it was initially thought it would be," new camp arrival James Lenpleh opined, after listening to a BBC report about the sharpest firefight to that point between American and Iraqi forces.
After the search for food and water ends, camp dwellers listen to in-the-desert accounts of tank battalions rattling toward Baghdad and wonder: could they please take a sharp turn southwest toward Liberia - and end the fighting here?
Actually, more weapons or fighters are the last thing Liberia needs, says Paywalah, the pastor.
"In some countries, people fight and rest, but here the fighting has no resting," he says.
"America should summon the government and rebels to talk."
France won't let us.
We would love to but our "Peace Movement" wouldn't stand for it. Afterall Paywalah, not everyone holds the same democratic values that we do.... and it would be wrong for us to impart our western values our your deep ethnic heritage.(sarcasm)
I was think, d@mn, I didn't know that all the fancy book readin' was that bad!
Anyway, we're gonna have our hands full when the 82nd Airborne reaches downtown Berkeley...
Yup. This is the direct result of Bush's stand and our new policy. Contrary to what Teddy Kennedy, Tom Dashle and other wags preach, freedom IS contagious.
One cesspool at a time, Liberia. Till then, grab some guns and raise a little hell.
OK. Stop me if I'm wrong... but even 1 million 10 year olds weilding rocks and sharp sticks oughta be able to give either the Army or the Rebels one heck of a whoopin'.
Sounds like these people are lacking the one thing that a lot of people living under harsh regimes are... the WILL to act. Our Founding Fathers found out what happend when you find that will-power within yourself.
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