Volume 4, No. 10, October 2003

Lying on the far Western edge of Africa, Liberia suffers from another onslaught of one of the most rapacious and dominant imperialist powers of the earth. Its elected president, Charles Taylor, has been forced to abandon the country. Instead, a US backed and Nigerian led ECOWOG military force of more than three thousand army men has taken control of the country. This ECOWOG army has been constituted by six West African nations that constitute an economic block known by the name of ECOWAS. The US marines are providing overall leadership to the interventionist forces. The US forces entered Liberia to ‘teach’ the black race on how to govern itself. The wise white man has again assigned to itself the task of taking up "the burden of the beasts and brutes" that have "proved unable to manage their affairs".

As far as Liberians are concerned, the imperialist press allege, the ex-slaves could not learn this ‘civilized art’ in the last one hundred and fifty or so years. The US imperialist masters are back with a bang though they had never left the Liberians to govern themselves ever since Liberia was established in 1847. The country was established by the US imperialists who dumped in this country 16,400 ex-slaves, after slavery was abolished in the US, and some six thousand "rescued" slaves who were being taken to the North American hemisphere. This was done to get rid of the excessive labour power of ‘dangerous men’ whose presence in America was considered a threat to the profit-making huge capitalist machine, which was emerging in the US. So, the white man dumped the fiery ‘black cattle’ on an enclave on the eastern coast of the Atlantic from where they had been originally huddled into ships and were brought to America to work on the land that was snatched from the red Indians by Columbus’s robber cohorts after exterminating them on a massive scale. The enclave presently known as Monrovia, the capital of Liberia, was named after the US President James Monroe and was gifted to the ex-slaves as a ‘land of freedom.’

But it was never free and was under constant pressure from the adjoining colonies possessed by the British and French colonialists. And to safeguard its ‘independence’ from the threats of rival colonial powers, the US maintained a special relationship, including military, with it, which literally made it tutelage of the US imperialists.

Now again, when the US and its British/Israeli allies are on a worldwide exterminating campaign, the US has sent its armed forces to occupy the country. It is taking the services of local Liberian and other reactionaries from the adjoining African neo-colonial rulers, who are not difficult to find as they abound in numbers. The regional bully Nigeria was too eager to be left aside from the troubled waters. It has served well its own and British interests in neighbouring Sierra Leone where British armies are managing the so-called peace in "the failed State." Now it is serving US interests in Liberia, which in the words of the Christian Science Monitor (CSM), "is a shell of a state...for more than two decades." It is an irony of the situation that Liberia has remained under the boots of pro-US rulers ever since its inception. More than two decades ago a US puppet Serg. Major Samuel Doe started ruling Liberia with an iron hand to serve the cold war US interests in North-western Africa to counter the Russian influences in the region. His tyrant methods gave rise to many rebel movements including the National Patriotic Front of Liberia (NPLF) led by Charles Taylor who ultimately became president in 1997 through a ceasefire arrangement, and then got elected in a universal suffrage. The CSM warning points that in the future arrangement no opposition groups should be allowed to take up the gun to challenge the current pro-US dispensation. It wants the US intervention to make way for unchallenged control of the country in the name of establishing "a poster child for post-conflict restoration in Africa" where "with UN (read US) and US (read UN) support and financial backing, they would have to commit and recruit troops, for security; police for the next level of security; experienced administrators, to train their successors; judges, to reintroduce the rule of law and to train their successors; educators, physicians, and technicians. The UN (read the US) would have to disarm, demobilize and reintegrate the combatants."

Beautiful words indeed! A blueprint for unchallenged US imperialist control over Liberia from where it can challenge the French interests in Guinea and contend with the British for influence in Sierra Leone and also other neighbouring states.

Local thugs are there alright, but the imperialist robbers call the shots.

Doe and his cabinet colleagues were killed in a coup in 1990 in the same way as he had killed the previous ruler in 1980 in a CIA inspired coup. But Liberia remained in a state of continuous civil war as different factions supported by various imperialist powers and regional thugs continued to intervene in the resource-loaded and diamond rich region. Taylor too was supported by the US as were his predecessors like Doe. And who has been plundering the people and natural resources of Liberia? From the nineteen twenties onward it was the Firestone Plantation Company, a US monopoly, that plundered Liberia’s natural wealth. Not only the local thugs but more than this, their imperialist lords who let the local chieftains to decide among themselves that who would have most of the local share. Thus local feuds arose and various rebel groups formed all of whom were prepared to strike independent deals with the imperialist robbers.

Whereas Britain resented Taylor’s intervention [for diamonds and pearls] in the Sierra Leonean civil war (in the form of the militarily supporting the rebel forces of Foday Sankoh) and called for his overthrow, the US had supported Taylor saying that he was an elected president. But after the British entrenched themselves in Sierra Leone through direct military intervention in 2001, the US let Britain have its way only waiting for an opportunity to tighten its grip over crisis ridden Liberia where Taylor’s rivals had never stopped their fight against him and who were supported by the French imperialists.

All these years the Liberian state under Taylor has been intervening in British-dominated Sierra Leone, French dominated Guinea and other neighbouring countries. The situation in the region has been that of continuous intervention of various imperialist interests and local reactionary forces in each other’s country and territorial domain. But the imperialist press has been talking only of the local thug forces while portraying themselves as saviours of the black people who are said to be "unable to govern themselves." Even the direct American intervention has come after a spate of ‘criticism’ of the US administration, that the US is not doing much for the black people of Africa as it has done for the white people of the crisis-ridden Balkans in Europe. This was another contemptible way of preparing the ground for and justifying the US intervention in Liberia. And the UN and the ECOWAS have come to the aid of the Bush administration by hailing its intervention as an attempt to establish peace in black Africa. And the world has a black African in the chair of the Secretary General of the UN when this crime is being done! Liberia is being set for more loot and plunder by the US imperialists.

The newly appointed president of Liberia, Moses Blah, who has taken over from Taylor has been a close associate of his. He is supposed to preside over the country for three months to pave the way for an interim ruling dispensation where rebel movements and Taylor’s party-men will share power for two years. After that, a façade of elections will be held to convince the Liberians that now it is their own chosen rulers who are at the helm. Even Doe had integrated the opposition underground leaders in his cabinet and termed his coup as a revolution for redemption. The day he carried out his reactionary coup was declared the day of freedom, but the lives of the people were only further brutalized. The US was behind him. He was abandoned by the US when his role as a strongman against Russian influences was no longer needed. He was left to be executed by his rivals. Taylor too was a pro-US president. When cornered by the rebel forces he himself invited US military intervention to save the situation, in June this year. The US intervention has saved Liberia for the US and Taylor is sent into exile in Nigeria where he would be looked after for the rest of his life in lieu of his services for the US. As he could not stem the advance of rebel forces, and three/fourths of the country passed into rebel hands, the US stepped in to make a smooth transition in the name of establishing peace and at the same time accusing the rebels and the Taylor government for aggravating the woes of the Liberian people through a useless and fratricidal war. The master accused servant Taylor of not running the country properly and now the US intends to stay there "as long as it takes," as the CSM says. It is another way of saying that "colonialism is in." And there is no dearth of such kinds, who air their dislike for any kind of war and seek peace to carry on their business of exploitation in an atmosphere of stability. They were the first to welcome the US interventionist forces. The US-forced stability only means more intense exploitation and oppression of the people. The whole history of Liberia is a testimony to it. From the time of establishment of Liberia right up to the present times it has been under US domination, and it has its constitution exactly on the lines of the American constitution. For America Freedom means freedom to exploit while in Liberia freedom means ‘freedom’ to be exploited. And when instability and a continuous civil war situation makes it impossible for the imperialists to exploit Liberia, they come to actively intervene in its internal affairs to set the equation right and try to unite the feuding groups through bargaining deals, that are usually known in political parlance as peace talks. In the end Taylor was characterized as a source of instability in the region. Had he been successful in crushing his rivals he would have been hailed as a great leader. As he could not, he is a culprit and must be replaced with someone else. Moses Blah has been his right arm for years. A few years back he fell from grace and imprisoned but was soon reinstated.

The leader of the opposition, Sekou Conneh, had been a former tax collector and a trader of used up cars and has an interest in the lucrative diamond mining. His movement, Liberians United for Reconciliation and Democracy (LURD) has French backing through Guinea and the Ivory Coast. He has good connections with the Guinean president. Another rebel group is being propped up by British-backed Sierra Leone. In fact the whole of North-West Africa is a play-ground for the contention of various imperialist powers, and local lords play second fiddle to the imperialist interests of their masters to get an added share from the exploits in other’s lands. The English have armies in Sierra Leone, the French forces are in the Ivory Coast and back Guinea, the US has marines in Liberia, while Nigeria acts as the regional lord, extracting commissions from imperialists by providing mercenary forces for them, and for this or that rebel group. Its role as a broker and a direct exploiter of diamond mines in Sierra Leone is a well-established fact.

Why has Liberia remained one of the poorest countries of the world, in spite of being run with the help from, and dictates of the "kind of white saviours" who "owned" their burdens for hundreds of years and always promised prosperity, wealth and freedom? Why is it that the local leaders who led rebellions of the poor masses against oppression always get tagged with the imperialist robbers in the end, after coming to power? Why does it always happen that freedom and liberation from oppression evade the people, time and again? The answers, of course, are not far to seek; yet they seem to be evading resolution for decades and decades. The movements in the region have no such programme that can deliver their people from imperialist exploitation. There is no genuine revolutionary movement that is directed towards achieving a total break with imperialism. Hence nothing positive comes out of years of rebellion and revolt by the people who are only used as cannon fodder by various local vested interests and imperialist powers. The salvation of poor nations lies only in a revolutionary break from the world imperialist economic and political system and in developing the economies and societies in the direction of establishing genuine socialism. Till then no nation of the region can see stabilization and real peace as various local and international exploitative interests will continue to collude and collide as the situation unfolds.

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