Liberia In the Heart of Darkness

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But Kakata is without almost everything else. At night, lights burn in just three houses, powered by privately owned generators. There is no water. The streets were once lively with Mandingo shops; now much of Kakata is burned and looted. Any Mandingo who did not manage to escape was "killed like a chicken," boasts a rebel. Every morning hundreds of people gather alongside the road, waiting for the occasional bus or truck to take them east to safety. If they are lucky, they will join 300,000 other refugees who have fled this war. "Doe started the killing 10 years ago," says an old man waiting with his family. "Who will stop it now?"

Few think that ECOMOG can. While President Dawda Jawara of Gambia played host at a meeting in the capital of Banjul to choose an interim President for Liberia, men with guns were very much in control. Taylor forcibly moved nearly 2,000 Nigerians and Guineans, mostly civilians seeking refuge in their embassy compounds in Monrovia, south to the port city of Buchanan, out of the reach of rescue. With Taylor's rebels shooting at Nigerian soldiers and Burkina Faso sending in troops to support Taylor, escalation of the war has already begun.

"Want a short-term worst-case scenario?" asked a Western diplomat in the Ivory Coast. "Everyone divides into constituent parts: Doe, Taylor and ECOMOG. Want a long-term worst-case scenario? Doe goes back to his Krahn in Grand Gedeh County. Taylor goes back to where he started in Nimba. And it's Doe against Taylor." All over again.