Bored fighters steal relief supplies
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TAPPITA, Liberia (Reuters) -- Liberian villagers barely touched buckets and blankets given to them by aid workers this week before fighters -- bored and listless now a civil war has ended -- snatched the precious bounty, residents said.
The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) handed out the tools to desperate residents in a remote eastern town on Wednesday but by Friday much of the badly needed aid was in the hands of armed former fighters who still roam the bush.
"Do you see? The fighters have taken all our tools from us. This is bad. They chased us and took it away. One of them threatened to kill me," Annie Leaba complained to an ICRC official.
Aid workers later met rebel commanders and asked them to retrieve the stolen goods and give them back to the civilians, but by the time the ICRC convoy rumbled out of Tappita nothing had been returned.
Although 11,300 United Nations peacekeepers are in the country, they still have to deploy to some of the farthest corners of Liberia, such as Tappita -- a town near the porous border with Ivory Coast, which is emerging from its own war.
Peacekeepers hope to reach the outlying areas soon and start disarming fighters there towards the end of next month, but concede that until they do, civilians are at risk from wild combatants hardened by years of rape, murder and pillage.
"Until we do (get to all parts of the country), there will be isolated cases of disturbances," General Daniel Opande, head of the U.N. peacekeeping mission in Liberia, told reporters in Ivory Coast after a meeting with regional U.N. military heads.
Jobless now that fighting in Liberia has stopped, the rebels -- many of them children -- say they are waiting for the United Nations to take their weapons and help them start new lives.
"The U.N. told us to put our arms away and they will do something for us. We have not seen anything yet and they have not told us anything yet," said Thomas Gaye, a commander with Model, the smaller of Liberia's two rebel faction.
Gaye said fighters also felt abandoned by leaders who left for the capital Monrovia to take their seats in an interim government which was established after a peace accord in August and brings together the country's warring factions.
Copyright 2004
Reuters. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
