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August
2, 2003
What's
Driving the Liberian Bloodbath
Is
the US Obligated to Intervene?
By NOAH LEAVITT
Two weeks ago, after 14 years of intermittent
civil war, a rebel army composed of teenagers with outdated rifles
attacked Monrovia, Liberia's seaside capital and have since taken
control of a large portion of the country. The battles have killed
hundreds of civilians, filled refugee camps and led to an outbreak
of disease. As an indication of the international's community's
concerns about events there, on Friday, the UN Security Council
voted during an emergency session to send a multinational force
to calm the fighting while a new government is formed.
Despite various "cease-fires"
and ongoing peace talks in neighboring Ghana, Liberia seems to
be descending into chaos with no relief in sight. The main rebel
group behind the attacks, Liberians United for Reconstruction
and Democracy (LURD), has stated that it will fight any interfering
peacekeeping force.
Of even more concern, the insurgents
initial attacks seemed to be concentrated on the U.S. embassy,
where thousands of terrified civilians gathered. Frenzied Liberians
piled mutilated corpses in front of the embassy's shuttered gates.
Many have called upon the U.S. to intervene,
citing its "special relationship" with Liberia--which
was founded primarily by freed U.S. slaves who left to create
their own nation. Few accounts have detailed, however, precisely
what the nature of this "special relationship" has
been and why, from a moral perspective, it imposes obligations
on the U.S..
In the following pages, I will use a
legal concept drawn from contract law to explain the basis for
the U.S.'s responsibility toward Liberia. The concept is "detrimental
reliance." A contract is an exchange of promises. When
one party breaks its promises, and the other has relied on that
promise and suffers as a consequence, the latter party is said
to have "detrimentally relied."
Liberia detrimentally relied on a number
of promises and representations--explicit and implicit--made
by the U.S. over the past century and a half. Historically,
the United States has acted in such a way as to represent that
it will provide for Liberia's economic well-being and security.
But over history, it has let Liberia down--at no time more conspicuously
than now.
In a contract case in which detrimental
reliance was shown, the remedy would be damages. In this human
rights crisis, the proper remedy is aid; humanitarian intervention;
and the U.S.'s sending troops immediately to stabilize Liberia
and protect innocent persons there from further atrocities.
The "Special
Relationship" Between Liberia and the U.S. : Lengthy and
Deep
As a review of Liberian-U.S. ties will
show, America's special relationship is based on its using Liberia's
resources to advance its security interests, and for economic
gain.
In the early 19th century, Paul Cuffe,
a wealthy African-American merchant from Massachusetts, became
convinced that the only way that American blacks could become
self-governing was to emigrate to Africa. To this end, he helped
create a transportation company called the American Colonization
Society. With the U.S. government's approval, the Society began
to resettle free American blacks in Liberia.
Those pioneers were the original Americo-Liberians.
In the small tropical nation, they quickly became the ruling
group, assuming all positions of power and influence. Soon they
constituted a U.S.-friendly elite. (It was also an elite whose
skin color was typically lighter than that of the original Liberians.
Sadly, then, the Americo-Liberians created a hierarchy that,
in this respect mirrored the racial hierarchy they had endured
in the U.S..)
In the 1920's--in large part because
of the presence of this friendly elite, and that of a considerable
U.S. naval fleet just offshore--the U.S.-based Firestone Tire
and Rubber Company founded the largest rubber plantation in the
world in Liberia. The company installed Americo-Liberians in
positions of power, and the small elite rose to economic prominence.
Subsequently, Liberia's president, William
Tubman--who ruled from 1944 to 1971--allowed the CIA to build
the largest spy station in all of Africa within his borders.
During the Cold War, the U.S. sank billions of dollars into developing
surveillance equipment in Liberia. Liberia also functioned as
a U.S. outpost from which the U.S. sought to undermine national
liberation movements throughout the continent.
After Tubman's death, his successor,
President William Tolbert, angered the U.S. by courting favor
with China and Cuba. Tolbert also angered most Liberians by showering
privileges on his fellow Americo-Liberians. The ethnic and class
conflicts between the Americo-Liberians and the darker Liberians
grew.
In 1980, Tolbert was murdered by Samuel
Doe--an illiterate warlord trained by the U.S. Green Berets.
Doe became the first "true" Liberian to rule the country.
Doe assassinated most of the former cabinet members as well
as his fellow insurgents, and unleashed a wave of ethnic-based
terror.
Doe also exploited America's Cold War fears concerning Africa.
Famously, President Reagan--who handed Liberia more than $5 billion
during the early 1980s--invited Doe to the White House, addressing
him as "Chairman Moe."
Charles Taylor's Ascension
to the Presidency
Around the same time, Charles Taylor--an
Americo-Liberian who had graduated from Bentley College in Massachusetts,
and was in prison there on charges of embezzling part of the
Liberian national budget--escaped, and returned to Liberia.
Taylor quickly became Doe's main adversary.
He led a ragtag group of boy soldiers who for years hounded
Doe's army and the civilian population from their countryside
hideouts. By the mid-1990s, that protracted civil war had claimed
more than 200,000 lives. In 1997--as a result of national presidential
elections that international observers concluded were essentially
open and fair--Taylor won, garnering more than 75% of the vote
of the war-weary population.
Taylor used his new power to foment
instability in neighboring Sierra Leone, in large part so he
could mine diamonds there to fund other regional military insurgencies.
Indeed, over the past decade, Liberia has been at the center
of a complex web of regional battles in West Africa one
that has also consumed Sierra Leone, Ivory Coast and Nigeria--that
has involved not only such diamonds, but also illegal arms sales,
massive refugee flows, the use of child soldiers and unspeakable
human rights abuses.
When the world became savvy to the problems
of "conflict diamonds"--illegally mined and traded
diamonds that could fund arms trade and terrorism--Taylor diversified
his business interests, in ominous ways.
Recently, the Center for Investigative
Reporting detailed the links between illegal harvesting of Liberia's
tropical rain forests and illegal arms smuggling in the area.
The report noted that U.S. consumers are buying large volumes
of wood products from Liberia--though it has been repeatedly
sanctioned by the UN because of these sales. The report also
noted that, unlike many other countries, the U.S. has failed
to ban the import of Liberian wood, and thus to comply with the
UN sanctions.
The Al Qaeda Link:
The U.S.'s Continuing Interest in Liberia
Currently, the United States is particularly
interested in the arms/wood trade in Liberia because Al Qaeda
has been funding many of its activities through income sources
such as diamonds and timber. Accordingly, Liberian intelligence
may offer some help in tracking the financial dealings of Al
Qaeda.
In addition, the U.S. fears that a destabilized
Liberia could become a training ground for other terrorist groups.
Its porous borders, excellent natural wealth and lack of any
sort of government or control make Liberia, in some ways, a perfect
base of operations for terrorists.
The Recent Crisis
in Liberia
Though Liberia has been troubled for a long time, the source
of its current crisis is surprisingly recent. Less than two
months ago, on June 4, a U.N.-backed court in Sierra Leone charged
Taylor with "bearing the greatest responsibility" for
war crimes, crimes against humanity and other serious violations
of international humanitarian law. Shortly thereafter, Taylor
promised to leave office.
As a result, a cease-fire among rebel
groups was signed, and representatives of the surrounding countries
started to plan for a new Liberian government. But when Taylor
refused to set a date for his departure, the fighting quickly
resumed.
Last month, Taylor accepted an offer
of asylum from the President of Nigeria--who said he would shield
Taylor from war crimes charges, but only if Taylor stayed out
of Liberian politics. On Friday, a group of West Africa negotiators
traveled to Liberia to try to arrange Taylor's departure, yet,
ominously, he disappeared shortly before their arrival.
The U.S. has demanded that Taylor leave
the country before it will decide on the deployment of even a
limited number of troops for a temporary mission, even though
they are parked just offshore in several large combat vessels.
However, Taylor has refused to leave until peacekeepers arrive--ironically
contending that if he did, Liberia would descend into chaos and
"total destruction." The result is a stalemate during
which Liberians will continue to die.
Unsurprisingly, without a credible threat
that troops will soon arrive, the LURD and other rebel groups
are pressing ahead with their attacks. Yet the African regional
security body and the UN are hesitant to respond--and again,
the main culprit is the U.S.'s mixed signals.
For all these reasons, it seems plain
that the bombs will continue to fall in Monrovia. It also seems
plain that the U.S. is in large part to blame for that fact.
Liberia's Detrimental
Reliance on U.S. Support
The sources of the U.S.'s responsibility
to intervene in Liberia are twofold.
First, throughout Liberia's history,
its enduring relationship with the U.S. has brought Liberians
to count on the United States for financial support and security.
And that is only fair; the U.S. has not only interfered in Liberian
politics, but has enhanced its own finances and security greatly
as a result of its relationship with Liberia.
Under similar circumstances, France and
Britain stepped in and established peace when their former colonies
Ivory, Coast and Sierra Leone, were in turmoil. The U.S. should
do the same.
Second, right now Liberians--as well
as other West African nations, and the UN itself--are relying,
to their detriment on the U.S.'s specific promises to send troops--promises
that have yet to be fulfilled. Every day this reliance creates
greater damage--damage measured in human lives.
It is high time for the U.S. to more
fully intervene to help a country that has so long relied on
its reciprocal relationship with the U.S., and on U.S. promises.
If the U.S. fails to do so, especially when it could do so quite
easily compared to other military involvements, the rapidly growing
chaos in Liberia may well develop into a regional disaster.
And that disaster could itself develop into a human rights catastrophe.
It's important to recall that it was
only a decade ago, in Rwanda, that civil unrest led to one of
the worse human rights disasters of this century. The darker-skinned,
subordinate Hutus suddenly, brutally slaughtered the light skinned
minority Tutsis with machetes and other weapons. The U.S. not
only failed to intervene at an early stage when it could have
stopped the fighting--it also gave mixed signals to the U.N.
and Africa security bodies, further delaying any possible intervention.
That conflict left half a million dead and scattered a million
refugees across the continent. The U.S. owes it to Liberia to
prevent a similar outcome there.
As I noted above, a basic principle of
U.S. contract law holds that if one makes a promise to someone
who is hurt by relying on it, one must account for the damage
one has caused. This simple legal and moral--principle
explains why the U.S. is responsible for stopping the Liberian
crisis before it becomes even worse.
Noah Leavitt,
an attorney, practiced refugee law in Cape Town, South Africa.
An earlier version of this essay appeared in Findlaw.com.
He can be contacted at nsleavitt@hotmail.com.
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