Africa, Economy & Trade, Headlines

LIBERIA: Life a Struggle for Ex-Combatants

Rebecca Murray

VOINJAMA, Liberia, Jan 15 2009 (IPS) - Hajah Kamara's life of violence began when she was not yet a teenager. After rebels butchered her father and pregnant mother in their Voinjama home, they forced her to become a ‘wife’ and a fighter in their warring faction.

Ex-combatants preparing to disarm in 2004 -- govt projects to employ ex-fighters have fallen short.  Credit:  IRIN

Ex-combatants preparing to disarm in 2004 -- govt projects to employ ex-fighters have fallen short. Credit: IRIN

"They raped me and tattooed me," says 22-year-old Kamara, pointing to the dark markings on her arm. "I felt bad fighting, but when I thought of my father and mother not living, I needed to revenge them."

During Liberia's brutal civil war in the 1990s, Kamara switched between rival factions several times. Initially with Sierra Leonean fighters battling Charles Taylor along the border region, she escaped, but later fell in with the notoriously violent "Anti-Terrorism Unit" run by Taylor’s son 'Chuckie' – convicted of war crimes by a Miami court in October 2008. Kamara eventually ended up with the opposing Guinean-backed LURD militia, in the final struggle for the Liberian capital Monrovia in 2003.

"I saw her armed here after the war," says Eric Kolubah, field supervisor with the Voinjama branch of the National Ex-Combatant Peacebuilding Initiative (NEPI), a local NGO working to reintegrate former fighters back into their communities. "She was commanding a special group. She is someone very, very big."

Voinjama is an agricultural market hub in Liberia's rural Lofa County – a day's drive north from the Monrovian capital on a rutted dirt road though dense tropical jungle – bordering mineral-rich Guinea and eastern Sierra Leone. For over a decade, fighters backed by Liberian actors and neighbouring states devastated Voinjama.

Now the town is hampered by a lack of long-term development projects, soaring unemployment, and simmering tensions between two dominant ethnic groups, the Loma and Mandingo. Small quantities of rice and vegetables are grown here, and today Liberians easily cross the border into Guinea to scour for cheaper goods.


The town has the third largest number of ex-combatants in Liberia. Many of the residents and fighters have lost families and friends, and are psychologically traumatized.

Kamara now supports two children – both named for her deceased parents – and is pregnant with a third. They scrape by on her earnings as a cook, 30 dollars a month, small pay for Liberian standards.

"I have no problems with the community," she says. "I asked forgiveness from my relative here, she wants to forget the past."

These factors, compounded with the threat of regional political instability – most recently the military coup in Guinea last month – heightens the vulnerability of Lofa County and the potential re-recruitment of impoverished ex-combatants.

"Liberian ex-combatants' most commonly cited reasons for considering a return to combat include poverty and economic disadvantage, followed by a lack of jobs, benefits or training," a September 2008 U.S. Institute of Peace (USIP) study of ex-fighters in Voinjama.

"A full 68 percent of Lofa respondents would not consider fighting now, or could they imagine circumstances that would lead them to fight in the future… [However] nearly a third responded that they could conceive of something that would lead them to fight again."

Initially after the Liberian war ended in 2003, a poll of fighting factions put the number of combatants at roughly 40,000. However, over 101,000 fighters, including women and children, registered with the Disarmament, Demobilization, Rehabilitation and Reintegration (DDRR) process in the following months, induced by cash payments for guns and ammunition, as well as vocational training, tool kits and the promise of work.

Since then, complaints about DDRR programming include an over-saturation in the market of tailors, carpenters and mechanics, and ex-combatants reselling tool kits for food.

Andrea Tamagnini, the Italian head of the Reintegration, Rehabilitation and Recovery unit with the United Nations Mission in Liberia (UNMIL), firmly believes short-term emergency employment, paired with a more long-term national development plan, is key to resolving conflict.

In 2006 the Liberian government and UNMIL kicked off an emergency job creation program, enlisting local communities to repair segments of Liberia's roads for salaries and food. The emphasis now in Lofa County is to expand the agricultural industry.

"Proof of the importance [of the road project] was an internal survey we did on illegal recruitment after the crises in Guinea in 2007," Tamagnini says. "The information from Lofa was that commanders who came across from Guinea – sometimes Liberians, both – to look for possible recruits, couldn't find anyone because the people were working on the road… So this is proof that if you have a job you don't go fighting."

Amara Kamara is a 37-year-old charismatic former general of the ULIMO militia's Alligator Brigade who trained in Cuba to fight Taylor's forces in the 1990s. He now serves as a de facto leader and counsellor for ex-combatants in Voinjama.

"I wouldn't fight again, but other people would, who are not busy 24 hours doing something," Kamara says. "That's why we are appealing to the Liberian government to facilitate more jobs – for us to forget about the past. If I'm not busy and I'm a fighter, then the same thing I was doing yesterday I could do today."

 
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