G-L,

This story below is about Liberia's Charles Taylor, but doesn't he remind us
of someone? One Yahya " your time has come" Jammeh AKA
Alieu Keita

MJohnson

Liberia's Diverted Dreams
As Leader Grows Richer, Vow to Rebuild Is Unfulfilled
    Charles Taylor, president of Liberia, listens to a reporter's questions.
(Douglas Farah - The Washington Post)







By Douglas Farah
Washington Post Foreign Service
Wednesday, January 31, 2001; Page A01



GBARNGA, Liberia -- When Liberia's brutal factional war ended in 1997, the
newly elected president, Charles Taylor, promised to quickly rebuild this
town, a once vibrant intellectual center that had been the base of
operations for his rebel forces.


But today, spread out below the bombed-out shell of Taylor's former
headquarters -- still called the Executive Mansion -- the bullet-pocked town
of 30,000 has no lights, no running water, few jobs and little hope.


"This town used to be alive; it was the place to be," said Mayor Jerome N.J.
Clark II, who said he had not been paid in three months. "We had three
colleges here, including a seminary, a hospital and a rubber processing
plant. Now we struggle."


Just a few miles down the road, heavily armed troops of Liberia's elite
Anti-Terrorist Unit guard Taylor's Yassa Farm, which he visits on weekends.
The farm has 24-hour electricity, working tractors and earth-moving
equipment to maintain the lakes and ponds visible from the main highway, and
newly graded roads.


The stark contrast -- mirrored in Monrovia, the capital, and elsewhere --
illustrates how Taylor, 52, has used Liberia's resources for his own benefit
while doing little to help rebuild the war-ravaged country, according to
residents, diplomats and businessmen.


In a recent interview, Taylor accused the international community of failing
to help rebuild postwar Liberia as it did Kosovo. His government is unable
to do the job itself, he said, in part because a festering border war with
neighboring Guinea is bleeding resources from reconstruction.


But businessmen, diplomats and international aid workers say huge amounts of
money have been siphoned off by a small group of Taylor's associates and
relatives. Onetime friends of Taylor's, such as former president Jimmy
Carter, Jesse L. Jackson and others, have withdrawn support and shut down
their operations in Liberia because of allegations of human rights abuses
and government corruption.


"If you want to do business in Liberia, you do business with Taylor," said
one businessman, who was told that a Taylor relative had been appointed to
the board of his business and would be taking a share of the profits. "He
has his hand in everything and gets a cut of everything."


Taylor's lucrative business ventures generate cash for his personal security
apparatus and the purchase of weapons rather than for rebuilding the nation,
according to U.S., European and Liberian sources. A prime example, they say,
is the Hong Kong-based Oriental Timber Co., known as OTC. The company is
virtually clear-cutting about 2.5 million acres in some of West Africa's
most valuable virgin forest, shipping rare hardwoods to Europe and cutting
smaller, less valuable trees for plywood in Asia -- and generating millions
of dollars.


OTC, according to the same sources, obtained its concession through Taylor's
brother Robert, who heads Liberia's Forestry Development Authority, and has
paid the Taylor family millions of dollars to operate.


Gus Kouwenhoven, manager of OTC, in a fax to The Washington Post, said those
assertions were false and that OTC operated "in strict conformity with the
terms and conditions of our timber concession agreement with the
government," which includes paying taxes. "We have never paid any funds
directly or personally to President Taylor," Kouwenhoven said.


Known locally as the president's "peppertree" or personal source of wealth
-- Liberians joke that the company's initials stand for "Only Taylor Chops"
-- OTC controls and operates the port of Buchanan, the nation's main port,
and employs virtually no Liberians.


"We usually log 4 percent of our concession a year, making it last 25
years," said one veteran logger here. "OTC is taking out as much as they can
as quickly as they can, with no regard for the size of the trees. It is
rape."


A recent U.N. report, which accused Taylor and a "small coterie of officials
and private businessmen around him" of "international criminal activity,"
strongly recommended banning trade in Liberian timber as part of a package
of sanctions. The Security Council is debating the sanctions, which could
include a ban on Liberian diamonds and a worldwide travel ban on Taylor, all
senior Liberian officials and their families.


The U.N. report said "large amounts of the proceeds" of OTC and other lumber
concessions go to Taylor and "are used for extra-budgetary activities,
including the acquisition of weapons." U.S., European and African diplomats,
as well as Liberian sources, say Taylor and his colleagues also profit
heavily through activities that help destabilize West Africa, including
illicit trading in diamonds that are used to purchase weapons and fuel some
of the world's most vicious conflicts.


That is the main focus of the U.N. report. Dozens of sources -- including
regional intelligence sources, weapons transporters and two sources with
direct knowledge of Taylor's dealings -- said that the document, while
flawed, paints a generally accurate picture of Taylor's role. The sources
said Taylor is part of a regional arms-shipment and diamond-smuggling
network that provides weapons throughout the continent, a shadowy pipeline
stretching from former Soviet bloc countries across Africa with the support
of senior East European officials and senior members of the governments of
Burkina Faso, Niger, Togo and Guinea.


The most prominent group benefiting from Taylor's support is the
Revolutionary United Front (RUF), a rebel force fighting in neighboring
Sierra Leone. The RUF in recent years has gained international notoriety by
hacking hands and legs off thousands of civilians, razing hundreds of
villages and forcing thousands of children into combat.


Taylor denied he is involved in criminal activity or in diamonds-for-weapons
deals and said he had severed all links to the RUF.


In a written response to the U.N. report, the Liberian government said the
U.N. panel of experts was "biased and prejudiced in its investigation,
allegations and conclusions. . . . The standards employed . . . are
reminiscent of the long-discredited Star Chamber proceedings, McCarthyism
and outright character assassination."


But a source with direct knowledge of Taylor's dealings said: "Taylor and
his circle were deeply shaken by the report because someone high in his
government obviously gave [the investigators] very good information. It is
full of truth."


Among Taylor's key foreign associates, according to the U.N. report and the
same sources, is Victor Bout, a native of Tajikistan and a former Soviet KGB
officer who lives in the United Arab Emirates. Generally known as Victor B.
because of his numerous aliases, Bout "oversees a complex network of over 50
planes" that are part of a web of companies and are used to ship weapons
across Africa, the report said.


The report and other sources identified Talal Ndine, a Lebanese businessman,
as an important financial lieutenant of Taylor's. The report called him the
"inner circle's paymaster" and said those bringing diamonds out of Sierra
Leone "are paid by him personally." Ndine did not respond to requests for
comment sent through intermediaries.


While Taylor and his associates have amassed enormous riches with their
enterprises, the country he vowed to rebuild after seven years of fighting
still resembles a war zone. Health care is virtually nonexistent. The John
F. Kennedy Hospital in Monrovia, the country's biggest health care facility,
shut down last month and reopened only when Taiwan agreed to finance it for
several months.


Most schools remain closed, and the illiteracy rate has risen from about 30
percent to more than 70 percent in the past decade, development workers
said. There is no running water, and the nation's telephone system, plagued
by a lack of maintenance and antiquated equipment, routinely crashes,
cutting the country off from the outside world.


In Gbarnga, Liberians say Taylor's image is gradually beginning to mirror
the way he is regarded abroad. His unfulfilled promises are eroding his
support in this West African country, which was founded by freed American
slaves.


"Some people here say Taylor will still rebuild the town as he promised, and
some people say that Taylor lied," said Jonathan Nyante, a businessman. "I
myself fall into the camp that says he lied."


© 2001 The Washington Post Company
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