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Liberia, formed by freed American slaves, seeks U.S. aid to keep peace

By Ellen Knickmeyer Associated Press 4 min read

DAKAR, Senegal (AP) – The United States is being called to the rescue of Liberia – yanked by old bonds many Americans never knew the United States had. The two nations have economic and strategic ties dating back to 1822, when President James Monroe dispatched soldiers to escort ashore the first freed American slaves, who founded the nation with a U.S.-style Declaration of Independence.

Now, West African leaders are asking for a 2,000-troop U.S. contribution to a peace force for Liberia to stand between Liberia’s rebels and warlord-president Charles Taylor – and a decision before President Bush opens his first Africa visit Monday.

The United States has placed three conditions ahead of any consideration of the idea: That Taylor, an inveterate maker and breaker of peace deals, cede power as promised; that he surrender on his war crimes indictment from a U.N. special court; and that the warring sides truly cease fire.

The rebels’ three-year campaign to drive out Taylor is nearing the deadliest of end games: a full-scale battle for the capital, crowded with 1 million residents and hundreds of thousands of refugees trapped between the rebels and the Atlantic Ocean. Pressure for an international peace force – and U.S. support – grew during two rebel offensives of Monrovia last month.

U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan and international figures from Europe to Africa have spoken of the United States as the natural candidate to lead a peacekeeping force.

Why the U.S. military?

Effectiveness, for one reason, supporters of the idea say.

Obligation for another.

They point to neighboring Sierra Leone, where a 10-year rebel terror campaign to win control of that country’s diamond fields killed tens of thousands of innocent civilians.

Sierra Leone’s doped-up, uneducated rebels repeatedly made mockeries of peace deals – until former colonial ruler Britain intervened, with Guinea and the United Nations, crushed the rebels, and brought peace in 2002.

Liberia, unlike Sierra Leone, was never a colony – but it came close. Returned American slaves patterned their new republic faithfully on the American model, pledging themselves in a U.S.-style Declaration of Independence to “regenerate and enlighten this benighted continent.”

U.S.-Liberia ties held. Firestone created the world’s largest rubber plantation in Liberia, helping make its fortune, and Liberia’s. U.S. business partnership made Liberia sub-Saharan Africa’s wealthiest nation for decades.

The United States “is a father to Liberia,” said the Rev. Willie T. Wolo said, one of many ordinary Liberians discussing the prospect of U.S. rescue this week on street corners and in homes.

The U.S. interest in Liberia became strategic during the Cold War, when President Ronald Reagan welcomed it as a West African launch pad for covert activities against Libya.

The role earned Liberia the most per capita U.S. aid of any African country, and President Samuel Doe a then-rare one-on-one White House visit, although Reagan, in an unfortunate moment, referred to his visitor as “Chairman Moe.”

Libya, in turn, looked to strike back at the United States and its West African ally – and found Taylor. A Boston-educated business student, the Liberian-born Taylor graduated from the Cold War-era Libyan training camps of Moammar Gadhafi.

In 1989, bringing the U.S.-Libyan rivalry home, Taylor launched Liberia into war, leading a small force of armed men into Liberia to overthrow Doe. The 14 years of near-perpetual conflict that followed has killed hundreds of thousands. Aid groups say virtually the whole population has been displaced by fighting, at one time or the other.

Ecstatic crowds, cheering and screaming welcome, rushed to welcome Nigerian-led West African peace forces in the 1990s. Taylor, making and breaking deals, fought with the peacekeepers.

Liberia’s rebels cite that history when they urge Americans, not West Africans, to lead any new peace force. Many Liberians agree.

“The only people who can bring decency to Liberia are the Americans,” one refugee, James A.B. Brown, said in the capital this week.

Liberians, faithful imitators of the United States, with their Masonic temples and evangelical Protestant churches, puzzle over why America remains aloof from their current troubles.

“Once America steps in, the process will be smooth and simple; the nightmare will end,” Monrovia resident Stephen Scott declared.

He spoke as aid workers cleaned the streets of corpses left by last week’s four-day rebel siege of the city, which killed hundreds.

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