Liberia

A LEADING REBEL group's declaration of a cease-fire yesterday seemingly offers one last chance for Liberia. This truce, after days of fierce shelling, is a godsend that should be used to prevent that West African country from further self-destruction. Two things must now follow in short order to make the announced cease-fire stick: An international peacekeeping force -- mostly from neighboring West African countries but under the auspices of the United Nations and the United States -- must be quickly landed in Liberia to supervise the truce.

Three banners hang from the wall in the wrestling room at Kenwood. One lists the school's state champions, another honors the school's Baltimore County champions and a third commemorates a junior varsity county championship. At first, that third banner embarrassed Nyonbou "Boo" Farley. He doesn't like to call attention to himself. But two years later, he knows how much it means. After finishing second in the Baltimore County championships last week, Farley's 30-2 record in the 160-pound weight class earned him the top seed in this weekend's Class 4A-3A North regional tournament with a chance to earn a berth in the state championship on March 1-2 at the University of Maryland's Cole Field House.

WHEN HE RESIGNED as Liberia's president Aug. 11 and exited his bleeding country, Charles Taylor pledged to return. That, unfortunately, was no empty threat. He now keeps running his homeland from an opulent Nigerian villa, barking orders on his cell phone to a network of enforcers. "He is like a vampire," observes Jacques Klein, the United Nations' top representative for Liberia. "Until you drive a stake in his heart, he won't die." Mr. Taylor's mischief must be stopped. If he is allowed to continue giving telephone orders to his military commanders and interim President Moses Blah, the Liberian peace process may derail even before the scheduled Oct. 14 installation of a new government.

Edith Johns felt lucky that she rarely got sick and never faced big medical expenses. But in August, while running to catch a bus in Baltimore, she tripped and broke her foot. Her doctor bills came to more than $1,000. Johns, 55, has been without full-time work since December, when she said she was laid off after four years as a file clerk at Russel Motor Cars in Catonsville. Since then she has been without medical insurance. "After you lose your job, they sent me something about COBRA," health insurance for the unemployed, she said.

An end to Liberia's four-year civil war may be in sight. Peace-keeping armies of Liberia's West African neighbors have begun disarming some 60,000 rebel rabble who have been raping and pillaging the countryside but are now gathering in designated areas under the eyes of United Nations observers. A five-member government representing the main political-guerrilla factions began operations, the sticking points mediated by former President Canaan Banana of Zimbabwe.These measures -- actually negotiated last July and just now being implemented -- postpone the question of who will wield power.

THE LONG-OVERDUE resignation and exit of President Charles Taylor offers a short window of opportunity for Liberia to regain stability and peace. The United States and the rest of the international community should use it to prevent the West African country from sliding into a new nightmare of suffering. Any hesitation at this point will only aggravate a dangerous power vacuum. Fourteen years of constant turmoil have torn apart Liberia's social fabric. Key institutions are in a shambles.

The United Nations Security Council moved a step toward accepting the role of subduing anarchy within a nation by calling the fighting in Liberia "a serious threat to international peace and security."Liberia's neighbors in West Africa sought the resolution, which clamps an embargo on arms to Liberian belligerents similar to those on Iraq and Yugoslavia. The embargo is pointed at Libya, which has provided Charles Taylor with training and arms. The resolution exempts and supports the 15,000-man force of the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS)

IF LIBERIA'S peace deal is to succeed, it will require a new spirit of cooperation among the country's power brokers. Civil institutions must be rebuilt, new coalitions formed. Unless this happens, the transitional government, which is to replace the current caretaker president, Moses Blah, won't be able to function. Fifty-one percent of the 76-member top administration is required to approve any action it takes, and no single faction can hope to muster such a majority without seeking consensus and compromise.

Much as Americans deplore the catastrophe of social breakdown in Somalia, something similar is happening closer to home in Liberia, where American associations are greater. In a civil war with no winners, the whole Liberian people are losers. Some 20,000 have been killed since 1990 and twice as many starved to death.The American nuns, Sisters Barbara Ann Mutra, Mary Joel Kolmer, Shirley Kolmer, Kathleen McGuire and Agnes Mueller, all in their 50s and 60s, nurses and teachers, spent years in Liberia, helping its development and sharing the lot of its people.

IT'S DIFFICULT to see how President Bush could have a successful five-country tour of Africa next week if he first disregards the continent's urgent pleas to send U.S. troops to Liberia. Without action, his speeches about responsibility and leadership would sound like outright hypocrisy. The White House spent much of yesterday trying to create preconditions for a limited involvement. The United States wants to avoid casualties; it also insists on a clear cutoff date for its lead part in a larger multinational peacekeeping mission.

Maryland entered a "sister states" agreement with two counties in Liberia yesterday in hopes that the state's 19th-century role in founding the African republic can be translated into a 21st-century role in sparking its economic development. The West African nation is looking to rebuild now that dictator Charles Taylor has been replaced with a democratically elected president, and officials say they are eager for Maryland to be a partner. "Let me hasten to inform you that Liberia is rich in culture and natural resources," Bong County Superintendent Ranney B. Jackson said during a ceremony yesterday outside Gov. Martin O'Malley's office.

HARBEL, Liberia -- They come in broad daylight, with guns, machetes, knives and buckets of acid. The invaders of Bridgestone Firestone North American Tire's rubber plantation in Liberia are hunting what they call "elephant meat": To them, the company is so big that anyone can take a hunk of flesh and no one will notice. Some people who stand in their way get hacked to death. Acid has been hurled on the faces and bodies of others. During 14 years of civil war in Liberia, the plundering of plantations and other assets became so common that the country was brought to its knees.

CHICAGO -- A reporter asked Liberian President Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf why she had come to America. She responded with five words that open doors, launch jetliners and move motorcades almost everywhere on the planet: "I was invited by Oprah." Of course, it is important to note that Ms. Sirleaf also was drawn by a humanitarian mission. She brought with her Musu Gertee, a 9-year-old Liberian girl who was fitted with a prosthetic replacement for the right arm and hand she lost in a rocket attack three years ago. Oprah Winfrey's staff alerted Ms. Sirleaf's government to Musu after the child was featured last year in a Chicago Tribune report about Liberia's young war victims.

FREETOWN, Sierra Leone -- Unshaven and looking haggard, Africa's most wanted war criminal, former Liberian President Charles Taylor, was placed in a detention cell at the United Nations war crimes tribunal in Sierra Leone yesterday after his early-morning arrest while trying to flee Nigeria carrying large bags of cash. A U.N. helicopter carrying Taylor landed in the compound of the U.N. Special Court in Freetown. Taylor, handcuffed and wearing a bulletproof vest over a white tunic, stepped out and was bundled into a four-wheel-drive vehicle and driven about 100 yards to the door of the detention center.

The U.N.-backed Special Court for Sierra Leone unsealed an indictment nearly three years ago charging Liberian President Charles Taylor with 17 counts of war crimes, crimes against humanity and other serious violations of international humanitarian law during that country's civil war. But he's still a free man. The indictment, handed down June 4, 2003, charges that Mr. Taylor "bears the greatest responsibility" for murder, rape, torture and the use...

JOHANNESBURG, South Africa -- Nigerian authorities said yesterday that former Liberian President Charles Taylor, who was indicted on war crimes charges by a United Nations tribunal in Sierra Leone, had disappeared from his oceanfront retreat in Nigeria, in what analysts saw as a blow to justice and Liberia's hopes of recovering from its devastating civil war. With Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo scheduled to meet with President Bush today in Washington,...

JOHANNESBURG -- Nigeria's government agreed yesterday to hand over former Liberian President Charles Taylor, who faces international war crimes charges, to Liberia's new democratic government, effectively ending the former warlord's more than two years of asylum in Nigeria. Taylor, who left Liberia in 2003 under an internationally brokered asylum deal, faces charges in neighboring Sierra Leone of backing a rebel movement there infamous for hacking off limbs. He is also considered one of the key figures responsible for a 14-year civil war in Liberia that left 250,000 people dead.

JOHANNESBURG, South Africa -- Liberia's President Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf has asked Nigeria to extradite her country's former leader, Charles Taylor, to face war crimes charges, a move cheered by human rights advocates but one that is also laden with risks for her battered West African country. An international court in Sierra Leone, which borders Liberia, has a cell waiting for Taylor, who has been indicted on 17 counts of war crimes. The United States has been putting intense pressure on Nigeria and Liberia to ensure that Taylor faces trial for his role in Sierra Leone's 10-year civil war. In Sierra Leone, Taylor is accused of supporting rebels of the Revolutionary United Front, whose trademark was mutilating civilians and cutting off their limbs, as well as using children as soldiers.