The world is pulling out of Liberia. Business people, missionaries, aid workers, diplomats, even the United Nations and the Red Cross have left the country's capital, Monrovia. All last week, television news carried footage of evacuees hurrying onto U.S. military helicopters to be lifted out of a city ruled by gunmen.
Bodies lie in the street. Most every business and office, including all the relief agency headquarters, has been looted. An estimated 20,000 people have taken refuge in the housing compound of the U.S. embassy. Thousands more are trapped in a military barracks under siege, where 500 people are being held hostage. Fighters armed with AK-47s and rocket-propelled grenade launchers roam the streets, robbing, raping and murdering whatever civilians they find. They do not appear to obey orders.
The transitional government, which was supposed to lead the country toward peace, is silent, its civilian president having fled to the headquarters of the West African peacekeepers. The peacekeeping force itself is scattered, with some of its members accused of joining in the looting.
Under these circumstances, it would be tempting for the United States to turn its back on Liberia, to write the country off as a lost cause, a place that after six years of civil war has ceased to be a nation.
But the United States must not abandon Liberia, not now, at the most desperate point in the war since 1990. The West African peacekeeping force, at less than 8,000--two-thirds of its strength earlier in the war--clearly needs help. The lives of more than 1 million Liberians in Monrovia are in danger. And with distribution of relief food stalled, hunger, already a problem throughout the country, threatens to deepen into starvation.
In 1990, U.S. troops waited offshore as rebels and government soldiers slaughtered thousands of civilians. U.S. officials hoped for a regional solution through the Economic Community of West African States Cease-Fire Monitoring Group, the Nigerian-led peacekeeping force.
West African peacekeepers eventually landed to take control of Monrovia, turning the capital into an island of safety to which hundreds of thousands of Liberians fled. But repeated cease-fire violations prevented peacekeepers from deploying outside the city.
In the interim, tens of thousands--an estimated 150,000 in the war--died and two-thirds of the population of 2.5 million was driven from their homes. The conflict in Liberia spawned a civil war in neighboring Sierra Leone and spilled over the border into Guinea and Ivory Coast. Other countries became increasingly unwilling to invest in Liberia. And an estimated 6,000 boys, forced or orphaned into fighting, grew up knowing only how to kill.
In August, a peace agreement finally resulted in a transitional government that included all the warring factions, which by then numbered seven. Disarmament was scheduled to start in December. But an ECOMOG request for $123 million to fund disarmament drew just one pledge--$10 million from the United States. Underfunded, the process fell behind schedule. There were massacres of civilians and clashes between factions. Members of one of the factions attacked the peacekeepers. Efforts to unseat and then arrest the leader of that faction, Roosevelt Johnson, provoked Monrovia's sudden descent into chaos April 6.
Now, the United States has a chance to take the action it might have in 1990.
Hundreds of American troops, with planes and helicopters, are already in the region. More are on their way.
By sending American troops into Monrovia for a limited period, the United States could stop the bloodshed in the capital, allow humanitarian and relief agencies to re-enter the country, and enable the peacekeepers to regroup and be reinforced. U.S. action could also bolster the confidence of the international community, which would have to fund these efforts.
American intervention would cost lives. But it would save more. American intervention would cost money. But so would a continuing conflict--since 1990, the United States has spent about $500 million in Liberia on humanitarian aid and peacekeeping. And, ultimately, it is in America's interest to have a world ruled by law, not the gun.
The Liberian fighters, who number 60,000, have no ideology, beyond greed and cruelty, and no support among civilians. Their only power is their guns. Well-trained, well-equipped, well-disciplined U.S. troops should be able to take these away.
For six years, U.S. officials have blamed the suffering in Liberia on the warring factions. The current crisis in Liberia demands more.
If the United States gives up on Liberia, America will have given the fighters just what they want--free rein to terrorize a country. If the United States commits troops short-term to establish order in Monrovia, America will have listened to the words of Liberian newspapers, churches, human rights activists, women's groups and marchers. With one voice, the people of Liberia want peace.