The delivery of a new luxury plane for the personal use of the Liberian President made front-page headlines in January in this impoverished West African country. The 60-seater Boeing 707, which diplomats here say was purchased for nearly $20 million, is "yet another cost-saving measure adopted by the Government," the state-owned newspaper said, because "it will minimize the high cost of chartering private planes." What news reports did not mention, however, is that only two runways in this small country are long enough to accommodate the new aircraft, and both are near Monrovia, the capital. As for foreign travel, the President, Gen. Samuel K. Doe, has not flown overseas since he visited Romania nearly three years ago. "It's an immense waste of money," a Liberian businessman said, "especially in a country that is nearly bankrupt."
In its way, the new plane may be an apt metaphor for Liberia, which often gives the impression of forward motion, while it is rolling steadily toward financial and political collapse. Liberia is rich in minerals and has one of West Africa's most skilled and educated work forces. It also has a reputation as one of the African continent's most egregious examples of economic mismanagement. The timing of the plane's arrival was especially striking, Western and Liberian analysts said, because it came during the visit of a delegation from the International Monetary Fund. "To acquire that plane right now, with everyone watching so closely, is either an act of incredible arrogance or incredible incompetence," a longtime Western resident said.
Three years ago Liberia, which was founded in the mid-19th century as a republic for freed American slaves, became the only country in Africa ever suspended from I.M.F. and World Bank borrowing. The lenders and the Government are in the midst of negotiations over the next disciplinary step - whether Liberia should be formally declared in default and unlikely to repay $1.2 billion in debt owed to them and other foreign creditors. Later this year, in the third and final step of the sanctions process, Liberia could become the first country ever expelled from the international lending agency.
At the same time the United States, Liberia's largest trading partner and foreign investor, is also cutting back. From 1980 to 1985, the United States gave this country of 2.3 million people nearly $500 million in aid and loans, making Liberia the largest per-capita recipient of American aid in sub-Saharan Africa. But charging mismanagement and misappropriation, the United States Congress has steadily slashed aid levels, to $19.5 million last year and about $10 million in 1990.
The sense of economic disarray is compounded, Western donors and bankers say, by President Doe's growing appetite for government-subsidized extravagance. He owns a small fleet of luxury automobiles and is said to spend lavishly on clothes and jewelry. And while no reliable estimate has ever been made, rumors run through the capital that General Doe and his wife, Nancy, and other family members have accumulated extensive real-estate holdings.
One telling detail about Mr. Doe's changing values, Liberian political analysts say, is his insistence on being called "Dr. Doe," the consequence of a visit to South Korea several years ago in which he received an honorary doctorate. By law, the President's image appears ubiquitiously in public places and many people hang his picture in private offices as a display of fealty. "He is definitely encouraging a cult of personality," a Liberian businessman said, "and you don't dare suggest that there's anything wrong with it."
Well-connnected senior Government workers have also grown wealthy through lucrative business opportunities obtained through the executive mansion. And despite the Government's deteriorating fiscal condition, in recent months at least a dozen West German limousines were purchased for the small group of political cronies who surround the President. Nonetheless, when confronted with accusations of corruption, the 39-year old General Doe has said he is a victim of disinformation and has blamed his political opponents for such reports. The President's aides said he was too busy to be interviewed.
Of late, however, the most immediate threat to the Doe leadership is an armed one. Since late December, Government forces have been trying to crush an invasion by guerrillas opposed to the President's rule. The rebels, led by Charles Taylor, a former Doe Cabinet minister who is remembered here mostly for fleeing the country in 1986 after being accused of embezzlement, invaded Nimba County, about 300 miles northeast of Monrovia. The Liberian Government sent troops and provincial policemen to oust them. In interviews on the Ivory Coast side of the border, refugees reported that the soldiers indiscriminately engaged in vicious and mostly arbitary reprisals, killing hundreds of unarmed civilians - people they apparently believed were sympathetic to the rebel cause.
Amnesty International and Africa Watch, human rights groups, as well as the United States Embassy in Monrovia, have also said that soldiers attacked unarmed civilians. So far, at least 140,000 Liberians are believed to have fled across the eastern frontiers to escape the bloodshed, most of them settling in the heavily forested hills of the Ivory Coast and Guinea.
Diplomats say that about half of Nimba County - its northern and eastern portions - is still contested. Guerrilla activity in these areas remains strong, and the army has been unable, despite a variety of tactics, to bring them under control. The Nimba invasion also has potentially far-reaching implications for Liberia's economy because about 30 percent of agricultural production comes from the region. By the accounting of Western economists, the sudden flight of tens of thousands of farmers has already clouded the prospects for this year's rice harvest, and there is talk of potential food shortages and other hardships. "If there is anything people react to here, it is food shortages and price increases; that combination could be explosive," said a Western relief worker who recalled that it was nearly a decade ago that proposals to increase the price of rice set off a wave of protest that eventually led to the overthrow of President William R. Tolbert.
In 1980, General Doe, an 11th-grade dropout and a 28-year-old master sergeant, came to power after he and other army noncommissioned officers shot and bayoneted President Tolbert and took over the Government. Ten days later, the foreign press was invited to record the sight of 13 senior Government officials, including most of the former Cabinet, marched nearly naked through the streets of Monrovia, tied to seaside posts and then executed at point-blank range. President Doe's international reputation has never fully recovered from that moment. Leaders of neighboring West African countries, particularly the President of the Ivory Coast, Felix Houphouet Boigny, have maintained diplomatically correct but nonetheless strained relations with the Liberian leader.
General Doe's image here and abroad has also suffered from persistent accusations of human rights abuses. The State Department's 1989 human rights report said, "Brutality by police and other security officials during the arrest and questioning of individuals is fairly common, and there has been no evident government effort to halt this practice."
Liberia's tightly controlled press rarely touches on such subjects and those who do can be expected to be dealt with ruthlessly. Dozens of journalists have been detained in recent years, often without charges, and several newspapers have been closed. The Daily Observer, Monrovia's leading independent paper, has been ordered shut five times since 1982, once for almost 20 months. Perhaps the greatest source of internal tension in recent years is the widespread impression here that a Krahn tribal elite has begun to replace the American-Liberian elite that virtually ran the country until the 1980 coup.
Unlike most countries in West Africa, until recently Liberia has been relatively free of ethnic strife. This began to change with the ascendancy of President Doe, a Krahn. Since then, the Krahn, though they make up only about 4 percent of the population, are disproportionately represented in the executive mansion, senior government positions, and the leadership of the armed forces. Most significant, senior military soldiers directing government forces in Nimba County reportedly engaged in bullying tactics and even murder. Most of the officers were Krahn, and the civilians attacked, members of the Gio and Mandingo tribes.
Source: New York Times
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