allAfrica.com: Liberia: High Stakes for the Region as Liberians Prepare to Vote (Page 1 of 3)

Liberia faces a 'make-or-break' situation as voters go to the polls next week, officials and Africa-watchers in the United States agree. The election is a central facet of the peace accord signed two years ago ending nearly 15 years of deadly armed conflict that spread throughout the West African region, claimed hundreds of thousands of lives and caused incalculable economic destruction.

"Liberians need to realize that this is their one shot at peace and development," says U.S. Rep. Ed Royce, a California Republican who chaired the House Africa subcommittee for the past eight years. "Americans are pulling for them."

"This is Liberia's first and best opportunity to establish a democratic society," says U.S. Deputy Assistant Secretary of State Thomas Woods. In an interview he said the administration of President George W. Bush is generally pleased by the way the campaign has been conducted and is hopeful that the process will produce "a stable democratic government that espouses free market policies and can be a good partner for us in the region."

Walter Kansteiner, who was responsible for Africa as Assistant Secretary of State during Bush's first term, says the election "represents Liberia's opportunity to return to the family of democracy." The United States, along with other members of the international community, "has expended a lot of resources to stabilize Liberia, and now the Liberians have to demonstrate that pluralism is achievable."

The campaign has been vigorously contested, particularly at the top of the ticket, where 22 candidates are on the ballot. Two other would-be contenders have gone to court for certification to join the field.

Local press and pollsters identify the front-runners as Ellen Johnson Sirleaf (66) of the Unity Party, who is a former banker and United Nations development official, and soccer star George Weah (39) of the Congress for Democratic Change, along with two lawyers and veteran politicians, Varney Sherman (52) of the Coalition for the Transformation of Liberia and Charles Brumskine (54) of the Liberty Party.

The elections represent "a rare if not final chance for Liberia to emerge from cronyism and conflict" after the years of civil war, says Susan Rice, who was Kansteiner's counterpart as Assistant Secretary of State under President Bill Clinton. "The burden really falls on the Liberian people to seize this opportunity," she says. "In the past, they haven't."

Liberia has the longest-standing ties with the United States of any African nation. Freed slaves and a few free-born African Americans came ashore in 1822, transported by a U.S. Navy ship and supported by the American Colonization Society. The Society was established by prominent U.S. citizens to encourage emancipated blacks to leave North America and settle on Africa's west coast. In 1847, the new arrivals declared a sovereign republic they called Liberia, named its capital after President James Monroe, adopted a U.S.-style constitution, a red-white-and-blue flag with a single star and the dollar as their official currency.

In World War II, the United States used Liberian territory to re-supply Allied troops in North Africa, and the Firestone plantations there became a source of vitally needed rubber. During the Cold War, Liberia hosted sophisticated U.S. communications facilities and served as a CIA staging post for anti-Soviet activities and later for operations against Muammar al-Qaddafi's regime in Libya.

The descendents of Liberia's founders, dubbed Americo-Liberians, exercised political and economic control over the indigenous population until a bloody 1980 coup, led by a young, unschooled master sergeant, Samuel K. Doe. Initially popular with the impoverished majority - and welcomed as the representative of a new era in Liberian politics by the administration of President Ronald Reagan - Doe presided over a decade-long slide into anarchy and despotism.

The corruption and incompetence prompted widespread support among Liberians for a rebel incursion in 1989, led by Charles Taylor, an exiled former government procurement officer. But more chaos followed, with Taylor rivals, one of whom executed Doe in 1990, sponsoring their own militias. Taylor, backed by youthful armed factions, gained control in 1994 and emerged as the winner in 1997 elections that were marred by instability and intimidation.

"The United States has a historical responsibility to Liberia," says Vivian Lowery Derryck, senior vice president of the Academy for Educational Development, who headed the Africa bureau at the U.S. Agency for International Development during the Clinton administration and is serving as a member of the election observer team from the Carter Center and National Institute for Democracy. "The outcome is very important to us."

For more than a decade, conflict in Liberia was a festering sore for the West Africa region, pouring refugees, arms and civil strife into neighboring Sierra Leone, Cote d'Ivoire and Guinea. The entire region felt the economic impact, and West African nations took the lead role in the peacemaking process. The price tag for Nigeria's peacekeeping interventions in Liberia and Sierra Leone between 1990 and 2003 may have run as high as U.S. $15 billion, Nigerian Vice President Atiku Abubakar said last month.

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