UN tries to disarm Liberia
2004-04-16 09:33
Gbarnga, Liberia - Disarmament of Liberia's estimated 45 000 fighters resumed on Thursday in the central rebel stronghold of Gbarnga, five months after the campaign was launched only to be swiftly aborted by the United Nations.
UN Mission in Liberia spokesperson Margaret Novicki said from the capital Monrovia that peacekeepers began relieving fighters of their weapons and ammunition early Thursday morning.
Each fighter will receive $150, food rations and preliminary vocational training during a seven-day stay at the cantonment site set up in Gbarnga and another $150 once they are returned to their communities.
On Tuesday the campaign will kick off in the port city of Buchanan and five days later in Tubmanburg, from where the main rebel Liberians United for Reconciliation and Democracy (Lurd) launched their offensive on Monrovia in early 2003.
Unmil considers disarmament to be pivotal to efforts to return a lasting peace to the west African state riven by 14 years of nearly relentless war that ended in August last year with a power-sharing pact and the flight into exile of former president Charles Taylor.
The disarmament campaign got off to a rocky start in December when thousands of soldiers from Taylor's armies flooded a lone cantonment site just outside of Monrovia, overtaxing the understaffed UN mission that had arrived just two months earlier.
Fighters ran riot
Dissatisfied with the incentives they were offered, fighters ran riot in the streets of Monrovia for three days, leaving at least 12 dead. The campaign was aborted after just a week.
Since December, UNMIL has bombarded radio airwaves with explanations of the disarmament process and mounted a song-and-dance revue which traveled around the Atlantic coastal nation of 3.3 million to promote the campaign.
But concerns about the effectiveness of the campaign still linger, with leaders of the three warring factions complaining that their troops were unlikely to be provided with adequate skills that would make them assets to their communities.
"The UN and others must ensure that our fighters are well taken care of and registered for vocational and skills training," General Roland Duo, a senior commander in the dismantled armed forces of Taylor, was quoted as saying by the UN news agency IRIN.
"With this they would not focus their minds on returning to war."