What Is the Mission of TRC

News and Events

What Is the Mission of TRC: reconciliation or prosecution?
By Nvasekie N. Konneh
July 15, 2009

Note: In 2003, I wrote an article captioned “Why Are We Fighting” which prompted a three part articles of rebuttal from the Liberian writer, Paul Yeenie Harry .based in Poland. The article below is the revised version of the previous article.

When Liberians overwhelmingly embraced the war launched by the NPFL in the early 90s, did they think that the war was going to be a Tea Party? Even from that very beginning when there were widespread reports of ethnic genocides committed by the rebels, wasn’t everyone looking the other way while at the same time condemning the Doe’s government? Fast forward 19 years or more, are they the same people (who overwhelmingly embraced the war) calling for war crime trial now? If they embraced the war from the beginning, knowing fully well that war is not a Tea Party, how hypocritical can they be now calling for war crime trial? What is the mission of TRC: reconciliation or prosecution?

These are some of the questions that come to minds regarding the TRC’s Final Report. The reasons (why are we fighting?) that should be sufficiently dealt with have been brushed aside; rather the Final Report is calling for prosecution, instead of reconciliation. The case for prosecution only shows two things in its proponents-either they are grossly ignorant of the various causes of the war or they are just hypocritical. The campaign for war crimes trial would have been more credible before the elections that delivered Liberia to the main warring faction leader, Charles Taylor in 1997. When many Liberians embraced the war because they were fed up with the dictatorial regime of President Samuel Doe and years later got on the streets singing, “You killed my pah, you killed my mah, I will vote for you,” those that thought otherwise should have got on the streets too to say that war was not the answer and that no warlord should run for the presidency, especially the one who came and unleashed brutal terror on the population. By embracing the war and by overwhelmingly voting for Charles Taylor in 1997, the message was loud and clear: war was the right thing to do and as such we have forgiven and are rewarding the main architect of the war. The chief war architect was given the opportunity to redeem himself when he was elected as President of Liberia in 1997. Because he failed to deliver what he promised as our “elected president,” and was only indicted for the crime he committed while he was already an elected president should not be the reason to go after other warring faction leaders who did not benefit from our generosity like Taylor. The campaign for war crime trial should not be determined by the failure of the Taylor regime to deliver on the promises it made to the Liberian people in 1997. If he had succeeded in delivering the promises of his election campaign, there would not have been any campaign for war crimes trial. The TRC’s Final Report is 19 years too late. Instead of focusing on the various reasons that caused us to fight one another and reconciling our differences, the TRC is now focusing its attention on prosecution. This is counter-productive and will not advance the cause of reconciliation and peace in the country. It shows all the signs of some people’s frustration with the fact that Taylor is behind bar while other factional leaders are free. The logic then is if Taylor is in jail, other faction leaders must also be in jail. But the reason Taylor is in jail is not because he and other warring faction leaders participated in war in Liberia. Taylor is in jail because of what he did in Sierra Leone when he was already an elected president of Liberia. That just show how hypocritical and vindictive some of our fellow citizens are. So the TRC’s Final Report’s emphasis on prosecution is more in the interest of Charles Taylor and his supporters because in their eyes, that’s the way to balance the equation. Taylor is already on the ground and his supporters are trying to pull others down with them.

Well, most people would like to compare the war in Liberia with that of Sierra Leone. There are several factors that set our case apart from that of Sierra Leone. 1. Their war was not an ethnic or religious one like ours. The rebels didn’t kill anyone because he or she was a Christian or Moslem. 2. The Sierra Leoneans did not embrace the war and voted for factional leaders like we did in Liberia; they resisted and chased them until the UN set up a tribunal. 3. Because of their rejection of the way the rebels conducted business, the Sierra Leoneans campaigned for war crimes trial. Why didn’t we start our campaign until the court in Sierra Leone indicted Taylor? It makes one wonder what if the court in Sierra Leone had not indicted Taylor. What would these folks calling for prosecution now be doing if Taylor was not indicted? .

The war that started in 1989 up to 2003 has brought the worst in every one of us Liberians. We all supported one warring faction or another. Charles Taylor, from the beginning, enjoyed “popular support” even when it became apparently clear that his forces were carrying out ethnic cleansing. I will never forget the fact that when I was running for my life from the NPFL forces whose only reason for targeting me was my ethnicity and religion, there were thousands of fellow “innocent Liberians” lined up on the streets singing and dancing, “The 1990 citizens go home.” Even after the ECOMOG had landed and established control in Monrovia, giving some of us the courage to come back to Monrovia, some of our fellow citizens were saying, “Mandingo people, y’all now forget so quick, but wait, Charles Taylor will come for y’all again.” Thinking about all this makes me wonder where were all these Johnny-come-lately advocates for war crime trial? Why did they sit down and condone the killing of some Liberians, only coming out now pretending to be for justice? Where were they when the so-called freedom fighters were killing some of us because of our ethnicity and religion?

TAYLOR’S INTRANSIGENCE: The war in Liberia should have ended with the death of President Doe in September 1990. However, it continued for another seven long years before the 1997 elections. The war was prolonged because of Charles Taylor’s intransigence. As reactions to this intransigence, other warring factions sprang up. There was INPFL, ULIMO, LDF, LPC, Black Berets, and the list goes on. With this scenario, everyone supported one warring faction or another and for different reasons. I could not be thankful enough for ULIMO’s presence in Monrovia during the Operation Octopus because I owed my life to its presence. When NPFL had overrun many ECOMOG positions including Caldwell, Duala, Logan Town, ULIMO came to the rescue, having been called in by the IGNU. ULIMO protected me and many others from the onslaught of NPFL. Many could say the same thing about other warring factions. With this being the case, who is neutral to be the judge? No one is neutral and as such no one is without sin to cast the first stone. It is against this background I have opted for truth and reconciliation instead of war crime trial. With truth and reconciliation, we can address all the problems that led to war in the first place?

Many revisionist commentators and apologists want us to believe that the war was prolonged because other warring factions emerged. They act as if we are blind to the fact that this was all simply due to Taylor’s arrogance and insistence on becoming president even if he had to rule over our dead bodies. He boasted of having the biggest guns and therefore should be awarded the leadership of the country. ULIMO, LPC, CRC, the Black Barrette didn’t fall from the blue sky. They all emerged as the result of Taylor’s unacceptable arrogance. At the end of the day, Taylor was not punished; he was rewarded like the spoiled child who demanded and got all his wishes from his parents. That was a slap in the face of all those who were victimized by Taylor. Some say that they did that so he would deliver peace and security. But those who thought that Taylor would graduate from being a murderer to a statesman were disappointed as he did not change. From the way he behaved as the “elected president,” there was no way he was going to change or relinquish power voluntarily or non-violently. One is only surprised now to know there are enough revisionists and apologists who want us to believe that the worst crime to have been committed was the fight to dislodge Charles Taylor from power.
ETHNIC INTOLLERANCE AND RELIGIOUS BIGOTRY are the cancers of our society just as racism is in some countries. These factors have largely influenced wars not only in Liberia but Africa as a whole.
The conflict that developed between the government of President Samuel Doe and his friend Gen. Thomas Quiwonkpa degenerated into tribal conflict with the Manos and Gio of Nimba County on one side against the Krahns on the other side. There’s no doubt that Doe was a tyrant. It was all Liberians’ responsibility to stand up to him for such. But somehow the Gio and the Manos symbolized our opposition to Doe’s tyrannical regime. The failed November 12 coup and other ones led by predominantly Gios and the Manos inflamed the relation between them and the Krahns. All because of our culture of collective guilt. In other words, it was nothing less than a fight for political power in which the Krahns felt compelled to maintain power while the Gio and the Manos felt compelled to wrestle it from them. This naked contest for political power generated a lot of anger and retributions from both sides. On this ground, most Liberians justified and supported the war without taking into consideration all of its negative consequences. There was a general feeling in the country that anything the rebels did (including specific targeting of the Krahns and the Mandingoes) was justified. The very people who felt the war was justified because of Doe being a dictator were silent when similar injustice was done to the Krahns and the Mandingoes. They didn’t care how many Mandingoes or Krahns were killed because they were “justifiable targets.”

If we must understand the contest for power between the Gios/Mano on one hand and the Krahns on the other, the question that one may ask is why the NPFL attacked the Mandingoes? The popular excuse was that the Mandingoes were allies to the government forces but this is far from the truth. The truth is, the attacks on the Mandingoes were motivated by ethnic intolerance and religious bigotry. The Mandingoes were thought of as easy targets whose behind could be kicked by anyone with impunity.

In Liberia, it’s acceptable for us to talk about how the Americo-Liberians treated the native people long before the 1980 coup but how other Liberians have used tribalism and religious bigotry to treat each other is a subject that we would rather sweep under the carpet. The Mandingoes, for instance have suffered many years of discrimination because of their ethnicity and religion. This is directly related to the fact that some Liberians think of Liberia as a “nation founded on the Christian principle.” What is wrong with this is the notion of bigotry it carries-“any non-Christian religion is an alien religion and those that follow such religion are aliens.” Since majority of the Mandingoes are Moslems, some Liberians find it difficult to accept them as equal citizens. Now that the Mandingoes have become much more aware of their rights as citizens, others think the best way to deal with them is to eliminate them. Another reason is their economic dominance. This is why the Mandingoes were dragged into the war, and not because they sided with President Doe.

As a result of tribal and religious bigotry, many people were excluded from fully participating in the political process. The Americo-Liberian dominated government perfected this over the years and the government of Doe repeated it. One would have thought that the Taylor government would have done better, given the way it came to power. But it only took the practice of exclusion and persecution to another level. Besides the general exclusion of his political opponents, Taylor systematically excluded and persecuted the Mandingoes and the Krahns and in the case of the Mandingoes, his loyalists kept occupying their homes and other properties while the government completely ignored any call for intervention. Mosques were burnt in many places in Nimba and Lofa counties and there were no outrage against these violations of other citizens’ rights. Taylor’s loyalists instigated and carried out brutal attacks against the Mandingoes in Saclepea, killing several people while the rest of the Mandingo population fled and the government ignored the issue. Even though this was reported widely in the news, it did not cause any national outrage among the rest of the Liberians.

Under normal conditions, no one prefers war to peace. We all desire and deserve peace. When we begin to feel that we are the only ones who deserve peace at the expense of others, then we are laying the foundation for war. War in this regard becomes the response to a long-standing grievance that remained un-addressed. This is why we all thought that the war against the Doe dictatorship was necessary, not withstanding the other hidden agendas of the liberators. Unfortunately for most of our commentators, they find it easy to justify Taylor’s war against the Doe regime because of its brutality but fail to apply the same justification to the war against the Taylor regime, which was more dictatorial than that of Doe.

One MAN’S MUDERER IS ANOTHER MAN’S HERO A few years ago I attended the Grand Gedeh Association’s program in Philadelphia. The heroes worthy of mention during that program were among others President Samuel Doe, Rosovelt Johnson, and George Boley. The names called above are nothing less than murderers in the eyes of some Liberians. To most Liberians, these heroes of the Grand Gedeans are devil incarnates. Didn’t all Liberians turned against Doe and in the process he was killed? Weren’t Krahn people hunted everywhere in Liberia? Didn’t Roosevelt Johnson, George Boley and others come to the defense of their people against the NPFL onslaught? Given the same logic, are we surprised that Prince Johnson was elected as the Senior Senator of Nimba County? To many Liberians, this was the biggest insult but can’t we count this as the reward for delivering the head of Samuel Doe, their arch-enemy, who was held responsible for the death of their beloved son, General Thomas Quiwonkpa? Go to the Mandingoes, Alhaji Kromah and Sekou Damate Konneh are heroes, not the brutal murderers some Liberians think they are. Alhaji Kromah led the movement that restored the sense of dignity of his people and Sekou Damate Konneh led the movement that removed the cancer of Liberia thereby ushering in the democratic governance we now have in the country. In the eyes of the Mandiingoes, if the rest of Liberia cannot acknowledge it, they will proclaim everywhere that indeed Alhaji Kromah and Damate Konneh are heroes. Taking all these into consideration, I was not surprised on visiting Monrovia in 2006 and 2008 to see cassette sellers selling CDS of Charles Taylor’s speeches. To these people selling and buying Taylor speeches, he’s not the mass murderers many of us think he is. If this is the situation in Liberia, who is going to prosecute who? Who is right and wrong? What about all those people who cheered for Charles Taylor when he was killing the Mandingoes and the Krahns? Won’t we be right to say that we all fought or supported one warring factions or another? If that’s the case, it is only prudent that we all take responsibility for what we did to each other rather than pretending to be on moral high ground to judge others.

The truth is we are all victims of cruelty we visited upon each other. Some of us were nothing more than spectators but nonetheless supported one faction or the other. We can’t pretend to have the “clean hands” while thinking of others as criminals. That is why it’s important that instead of calling for war crimes trial, we must seriously look at the reasons that caused the war in the first place. This calls for truth and reconciliation, not prosecution.

The writer can be reached @ KonnLove@aol.com or 267 582 5699