They call it “UN Drive”. A long, cracked, potholed street, through which pass an endless stream of Land Cruisers and Toyota Hilux pick-up trucks flying the flags of international concern and compassion.
At any one time of the day, “the drive” is home to hawkers, hookers and kids playing hand-clapping games, as well as the International Red Cross, Save the Children, Concern Worldwide, Oxfam, Merlin, Médecins San Frontières, the World Lutheran Foundation, and a myriad of other “independent” NGOs.
But far and away it’s the blue and white flag of the United Nations and its own countless confusing departments that have the highest profile.
They are all here in Liberia – Unesco, Unicef, UNDP, Unocha, UNHCR, to name but a very few. There is something surreal in the way the global monolith that is the UN deploys itself in this war-torn west African state and other conflict zones.
For a start, the scale of its operation is awesome. At Roberts International Airport about an hour outside Monrovia, giant UN Russian Ilyushin transport planes carrying everything from tarpaulins to laptops scream to a halt through oily rain-filled puddles that swamp the runway. From there convoys of UN trucks ferry the aid past government checkpoints to warehouses and compounds in the capital.
The UN, it seems, always has the biggest and best. The best radios, the best vehicles, and, as most aid workers will tell you privately, the biggest salaries.
Some of the UN personnel run up their expense accounts and spend their salaries at the Mamba Point Hotel just off the drive.
There the obligatory white Jeeps with their antennae and flags clog up the entranceway as UN staff meet for drinks or meals, only yards from thousands of Liberians displaced by the war and now forced to live in the squalor of an adjacent derelict block of flats, and the old Ministry of Internal Affairs building.
While the “global community” dine and discuss “food security ” and the current “complex emergency”, outside the hotel, Liberians wash their 4x4s for a few liberties – Liberian dollars.
It’s a similar story near the main UN administration buildings on the drive. Every day despite “NO VACANCIES” signs posted on the gates, hundreds of Liberians queue looking for work as drivers, cleaners, odd-job men, any employment they can get that will put bread in their mouths.
There is a long-term danger in this of course. A consequence the UN never seems to learn from experience. For, quite simply, if and when the UN finally departs Liberia, it will inevitably leave in its wake an army of dependents.
The very role it sought for Liberia, peace and self-sustainability, will in one fell swoop be dealt a body blow. Even in the short term, its own recruitment of skilled local personnel, while immediately necessary, ultimately undermines the ability of Liberia to put its own house in order.
If proof of such a scenario was ever needed, then look no further than Afghanistan, where UN administrative departments tempt returning skilled Afghans by offering salaries the government of that country can never match.
As a result President Karzai’s effort to rebuild and democratise Afghanistan is starved of those most capable of carrying out the task.
During the Vietnam war, journalists in Saigon nicknamed the daily 5pm US military briefing “the five o’clock follies”. In Monrovia the UN’s own five o’ clock folly – or 5.30 follies to be precise – takes place in a briefing room off UN Drive.
“Logistics,” “Shelter,” “Security” “Media,” the chairman announces in turn as UN workers provide a daily “sitrep” on their respective specialisms.
“The Fastest Fittest Intervention Force,” reads the slogan on the back of one of the worker’s T-shirts. The UN is fond of T-shirts, slogans and logos. But behind the gloss, many Liberians are becoming increasingly anxious that the international body is not moving fast enough, and is perhaps not fit enough to wrestle the initiative away from the gunmen that have terrorised Liberia for too long.
“In Buchanan there is no food and Model rebels rule,” a Liberian aid worker told me.
“Men are being tied to other men and forced to walk in opposite directions,” the worker added, detailing scarcely believable but nonetheless corroborated stories of the most perverse atrocities.
“In Gbarnga the rebels make women walk around naked, but what is the UN doing about it?” the source asked despairingly.
The more Liberians one talks to, the more it becomes apparent that they increasingly see the UN as having no strategy for war and no strategy for peace.
Back at the follies in UN headquarters in Monrovia, the organisation’s chiefs, such as special representative Jacques Klein, reiterate the message that it will take until October for the full deployment of the peacekeeping force. That same month acting president Moses Blah is expected to stand down and elections run.
“October is way too late, things could easily unravel well before then, already Lurd fighters are only a few miles from here and getting closer every day,” insists Richardson Sando, chairman of the Maimu displaced persons camp near Totota, scene of the latest hostilities.
As we spoke he pointed to a woman washing some tattered clothes in a blackened pool nearby, her bare-backed children paddling alongside in the brackish soup.
“They only arrived here yesterday, it’s the third time they have had to escape, people are running out of places to hide,” Sando explained.
Many of those on the move are also going hungry. While the UN World Food Programme (WFP) has distributed food aid, they are quick to point out the dangers of doing do in areas run by the rebels.
“You take truckloads in, and the gunmen and thugs descend like vultures, there is absolutely no way of guaranteeing it will get to those who need it most,” said one WFP representative who preferred not to be named.
Liberians argue that it is precisely the UN’s duty to provide that guarantee, by military force if necessary. What else are the UN here for if not to provide security for the civilian population?
But the fact remains that for all its civilian operations, the UN’s military resources in Liberia implemented through Ecomil are limited for the forseeable weeks, and more than likely months ahead.
“If the UN does not act authoritatively now, I tell you we will be back to where we were weeks ago, under siege and starving,” said Ted Johnson, emergency programmes supervisor for Concern Worldwide, speaking at the Samuel Doe SKD football stadium in Monrovia.
In the same stadium where once the great Liberian footballer George Weah graced the turf, 55,000 displaced people, mainly families, have made their temporary home beneath the terracing and in grass huts they are throwing up themselves to protect them from next season’s heavy rains.
For these people this is their only sanctuary. They have no protection against the brutality of the militias except that the UN can give them.
All are innocent people who desire nothing more that to gain the momentum of normality, and return to their homes. The UN must not fail them through prevarication or lack of will and conviction. To do so makes a mockery of why it intervened in Liberia in the first place.
“The Fastest, Fittest, Intervention Force,” slogan on the back of certain UN workers’ T-shirts might carry a certain cachet and convince some in the organisation’s corridors of power in New York.
But the message I saw on the filthy T-shirt of a little girl, standing amidst the squalor of the SKD stadium, seemed altogether more appropriate in summing up Liberia’s plight.
“A little sun, a little rain, a little patience,” it read. Liberians have experienced and embraced all three of late, but their patience, quite rightly, is running out.
David Pratt
Article republished courtesy of Scotland's Sunday Herald: http://www.sundayherald.com
For additional information on Liberia, please see the collection of articles compiled by MoveOn.org: http://www.moveon.org/moveonbulletin/bulletin26.html
Please continue for more photographs by Stewart Attwood.
Please click the photos to enlarge.
At any one time of the day, “the drive” is home to hawkers, hookers and kids playing hand-clapping games, as well as the International Red Cross, Save the Children, Concern Worldwide, Oxfam, Merlin, Médecins San Frontières, the World Lutheran Foundation, and a myriad of other “independent” NGOs.
But far and away it’s the blue and white flag of the United Nations and its own countless confusing departments that have the highest profile.
They are all here in Liberia – Unesco, Unicef, UNDP, Unocha, UNHCR, to name but a very few. There is something surreal in the way the global monolith that is the UN deploys itself in this war-torn west African state and other conflict zones.
For a start, the scale of its operation is awesome. At Roberts International Airport about an hour outside Monrovia, giant UN Russian Ilyushin transport planes carrying everything from tarpaulins to laptops scream to a halt through oily rain-filled puddles that swamp the runway. From there convoys of UN trucks ferry the aid past government checkpoints to warehouses and compounds in the capital.
The UN, it seems, always has the biggest and best. The best radios, the best vehicles, and, as most aid workers will tell you privately, the biggest salaries.
Some of the UN personnel run up their expense accounts and spend their salaries at the Mamba Point Hotel just off the drive.
There the obligatory white Jeeps with their antennae and flags clog up the entranceway as UN staff meet for drinks or meals, only yards from thousands of Liberians displaced by the war and now forced to live in the squalor of an adjacent derelict block of flats, and the old Ministry of Internal Affairs building.
While the “global community” dine and discuss “food security ” and the current “complex emergency”, outside the hotel, Liberians wash their 4x4s for a few liberties – Liberian dollars.
It’s a similar story near the main UN administration buildings on the drive. Every day despite “NO VACANCIES” signs posted on the gates, hundreds of Liberians queue looking for work as drivers, cleaners, odd-job men, any employment they can get that will put bread in their mouths.
There is a long-term danger in this of course. A consequence the UN never seems to learn from experience. For, quite simply, if and when the UN finally departs Liberia, it will inevitably leave in its wake an army of dependents.
The very role it sought for Liberia, peace and self-sustainability, will in one fell swoop be dealt a body blow. Even in the short term, its own recruitment of skilled local personnel, while immediately necessary, ultimately undermines the ability of Liberia to put its own house in order.
If proof of such a scenario was ever needed, then look no further than Afghanistan, where UN administrative departments tempt returning skilled Afghans by offering salaries the government of that country can never match.
As a result President Karzai’s effort to rebuild and democratise Afghanistan is starved of those most capable of carrying out the task.
During the Vietnam war, journalists in Saigon nicknamed the daily 5pm US military briefing “the five o’clock follies”. In Monrovia the UN’s own five o’ clock folly – or 5.30 follies to be precise – takes place in a briefing room off UN Drive.
“Logistics,” “Shelter,” “Security” “Media,” the chairman announces in turn as UN workers provide a daily “sitrep” on their respective specialisms.
“The Fastest Fittest Intervention Force,” reads the slogan on the back of one of the worker’s T-shirts. The UN is fond of T-shirts, slogans and logos. But behind the gloss, many Liberians are becoming increasingly anxious that the international body is not moving fast enough, and is perhaps not fit enough to wrestle the initiative away from the gunmen that have terrorised Liberia for too long.
“In Buchanan there is no food and Model rebels rule,” a Liberian aid worker told me.
“Men are being tied to other men and forced to walk in opposite directions,” the worker added, detailing scarcely believable but nonetheless corroborated stories of the most perverse atrocities.
“In Gbarnga the rebels make women walk around naked, but what is the UN doing about it?” the source asked despairingly.
The more Liberians one talks to, the more it becomes apparent that they increasingly see the UN as having no strategy for war and no strategy for peace.
Back at the follies in UN headquarters in Monrovia, the organisation’s chiefs, such as special representative Jacques Klein, reiterate the message that it will take until October for the full deployment of the peacekeeping force. That same month acting president Moses Blah is expected to stand down and elections run.
“October is way too late, things could easily unravel well before then, already Lurd fighters are only a few miles from here and getting closer every day,” insists Richardson Sando, chairman of the Maimu displaced persons camp near Totota, scene of the latest hostilities.
As we spoke he pointed to a woman washing some tattered clothes in a blackened pool nearby, her bare-backed children paddling alongside in the brackish soup.
“They only arrived here yesterday, it’s the third time they have had to escape, people are running out of places to hide,” Sando explained.
Many of those on the move are also going hungry. While the UN World Food Programme (WFP) has distributed food aid, they are quick to point out the dangers of doing do in areas run by the rebels.
“You take truckloads in, and the gunmen and thugs descend like vultures, there is absolutely no way of guaranteeing it will get to those who need it most,” said one WFP representative who preferred not to be named.
Liberians argue that it is precisely the UN’s duty to provide that guarantee, by military force if necessary. What else are the UN here for if not to provide security for the civilian population?
But the fact remains that for all its civilian operations, the UN’s military resources in Liberia implemented through Ecomil are limited for the forseeable weeks, and more than likely months ahead.
“If the UN does not act authoritatively now, I tell you we will be back to where we were weeks ago, under siege and starving,” said Ted Johnson, emergency programmes supervisor for Concern Worldwide, speaking at the Samuel Doe SKD football stadium in Monrovia.
In the same stadium where once the great Liberian footballer George Weah graced the turf, 55,000 displaced people, mainly families, have made their temporary home beneath the terracing and in grass huts they are throwing up themselves to protect them from next season’s heavy rains.
For these people this is their only sanctuary. They have no protection against the brutality of the militias except that the UN can give them.
All are innocent people who desire nothing more that to gain the momentum of normality, and return to their homes. The UN must not fail them through prevarication or lack of will and conviction. To do so makes a mockery of why it intervened in Liberia in the first place.
“The Fastest, Fittest, Intervention Force,” slogan on the back of certain UN workers’ T-shirts might carry a certain cachet and convince some in the organisation’s corridors of power in New York.
But the message I saw on the filthy T-shirt of a little girl, standing amidst the squalor of the SKD stadium, seemed altogether more appropriate in summing up Liberia’s plight.
“A little sun, a little rain, a little patience,” it read. Liberians have experienced and embraced all three of late, but their patience, quite rightly, is running out.
David Pratt
Article republished courtesy of Scotland's Sunday Herald: http://www.sundayherald.com
For additional information on Liberia, please see the collection of articles compiled by MoveOn.org: http://www.moveon.org/moveonbulletin/bulletin26.html
Please continue for more photographs by Stewart Attwood.
Please click the photos to enlarge.