Posted on 06/14/2003 2:43:35 PM PDT by HAL9000
A US marine expeditionary force was heading for the strife-riven west African state of Liberia on Friday night after Washington came under increased pressure to deploy troops in what would be its biggest military engagement in Africa since the early 1990s.The USS Kearsarge, carrying 1,800 marines, 1,200 sailors and attack helicopters, was diverted on its homeward voyage from Iraq to prepare for the possible evacuation of civilians from Liberia where rebel fighters have reached the edge of the capital, Monrovia.
The ship's redeployment comes amid concerns in the US military that its forces are overstretched.
The US army is engaged in combat operations in Iraq some six weeks after President George W. Bush said they were over.
The US has avoided engagements in Africa since the ill-fated Somalia intervention, when 18 army rangers lost their lives in Mogadishu on a single day.
There is resistance in the Bush administration to the idea of the US being co-opted as a global policeman, especially in a region where it has no clear strategic interest. Many Republicans severely criticised the Clinton administration for its entanglement in Somalia.
Lt Col MJ Jadick, of the task force, under US European command, said the Kearsarge was already in the region. US military officials said a small group of US troops had already arrived in Monrovia to help the embassy.
The diversion of the USS Kearsarge follows calls for a US-led multinational intervention force to secure a fragile ceasefire after a week of renewed fighting between the Liberian rebels and the government of Charles Taylor (pictured). One official said there were proposals for the US to join up to 2,000 Nigerian peacekeepers, with the US running a headquarters and logistics base.
Remi Oyo, spokeswoman for President Olusegun Obasanjo of Nigeria, said Nigeria had been talking to the US, but declined to give further details.
A United Nations diplomat said it was possible the Security Council could give its blessing to a temporary deployment in Liberia of troops from the US and other nations.
International Crisis, an influential lobby group, has led calls for the US to intervene in a country that was founded by freed American slaves in 1847. There are concerns that new instability in Liberia risks spiralling to much of west Africa.
"Just as the UK led in Sierra Leone and France led in the Ivory Coast, the US must now assist the nation it helped establish, including through the deployment of troops if necessary," it said in a recent briefing.
Reuters reported that Liberia's warring parties were on Friday haggling over a ceasefire at peace talks in Ghana. Despite a halt in fighting, neither Mr Taylor nor rebels seemed ready to resolve their differences.
But NO 'nation building'. Africa is a hopeless case.
Even from the time of its founding, however, the country's political situation was troublesome. The people of the 16 tribes who live in the interior constituted the majority of the population but never enjoyed a political status commensurate with their numbers. Power rested with the few Americo-Liberians whose ancestors had come from the U.S. In 1980, tensions boiled over -- rebel army personnel staged a gruesome predawn coup that left the president dead. Government officials were executed before TV cameras on the orders of Master Sergeant Samuel Doe, who assumed leadership of the country. The new government soon proved little different from the one it had replaced -- repression and corruption continued unabated. Civil war erupted in 1990, and Doe met the same fate as the president he had deposed.
The war was sent nearly half of Liberia's population fleeing to neighboring nations or overseas, from which many still have not returned. The war nominally ended with the election of President Charles Taylor, the most resilient of the rebel warlords. But Taylor's government, too, is notorious for human rights violations and corruption. Western nations have distanced themselves from Taylor, in part because he has allied himself with Libya's Muammar Qaddafi. Meanwhile, unrest and occasional fighting have continued in Liberia, sometimes spilling over the borders with Sierra Leone and Guinea.
I don't think external nation building works, no matter what century.
Bruce Willis, "Tears of the Sun."
God help the Africans, and stay the F*** out.
10-4, especially in Africa. Rescue our people and get out IMO.
Who is "pressuring" Washington to do anything whatever about Liberia?
The article asserts that pressure is being exerted but gives not a clue as to who, when, how, why.
--Boris
"International Crisis" is a household word, no? And they are so potent, so powerful, that they can order the US government around?...
--Boris
I thought we rescued our people out of there a few years ago.
Bush said no such thing. As I recall, he said that major combat operations were over. The left not only rewrites history, now it rewrites current events.
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