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Liberia
Violence encroaching
Country involved in neighbors’ troubles
The people of Liberia, already afflicted by poverty and illiteracy, are now facing troubles caused by the fighting in neighboring lands, according to a report filed by the Vatican news service Fides.
The Republic of Liberia lies on the Atlantic in the southern part of West Africa, bordered by Sierra Leone, Guinea, and the Ivory Coast. All three of those neighboring countries have been stricken by civil war in recent months.
Most of Liberia is a plateau covered by dense tropical forests. It has a population of 2,666,000 (as of 1998). Christians make up 30 percent, of which Catholics account for a little more than 10 percent; Muslims are 8 percent and followers of traditional religions about 62 percent. 68 percent of the labor force is engaged in agriculture. There is one doctor for every 8,333 citizens. The illiteracy rate is 61.8 per cent.
For some months now, Liberia has been the scene of renewed armed conflict. Liberia’s President Charles Taylor accuses neighboring Guinea of hosting rebel troops, while Guinea in turn accuses Taylor of financing Sierra Leone rebels who are often seen in Guinean territory. Taylor won elections on July 19, 1997, after eight years of civil war. An international peacekeeping force confirmed that he had been elected with 75 percent of the vote. But the election did not bring an end to the country’s conflicts.
Monrovia’s shanty towns, built by farmers who fled the rural areas in fear, were razed when the Taylor government appeared to have won control of the country; the regime wanted the people to go back to working the fields. But those who returned to their old farms found their homes destroyed, their fields needing to be plowed again, and no machinery remaining. Then, as rebels became more active, the rural regions became more dangerous. Today, by the hundreds, they are moving back toward the capital, fleeing attacks by troops seeking to overthrow the Taylor government.
Father Gabriel Jubwe, the secretary of the Liberian bishops’ conference, told Fides that the government is now facing a crisis. “Opposition factions have resorted to armed combat because they say that in these last three years of peace the President has done nothing for the people,” he said. “They say that with Taylor, Liberia has no future. They accuse him of financing RUF rebels in Sierra Leone: the ones who think nothing of cutting off arms and legs in the fight to control diamond deposits.”
“Every day hundreds of refugees come in from the north, where the rebel pressure is fiercer,” Father Jubwe continued. “When the world knew that Liberia was facing a war we received aid, but now fewer supplies come in, while people’s needs grow.”
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