Though exiled two years ago, former Liberian president Charles Taylor still looms large in the country's first elections since the end of its brutal civil war. But, despite the advent of true democratic elections, Liberia and all of west Africa will be trapped in an unending cycle of violence unless Taylor is put in the dock for war crimes.
The presidential poll held on Tuesday could help Liberia determine a new course. But Taylor has wielded a heavy hand in the campaign, his impunity making a mockery of international justice.
Nigeria, which is giving Taylor sanctuary, is obliged to turn him over to the Special Court for Sierra Leone, created by the UN in 2003 to prosecute those responsible for the bloodletting in west Africa in the 1990s. Indeed, Nigeria now holds the key to peace in the region.
But Nigerian President Olosugun Obasanjo has, so far, turned a deaf ear to calls to surrender Taylor. Instead, Taylor is housed in a villa on the sandy beaches of Calabar on Nigeria's southeastern coast, as key international players -- including France, the UK and South Africa -- remain silent.
The list of Taylor's crimes is long, and the evidence against him is overwhelming. As a rebel leader, he waged an eight-year uprising against Samuel Doe in Liberia -- a conflict that left 300,000 people dead and displaced more than a million others in a population of just 3.3 million. As president, he launched a rebellion in 1991 against Sierra Leone's government with the forces of Foday Sankor, using machetes to mutilate women and children.
In 2000, Taylor used those same thugs to attack Guinea, in an assault that left hundreds dead and destroyed the city of Guekedou. In 2003, while Taylor was under rebel attack, he organized and supported an incursion into Cote d'ivoire. Taylor's warmongering also paved the way for military coups in Sierra Leone and the Gambia.
The women and children whose limbs Taylor ordered to be hacked off bear testimony to his brutality, and the countries left in turmoil make clear that there can be no durable peace in west Africa unless the man who unleashed these conflicts is stopped. Even if there were instant peace, the region will pay the price for Taylor's bloodlust for decades to come. So will the world.
Indeed, Taylor continues to incite trouble. His efforts to undermine regional stability range from an assassination attempt against Guinean President Lansana Conte earlier this year, to which he has been linked, to using his fortune to influence Liberia's elections, setting the stage for his allies to win. His followers, unsurprisingly, cling to his parting promise to return to Liberia.
That would be nothing short of disastrous. Taylor has undermined a string of peacekeeping interventions in the region. In Liberia, for example, he signed 13 agreements and violated them all. He kidnapped 500 troops from the regional peacekeeping force, ECOWAS. Before the hostages were released, Taylor killed six soldiers and stole their weapons and cars. The best containment strategy is to put Taylor in the custody of the Special Court that indicted him in 2003 for war crimes and crimes against humanity for his role in the war in Sierra Leone.
Yet Obasanjo has said that he would release Taylor only to an elected government of Liberia, and many believe that Taylor is waiting it out until his allies are in a position to let him return with no threat of prosecution.
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