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West african troops land liberia Original Source Link: (May no longer be active)
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Monday, Aug. 4, 2003
West African troops land in Liberia
UPDATED AT 11:47 AM EDT Monday, Aug. 4, 2003
Monrovia — West Africa's first troops landed Monday on an international rescue mission for Liberia, greeted by overjoyed civilians who spilled onto the airfield by the hundreds, screaming, "We want peace!"
Nigerian soldiers in green camouflage and flak vests leaped from white UN helicopters onto the tarmac at Liberia's main airport, outside the country's besieged capital.
Machine-guns at the ready, they crouched, taking up defensive positions on the landing strip.
West African leaders promise an eventual 3,250-strong deployment charged with helping end 14 years of conflict in the war-ruined country and overseeing the departure of warlord-turned-president Charles Taylor.
As an armoured personnel carrier with mounted machine guns rolled off one later flights, excited crowds evaded security and ran at the crew. "No more war! We want peace," they chanted.
Outside the terminal, two women danced in the rain, celebrating the arrival of the desperately hoped-for peace troops.
Colonel Theophilus Tawiah of Ghana, the new force's chief of staff, said he knew how much Monrovia's trapped people had been waiting for the day.
"And we hope to live up to their expectations," he said.
Authorities said 192 men and 15,000 kilograms of equipment would deploy Monday. The West African deployment is to be followed within months by a UN peacekeeping force.
"We are ready. I can assure you of that," said Captain Aliyu Jibril, commander of the first units to arrive. Capt. Jibril said the troops had a mandate that allows them to fire to protect themselves and civilians.
On Sunday, two of three U.S. warships full of marines arrived off the country's Atlantic Ocean coast, ready if ordered to deploy to support the peacekeepers, although their exact role remained unclear. In Monrovia, residents near the city's embattled port heard cheers and watched flares go up over the war-ruined city. The flares appeared to have been set off by rebels celebrating the arrival of the West African troops.
"I want to see them with my own eyes. And when I do, even though I have no food, my belly will be big, and I will be happy," said Bangalu Wonwondor, 62, a refugee.
Allan Doss, UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan's representative in Sierra Leone, saw off the first troops from neighbouring Sierra Leone earlier Monday.
"I wish you God speed and well in this historic mission to Liberia," Doss said. "The people of Liberia have suffered a lot, for too long. They need your help."
In all, 675 Nigerian soldiers and 18 of their officers assembled on the airfield to take part in the first deployment.
West African leaders have promised the force to quell fighting in Liberia, where two months of rebel sieges on the capital have killed more than 1,000 civilians outright and left the refugee-crowded city of more than 1.3 million wracked by disease and desperately short of food and water.
The Nigerians, the first arrivals, are leaving a UN mission in Sierra Leone, where large-scale military intervention by Britain, neighbouring Guinea and the United Nations helped end a vicious 10-year civil war.
A UN fixed-wing aircraft, borrowed from a UN peace mission in Congo, was flying to Sierra Leone to speed up the Liberian deployment, force organizers said.
Crews in Sierra Leone loaded armoured-personnel carriers and other gear onto aircraft at two airports there.
The leader of the peacekeeping force for Liberia on Sunday sought to temper high expectations among the country's suffering people, saying the first troops would only secure the airport on the capital's outskirts.
"We are going in with as much troops as possible," Nigerian Brigadier-General Festus Okonkwo, the force's commander, told reporters late Sunday. "We know that the situation is bad in and around Monrovia."
The airport is about a 45-minute drive on a government-held road from the capital, where fighting has raged daily between government troops and rebels battling to overthrow him.
On the road to the airport, aid workers on Monday were preparing mass graves, readying them for the bodies of about 80 people killed in fighting but left unclaimed at the morgue at Monrovia's main hospital.
In Rome, the leader of the insurgent group behind the siege promised to co-operate with peacekeepings and renewed pledges to hand them control of the embattled port.
"We are going to work with them," said Sékou Conneh, in Rome for talks with an international mediating community. "They should be able to provide security for civilians, then we can withdraw."
Gen. Okonkwo said he asked both sides to return to the positions they held when they signed a June 17 ceasefire, broken repeatedly since then. He said he does not expect peacekeepers to be attacked.
Debt-strapped Nigeria, which is overseeing the deployment, says it needs far more international backing for the mission, expected eventually to cost at least $2-million (U.S.) daily.
U.S. officials have promised $10-million in logistical support for the West African peacekeepers.
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