Liberia In the Land of Blood and Tears

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Later we moved by car and then by foot into Monrovia to see how far ECOMOG troops on the ground had advanced behind their air and artillery attacks. We were walking past a small airport called Spriggs Payne, held that morning by Taylor's rebels, when we suddenly discovered ourselves, with our N.P.F.L. bodyguard, behind ECOMOG lines. A group of Guinean and Ghanaian soldiers ordered us to accompany them to their base camp just west of Spriggs Payne. "Look what we've got!" shouted one. "Taylor's writers -- and we got us a rebel!" As more ECOMOG soldiers gathered, the scene turned ugly. The soldiers began to push us toward the rear of the camp, their rifles in our backs. One trooper grabbed my arm. I pushed it away, saying, "Get your hands off me." He took hold of me again and shouted, "You aren't a journalist, you're a spy!"

The soldiers disarmed the N.P.F.L. guard and stripped him to his underpants and socks. They tied his hands behind his back, threw him to the ground and began kicking him unmercifully. The assault was interrupted by a barrage of N.P.F.L. gunfire nearby. The unit commander, a Ghanaian captain, said accusingly, "You see? You've brought us an ambush."

Eventually the firing stopped. After an hour of high tension, the captain ordered us taken to ECOMOG headquarters in the Free Port area of Monrovia. There, for the next day and a half, together and separately, we were politely interrogated by a team of ECOMOG military police about where we had come from and what we had seen. We slept for two nights on the floor of the M.P. headquarters, ate military rations and were given soap and buckets of water to wash with.

The next day I was told that another "President," Prince Johnson, wanted to meet "one of those people who was with Taylor," and so I was taken the following day to his "executive mansion," which is located in an office building near the harbor. Parked outside was the late President Doe's silver Mercedes. Dressed in military fatigues, Johnson punctuated his pronouncements by waving a cigar in one hand and a can of beer in the other. Though his troops had occasionally fought alongside ECOMOG against the N.P.F.L., Johnson was nearly as hostile to the peacekeeping force as he was to Taylor. "They told me to move my people out of Monrovia," he said. "I took that territory. It's mine." As for the differences between him and Taylor, said Johnson, "I want civilian rule and democracy. That rogue wants socialism."

On a quick tour of territory north of Monrovia that was recently taken from the N.P.F.L., Johnson posed for his own video cameraman and shouted to his troops, "Where is Taylor?" "Nowhere," the soldiers shouted back. After returning to his headquarters, Johnson, accompanied by a background quartet of two guitars, a Casio keyboard and a hand-held African drum, strummed religious songs on his own guitar. Dozens of soldiers joined in, dancing and singing, "Oh, I love Jesus, because he loved me first."