Washington, DC — Charles Taylor's days as president of Liberia are numbered. For what his word is worth - admittedly, very little - even he has said so. Few in the region will mourn the departure of this predatory tropical gangster.
His legacy is a Hobbesian nightmare of mayhem, depradation and poverty. Creating conditions for Liberians, and their neighbours, to chart a happier future will be hard. It may well require the deployment of a US-led multinational force to create a UN-keepable peace.
The active engagement of regional governments, and their institutions such as the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) and the African Union (AU), is essential.
There can be no lasting solution to this or any African crisis if it is imposed from outside, or if outsiders fail to respect the very real efforts of responsible African leaders to deal with the conflicts ravaging their continent.
The Ghanaian government has come under fire for failing to arrest Taylor when his indictment for war crimes by the Special Court for Sierra Leone was unsealed on June 4. Such criticism suggests a predisposition to presumptively doubt African motives.
Taylor was in Ghana for the launch of peace talks under the auspices of ECOWAS and the AU. The talks were hosted by Ghana's president, and ECOWAS chairman, John Kufour, with Presidents Olusegun Obasanjo of Nigeria and Thabo Mbeki of South Africa at his side.
The desired outcome was clear: the voluntary departure of Taylor before the end of his term next January and the formation of a transitional government to prepare the way for credible elections. At the start of the talks, a seemingly chastened Taylor indicated he might be amenable.
Last March, the Special Court for Sierra Leone, created to promote peace by bringing to justice those responsible for the atrocities of that country's horrifying civil war, decided to charge Taylor with crimes against humanity for his support and control of Foday Sankoh's murderous Revolutionary United Front (RUF).
The Court's decision was no secret. It had to be a factor in Taylor's calculations. But until the indictment was officially made public, no action could be taken against him.
The Court's Chief Prosecutor, former Defense Department attorney David Crane, has said he decided to unseal the indictment and have arrest warrants issued upon learning that Taylor was leaving his home turf for the talks in Ghana where it would be much easier to have him served and arrested.
The Ghanaian authorities chose not to arrest him but arranged for him to return to Liberia. This was not a matter, as some have suggested, of African leaders refusing to act against their own.
Whatever one may think of Taylor's bona fides, the negotiations (since resumed) represented a good faith effort by ECOWAS and the AU to bring a negotiated, and sustainable, end to the series of interconnected conflicts that have been tearing up West Africa for over a decade.
To have permitted Taylor's arrest, however desirable on its face, would have been an act of bad faith. Heads of government do not invite other heads of government to the negotiating table and then hand them over for arrest. To have done so in this case would have compromised future efforts by the African leaders involved to resolve conflict through mediation and moral suasion.
Taylor's abrupt removal to a cell in Sierra Leone, however gratifying, would have created a vacuum in Monrovia, the Liberian capital, quite probably triggering bloody reprisals against the city's Ghanaian community by Taylor's enraged thugs.
Inasmuch as it might have led to the immediate collapse of the government to the rebels, that would not have been desirable, either. The military seizure of power by the LURD (Liberians United for Reconciliation and Democracy), or its splinters, is no recipe for ending the local or regionwide cycles of violence.
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Crane, as the Special Court's chief prosecutor, did what he felt his mandate required him to do. The government of Ghana did what it felt was in the best interests of peace and stability in its region. Perhaps closer coordination is needed.
Ghana has long supported UN and regional peacekeeping efforts. Ghanaian troops helped reinstate the democratically elected government of Sierra Leone after it was overthrown by groups supported Taylor. The atrocities committed during this coup d'etat are the basis of Taylor's indictment by the Special Court.
To question Ghana's commitment to peace and democracy in the region is to grossly distort the historical record and cheapens the sacrifice of Ghanaian troops acive this in both Sierra Leone and Liberia.
Rosa Whitaker, CEO of the Whitaker Group, was Assistant U.S. Trade Representative for Africa in both the Clinton and Bush administrations.
