The Bulk Challenge Experience. I. Ezax Smith
from fighting into an area, you were still not safe because you would seem strange to someone, and because of the self-evident fear and uncertainty, you could be killed without questions, on grounds that you were an enemy. No wonder Liberians evacuated into exile in mass numbers. Indeed, no one was safe anymore in a land once known as one of the safest, more peaceful and hospitable places in Africa. Liberia was now a “dog-eat-dog” land, where, as Liberians often say, “everybody for himself, and God for all.” To live and survive under these circumstances had to be by the protection of a higher being, and for some of us, that being was God. He shields his own and provides passage for them even in the midst of the most dangerous situations. It had to be God.
By September 1994, factional leaders agreed to another ceasefire in Ghana. That agreement became known as to the Akosombo Peace Accord³, which was intended obviously to stop the fighting and encourage the establishing of a democratically elected government. But that agreement yielded little effect. The warring factions continued to fight, demonstrating unwillingness to honor the agreement. There were occasional and sometimes extended shoot-outs among the various groups. Ceasefire was just a word not put into action. Pockets of shootings and fights continued until December 1994, when factions and parties signed what came to be known as the Akosombo Clarification. Notwithstanding the clarification, fighting continued.
There seemed to be a purpose far greater than the claim of factional leaders: to rescue the Liberian people. Each agreement seemed to have all the ingredients for peace, yet factional leaders reneged on every commitment to resolve the conflict. Each time, these factional leaders trumped up reasons, claiming that the agreements did not go far enough to ensure the interest and benefit of the Liberian people. However, critics began to see that the motives of these factional leaders were more personal and deeply rooted in greed for power and money. This glaring evidence of selfishness created skepticism in the minds of many as to whether there was any intention for peace on the part of any of the leaders. Unfortunately, in such matters of uncompromising greed of fighting forces, it is the common people who become the ultimate victims.
So, when on August 19, 1995 it was announced that the warlords had agreed to another accord called the Abuja Peace Accord⁴, the confidence of ordinary people in warring factions had worn thin. There was little hope that it would last, and justly so! Regardless of the Abuja Accord, fighting broke out again in April 1996. Once again, the fear of death was in the air, and here we were, in the streets—Cedrick, I, our families and untold number of other families—headed to nowhere.
Cedrick’s family and mine made several stops along the way, meanly because of the children who were tired, wanted to rest, drink or ease themselves. At one of our stops at the back of the Paynesville Town Hall, one of the children inquired about where we would spend the night. There was sporadic shooting everywhere and we couldn’t continue for a moment. Vehicles were zooming by in speeds as if in a race; they were avoiding the main roadway. The occupants of some of the vehicles, we observed, were relatives of officials of the government--particularly, from the NPFL group. There was no mistaking they themselves were trying to get away. This rush suggested the level of the seriousness of the situation. Because these relatives were close to those in power, it was assumed that they knew something that we did not know—perhaps, how serious this fight was getting, or how uncontrollable it could get.
With such scenes playing out, we, the ordinary “get-aways” became even more frightened. We had seen many people die before our very eyes, shot in front of us, or gutted out as we walked by—so much so that dying was not dreaded but expected any day. Such was our predicament, the frustration of constantly being in harm’s way, that at some point during the journey I decided we would head to the Freeport of Monrovia to check on the possibility of any passenger ship or boat that was preparing to evacuate residents out of the country. Cedrick had the same thought and so we planned to support one another during these times.
As a matter of fact, hundreds of people were headed to the Freeport. Apart from it being an outlet, it was perhaps one of the safest places in the city because it was the official base of ECOMOG contingents. People felt safer with the peacekeepers than with any of the warring factions. Experience had indeed taught Liberians a great and valuable lesson about trust, distrust and personal security—understandably so. Indeed, throughout the country, unarmed civilians—the ones for whom every faction claimed to have been fighting to liberate—remained ceaseless victims of heinous atrocities, at the hands of warring faction “liberators.” Notable among these atrocities was the massacre in the St. Peter’s Lutheran Church in Sinkor, Monrovia. That massacre occurred in July 1990 during the early days of the crisis. It is said to have been one of the most brutal of crimes against humanity, when soldiers of the Armed Forces of Liberia (AFL) entered the church and murdered 600 innocent civilians, including women and children, who fled their homes and sought refuge in the church. Over 150 more were wounded. Most of the victims were of the Gio and Minor tribes.
I can still recall vividly the night of the massacre. I had just left my church—the S. Trowen Nagbe United Methodist Church which is situated almost directly opposite the Lutheran Church. My church, like many churches at the time, was housing internally displaced people. As a church staff person on the relief committee, I had slept two nights at the church, sorting out food and other items for distribution to the people. This night, I had retired to spend some time with my family, just four blocks from the Methodist Church. During the shooting that lasted most of the night and into the early morning, we thought the rebels had entered the city and were exchanging fire with the government soldiers. It was not until the next morning that we learned otherwise.
I was among the first group of people to visit the scene of the massacre. Bodies littered the yard, the main streets and alleys. There was a baby on the back of his mother; he was still alive and crying, but the mother was dead. We were forbidden by solders from getting the baby or to even enter the church yard. The child was later taken by a woman in the community to care for him as her own. The bodies in the churchyard and in the streets around the church were buried, but the hundreds within the church remained unburied for many months.
Today, there are two mass graves in the church compound. Many believed that this grotesque violence by the AFL was ostensibly meant as reprisal against the people of Nimba County who comprised a larger percentage of the rebel faction of the NPFL at the time, and from whose region the war was begun. Others believed it was meant to discourage recruitment to the National Patriotic Front of Liberia (NPFL).
Another massacre of equal magnitude and heinousness occurred on June 6, 1993. The NPFL, it was believed, hacked several hundred men, women and children to death. That massacre became known as the Carter Camp Massacre. Carter Camp is a settlement on the Firestone Rubber Plantation. Initially, it had been rumored that the Armed Forces of Liberia, under the command of the then Commander-in-Chief Dr. Amos C. Sawyer, president of the Interim Government of National Unity, was the culprit for the Carter Camp atrocities because goods looted from the dead were found dumped around AFL positions in the Firestone area⁵. Later, through unsolicited confessions of many NPFL fighters, the genuine truth emerged.
Truth may be hindered, but as sure as the sun that rises in the east, it will come out bright and hot. Although a United Nations investigation team concluded in a report that the AFL committed the act and the team cited substantial evidence supporting its findings, the Interim Government and the AFL disputed the U.N. team’s report, insisting on NPFL culpability. Survivors of the massacre named some key and well known AFL soldiers who, it was said, led their men to carry out this gruesome act. There are claims that the massacre was arranged by the NPFL in order to discredit the efforts of ECOMOG. The victims were buried in mass graves on the outskirts of the camp.
The Cow Field Massacre on Duport Road, a suburb of Paynesville, was another act of violence against innocent civilians. Another reason why people feared being in an area with any fighting group. About 48 people (all civilians) were massacred and burnt whilst they were asleep at their homes at Cow Field⁶. The perpetrators of this massacre remained unidentified, although survivors and residents of the area have pointed fingers at Taylor’s NPFL. The victims were buried in the Palm Grove Cemetery on Center Street, in central Monrovia. The massacre was reported by the News Newspaper on December 19, 1994. Nearly every region of the country had its share of atrocities—from Grand Kru