Liberia. (Areas of Conflict).

Charles Taylor, who is the president of Liberia, has attracted the criticism of just about everybody. In December 2000, a United Nations report accused him of supplying arms to the murderous Revolutionary United Front in neighbouring Sierra Leone. In return, Mr. Taylor receives diamonds. He is also blamed for much of the destabilization and violence elsewhere in West Africa.

President Taylor likes to zoom around Monrovia, the capital, in ten-car convoys. He is accompanied, reports The Economist, by "goons in dark glasses who gun down the odd driver who gets in their way ... If Liberia is peaceful, it is because almost all opposition has been crushed."

In December 1989, a group of dissidents began an uprising against the government. The National Patriotic Front of Liberia (NPLF), a rebel group led by Charles Taylor, soon had an ill-trained army of 10,000 men, and within weeks they controlled much of the countryside. A split among the insurgents only increased the violence as fighting continued into 1990.

A multinational West African peacekeeping force failed to halt the fighting.

The destruction of Liberia's economy that had begun under the regime of President Samuel Doe was completed by the civil war. Half a dozen rival militias continued to battle in a very bloody conflict that took at least 150,000 lives.

In July 1997, Charles Taylor won at the ballot box what he could not win on the battlefield. He scored an easy election victory to become Liberia's first civilian president in 12 years. The Economist reports that the poll was flawed, but Mr. Taylor probably won anyway. The vote came after neighbouring countries helped the combatants put together a peace deal that finally held.

However, dissidents are reported to be attacking counties in the north of Liberia. They are based in neighbouring Guinea.

Meanwhile, many Liberians are living in rock-bottom poverty. The electricity system in Monrovia doesn't work, there is no piped water, and garbage is left to rot on the streets.

The Associated Press reports that what little money the government has is spent on security. President Charles Taylor says this has priority over reconstruction. Aid donors will give money only to non-governmental agencies; they are concerned that any funds getting into government hands will disappear.

The little bit of the economy that survived the civil war is controlled by Mr. Taylor and his friends. Foreigners will not invest in the country because of its corruption. One foreign observer is quoted as describing Liberia as a country where there is "a demented circus of crooks trying to outdo other crooks."

There are reports that Mr. Taylor's rice farm is kept in production by unpaid locals who are recruited at gunpoint.

Websites

Friends of Liberia - http://www.fol.org/

Liberian Center - http://pages.prodigy.net/jtell/ Liberia.htm

Liberian Post - http://members.tripod.com/% 7Eliberian/Post.html