These, the fleeing refugees, must be at the centre of sustaible  peace

Grieving For Mr. Greaves’ Prescriptions
By Tom Kamara

5 June 04

There are many rebuttals that I do not bother to confront, for many are simply banal and not worth the time. But some, such as the one  (A Rejoinder TO Tom Kamara From Harry Greaves ) from Mr. Harry A Greaves, Jr., Chairman of the Council of Economic Advisors for the Liberian interim regime, and therefore a key player in charting the course for accountability and openness in government, deserve special attention. But before going further, I must ask readers’ forgiveness for writing in the first person. I do no fancy it, because it pushes the person to the forefront of the issues. The “I” (my person) overtakes the issues. In this case, however, the I and the issues are lumped together.

Mr. Greaves, in his obvious and understandable anger, said I am “sloppy” with my facts. I will now therefore undertake to deal with some facts and see how “sloppy” I am in delving into his article, which I will not call a “diatribe”.

1. When I highlighted the impropriety behind Mr. Bryant’s alleged renovation of his sister’s house, the Government claimed this was untrue. Yes, the house was renovated, but not at the cost of US$500,000, “only” US100, 000, and Bryant’s sister, not the government, was paying the bill, it claimed. Since then, Mr. Bryant has moved in, (move out on alleged family matters) of the house. Liberians have not been told how much the government is paying Bryant’s sister for lodging the head of state. Or is the sister simply lodging her brother gratis?  Mr. Bryant reportedly moved into the Executive Mansion, where I had suggested he should have lived to save the state money, since the building was already there, and if renovated, would accommodate the next president at no cost to the state.  When transparency is the rule, this is a key issue, nothing to do with “vendetta”, as Mr. Greaves claims. 

2. I contended that it is improper for Bryant to have left his former home to live with the Governor of the National Bank. The Government clarified that indeed Mr. Bryant was living with the Governor, but that the house in question belongs to the Methodist Church, and that the Governor sub-leased it to the new head of state. Sub-leased for how long, how much, were questions never answered. Suddenly Mr. Bryant moves out of the Bank Governor’s house that was supposedly sub-leased, leaving more questions unanswered.

3. The story on the alleged corruption linked to the Governor of the National has taken different dimensions. Mr. Bryant announced a team to investigate the Governor, vowing that where theft is discovered, the law would take its course. Now, Mr. Greaves, Chairman of the Council of Economic Advisors, tells us the EU, not the Bryant team, will investigate the Bank. Where is honour, and the fulfillment of the vow that Bryant made there would be “no business as usual?”

4. There are other facts, which Mr. Greaves has conveniently avoided, such as reports that his boss asked Guinea’s President Lansana Conte to vote for the lawyer Varney Sherman. Is the Government now saying that Guineans have the right to vote in Liberia? In this case Alhaji Kromah and Sekou Conneh, with ethnic links in Guinea, stand better chances. So much with being “sloppy” with my facts. Now the main issues as contained in Mr. Greaves’ article, which again I refuse to call a “diatribe’’.  

Mr. Greaves made several assertions, some well-placed. But I will concentrate on those I consider relevant to the debate on Liberia if it is to emerge as a viable state in which law and order, accountability, and compassion for the underprivileged are to be the determining factors for success or erecting the pillars for more chaos. There are a number of. areas in Mr. Greaves argument that warrant fears for openness and sustainable democratic principles.  They are, paraphrased:

1. The prescription is that demanding justice for suspected criminals is vendetta
2. The belief that highlighting the ills of a national leader is equal to hate

Justice for suspected criminal is “vendetta”.

 Mr. Greaves wrote:

I read Tom Kamara's article, All The Don’s Men: Implications of Global Witness Report, where he tried desperately to establish a link between people who work with Chairman Gyude Bryant like myself and the criminal activities of the Taylor administration. He starts his article by saying that I had said on BBC that all Taylor’s men were not bad.  I feel sorry for him if (he) believes that everyone who worked in government under Taylor was a criminal and should be indicted even before being convicted of any particular crime.  

Here is one fundamental problem within Liberian politics, as I see it, which is the failure to see the difference between good and evil, honour and dishonour, villains and victims. Mr. Greaves was one of the luminaries in Washington in the 1980s digging the pillars for the eventual bloody fall of Samuel K. Doe, something many of us are guilty of, if guilt is the word. Back in Monrovia, he participated in projects (including forming the Liberian Action Party, etc.)  to ensure Doe’s fall, like many of us. This in itself is not an indictable act, for Samuel Doe was one of the 20^th Century’s examples of rule by brute force, a man lacking total compassion.  What is indictable is Mr. Greaves’ failure to use the same yardstick, the same logic, on a far more vicious brute—Charles Taylor, an indicted war criminal, something Samuel Doe was not. His (Greaves’) belief that there are “some good people” amongst Charles Taylor’s gang should have been used on Samuel Doe, who, as the record indicates, had far more good people around him than Taylor and was never charged with crimes to flee in exile and hide himself under the gown of Nigerians, as Charles Taylor has done.  But Mr. Greaves did not return to Liberia to work with the “good people” around Doe. He did not see as vendetta the voluminous scripts on Doe’s excesses. He schemed, in Washington, with the like-minded, to ensure that both the “good people” and the “bad people” went in flames. For those without the means of locating family members to America, we lost good people. We lost our villages, gone, forever, existing only in our fading imagination till death. Mr. Greaves cannot say the same, for to him, a system that carved and implemented the butchering of the innocents has within it “good people”, and he has the right to determine that goodness.  Those that see evil embedded in such beings are guilty of vendetta.

This defence—working with the “good people"—also defies logic and facts. It seeks to deceive, in that men like Mr. Greaves would like to sell the notion that only Charles Taylor, alone, is responsible for our national catastrophe in the name of greed. This is far from the case, for anyone accepting this system, working for it at decision-making levels (not members of the Small Boys Unit the or the office messenger, definitely not amongst Mr. Greaves’ good people with whom he is prepared to work) cannot be good.  Such a person carries within him or her seeds of evil, forever, only awaiting time to germinate. There are men and women, still around in lucrative posts, who contributed their quota in the destruction campaign that crossed borders into Sierra Leone, Guinea, and now Cote d’ Ivoire, the birthplace of the destruction. Charles Taylor alone could not have been in Voinjama, Zwedru, Foya Kamah, Sierra Leone, Guinea, directing and financing his gangs of killers and looters. He could not have planned and implemented the schemes alone and he did not. But if there are good people around Mr. Taylor with whom Mr. Greaves has decided to form alliances with, would he please name them for the record? 

Are there good people in evil systems? Can a good person join the KKK or the Nazis?  If politics in Liberia is to be based on beliefs, principles, the desire to implement ideas, and not the desire for bread, then values should be at the core, not determining who is bad or good in a killer gang. Or is Mr. Greaves saying that he shares the same values with the “good people” in Charles Taylor’s rebel enterprise? Political alliances are commonly based on values and collective perceptions of what is good or bad.   It is therefore unlikely that George McGovern would be appointed George W. Bush’s Secretary of State, nor would Tony Blair, as conservative as he is, hire a member of the Conservative Party on his team. The change of government in Spain saw some drastic shifts in policy, such as the withdrawal of troops from Iraq. This is called politics on the basis of conviction, not bread.  Liberia is the difference, because here, values do not count, only the desire for bread, serving one chief after another and shamelessly justifying the search for bread in the name of “our people”, or nowadays, “peace.”

But we live in a world of double standards, in which truth is not equal to justice. Taylor’s regime has been labelled one of the most brutal in modern African history. J. T. Richardson, one the spokesmen for Charles Taylor credited for organising Operation Octopus to seize Monrovia, declared in April 1996:
 

“What the journalists have failed to point out is that this time, unlike previous fighting in Monrovia, the civilians have not really suffered. In the past, fighters would rip out people's intestines and use them to string up roadblocks, or cut off people's heads. This time there has been none of that. (Courtesy Kenneth L. Cain, Rape of Dinah)

Mr. Richardson was referring to the 1996 fighting in Monrovia, when Alhaji Kromah teamed –up with Charles Taylor against ethnic Krahns, leaving over 3000 people killed and millions in property destroyed. Hundreds of thousands fled into refugee camps. But the good people around Taylor were not only looking at Liberia. They were thinking big, and crossed into other countries.

Two Nigerian businessmen in Sierra Leone David Anyaele and Emmanuel Egbunna, in Affidavit, told a part of their horrors in the hands of Charles Taylor’s sponsored rebels. They A Nigerian victim, Here is a quote from one of his victims, a Nigerian in Sierra Leon

"The rebels isolated Nigerians from the other captives and began amputing (sic) their forearms. I witnessed the amputation of tens of persons. Only Emmanuel and I survived. After amputing (amputating) me, the rebels set me on fire and told me to go deliver their message to the Nigerian Government…They cut off the hands of my younger brother, Benedict from beneath the elbow. They dumped him at the cemetery (sic) behind the house. He bled to death in front of me and his pregnant wife. I was next. The matchet cut through the flesh and the bones of my hands but did not entirely severe them. With my hands dangling from my arms, the rebels also dumped me at the cemetery…"

The crimes on Liberian soil are from being recorded. When one looks at the faces of five American nuns raped and mutilated, and other horrendous crimes committed in the name of politics, the question as to which good person would work with such an evil enterprise becomes a burden, but that is only if one has conscience and compassion. Where is the good in men that line-up behind such minds, accepting political appointments from them in the name of “our people”, that perennial excuse opportunistic Liberian politicians have mastered for self-service? 

Where justice is not compromised on the basis working with “good people”, the examples are evident. In South Africa, the evildoers were exposed, and isolated from state power. Some were punished, to clearly come to term with the fact that evil does not pay. In Sierra Leone, Foday Sankoh may be gone, but his lieutenants are on trial. Honourable Sierra Leoneans did not accept appointments, scheme for political prominence under rebel umbrella with the excuse of having good people around Sankoh. They organised, and with international assistance, got justice to start from a clean slate. The Liberian story, as it is emerging, is the direct opposite. With key decision-making makers like Greaves decreeing there were good people around Taylor, justice is distant.  Taylor’s team players are allowed to maintain their criminal economic entities with hilarious excuses of formulating policies for economic revival. The monopoly, which Lone Star has maintained in telecommunications, is only one example of economically empowering the Taylor “good people”. Where honesty and the desire for justice matter, this entity, Lone Star, should have been opened for investigation to set clear examples that no one has the right to use crude political power to set-up personal economic entities, with state money at state disadvantage. Again to the contrary, justifications, however laughable, are thrown around to sustain the financial and political interests of group of people squarely responsible for the destruction of the economy and people.   And yet demanding justice, in Mr. Greaves’ mind and eyes, is called vendetta.

It is far from an even world based on universal concepts justice on which wars are waged. The UNHCR chief, the Dutchman Ruud Lubbers, concluded that between Saddam Hussein and Charles Taylor, the Iraqi has more honour. And yet, he wondered, the world was applying the sword on Saddam while winning and dinning with Charles Taylor, a far more heinous being. Saddam’s sons were hunted down and killed for their alleged crimes. There was no decision on distinguishing between the good people and the people. His political party was outlawed. A manhunt was launched for his officials. Many have been arrested. His Army, Police, and other political infrastructures, were dismantled. No one ruled that there are “good people” in the regime to work with. Where justice is the desire, history is replete with no compromise with evil. In Germany, Cambodia, etc. The political machines that manufactured death were destroyed, their keepers along. In Liberia, where men like Mr. Greaves are deciding who was good and who is bad in Taylor’s gang, the political and economic machines that led to horrors are sustained, with the recruiting Generals now concluding they even have a chance in winning the next election because they have the money are the most organised.  Evil, as seen in sustaining entities like Lone Star, is confident, believing it represents good, not evil. Mr. Greaves, by announcing his sorrow for people who insist on justice and not compromise with evil, has just unveiled his political agenda and his mind. Pity for subscribing to the belief that men and women who served Charles Taylor in high and decision-making portfolios from the beginning to the end have any good in them.

Mr. Greaves said:

Since its (the Bryant regime) inception, Mr. Kamara has not missed an opportunity to try to tarnish the image of the Bryant administration. Every time he has something negative to say, he puts the Chairman’s picture up on his website. Whether the Chairman has anything to do with the story or not seems to make no difference to him. He never misses a chance to point to the fact that Chairman Bryant was selected by the warring factions. Yet, he fails to note that had the Chairman not been "pre-selected" by civil society groups and political parties, his name would not have reached the warring factions. Many others fought for the honor of being chosen by the warring factions but failed. He succeeded. This may be hard for Mr. Kamara to accept but there could only have been one winner and Bryant it….”

Mr. Greaves may find this hard to accept, but if there were any choice of non-rebels, meaning political parties and civil society groupings, it was Mrs. Ellen Johnson Sirleaf. She won by a landslide. Bryant sluggishly came third or fourth, and it is here that the rebels used their veto power similar to what we see in the UN. Even if the entire world says yes, one member of the UN Security Council’s can undo a decision. Thus as far as I am concerned, the rebels (MODEL and Taylor’s men), not civil society, elected Mr. Bryant. I would have reached the same conclusion on the other candidates that fell in the same category as Mr. Bryant. This is not being “sloppy” with the facts. It is sharpening the facts.

I fail to see the rationale behind the venom that, “Since its (the Bryant regime) inception, Mr. Kamara has not missed an opportunity to try to tarnish the image of the Bryant administration.” Charles Taylor made the same claim in 1996 for constantly opening his acts and remarks to scrutiny. “They are writing. When we out it this way, they take it from there and put it that way. But the time is now coming…We will use jungle justice….”

This was not surprising coming from a man who made himself by killing and looting—Charles Taylor. But from Mr. Greaves, who has spent nearly all his life in the US or Europe? Do I have to tell him that a head of state has no secrets? Whoever saw Mr. Bryant’s picture until he opted to carry the burdens of a ruined a country with benefits? In any undertaking, there are advantages and disadvantages. One of the advantages is that Mr. Bryant can propel his friends on the national stage even where there was no role for them in the Ghana Agreement. Mr. Greaves is therefore more important in the government than most ministers, even if his position, Chair of Council of Economic Advisors (reminds me of the Soviet era chair of Gosplan, the supreme economic planning agency that took care of every issue, every need, including how many cups of water people should drink).   

He claimed:

It is one of the supreme ironies of history that Chairman Bryant was one of the few who objected, and vociferously so, to the idea of selection-by-warring-parties when that selection procedure was sprung on us (the civilian side of the house, that is) by the convening authorities at the eleventh hour. Others who thought it would favour them warmly embraced it. We simply went back to the drawing board after it was clear that we would be overruled and devised a strategy to use the procedure to the advantage of our candidate. And we succeeded. 

As a free citizen, Mr. Kamara, you are at liberty to vent your frustrations on others, but you should consider basing your accusations on fact rather than rumor or supposition, Avoid stretching reality to suit the exigencies of your vendetta. I, for one, am at loss as to why you have tried to link me to allegations that Global Witness made against Mr. Taylor. I did not serve one day in his administration. Having said that, I want you to know that I would be the first to champion your right to express your opinion, even if that opinion is misguided or fanciful

That some Liberian politicians see any criticism as “”frustration” reveals their minds. The first allegation against me when I began to unveil what was behind the Bryant agenda was that I was jealous for not being called in Ghana to be a part of the team. How interesting. An opportunist wanting to be a part of the team would have begun cheering and praising the team immediately, as many did and won corners for themselves. These are people I hardly know, and conceiving myself in their midst as a member of the political team is laughable. Moreover, as I said in previous articles, the doses of Liberian politics received in the Dr. Amos Sawyer regime, have taught me that it is far better being a journalist than a politician. I do not have the acumen for the kind of politics prevailing. My surprise is that such a word would come from Mr. Greaves, a man I thought had far greater imagination than he now reveals. It came from Charles Taylor’s paid propagandists with no shock, but Harry A. Greaves, Jr.? It is far too mundane and pedestrian.

Mr. Greaves is one of the main actors on the Bryant team. His thesis on why the monopoly on telecommunications should be sustained indicates this. Global Witness, and the Minister of Post and Telecommunications, highlighted the monopoly which Lone Star enjoys and which Mr. Greaves sought to justify with his Nigerian comparison. Thus it is not I who linked Mr. Greaves to the Don’s men, but his position and actions. He had already announced he would work with the good people around Taylor because not all are bad. Mr. Emmanuel Shaw, whose position as advisor I did not invent but read in one of the stories from Monrovia on the Net, is one of the good people in charge of Lone Star. Thus Mr. Greaves, however hard he tries, cannot de-link from the Charles Taylor “good people.”  He should never be at a loss if the links are highlighted. It is the same crowd.

He wrote:

“A careful reading of the Accra peace agreement will reveal that the issue of justice for crimes committed by Taylor or anyone else during the civil war is not part of the mandate of the transitional government. There was heated debate on this point and the warring parties made it crystal clear that, should any provision be included in the CPA on war crimes, they would not sign the agreement and the war would continue. We did not want to be held responsible by the Liberian people for prolonging the war, so we acquiesced…”

This may be true, but cooperating with international bodies to ensure Charles Taylor’s extradition does not violate the mandate of the government as contained in the Ghana agreement. And surely, if this cannot be done, since Mr. Bryant claims Taylor’s exit brought him to power, then the indicted war criminal should not be financially empowered, as it is done in the deals with Lone Star. Moreover, there are many decisions the Government has taken that are not within the confines of the mandate. It was not mandated to undertake economic deals that would be binding on an elected government. It was not mandated to lobby for its heir apparent with sub-regional leaders, such as the reported request Bryant made for Lansana Conte to endorse Varney Sherman, and many more.

Mr. Greaves:

As a journalist, Mr. Kamara of all people should be happy that the Bryant administration is not embarking on a witch-hunt and dispensing kangaroo justice. Or perhaps he is only interested in due process when it comes to his friends. This transitional government intends to offer due process to everyone---friend and foe alike.  

Those who make constructive criticisms contribute positively to the reconstruction process. As a free citizen, Mr. Kamara, you are at liberty to vent your frustrations on others, but you should consider basing your accusations on fact rather than rumor or supposition, Avoid stretching reality to suit the exigencies of your vendetta. I, for one, am at loss as to why you have tried to link me to allegations that Global Witness made against Mr. Taylor. I did not serve one day in his administration. Having said that, I want you to know that I would be the first to champion your right to express your opinion, even if that opinion is misguided or fanciful

Due process? This should begin with the implementation of the vow to investigate the retired Governor of the National Bank, and open inquiry on how criminal economic entities tied to the indicted war criminal have been sustained and why. An open inquiry into the over US1m. spent on cars with the Lebanese George Haddad, claims of millions more stolen, including instructions to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on intelligence as Global Witness reports”, and cooperating with the forces of justice to ensure that Charles Taylor appears in Sierra Leone, would all be good staring points for “due process

 And “constructive criticisms?” I thought Mr. Greaves was imaginative enough to use other phrases, for here is a phrase so overused during True Whig Party era and during the rule of the military dictatorship to stifle views the establishment disliked. Any criticism disliked was “not constructive”, punishable by death or imprisonment. Mr. Greaves is in no position to determine which criticism is constructive. The readers and the courts should have that right.

Mr. Greaves:

I did not and could not have rigged the "selection process." I campaigned actively for Chairman Bryant in the run up to the elections. But when my peers indicated that they wanted me to chair the elections commission, I made a personal decision not to vote in those elections, even though I was entitled to do so. And that decision almost cost my candidate, Mr. Bryant, the election. As you may recall, he came in 3rd on the first ballot, equal with Dr. Moniba and Dr. Tipoteh, and had to go to a runoff, which he won handsomely. Had I voted, Mr. Bryant would have won 3rd place on the first ballot. (Incidentally, I was the only person on the elections commission entitled to vote who chose not vote. I think that fact weighed heavily in the decision of the mediator, General Abdulsalami Abubakar, to dismiss Dr. Moniba’s claim that I was biased. As regards the fairness of the process itself, I will not blow my own trumpet. Ask those who participated. Suffice it to say that, after the election, I was being referred to in the corridors of the conference hall as the next chairman of the elections commission in Liberia by participants and observers alike.  

I did not charge Mr. Greaves with rigging the election, but, as I always contend, elections are not necessarily rigged on the date of the balloting. The rigging takes place in the system and the processes adopted. My contention is that, as he clearly puts it, he “campaigned actively for Chairman Bryant in the run up to the elections”, he should not have been selected elections or selections commissioner. That Liberian politicians could not see the compromising nature of selecting a man who campaigned actively for another to chair the selections indicates the extreme lack of political skills. And that Mr. Greaves, after campaigning “actively”” for Bryant, refused to cast his vote as he said could also indicate another factor: he was convinced his candidate, after he “campaigned actively”, had already won. It is like Reginald Goodridge, Charles Taylor’s Information Minister,  who told CNN Charles Taylor’s victory margins were so wide that they “stopped counting the ballots. 

But Mr. Greaves has opened interesting avenues in the debate for justice, accountability and fairness. It has just begun, and it is necessary if we are to avoid plunging into violence to implement our ideas. No one should be allowed to have a monopoly over prescriptions for assured and sustained stability And he has taught me something else—how to spell his name.

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