A few nights ago, a well-dressed man from the Foreign Ministry walked out on the verandah of the Mamba Point Hotel, ordered a beer, and proceeded to explain what happened here.
The hotel looks out on the Atlantic Ocean, over a beach where many bodies are buried, and into the horizon where three American warships bob in the mist. Here is where the diplomats, aid workers and reporters drawn to the disaster of Liberia gather to discuss, over drinks and dinner, the death and destruction around them.
All of Liberia's troubles, said the man from the ministry, all the death and misery, were the fault of the aborigines.
The aborigines?
The aborigines, said the man from the ministry. When, led by Master Sergeant Samuel Doe, they overthrew the government in 1980, the world turned upside down, the bottom on the top.
A few days later, one of Liberia's most prominent lawyers begged to differ.
"It was the settlers who, in many ways, brought the destruction upon themselves," the lawyer said.
The settlers? The word has a certain resonance in Africa, where most people use it to describe the white Europeans who colonized the continent and created apartheid in South Africa.
The man from the ministry, an urbane descendant of a former president, and the distinguished lawyer, born in a little village without American roots, had divided their nation in two. This divide, they explained, ran so deep that it was like a geologic fault in the earth. It was the source of the wars that have ruined Liberia.
By settlers, the lawyer meant the American Liberians, whose ancestors are the freed slaves who founded this republic in 1847. They have names like Scott, Dennis, Roberts and Payne. They belong to Baptist, Catholic, Episcopal and United Methodist churches, and a dozen other Christian denominations. Some are members of the Masonic Order established here in 1851. Today they represent 4 percent or 5 percent of Liberia's 3 million people.
By aborigines, the man from the ministry meant almost everybody else in Liberia, the people who were here first. They belong to the Kpelle, the Krahn, Kru, Gola and Mandingo tribes, and a dozen others. Half are Christians, a fifth are Muslims. Some follow traditional African rites and religions; some belong to secret societies called Poro and Sande.
The settlers made two sets of laws: a civil law for the civilized, an indigenous law for everyone else.
From 1930 to 1935, the US and Britain broke diplomatic relations with Liberia for its sale of human labor, or slaves, to Spanish colonists in Africa. Civil rights, including the right to vote, were not granted to indigenous Liberians until 1963.
Change came.
"The population was coming together in the 1970s," said Gloria Musu-Scott, 50, the chief justice of the Supreme Court in Liberia. "There was intermarriage. Very few of the settler population could say they had pure blood. Now, I have a lot of respect for them. They came here with nothing and established something. It was like they transported the US to Africa."
Intermarriage did not dissolve disunion. Nor did it solve inequality. "There are very few people who can say, `I'm an American-Liberian'," said Hilary Dennis, 58, president of the nation's biggest shipping company. "The problem has been one of have and have-not."
Those tensions grew as the era of colonialism ended and tribal pride and passions rose against the power of the settler community.
They exploded with a murderous 1980 coup led by an "aborigine," Doe, of the Krahn tribe. The "settler" president, William Tolbert, was killed in his bedroom, and 13 government ministers were tied to telephone poles and shot on the beach.
They raged on as the warlord Charles Taylor began fighting his way to power in 1989 (around that time, Taylor, who has said he is a child of intermarriage, changed his middle name from McArthur to Ghankay, which means "warrior" in Gola).
The tensions never left. Taylor, after bringing 14 years of civil war to Liberia, stepped down as president last month, leaving much of the country in the hands of rebels: Liberians United for Reconciliation and Democracy, a largely Mandingo force backed by Guinea and Ivory Coast, and the Movement for a Democratic Liberia, also backed by Ivory Coast, and dominated by Krahn tribesmen.
"And this is what has led Liberia to self-annihilation," said Musu-Scott, whose court and chambers were sacked by government soldiers three weeks ago. "This is what our selfishness, our lack of nationhood, our lack of compassion for our fellow citizens has brought our country to. This is what we have done for our country. Our existence as a nation is threatened."
The rancor and sadness were banished Saturday night at K.D.'s, an open-air roadhouse on the edge of Monrovia, which reopened two weeks ago. The beer was cold, the barbecue hot. The band began looking for a beat, and found it in a groove somewhere between Nigerian high-life and Jamaican reggae.
South Korea’s air force yesterday apologized for a 2021 midair collision involving two fighter jets, a day after auditors said the pilots were taking selfies and filming during the flight and held them responsible for the accident. “We sincerely apologize to the public for the concern caused by the accident that occurred in 2021,” an air force spokesman told a news conference, adding that one of the pilots involved had been suspended from flying duties, received severe disciplinary action and has since left the military. The apology followed a report released on Wednesday by the South Korean Board of Audit and Inspection,
About 240 Indians claiming descent from a Biblical tribe landed at Tel Aviv airport on Thursday as part of a government operation to relocate them to Israel. The newcomers passed under a balloon arch in blue and white, the colors of the Israeli flag, as dozens of well-wishers welcomed them with a traditional Jewish song. They were the first “bnei Menashe” (“sons of Manasseh”) to arrive in Israel since the government in November last year announced funding for the immigration of about 6,000 members of the community from the states of Manipur and Mizoram in northeast India. The community claims to descend from
Indonesian police have arrested 13 people after shocking images of alleged abuse against small children at a daycare center went viral, sparking outrage across the nation, officials said on Monday. Police on Friday last week raided Little Aresha, a daycare center in Yogyakarta on Java island, following a report from a former employee. CCTV footage circulating on social media showed children, most younger than two, lying on the floor wearing only diapers, their hands and feet bound with rags. The police have confirmed that the footage is authentic. Police said they also found 20 children crammed into a room just 3m by 3m. “So
‘TROUBLING’: The firing of Phelan, who was an adviser to a nonprofit that supported the defense of Taiwan, was another example of ‘dysfunction’ under Trump, a US senator said US Secretary of the Navy John Phelan has been fired, a US official and a person familiar with the matter said on Wednesday, in another wartime shakeup at the Pentagon coming just weeks after US Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth ousted the Army’s top general. The Pentagon announced his departure in a brief statement, saying he was leaving the administration “effective immediately,” but it did not provide a reason or say whether it was his decision to go. The sources, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said Phelan was dismissed in part because he was moving too slowly to implement reforms to
RSS