Black Diamond's fighters

2003-08-13 12:54

Monrovia - Black Diamond and her posse of girlfriends could, at first glance, be a group of inner-city women out for a night on the town in Los Angeles, London or any other city in the grip of hip-hop street style.

The bandanas, shades, hoop earings and tight, tight jeans - accessorised with a portable ghetto blaster playing the latest US rap and dance tracks and a shiny silver pick-up truck - could be straight out of an MTV video.

Elsewhere in the world a young woman might think of finishing off such an outfit with a designer bag or the latest sports shoes.

But on Bushrod Island, Monrovia, this season's must-have designer is Mikhail Kalashnikov and his timeless classic, the 7.62 millimetre AK-47 assault rifle.

"They are fierce fighters," murmurs a similarly armed, awe-struck 14-year-old boy as he watches "Colonel" Black Diamond and a half dozen of her troops sashay past his guard-post and up to the frontline.

"We're just coming to have a walk about, to take a look," said the 23-year-old streetfighter, inscrutable behind her wrap-around mirror shades and carefully applied make-up.

For weeks beforehand New Bridge had been the scene of fierce gunbattles, but by the weekend, with the Nigerians beginning to patrol on the other bank and President Charles Taylor on the verge of resignation, the guns were silent.

Black Diamond took the chance to examine some of the damage she and her fellow rebels had caused on the government bank, and to hand out a carton of new boxer shorts to their male Lurd comrades still keeping watch.

Despite their deadly armoury the young women were shy when approached by foreign journalists after they barrelled up to New Bridge and picked their way through the bullet casings and mortar fragments to visit the front.

"I fought in the battle," she said. "They fired a cannon at me."

At first she seems at a loss to explain why she and her friends should be fighting in this war at all, but she does offer one explanation. She fears if government forces counter-attack, then girls on Bushrod Island will be raped.

"We haved no time to marry," she said uncomfortably. "Most of the virgins have been raped. We want for all that to stop."

Behind Colonel Diamond, smiling shyly, an even younger fighter, in a silvery head-scarf and a star-shaped silver earring, nods.

She has a plaster on her cheek, but it appears to be more of a tribute to the signature style of chart-topping rap US artist Nelly than a battle scar. One of her friends is limping badly, however.

Liberian fighters have been accused of using rape as a weapon by the United Nations, and civilians on both sides of this latest futile conflict have suffered greatly at the hands of drugged, often under-age, fighters.

Hundreds of people have been killed or died from disease or malnutrition in the two months since the Lurd rebel movement seized Bushrod Island, including the food aid stocked at its port, and launched its siege of Monrovia.

And there is nothing comic or stylish about a battle which drove a quarter-of-a-million people from their homes.

But as the mood lightened on the frontline this weekend with the arrival in government territory of a battallion of Nigerian peacekeepers, Black Diamond's squad added a dash of colour to a squalid conflict.

- AFP