Monrovia — As President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf prepares to make an official visit to the United States in mid-March, pressure is growing for the addition of $80 million in reconstruction and development funds for Liberia to a $72.4 billion supplemental appropriations bill now before Congress. Liberia supporters had expected the Bush administration to include those funds in the request, which is primarily for the Department of Defense, although $645 million is for emergency and humanitarian aid and refugee assistance, largely for Africa.
Non-governmental organizations note that public mobilization helped secure $500 million of that total for Sudan and the Darfur region. A Washington, D.C.-based coalition hopes to replicate that effort for Liberia, arguing that helping the country rebuild is in the U.S. interest, by promoting peace after a quarter-century of despotism and conflict that degenerated into nationwide chaos.
Armed factions drove most of Liberia's three million people from their homes, forced children to be soldiers or sex slaves, burned and ransacked schools and medical facilities, and pillaged the country's resources, especially rubber and timber. Liberia today faces the challenge of responding to urgent human needs as well as rebuilding basic infrastructure - many roads have become impassable and there is no water, no electricity and no communications, except what people can provide for themselves.
The wounds of war are still raw, and this month President Sirleaf launched a Truth and Reconciliation Commission to probe the crimes and begin to heal the rifts. A new army and police force are being built, spurred by knowledge that the United Nations peacekeeping mission, which secured the peace and allowed free elections, will not remain indefinitely. The president has appointed a Cabinet drawn from diverse backgrounds, and most of her appointees have been confirmed by the Senate.
But Sirleaf's challenges are formidable. Her party is a small minority in the legislature, holding three of 30 Senate seats and eight of 64 seats in the House of Representatives. Corruption is entrenched, international economic sanctions have not yet been lifted, and the national purse is empty. Foreign debt exceeds U.S.$3.5 billion. The president has responded by traveling around the country to promise change and to encourage both patience and civic action. She has listened to popular concerns, and she has promised that government will be responsive. She is also appealing for international support, and her administration has outlined a 150-day plan to jump-start recovery.
Reed Kramer and Tamela Hultman of AllAfrica attended the inauguration and traveled around the country afterwards, exploring Liberia's problems and potential. They talked with Sirleaf, both in a private interview and during a visit by a delegation of United Methodists. Excerpts:
Liberia has so many urgent needs - peace, jobs, sustainable agriculture, education, health. Where do you start, and how do you set priorities?
Clearly, peace is the first thing. We can't do anything else unless we have peace and security. And peace includes successfully concluding the ongoing process for the restructuring and professionalization of our security forces. Peace also means doing something for war-affected youth - giving them opportunities for education, for skills training and job opportunities. That way, we reduce their vulnerability to recruitment anywhere. So that's first.
Parallel to that are the efforts at reconciliation, so we don't have too many pockets of discontent. I hope that the composition of the government and our efforts to be as inclusive as possible - without compromising on efficiency and integrity standards - will send a signal that everyone has an opportunity and that everyone will feel like the government belongs to them.
But we have to go beyond that. The Truth and Reconciliation commission has a difficult task, because reconciliation cannot be legislated or achieved through any institution. It's got to come from individual efforts and individual commitments to peace. They're going to be looking at the root causes of our conflict and the cleavages that have existed in our society historically and what we can do to ensure everybody that the basis for those cleavages no longer exists. They had to do with exclusion. They had to do with the monopolization of power and privilege. They have to do with dominance by a particular ethnic group.
While we want to support the process of contrition and forgiveness - that's important for reconciliation - one must always leave some means for the process of justice to take place in those cases where there are those aggrieved, who want to use the legal system to get their grievance addressed. How the TRC is going to come out of that, it's going to be quite an undertaking.
So many Liberians have been displaced, both internally and externally. How will you deal with the inevitable tensions of people returning to their lands, who may find others living there, perhaps people of ethnic groups who were rivals during the wars?
It's going to be a tough problem when it comes to those who fled during the war, and their properties were taken. I think we have to say that those who own the land and can establish their ownership will have to get their land.
We have to have a land reform program that will draw on the lessons of experience. It may end up being some radical action, like temporarily dispossessing everybody until we can have some formula for equitable distribution, a formula which ensures that communities that originally owned the land maintain that ownership and are not displaced by any subsequent group. It's going to also affect some of our large plantation operations, [when] a large segment of land has been given to them for long periods of time, sometimes the majority of the land lying idle, but which they own and which have led to the displacement of communities who originated there.
One has to have a very active program of communication with the people. You can't do this except fully transparently through dialogue, open dialogue, where you bring people together and you go through the basis for the problem and the solutions and the consequences of taking one option as opposed to another option. You have to try to let them reach a consensus on the way forward. I don't think the government will play any kind of dominant, certainly not dictatorial, role, except when we're dealing with the total issue of land reform, where there will have to be some radicalism.
To say you want an inclusive government; you're balancing competing pressures. How is the process going?
It's going as best we can. There certainly are competing interests. We have to remain committed to what we promised, that we will be inclusive, that all ethnic groups are represented, all religious groups, that gender is going to be sufficiently prominent for people to know that we do believe in women's participation.
You've appealed to Liberians living abroad to return and contribute to reconstruction, but there are very few jobs outside the public sector. How do you make it possible for people without substantial assets to come back, and how do you encourage those with assets to invest them in the country's development?
The potential for jobs, in the public sector and the private sector also, will be constrained, because we don't have a growing economy. It's been a collapsed economy for a long time. To create jobs in the private sector, we've got to create the environment where businesses have confidence that, first of all, there's going to be security, and next, that government policies are going to be business-friendly. Those are things we can work on. We've committed to supporting Liberian entrepreneurship, and we will give opportunities to Liberian businesses. There's been a lot of monopolistic practice here in the last few years. That's going to change. We'll break the monopolies and give [entrepreneurs] opportunities.
But they will need more than just opportunity. They are going to need substantial and material help, access to credit, technology. So even if they come with some assets, they will require more. I am thinking about something like a Small Business Administration - some office that will help. In the meanwhile, the National Investment Commission and the Liberian Bank for Development and Investment will be urged and supported to provide them with the initial assistance that they need, until we determine what kind of institution would be particularly fitted and organized to serve their specific needs.
You mentioned the Millennium Development Goals - the global United Nations-sponsored plan for reducing poverty - in your inaugural address. Most people would say that if Liberia, after so many years of conflict, can make progress towards the goals, then anyone can. Are you hopeful that you can?
Yes, we can. We're behind in each of the goals, and I'm not saying we're going to catch up in a year or two, certainly. The goals are clear. What has been lacking is the political will, the policies and the resources to support programs that achieve those goals. In the last few years, we've not had a government that was committed to those goals - or to development - for that matter, and so the misallocation and misuse of resources have diverted our attention. That's what we can change.
It will take some time to catch up. I don't want to set a time frame for us to make up for lost time, but with the commitment and efficiency that I hope the new government will bring to the task, I think we can quickly catch up in some of the areas. We're going to start working on it right away.
I mentioned it specifically because I wanted people to know that we're conscious of it and the new ministers coming in to know what their goals are going to have to be. We will be monitoring, and I'm optimistic.
The biggest concern, quite frankly, will be those who have lost power and authority - what kinds of things they may do that will divert our attention from our goal of accelerating development. I'm hoping that as we begin to make progress, and with the strong support of the people with us, we can overcome that.
Many of your programs will require the approval of the politically divided legislature, including some who have lost those powerful positions. How does your administration expect to work with the members of the Senate and the House of Representatives?
We've got a problem there; we have to admit that. There's a capacity problem. There's also a little bit of a 'power entitlement' problem. I hope to reach out to each of them - to give them information, to be frank and open, and to make them more comfortable and more sensitive to the important role they have to play if we achieve objectives. If we succeed, it's their success also. And if we fail, it's their failure. They're part of the government. I think that many of them will see the wisdom in us working together rather than being at loggerheads.
If we encounter difficulties, we're going to take our agenda to the people - the people whom they represent. If the people agree that we are doing the right things in the national interest, their representatives will be subjected to public pressure.
You've outlined a 150-day plan. Can you sketch out what you hope to accomplish and how your plans are being coordinated with the Governance Economic Management Action Program (GMAP, pronounced gee-map) that the major international donors put together last year?
We're stuck with completing the budget year of the NTGL [National Transitional Government of Liberia, which was in power from late 2003 until Sirleaf's inauguration]. There were 150 days remaining. What we want to do within that period, using our own resources and those provided by donors, is to set several clear, measurable targets. They may not be as much as we would want, because our resources will be limited, but we're going to have deliverables. Donors have been establishing their own priorities and applying their own procedures and programs. We're trying to make that process more coherent and more in harmony to our objectives.
We also want to make sure those deliverables are clearly identified and communicated to the public. We will make it clear that we want job creation. We want to expand our community development program to all counties at a level that's double what it is today. Community development programs involve infrastructure: repairing farm-to-market roads; getting farmers back to their farms, because our growing season is starting right now; getting vocational schools functioning again, so that war-affected youth can go to school; getting limited electricity into the capital city and starting to progress toward the fuller power restoration program, not only in Monrovia, but elsewhere; getting water back into the city; and, on HIV/Aids, establishing the commission to formulate the policies and programs.
You have mentioned education as a priority and asked for help in rebuilding schools, making a special plea to churches. Why?
Our country has had a tradition of mission schools. I was the product of one [the Methodist-run College of West Africa in Monrovia]. They took in many of our rural children, where they got an education, learned a work ethic and learned to fear God. We lost that over the years of conflict and war. I would like to see those come back. Too many of our rural children have no opportunity to go to school. The government has a responsibility and will do what it can. The [church] schools could really play an important role.
You know how much your election generated excitement all over Africa and among women in particular. Health is one of the issues that women are most concerned with - maternal and child health, malaria, HIV/Aids, to name a few. With almost no functioning health facilities and little treatment for anything, how do you start to address those crises?
For me, there are two primary areas. One is preventive health, and that means ensuring people have things like good sanitary conditions, clean water, before we get to curative. We need to have the hospitals and the clinics and all of that, but let's stop people from getting sick, before we talk about curing them. Some of the basic things: nutrition, clean water, sanitation. We need to work on those things.
Of course, HIV/Aids is of concern. We now have a prevalence rate of 12 percent, which means it has almost doubled in the last couple of years. If we don't do something about that, we could find that a major, major impediment to our development efforts. We talked about getting this commission activated so that they can begin to start the sensitization and whatnot as a means of preventing rather than trying to remedy the issue.
And malaria is such a problem.
And malaria, too. Drainage systems and sanitation have collapsed; mosquitoes breed in standing water. We need an educational program, somebody on the radio doing the little catchy things that teach communities to take responsibility to ensure that the garbage and the drains and the waterways are cleared - basic things that will change people's attitude and change people's behavior and people's appreciation for the little things they can do. Some of those things don't cost a lot of money. It just requires some attention and some creativity to get the people interested.
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I tell you, of my entire inaugural speech, so far as the masses are concerned, there's one thing that they really liked. That's the one thing I hear: "papa na come." [The president spoke in her inaugural address of making it possible for parents to support their families, providing food at the end of a day's work.] Because for them, "papa na come" represents my effort to give them a job. That's what they translate it to.
[Similarly], we can get some catchy things that stay in their minds, that point to better sanitation and things like that. Maybe we can get a renaissance spirit going. That's what I'd like to see. I'd like to see people just all anxious to get things done, to change things, to improve things.
You have received much international attention and many invitations. How do you weigh the need to marshal outside support with your domestic responsibilities?
My domestic agenda has to take priority, no question about that. In those cases where responding to a foreign invitation helps to promote my domestic agenda, then I think I can justify responding to that. There are trips that may be very useful for us to mobilize the kind of support and resources that we need to carry out our agenda. In those cases, I think the Liberian people will understand why we have to do it. There are others that we're just going to have to give low priority to and stay at home and do all we can do.
My development agenda also means getting out to the rural areas, and, by my presence, try to make people there feel like a part of it - provide the incentives they need to get involved and to catch on to the spirit of getting things done and participating and producing.
And that's not easy to do.
That's not easy, given the state of our infrastructure.
When you visit Washington, what are you hoping to achieve?
We're asking the U.S. government for a supplemental appropriation. President Bush has been immensely kind and supportive. Not only did he send Mrs. Bush here, but I had a full conversation with him, and he was gracious and talked about helping our government do the things we need to do.
Now we've got to go one step beyond. We need concrete support to begin to attack the social ills that affect our children and youth, to repair our infrastructure and set this country on the road to recovery. We also need U.S. backing at the IMF and World Bank in our negotiations over this country's long debt arrears and get us back in good standing.
Our task is big. We will have to take some hard decisions, some tough decisions. Some decisions that many will not like, because vested interests are affected. As long as what we are doing is right, with God's help I think we can count on our people to give us support.
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