[Congressional Record Volume 142, Number 60 (Friday, May 3, 1996)]
[Senate]
[Pages S4682-S4683]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                        WHY NO HELP TO LIBERIA?

 Mr. SIMON. Mr. President, the tragedy of Liberia should be of 
concern to all Americans.
  I have twice visited that battle-scarred country which has more ties 
to the United States historically than any other nation of Africa.
  And the United States bears a partial responsibility for what is 
happening there.
  I'm pleased that the latest reports show that there is relative 
stability temporarily, but I am confident that this relative stability 
will be broken once again unless the nations move together effectively 
under U.S. leadership.
  The ECOMOG forces have brought some stability but there needs to be a 
stronger indication of interest outside of Africa also. Bishop John H. 
Ricard, chairman of the board for Catholic Relief Services, had an op-
ed piece in the Washington Post, which I ask to be printed in the 
Record after my remarks. I hope his article will stir policymakers a 
little more.
  He eloquently pleads for help to this needy, desperate country.
  The article follows:

                        Why No Help to Liberia?

                          (By John H. Richard)

       When the leaders of Liberia's warring factions signed a 
     peace agreement in Abuja, Nigeria, last August, they did not 
     ask for American troops to back it up. They did not ask us to 
     broker the peace or shed our blood. What they did ask for was 
     a credible force of properly equipped peacekeepers to 
     persuade combatants to give up their weapons.
       They knew that this relatively modest assistance would 
     provide stability and give the country an opportunity to 
     rejoin the rest of the world. The signatories to the 
     agreement had hoped that Liberia-like Bosnia, Haiti, Kuwait 
     and Somalia--might qualify for the type of aid necessary to 
     give the nation a chance.
       Rejected by the international community, Liberians were 
     left to face the formidable tasks of nation-building without 
     the assistance that might have seen them through those tasks. 
     Perhaps the violence we witnessed last week would have 
     happened anyway. The sad truth is we won't ever know whether 
     a stronger American and International commitment might have 
     helped Liberia avoid this bloodshed.
       Liberian warlords cannot be excused for the terror 
     inflicted in Monrovia over the past week, but neither can we 
     place the blame entirely on Africa's doorstep. Liberia's West 
     African neighbors, committed to bringing peace to the region, 
     brought the warring parties to the negotiating table more 
     than a dozen times since fighting broke out in the fall of 
     1990, and scores of African peacekeepers have given their 
     lives to end the war. When the accord was signed, the fueding 
     leaders established a functioning government that all parties 
     upheld for nearly five months.
       As skirmishes flared up-country, one or another of the 
     Liberian leaders traveled to the point of conflict to settle 
     it. It was not exactly a constitutional system, but the 
     Liberian Council of State represented the resolve of a 
     critical mass of Liberians to achieve peace. They were 
     willing to continue, and they need our help.
       It is impossible to say whether there would be peace in 
     Liberia today if the United Nations Security Council had made 
     the sort of commitment there that it has made in other parts 
     of the world. But the international community never gave the 
     African peace agreement a chance.
       A week ago, international donors meeting in Brussels agreed 
     that it would take $1.2 billion to begin the reconstruction 
     of Bosnia. Last September, the same international donors 
     rejected a $110 million U.N. appeal to finance 
     demilitarization, resettlement and economic rehabilitation in 
     Liberia, demanding that African nations shoulder more of

[[Page S4683]]

     the burden. The achievement of peace in the region is not 
     a question of cash. But the vast disparity between 
     monetary commitments in Eastern Europe and West Africa is 
     telling; reflective perhaps of a basic unwillingness on 
     the part of wealthier nations to meet Africans halfway in 
     their efforts to build peace.
       Last fall, Catholic Relief Services and other humanitarian 
     organizations in Liberia warned the United States and 
     European governments that if the peace process in Liberia was 
     not supported, it would unravel. U.N. Secretary General 
     Boutros-Boutros Ghali and Ghanaian President Jerry Rawlings 
     noted at the time that the annual U.N. budget for Liberia 
     would last only five days in the former Yugoslavia.
       Without the support needed to foster a peaceful transition, 
     war returned quickly. Disagreements that a well-established 
     democracy would weather easily turned into life-and-death 
     struggles. The resulting horror is an example of a fledgling 
     government's inability to solve its problems. But tragically, 
     it is also an example of our vacillation, of our reluctance 
     to provide the sort of support and companionship that could 
     have seen Liberians through the dark but hopeful days of an 
     early peace.
       In Liberia, thousands of teenage fighters have not only 
     been denied formal education during the years of mayhem, but 
     in fact have never learned how to be members of society; they 
     know only how to kill. These boy soldiers, having grown up 
     killing, realized as the Abuja agreement dissolved that there 
     would be no alternative to war; there would be no chance to 
     learn a way to make a living without a gun, or even to 
     develop into normal human beings. Already robbed of the 
     luxury of human emotion, they would also be denied the 
     opportunity to leave behind the violent life they had always 
     known.
       By January, the peace was undone, and today Monrovia burns. 
     The people of the United States and the members of the 
     Security Council must ready themselves to pacify Liberia and 
     reconstruct the country from the ground up, again. As 
     Americans, we cannot throw up our hands and walk away. Why 
     not? Because Liberians are not all warlords. They are farmers 
     and merchants, women and children; they are our brothers and 
     sisters. And they need our support.

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