Blah's warring past

2003-08-11 20:07

Monrovia - Liberia's President Moses Blah, who took power on Monday, entered the political arena in the same way as his predecessor Charles Taylor - from a Libyan guerrilla training camp.

The pair returned from Libya in 1989 as part of a 200-strong group dubbed the Special Forces Commandos, the military vanguard of Taylor's National Patriotic Front of Liberia (NPFL).

They immediately took up arms against Liberia's government, launching a conflict in which some 250 000 people were killed and regional powers were dragged into the conflict.

Seven years of failed peace deals followed, until Taylor was elected president in 1997 after threatening to restart the fighting.

During the first three years of Taylor's reign, Blah returned to Libya as Liberian ambassador, before coming home in 2000 to become vice president.

But where Taylor was flamboyant, Blah is low-key, known in Monrovia for driving himself around in his own car, with only a single bodyguard.

In a historic ceremony that signalled the end of Taylor's domination, the 56-year-old former animal-feed plant operator and father of 14 shrugged off anonymity and was sworn in as president on Monday.

Peace talks

Blah will take theoretical charge of an embattled government that holds only around a fifth of Liberian territory, and only part of its own capital, which has been trapped in a rebel choke-hold for two months.

It is also not clear how long his government will last.

Peace talks between the regime and Liberia's rebel movements are under way in the Ghanaian capital Accra, where negotiators are seeking to set up a government of national unity.

Commanders of the rebel Liberians United for Reconciliation and Democracy (Lurd) say they will accept the results of the Ghana talks, but also that they oppose Blah and will relaunch fighting if a more neutral civilian is not found to replace him.

Thrust into the centre of this political and military storm, Blah's curriculum vitae has all the hallmarks of a dyed-in-the-wool Taylor clone.

Like his current boss, he is a graduate of Libya's Tajura Military Training College - whose alumni also include Sierra Leone's notoriously brutal rebel chieftain Foday Sankoh - and studied there from 1985 to 1989.

Gaddafi

He returned to Liberia in December 1989 as one of the leaders of the NPFL and was the movement's adjutant general until 1990 when he became inspector general and Taylor's envoy to an attempted national reconciliation government.

His posting to Libya was a key one. Colonel Muammar Gaddafi has long been reported to have been one of Taylor's key backers in his years of guerrilla war and brutal rule.

Blah speaks Arabic - along with English, French and his native Dan - and his role must have been an important one as Taylor attempted to shore his regime against Lurd's revolution, now almost five years old.

But in recent months there have been signs that the former comrades in arms might not have been as close as was imagined.

In June, when Taylor was forced to flee a conference of west African leaders in Ghana to avoid an international arrest warrant issued by the UN-mandated war crimes court in Sierra Leone, he accused Blah of plotting to overthrow him.

The vice-president was held under house arrest for several days, before leaders from the pair's home region of Nimba prevailed upon Taylor to let him go. The truth behind the allegations remains a mystery. - Sapa-AFP

- SAPA