Signs of War

There is a reason why Liberia has the large international aid presence it does.  The reason why people like me need to be here is because of a 14-year civil war that ended less than a decade ago.  The consequences of that civil war - the war that introduced the now-common phrases “child soldiers” and “blood diamonds” - are still evident and arise in so many different contexts.  It’s ironically evident even in the acronym for the United Nations’ presence here - the United Nations Mission in Liberia, or UNMIL.

The most obvious impact of the civil war is in the number of ruined buildings one encounters wherever you go.  Even along Lake Piso there is evidence of the war.  The above image comes from the lot adjacent to where we ate lunch.  A shell of what must have once been a gorgeous lake-front house.

Throughout Monrovia you see uncompleted buildings, obviously with no work done on them for a decade or more, functional buildings with holes blown in the sides, or damaged beyond what weather and lack of maintenance will do.  Finley took me through a neighborhood along the coastline on an indirect route to visit the law school this past week.  We drove through a neighborhood that sloped up a hill with a view of the ocean, much like Carmel, California, and with what would have been, under very different conditions, beautiful homes with verandas, balconies, and open courtyards.  Instead, there were bomb blast holes in walls, missing roofs and collapsed foundations.  Shanty homes filled in some open areas, others were makeshift dump yards.  As we reached the top of the hill and turned towards the main road, Fin simply said, “When I was a child, this place was beautiful.  We used to come for Sunday drives here.”

Often these shells are homes.  Homes where people live.  One in fact is right next door to me, visible outside my kitchen window, but of course separated by concertina wire on top of a high wall.

Blown out windows, damaged roof, missing doors - it’s a common site here in Monrovia as well as throughout the country.  A family lives in this corner of the house.  Best I can gather is that a group of men live in the western part of the house.  Those few days when it’s rained at night, I’ve noticed that people have slept in the dirt foundation area of the building (which is open to the road) while I pass by on my way to work.  The ownership of a lot of buildings isn’t clear - there was an intentional destruction of property records by the previous dictators, and many displaced persons due to the civil war.  Many don’t want to come back, many are dead, but no one knows that they are.  So people occupy whatever they can find for as long as they can.  And where they can’t find existing buildings, they occupy empty spaces throughout the city.  So you have massive areas of homes built out of whatever people could find, often infilling between developed areas, creating communities of people who fled the rural areas for the safety and hope of opportunity in the city.  Helping the government of Liberia work through some of these issues is part of what I do, though the main focus of my work is to help with the land disputes that happen in the more rural areas of the country - the areas that have in the past led to massive violence and where many fear could start yet another civil war.  While the name may sound depressing, Liberia is fortunate enough to have a government now that will tolerate and include an organization, called the Land Squatters Association, that gives voice to those with the greatest needs in this city, and that actively participates in government decision-making to advocate on their behalf.

Equally depressing is the number of public buildings and institutions that were targeted in the war.  This is the former cultural center in Robertsport:

There’s not much culturally happening there now.  Throughout Monrovia, and the rest of Liberia I suspect, you come across ransacked institutions that used to add to the quality of people’s lives.  Life was reduced to a matter of surviving.  The country is working to build these institutions back up, but the reality is that the need for basic services is so great, very little with respect to public funds can go to these institutions.  Ministries need (actually need) to be renovated, schools and hospitals need to be rebuilt, roads need to be repaired (and paved), the electrical grid needs to be reestablished and water and sewer need to be provided to neighborhoods.

But the war didn’t just impact the physical infrastructure and social services of the country.  Time and time again I’m  reminded of the war and shown the many manifestations of its damage to this country.  When we go food shopping we invariably go to a part of town where there are many maimed men.  Folks missing arms or legs, struggling to make a living.  Some are elderly, but many are in their late 20s or early 30s.  Victims of a war where the question “Short sleeve or long sleeve?” meant where on your arm you wanted them to hack with a machete.  Others, I’m sure, were combatants and suffered the ravages of war.  Then there are the many women, those whose trauma from the war is not so physically obvious, but is no less damaging. Lives that were ruined in so many different ways.

Last week I met with a Minister, I’ll leave the ministry unnamed.  She mentioned how she had to struggle to make many of the older employees realize that we are in a different time now, one where good governance is necessary, where proper management techniques and fiscal responsibility are not just essential, but are now mandatory.  She explained that these officials had never been to the west, and had only known government under Charles Taylor where all you had to do was stay on his good side and then you could do anything you wanted, spend whatever money you wanted; but that if you got on his bad side, there was nothing you could do, nothing to save yourself.  She said that none of these people are bad people, they don’t mean to be corrupt, but they are stuck in a survival mentality that was ingrained into them first as  working professionals and then through 14 years of civil war.  She said it was difficult in other ways with her younger staff because not only did she have to make management decisions, she often had to tell her lower level staff what to do and how to do it.  She said, with sadness in her voice, they have no skills, they’ve lost 14 years of education and experience - it’s not their fault, we have to find a way to build them up so they know how to do this right.

In the paper this week there was a story about another ministry.  The Minister there explained that 66% of the ministry’s management level staff had no more than a high school education.  And President Sirleaf has recognized the need, and dangers, of this generation that lost their childhood and the benefits one usually gains during that time.  Think about it, if a 7 year old was forced to become a child soldier (often after seeing his family killed before his eyes) at the beginning of the civil war, he would have been 21 at its conclusion.  No education, no productive skills, no concept of what a normal life is.  This country needs to find futures for young people who know very little other than to bring hell to other people’s lives.

What I’ve quickly come to realize here, and others have confirmed, is that there is an incredible group of leaders trying their best to move this country forward.  They are intelligent, well educated, articulate and dedicated to making Liberia a wonderful country.  However, that quality exists only at the top, break that surface and the level of competence (not necessarily the dedication) quickly drops.  They don’t have the skills or experience to undertake the massive work that must take place here.  Fortunately, many are eager to be trained (unlike others I have worked with) and they want to learn.  They want to develop the skills so that they can take over and do it themselves, and to do it right.  It’s refreshing to see that desire.

As one might expect, not everyone is like that.  Some want to keep things as they were.  They’re comfortable with it and, as often is the case, they benefit from the old ways financially and with power.  A colleague of mine described one profession, and the professional organization that represents them (no it wasn’t lawyers), as an “Entrenched Corrupt Profession.”  One that refuses to change, or to even let young people enter the profession, because the young people would work hard, and would not force people to pay bribes in addition to their normal fees.  There are several such professions here, not to mention individuals throughout otherwise normally functioning areas.  They resist openness and transparency in business, decision-making or government.  They seek ways to ensure that they can extract bribes for their work and to control the flow of work so they can maximize the amount of each bribe.  Fortunately, an equal group of Liberians are just as determined to force them out, and this group has the full support of the international community.

This hasn’t been the most uplifting blog post, but I think it was necessary so that you can understand a bit more as to why I am here (and why we’re spending millions of your taxpayer dollars).  The consequences of the war - whether physical or in lost years - are what they are, they’re a reality on the ground that we need to recognize, take into account, and respond accordingly.  Other than the cadre of folks that want things to remain like the old days, these impacts are conditions that do not offer active resistance and can change quickly for the better.  This country is fortunate to have reelected President Sirleaf to continue the progress that has been made over the past 6 years.  Many want that progress to continue.

I was at a meeting of donors requested by a Liberian government body I work with the other day.  There, the chairman told us what they were going to do over the next 12 months, told us what their expectations were of us, and told us what their needs were.  The interesting thing was that time and time again, he pointed out an area that they needed to improve and their request to us was to provide them the training for them to develop the skills so that Liberians can do the necessary work to fix this country’s problems.  It wasn’t about physical things we could give them, it was about the skills and experience we can share.  That gives me a lot of optimism.