LIBERIA: Study sees risk of new war unless corruption stamped out

[ This report does not necessarily reflect the views of the United Nations]

DAKAR, 7 Sep 2005 (IRIN) - Liberia could slide back into war by the end of the decade, dragging its neighbours with it, unless the government gets tough on corruption and the international community stays on to help the rebuilding effort after crunch elections in October, an influential think tank said on Wednesday.

Liberians, battered by 14 years of civil war, head to the polls on 11 October to pick a new president and parliament to succeed the transitional government that was installed when the conflict ended in August 2003.

"Elections are but a small, early step in a lengthy reconstruction process that will be sabotaged if Liberian elites refuse some form of intrusive governance mechanism or if international partners pull out before a sustainable security environment is achieved," Crisis Group said in a report published on Wednesday.

"In a regional context in which UN peacekeeping forces are drawing down to zero in Sierra Leone, Guinea remains volatile, and violence in Cote d'Ivoire simmers just beneath the surface, anything less than full commitment to reintegration and reconstruction in Liberia will most likely contribute to a new, wider conflict," the Brussels-based think tank said.

International donors and Liberia's transitional government are currently wrangling over the finer details of a plan to stamp out corruption in the West African nation, whose wealth of diamonds, timber and iron ore have tempted generations of government officials.

Through the so-called Governance and Economic Management Assistance Programme (GEMAP), donors want to ring-fence key sources of revenue, place international supervisors in key ministries and state organisations, and bring in judges from abroad.

Western governments have warned that they will cut off funding to Liberia if politicians and government officials continue to squander the cash meant to help the country's estimated three million people, who are still living without running water or electricity more than two years after the guns fell silent.

"What is at stake is not only aid and reconstruction funds, but also the possible forgiveness of Liberia's approx $3 billion debt," Crisis Group said.

It also warned the international community that it must stick to its side of the bargain if the current interim government and the elected government that follows it do allow foreign experts in to help manage the economy.

"Donors must (then) come through with the significant funds and long-term commitment required to rebuild an electricity grid, a piped-water system, roads, education, healthcare, security forces and everything else Liberian needs to become a functional nation again," the report said.

The 15,000-strong United Nations peacekeeping force in Liberia is the most expensive in the world and observers say that if the October polls go smoothly there will be the temptation for troops to begin drawing down.

Many residents openly worry about how safe their war-scarred country would be with fewer UN blue hats on the ground, given that the unemployment rate is around 85 percent and thousands of ex-combatants have nothing to do.

Diplomats, human rights experts and aid workers agree that reintegrating former fighters back into society and finding them jobs is key to guaranteeing Liberia's future security and that of the region.

The vicious intertwined West African conflicts of the 1990s and early 2000s showed how porous borders allowed idle youths to take up arms abroad and become regional warriors.

As recently as April this year, Human Rights Watch sounded the alarm about Liberian youths renting themselves out as hired guns across the border in Cote d'Ivoire.

Around Liberia, both ex-combatants and civilians are quick to point to the last elections held in Liberia in 1997, where everyone hoped for peace but more war followed because of a flawed disarmament and reintegration process.

"Getting it right over the next year in Liberia would help move the entire Mano River Basin region (which also includes Guinea and Sierra Leone) in the right direction," Crisis Group said.

"Getting it wrong would probably seal the region's fate for years to come as the theatre of a nomadic war in which aimless and cruel young men roamed from one country to another, seeking the most lucrative sites to loot."

[ENDS]