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The US government is conducting an experiment in peacekeeping in Liberia. It’s retraining and rearming the Liberian army. The plan is to turn what was a notoriously criminal military into a force for stability. As Anna Sussman reports, the plan has raised hopes — and concerns — in the West African nation.
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LISA MULLINS: I’m Lisa Mullins and this is The World a co-production of the BBC World Service, PRI, and WGBH in Boston. Hilary Clinton is in the Democratic Republic of Congo today. The secretary of state urged Congolese students to speak out against corruption and conflict. Tomorrow she’s expected to raise issues of sexual violence as she speaks with President Joseph Kabila. Later this week Secretary Clinton will visit another African country that has suffered an epidemic of sexual assaults often by government soldiers. That country is Liberia. As Anna Sussman reports the US State Department is trying to reform Liberia’s army by re-training and re-arming.
ANNA SUSSMAN: On a patch of dry land south of Monrovia young Liberian soldiers crawl on their stomachs through the brush firing machine guns and tossing smoke bombs. Above them several broad-shouldered Americans shout orders. This is the re-training of the Armed Forces of Liberia – the AFL. The old AFL had a reputation for corruption and lawlessness. Solider Edwin Barclay says the training is finally making the army something he can be proud of.
EDWIN BARCLAY: the difference is that this new Armed Forces of Liberia got a new thing. We are seeing a new army. First of all, we got human right violations is not in this new army and this new army full of discipline.
SUSSMAN: Were there human rights violations in the old army?
BARCLAY: I can say yes. I see violence against women. Violence against children. The differences are determined by the kind of training that we’re having now.
SUSSMAN: That training includes lessons in gender sensitivity and human rights law. But the Liberian army’s long history of carrying out abuses against its own people has left many worried about re-tooling and re-arming the force especially since the US helped fund the old criminal army decades ago. Emira Wood is a Liberian native and co-director of Foreign Policy and Focus at the Institute for Policy Studies in Washington.
EMIRA WOOD: What happened in the 1980s was that US tax-payer dollars paid to build this machinery that then killed 250,000 Liberians during these 26 years of war. And we cannot repeat that cycle.
LINDA THOMAS-GREENFIELD: This is a different day. It’s a different era. I think it’s impossible to compare what happened in the 1980s with what has happened now.
SUSSMAN: That’s the US Ambassador to Liberia, Linda Thomas-Greenfield.
THOMAS-GREENFIELD: We’re conscious of how security aid is viewed and we don’t want our aid to go to people who would abuse their populations. Did that happen in the past? It probably did. But now we’re monitoring it very, very closely to ensure that that does not happen in Liberia.
SUSSMAN: The American in charge of that monitoring here is Colonel Al Rumphrie. He’s chief of the US Office of Security Cooperation in Liberia. He says if everything goes right the Liberian project could serve as a model for future re-training projects across Africa. But that’s a big if. Rumphrie’s concerned about the Liberian’s government’s limited ability to pay and feed its rebuilt army.
AL RUMPHRIE: We’re worried about what’s going to happen once we turn everything over to the Liberians. Because we don’t think they’re at that level right now to accept responsibility for an armed forces. If they cannot feed the people in the long run, they cannot pay their soldiers in the long run, we just trained a military force to take over government.
SUSSMAN: That worries Liberian officials as well. And they have another concern. Much of the actual training work has been farmed out to American private contractors such as DynCorp. Liberia’s Minister of Defense Brownie Samuki says that’s a potential problem.
BROWNIE SAMUKI: Let me put it this way. We support the participation of active duty military personnel from the US in helping us to re-train our military because these individuals will come to carry out a mission whereas the contractor comes to carry the contract terms. So everything he sees is a dollar sign.
SUSSMAN: Still Samuki is hopeful the peacekeeping experiment will succeed and so is AFL soldier Edwin Barclay.
[SOUND CLIP OF SOLDIERS CHANTING]
Back at the training ground Barclay says he believes the army’s troubles are in the past with the help of what he calls Liberia’s big brother.
BARCLAY: For now realistically speaking to you we will not experience just war from outside but we’ll always have internal problem. That’s why I say it’s really up to our big brother – the US.
SUSSMAN: The US has invested some $200 million in re-training and re-arming Liberia’s military. But come January the trainers will leave and the men and women of the Armed Forces of Liberia will be on their own to maintain the country’s fragile peace. For The World I’m Anna Sussman, Monrovia, Liberia.
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I am a major in the Marine Corps Reserves, and I just came back from serving in Liberia as one of the military advisors for the SSR program. I thought this was a pretty good piece, but it left out that the US military will most likely continue to work with Liberia even after the contractors leave. And I totally agree with the Minister of Defense, contractors have to focus on money, U.S. military focus on mission. Doesn’t mean contractors are bad, but it does create a gap with how the two operate together.
What is the likelihood of the soldiers who are being trained in the AFL and promoted to function in the US Military? Would their training be adequate. I am in a relationship with a gentleman who is a Liberian and we want to be married, but I am not certain of how plausible his future would be if he wanted to continue a military career once he is here in the US. Would consideration be made that he was trained by Dyncorp and military personnel? I am a US citizen and have considered our situation and the options that we have. I just want to get an opinion of the quality of training. Should the quality be so that if the soldiers in the AFL were to find greater opportunities to live in other countries the adjustment of training would be equal to that of the military service required in the country they would reside in? Would what they have learned and the time they have invested in the training be beneficial toward their ability to serve in the US military?