Fighting for survival: Liberia's ex-combatants in Cote d'Ivoire

Gabriel Swen, 25, fought in wars in Liberia and neighbouring Cote d'Ivoire. After disarming in 1997, poverty drove him back to fighting. Photo by Jessica McDiarmid.

By Jessica McDiarmid

Once, Gabriel Swen was a regional warrior.

He fought in his country, Liberia, for years, first picking up a gun at the age of 7 after losing his family in the West African nation's 14-year civil war. He handed in his weapons to the UN in 1997 in exchange for some training in shoe repair, but after failing to find a means of survival without a gun, he took up fighting again the following year.

In 2001, Swen was part of a mercenary army that crossed Liberia's eastern border to francophone Cote d'Ivoire following a January coup attempt on the then-newly elected president Laurent Gbagbo. Swen fought not for pay, but for the spoils of war, until he was seriously wounded in a car crash and returned to Liberia.

The phenomenon of regional warriors in West Africa is rearing its head again today, as Cote d'Ivoire hovers on the brink of civil war. 

Thousands of combatants roam this fragile region from conflict to conflict, fighting as a means to survive in some of the poorest nations on earth, where peace without proper reintegration has brought not happiness but rather a life of idle deprivation for some former fighters, many of whom were coerced to take up arms as children.

According to numerous reports, Cote d'Ivoire's death squads are linked to the security forces of Gbagbo, who is refusing to cede power to the internationally recognized winner of the country’s November 2010 election, Alassane Ouattara.

UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has confirmed that mercenaries, including former combatants from Liberia, have been recruited to "target certain groups in the population” during the current crisis that has left more than 200 dead.

The risk to regional stability posed by disenchanted and impoverished former fighters in Liberia, Sierra Leone, Guinea and surrounding countries is widely recognized by the United Nations and international bodies, as well as national governments.

The United Nations Mission in Liberia (UNMIL) noted as recently as June 2010 its concern about an estimated 1,500 to 2,000 Liberian fighters in western Cote d'Ivoire.

At various times since the Liberian civil war ended in 2003, UNMIL has responded to reports of ex-combatants congregating along the borders with Guinea and Cote d'Ivoire in hopes of getting picked up by a commander heading to conflicts elsewhere.

Over the last six weeks, Liberian President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf has repeatedly called on her country’s ex-combatants not to get involved in violence next door.

But the failure to provide the tens of thousands of ex-combatants throughout the region with viable alternative livelihoods continues to fuel regional instability and mercenary activity.

Nya D. Twayen Jr., assistant minister for youth services with the Liberian Ministry of Youth and Sport, calls the country's thousands of street youths, many of whom are ex-combatants, the greatest threat to stability in the fragile post-war country.

"They are vulnerable. You give them five dollars and give them an AK-47 and say shoot… they'd shoot," says Twayen. "As long as a portion of them still remain depressed and down and wayward, they will wage war on others."

In a 2005 report dubbed "Youth, Poverty and Blood: The Lethal Legacy of West Africa's Regional Warriors," Human Rights Watch wrote that regional warriors identified poverty and hopelessness as motivators for them to risk dying in subsequent armed conflicts.

"They described being deeply affected by poverty and obsessed with the struggle of daily survival, a reality not lost on the recruiters,” the report reads.

“Many described their broken dreams and how, given the dire economic conditions within the region, going to war was their best option for economic survival."

Swen retired from a decade of fighting before he was 18 years old. Now repairing shoes on the streets of Liberia's capital, Monrovia, Swen says he wouldn't want to go back to war. But eight years of peace haven't got him anywhere. He still has no job and can't afford to eat most days; he says he's haunted by memories and holds little hope for the future.

"I need help to stop thinking," he says. "I think about the war that happened, I feel bad."

If a truck rolled up and offered him a couple bucks and some food to return to a frontline somewhere, he says with a shrug, he might go.

"The future? I do not have no hope for it."

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On the road in Sierra Leone

'Nearly half the money motorcyclist Abraham Bungara charges for a long-distance trip goes into covering bribes at the many police checkpoints along Sierra Leone's roads. Photo by Jessica McDiarmid. 

By Jessica McDiarmid

The sky was just beginning to lighten as the roar of a motorcycle drew near.

Moments later, there was a light tap at the door.

"He's here," said the young man who runs a guesthouse in the diamond-studded eastern Sierra Leonean town of Kenema.

Out on the street, motorcycle driver Abraham Bungara balanced my bag on the handlebars, rammed a helmet on my head, and we sped off on a 140-kilometre journey to the Liberian border.

A minute later, we rolled up to a police checkpoint.

Several men sat in a mud hut next to a line of strings knotted together to form the roadblock.

"Moo de bodee," said Bungara.

"Huh?"

"Moo de bodee," he said. "Off."

He was speaking Krio, a Sierra Leonean dialect comprised of buccaneer-style English with lots of local flavour that originated with people freed from slavery in Jamaica, who settled in Freetown in the 19th century.

We clambered off the bike and Bungara disappeared into the hut, where he shook hands with the police officer before the string was lowered and we roared off.

Paying bribes to get around is a necessity in some West African countries where authorities supplement low salaries—that may never be paid—with a system of informal taxation, collecting "tokens" from citizens for services such as road travel, primary education, and treatment in public hospitals.

It means free public services to people, the majority of whom live in extreme poverty, are free only on paper.

We tore along the gravel road, knees kissing the dirt on the corners, the sun rising over the dense forest.

Soon, we reached another checkpoint.

Bungara went into the hut with a policeman in a tired blue uniform too large for his skinny frame. A woman in a bright orange tank top and jeans approached and introduced herself as Alice.

"Can I see your documentation?" she asked.

"What documentation is that?"

"Just your documentation," she said.

I held up my passport.

"What organization do you work for?" I asked her.

"INTERPOL."

Bungara finished ponying up the bribe money with a smile and a handshake and we were on our way again.

At the next road block and the next, we repeated the process. Each roadblock cost 4,000 or 5,000 Leones, the equivalent to about $1 CAD. Over the 140-kilometre trip, we passed through six or seven of them.

If you refuse to pay, you would be detained, said Bungara.

"But you haven't done anything wrong or illegal."

"They'll still detain you," he said.

"And then what?"

He shrugged.

"You're detained."

"So you pay?"

He smiled. "So you pay."

 

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Paper versus practice: Disability rights in Ghana

 
Abu Mohammed, 28, makes his living begging in traffic in Ghana's capital city. Photo by Jessica McDiarmid. 

By Jessica McDiarmid

The traffic comes to a stop along a busy thoroughfare that leads into central Accra.

In a flurry of deft movements, several limbless men vault onto scooter boards and launch themselves into the fray, weaving between vehicles, tapping on windows and holding out their hands.

From the inside of a vehicle, many of them are so low to the ground that they're invisible unless they're at your window.

At an intersection closer to the city centre, a young child is pushing an elderly woman in a wheelchair from car window to car window, holding out her hand to commuters and pointing at the old woman. Nearby, a boy leads an old blind man through the traffic, begging.

They are some of Ghana's estimated 2.5 million people who are living with a disability. While the Ghana Persons with Disability Act passed in 2006 to enshrine the rights of people with disabilities in the country, few of those laws have been realized.

So, in a country with little in the way of a government-sponsored social welfare net, begging in traffic is the only means to stay alive for some of those living with a disability.

Abu Mohammed is 28 years old. He has a wife and two young children. He recently returned from competing in international football in Nigeria; he is captain of Ghana's national team for people with physical disabilities.

Despite his prowess as a "scooter-soccer" player, six days a week, eight hours a day, you'll find Mohammed out in the traffic, begging for money to cover his rent, feed his family, and send his children to school.

Smiling shyly under a faded camouflage-print hat, Mohammed arranges his immobile legs on the scooter, crossing them one over the other. He uses mismatched flip-flops hooked on his fingers to protect his hands as he pushes himself over the concrete.

On a good day, Mohammed will make about $7 a day; slower days, it's more like $3 or $4.

Mohammed wasn't born with a disability. He fell ill at the age of three and was never able to walk again.

"My parents told me it was a headache and later it affected my whole body," says Mohammed through a translator. "Since then I have never been able to walk."

As a person with a disability, Mohammed didn't attend school, though, unlike some, his parents continued to care for him.

When he was 12, they were killed in a car crash. Mohammed was sent to live with a relative but, suffering from maltreatment, he began to make his own way on the streets. He's been there, for the most part, ever since.

The legislation guarantees people with disabilities access to public buildings, healthcare, education and employment opportunities. It also establishes a national body to ensure compliance and makes it an offence to discriminate against people with disabilities.

On paper, it's "nearly perfect," says Mary Tobbin, the program manager for inclusion with Voluntary Service Overseas (VSO), an international organization that champions rights of people with disabilities in Ghana.

"(But) I can tell you the implementation is woefully, extremely poor," she says.

The act has a 10-year window to allow for time to implement it, but four years after its passage, little is progressing. A big part of the problem, says Tobbin, is that no one is taking responsibility.

For example, the law requires that all children with a disability receive free education that meets their particular needs.

"Who is checking that they're getting it?" asks Tobbin. "There is a huge gap hanging around who ensures that the law is implemented."

Tobbin blames a lack of resources, stemming from a lack of political will.

"The government's priority is simply not there."

The National Council on Persons with Disability was established by the 2006 legislation, tasked with implementing it.

Now, in late 2010, the council is about a year old, and still very much "finding its feet," says Executive Secretary Duut Bonchel Abdulai.

He adds that there are many projects in the pipeline, including a strategic plan, accessibility standards and a communication strategy.

A lack of money, however, is a big challenge, he says, particularly because the council was formed after current budget allocations were already complete.

Abdulai says discrimination still makes it extremely difficult for people with disabilities to find work and access services.

"People with disabilities in Ghana face discrimination and this is a result of the fact that we still don't understand what disability is," says Abdulai. "Disability knows no bounds. In a split second, you can become a person with disability.”

Back in the traffic, Mohammed says he's seen people killed by vehicles; he's lost friends to accidents on the road. He doesn't want to be here but he has never been able to find a job. What he would like is to have a shop, where he could sit and sell goods, and be around his family.

"We've been waiting for the government or an NGO to come to our aid," says Mohammed. "But if we just waited, we'd die of hunger."

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Bursting at the seams: A walk through Ghana's prisons

Prisoners from the recently-closed Jamestown Prison (above) were moved to nearby Nsawam Prison, which holds more than four times the number of inmates for which it was designed. Photo by Shawn Hayward. 

By Jessica McDiarmid

“Never say die” is stencilled in capital letters above a cell door on death row in Ghana’s Nsawam prison.

One of the cell's inhabitants leans on the door frame, following my eyes as I read it. He grins before retreating back into his room, a cell that perhaps measures 3 by 4 metres and sleeps three or four men.

He is just one of nearly 3,400 inmates at Nsawam Medium Security Prison about 35 kilometres from the nation's capital, Accra. The facility—cell blocks, some outbuildings, a grassy football pitch and a few well-kept administrative buildings—is designed for 850 men.

The term "prison congestion" wasn't new to me. I'd seen the statistics and read the reports. But the sight—and smell—of it was. Ghana's prison system is vastly overloaded—a problem everyone knows about, but no one is doing much about.

On death row, bags, pots, pans, shoes, clothing and crude tools hang on the walls of the two-storey building that houses the 105 condemned men.

According to the rules, convicts' worldly possessions shouldn't be kept here. But at Nsawam, there isn't any other room.

Some of the cells are decorated: posters of busty white ladies here, a landscape painting there. Prisoners and guards weave their way down the hall outside the cells, stepping carefully around the bodies and belongings that cover a good part of the floor.

Just beyond the prison "library" are the gallows. A prisoner smiles as he holds the door open and points up to a wooden platform overhead. A long lever extends downward to activate the trap doors that open to drop condemned men to their deaths. High above the platform are the nooses. There is a dummy in one of them.

"It's like a museum for us," says the inmate. No one has been hung here since the 1960s, when firing squads replaced hangmen as the state's preferred executioners. The last time a death sentence was carried out in Ghana was 17 years ago.

None at Nsawam are begging for their lives, but rather for the conditions in which they will live the rest of those lives.

And, despite living like sardines in sweltering heat just around the corner from a gruesome reminder of their sentences, the inmates on death row have it good when it comes to their living conditions.

Outside the high wall topped with shards of glass that isolates death row from the rest of the prison, eight buildings house about 3,300 inmates. More than 1,200 of those men are not convicted of any crime—they are on remand, waiting for the sticky wheels of justice to turn. They may be waiting years, they may be waiting decades.

In Canada, there is a push to eliminate double-bunking in prison cells. Currently, between six to 10 per cent of inmates share cells at Canadian prisons.

At Nsawam, the number of inmates per cell is written in chalk on blackboards at the front of each cell block: 42, 26, 22, 43, 45. Each cell measures five metres by five metres. The smell of the cell blocks wafts out across the yard, a sour mixture of urine, feces and sweat that, once you get close, is strong enough to taste.

In the sweltering midday heat, inmates sit in the cells out of the sun, lining the walls, forming lines through the middle of the rooms. Constantly fanning themselves with almost no ventilation, inmates are locked in these cells for about 12 hours a day. About $0.40 per day is allotted to feed them, which affords them a small cup of porridge in the morning, soup at lunch and a cup of gari, a local cassava dish, at dinner, according to one former inmate.

Prison officials say water shortages are frequent and sanitation is "out of control." And prisoners' health is suffering.

A 24-year-old man from Volta Region in eastern Ghana found himself at Nsawam after being arrested on suspicion of armed robbery. He spent over three years there.

“The place is just rough,” says the man, who doesn’t want his name printed for fear it would affect his case, which is now before the courts, as well as the risk of mob violence.

He says he remembers waking up to find someone's feet in his mouth. Other mornings, prisoners would realize that someone hadn't survived the night.

“When a human being dies over there, they just say, one more fowl dead.”

Richard Quayson, deputy commissioner of Ghana’s Commission on Human Rights and Administrative Justice (CHRAJ), calls the situation in the country’s prisons “intolerable.”

He says all the government departments involved in the justice system are concerned.

“But we are not translating that concern into action,” says Quayson.

Ghana’s attorney general’s office has launched several programs in recent years aimed at decreasing the number of remand inmates behind bars in order to lessen overall congestion, but CHRAJ calls these measures “ad hoc" and says there has been little improvement overall.

Overall, the rights of prisoners are low on the totem pole of social consciousness, says Tuinese Edward Amuzu, executive director of the Legal Resources Centre in Accra.

"There's a lot of resistance there," says Amuzu, whose organization provides legal counsel to inmates and stages ad hoc interventions. "If you are in the hands of law enforcement, people think, ‘Ah, you have committed a crime and…you must suffer.’"

Championing prisoners' rights on a political level isn't likely to win many ballots, says CHRAJ's Quayson, which makes the fight for prisoners' rights that much more difficult.

"We are in a dilemma at this stage," he says. "In promoting human rights, we are promoting  human rights for all persons. And when it comes to prisoners, compared to other people, they are very, very vulnerable." 

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Liberia, a country caught between heaven and hell

A monument in downtown Monrovia, Liberia. The country is rebuilding itself after a 14-year civil war. Photo by Jessica McDiarmid

By Jessica McDiarmid

A young man wearing camouflage shorts lowers his sunglasses down over his eyes from their perch atop unkempt braids, eyeing me up and down as I stand in a throng of young men on the outskirts of Monrovia. 

"Welcome to hell," he says.

Then he melts back into the crowd of mainly ex-combatants eager to tell a white journalist about what life is like in Liberia.

Seven years have passed in this small West African nation since the guns finally fell silent after a gruesome 14-year civil war that claimed the lives of an estimated 250,000 people.

The pieces are slowly, fitfully, being put back together. Looking out across the lush hillsides teeming with tropical forest and down the long, serene beaches, it's not hard to believe this place will one day be a paradise.

Turn the other way and you are faced with stark reminders of the long, brutal war that was fought here, and lives on in the memories of the people who have come home.

Those memories are omnipresent, in the stories people tell you, in the scars on the landscape, in the haunted faces you find yourself looking into, wondering, what have your eyes seen?

Outside the airport where crowds wait for arrivals holding up signs emblazoned with NGO logos, UN jeeps idling nearby, a young man sells cellphone credit, referred to as "scratch."

He says he returned from Ghana's Buduburam refugee camp four months ago. All he wants now, he tells me, as we stand on the asphalt in sweltering heat, is to get out of Liberia.

But there are no jobs, he says, and no opportunities.

"It's hard here, man, hard. Look at me. I'm selling scratch," he says. "Can you take me back to Ghana?"

The hour-long drive into Monrovia from the airfield betrays little of Liberia's troubled past. A flawless highway rolls over hills dotted with palm and mango trees, past thatched bus stops and villages of fresh-painted cottages. It's a beautiful country, far more developed than I expected, in total defiance of my preconceptions of what a "post-conflict" country would look like.

Upon entering Monrovia, on a dirt soccer pitch alongside the road, young men are playing soccer. Some are on crutches, missing limbs, or pushing themselves in wheelchairs. Many are former child soldiers, falling into a strange category of being both victims of the war, and perpetrators of it.

I spent my first evening in Monrovia at a restaurant on the beach, sitting beneath pristine palm trees while nearby, a couple of people swam as the sun set in a brilliant riot of colour. Joggers huffed by through the clean, white sand and the smartly dressed waiters offered flawless service. It was like heaven on earth.

Then someone asked how close we were to the site of the execution of Liberia's president and 27 other government officials, who were tied to poles and shot on a beach in 1980.

Strolling through downtown, impressive new buildings stand proudly beside blown out walls pocked with bullet holes. Atop a hill overlooking Monrovia, a palace is being restored to former glory, complete with a swimming pool, domed ceilings and gazebos. Just outside the security fence erected around the renovations, a group of youth are hard at work in the piles of discarded concrete. They're chipping off the cement with a hammer to get the metal rods out, which they'll be able to sell for a pittance.

I ask them why they're busting stone when they should be in school. They holler and laugh, exchanging quick words in "Liberian English" that I can't understand. Then the smallest boy says, "No parents no more. We gotta eat, lady."

On Broad Street, one of downtown's main drags, stands a monument to the 50th anniversary of the Geneva Convention, a globe with the words, "Even wars have limits," written in red, block letters underneath.

On a nearby bench facing the monument, a young Liberian man sits chain-smoking, telling his story, of how his father was taken from the house and killed, the body left on the street, of how his mother fled with five young children in tow, of the almost unspeakable brutality they saw on the month-long walk from Monrovia to a refugee camp in over the border in Cote d'Ivoire.

We sit looking for a time at the words and he smiles wryly.

"Ah," he says, leaning back and stretching. "Liberia, man."

It's not heaven, it's not hell, but somewhere in between.

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Poverty under a goldmine

Children play in the ruins of homes in Anwiam, a village near Obuasi in Ghana's Ashanti Region, where blasting at a nearby mine has destroyed dozens of homes. Photo by Jessica McDiarmid.

By Jessica McDiarmid

"You are now encroaching," says Eric Adjei.

"Eh?" I say. "On what?"

We were walking down a road in Obuasi, a mining town of about 250,000 in Ghana's Ashanti Region, before hopping a gutter and starting up a well-trodden trail under a canopy of palm trees.

"On their land," says Adjei, a Ghanaian journalist-turned-mining activist.

"So what happens if they catch us?"

He shrugs and starts to walk again.

"I was seeing what your reaction would be," he says. "It's not much."

AngloGold Ashanti (AGA) has the rights to much of the land in and around Obuasi, including the road we're walking on.

As we climb up the path, we come to another road, paved and winding past large, luxurious houses. All around us are green hills that fade off into the horizon under the rumbling clouds overhead.

An arch over the entrance to the town reads, "Welcome to Obuasi, the Golden City." Mine shafts are interspersed with shops and homes on the rough-paved streets. The AGA name is plastered everywhere.

Millions of dollars worth of gold — 381,000 ounces — have been pulled from these hills, refined and moulded and polished into rings and earrings, chains and statues and watches. But here, in the communities that have born the brunt of the extraction and production of what some call the world's dirtiest mineral, no one has gold watches.

In Anwiam, a community of about 500 directly below the mine, few have solid homes. None have safe drinking water. Most don't have a livelihood. They live in the shadow of the mine.

The community has begged AGA for years to be resettled, anywhere far, far away from a mine, to no avail. They say the company won't move them because its operation is scarcely active now and not bringing in enough money. Based in Johannesburg, South Africa, AGA generated $3.8 billion USD in profits last year.

And while the roar of the mine has died down, its effects have not.

"In Obuasi, we are dealing with legacy issues," says Adjei. "Most of the existing laws were not in place before."

Adjei works for the Wassa Association of Communities Affected by Mining (WACAM), a non-governmental organization that promotes human rights in communities where mines operate.

He has lived in Obuasi all his life. He completed secondary school here and studied at the Ghana Institute of Journalism in Accra before returning home to take a job as a reporter at a local radio station.

He wanted to do stories about the plight of people affected by mining operations and the human rights abuses taking place. But at the radio station in town, "you didn't fight the mine," he says.

"There was a saying, AGC is Obuasi, Obuasi is AGC," he says, referring to the previous name of the company. "If you were writing any story that's at variance with the status quo, it became very difficult for you."

After being threatened with "sacking" a handful of times, Adjei looked elsewhere to air his stories. He began producing them and then sending them outside Obuasi to friends and acquaintances at stations in other parts of the country, hoping they would air there.

He met WACAM Executive Director Daniel Owusu-Koranteng through his work as a reporter, and eventually went to work as the assistant to the WACAM officer in Obuasi, who happens to be the news director from the radio station.

Most residents used to be farmers before handing their land over to the mine. Now, with few skills and no education, they resort to petty trading, menial labour, eking out gardens beside the village dumpsite—and illegal mining.

"If you take away their source of living, you are killing them," says Adjei. "It leads to TB, to street kids, to galamsey, you name it."

Referred to as galamsey, illegal mining is a tough trade; floods and disasters have killed hundreds of illegal miners in Ghana in the last couple years and scuffles with company security forces have led to beatings, illegal detainment and alleged deaths.

But, as Adjei tells me, people like those of Anwiam are desperate.

After talking with villagers, we make our way toward a steep trail that cuts up the side of the hill toward the spray of dark gray shale that towers overhead.

From a mining road high above the village, you can see the sprinkle of rough huts, crumbled time and again by blasting and patched together with whatever material could be scrounged up. Beyond stretches the town of Obuasi proper.

"Do you know how to run?" Adjei asks.

"Are we encroaching again?"

"Yeah, we are."

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