Global Policy Forum

By Marty Logan

Washington's removal of U.S. marines from Monrovia to ships offshore will hurt the recovery of war-weary Liberia in both real and symbolic ways, say humanitarian and political experts. Earlier this week, 150 soldiers in a rapid reaction force that had been patrolling Monrovia since Aug. 14 climbed into their helicopters and flew to three ships stationed nearby, leaving about 100 troops behind to guard the U.S. embassy and work with West African peacekeepers.

The marines had arrived in the city hours after the resignation of former president Charles Taylor, who kept his country plunged in war much of the past 14 years. Taylor's exile to Nigeria also led rebels to quit the capital city. Since the marines' departure, reports have emerged of battles between government and rebel forces in different parts of the country. On Monday, aid agencies reported that 3,000 to 4,000 civilians were fleeing their homes toward refugee camps in central Liberia because of fighting.

Caretaker President Moses Blah asked U.S. Ambassador John Blaney on Monday to intervene with the rebels to extend the cease-fire to all parts of the country, said an Associated Press report. Negotiators from the Liberian government and two rebel groups signed a peace pact in Ghana last week, which will see the Blah's government transfer power to a new interim leadership Oct. 14.

U.S. military spokesmen said they recalled the marines because the soldiers can better assess the situation from offshore, although officials were earlier quoted saying that was a job better done on the ground. President George W Bush said earlier this month the soldiers would leave Liberia by Oct. 1.

''All along the discussion of sending troops was a first step, as part of a broader stabilisation process,'' said Joseph Siegle of the Council on Foreign Relations. ''U.S. forces are extremely integral to this process in my view because they not only bring in a coercive capacity but more importantly, I think, they send an important psychological signal to the Liberian population that the world does care about what's going on there,'' he added in an interview. ''I think it's extremely to maintain momentum, to try, first of all, to create a real stable environment in Monrovia but then to quickly expand throughout the entire country and create a dynamic for reconstruction rather than this halfway limbo approach that is unfolding.''

The international community had strongly pushed Washington to intervene in Liberia, a nation created by freed U.S. slaves in the 19th century, for months before the troops set foot onshore without warning -- just as they left this week -- earlier this month. '''What is the U.S. approach?' is the question that's out there now,'' said Joel Frushone, Africa policy analyst for the U.S. Committee for Refugees (USCR). ''When U.S. troops landed on the ground -- I don't know if it was a coincidence, but the fighting stopped.''

In the following days, international non-governmental organisations (NGOs) had ventured out of the capital to assess the situation in other areas, he added. The pullback ''stops the momentum that started when U.S. troops hit the ground there, even in small numbers''. ''It was my hope that these peacekeepers would help open up humanitarian corridors to start bringing supplies in. Sure, they're emergency supplies, but you can't go in to any part of the country and start doing relief operations until you do assessments.''

The pullback is ''a slap in the face to the U.N. and the whole peace effort'', said Robert Rotberg, director of the programme on intrastate conflict, conflict prevention and conflict resolution at the John F Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University. ''It shows that the U.S. doesn't take it seriously.''

Rotberg compared the U.S. forces with the U.K. and French soldiers who continue to keep peace in their former colonies, neighbouring Sierra Leone and Cote d'Ivoire respectively. ''Eight hundred and fifty paratroopers in Sierra Leone turned the whole situation around and made elections possible next door, in Ivory Coast, 2,000 French Foreign Legion troops and others are there preventing Ivory Coast from descending into chaos -- so we need to do our part.''

Rotberg believes U.S. forces should eventually become part of a larger U.N. peacekeeping body that is slated to replace the West African ECOMIL force of 3,250 troops that will patrol Liberia until October or November. About 1,500 Nigerian soldiers now make up that body. But ''anything can happen before those other troops get there'', he said. ''The Liberians distrust the Nigerian and Ghanaian troops who are there because of what happened last time, when Nigerians looted and traded in drugs and so on.''

The ECOMIL force simply cannot be as effective as U.S. soldiers, said both Siegle and Frushone. ''Some of these Nigerian troops were driving down the road -- they ran out of gas because they didn't have the funds to properly fuel these vehicles,'' Frushone said. ''Even if you're 3,250 soldiers strong I still believe that you need a sizeable U.S. presence there, for military support, for logistical support, for guidance.''

Siegle doubts that the marines returned to their ships because Washington lacks resources or is too skittish about getting entangled in a bloody conflict. ''I think it's the administration's approach to nation building. They like to do nation-building-lite.'' (. . . ) ''It's a military strategy for putting out hotspots. It's not a peace-building strategy; it's not a political strategy for creating stability,'' he added. But ''we have to be looking at this as a political rebuilding process. The fighting that we've seen in Liberia, the humanitarian crises, are symptoms of the political disintegration that's taken place.''

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