Women warriors at center of Liberia's armed struggle

Her is a red beret, spaghetti-strap halter top and black jeans. Her weapons are Kalashnikovs and mortars.

Black Diamond, 22, is a Liberian rebel commander -- known by her nom de guerre and feared by friends and foes alike in a war-shattered nation where women and girls are more likely to be victims than avengers.

Whether mortars at enemy troops or slapping down armed looters, she and her all-female Womens' Artillery Commandos fight for revenge, they say, against wrongs by Liberia's brutal government forces.

They don't have to fight for respect; they've already got it.

"Fire you! Fire you!" Black Diamond snarled one day this month at armed men lugging sacks of grain in a looting spree she and her fighters, many in earrings and lipstick, had been ordered to stop.

She blasted her rifle centimeters over the head of a muscular looter who was slow to drop his weapon, then struck him in the chest with a lightning-fast fist.

The man -- nearly twice her size -- fell backward, astonished and cowering.

"Women can fight the same as men. Some women more than men," Black Diamond said later at the rebel stronghold of Tubmanburg, 60km from Monrovia.

"They are trained like we are. They are the same," confirmed Ranger One, commander of an all-male unit.

Asked the women's much-touted ferocity, Ranger One replied that he would never marry a female fighter "because it's risky to my life."

Liberia a history of women in arms in its 14 years of conflict under Charles Taylor.

In the 1989 to 1996 civil war, which Taylor launched, his own faction had female artillery units renowned for their bravery and accuracy. Some senior female commanders took posts in Liberia's armed forces when Taylor won the presidency in 1997.

When Liberia's main rebel movement took up arms four years ago, Black Diamond and many other women were among the first to join.

Their was to unseat Taylor, whose unsalaried, undisciplined fighters made raping and looting, a perk of service in Liberia's armed forces. "Operation Pay Yourself," the soldiers called it.

Black Diamond's mother was killed in the civil war, though she refuses to say how or when. Other relatives fled their homes in the capital, Monrovia, for neighboring Guinea.

"Yes," Black Diamond said when asked if she had suffered at the hands of Taylor's vicious troops.

"No," she said, looking down, when asked to elaborate.

"If I explain all that, I will cry," she growled.

"No more raping," Black Diamond added, in a mumble.

"If I talk about it, I will shed tears," nodded comrade Road Crossing, 27, the female rebels' second-in-command. She says she got her name from fellow fighters "because of my hardness."

Liberian Health Minister Peter Coleman, a surgeon and therapist, has encountered a number of female fighters over the years of near constant warfare.

Many him they were motivated by rage after they or their relatives were sexually assaulted. Others took up arms after being captured to perform domestic and sexual services for male fighters.

"When you think of cooks and sex slaves, it is preferable for many to fight, even if you could be killed," the health minister said.

Rebel prize their female officers because they are "more disciplined than the men. They don't get drunk and they take their mission very seriously," Coleman said.

"I saw a woman shoot another officer because he raped a woman," he said. "She could not tolerate it. Everyone was afraid of her."

Government -- which also have female fighters -- say women are among their most feared opponents.

"They have powers that men don't have. They will not stop when others stop," said a government officer, who identified himself only as Powell.