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| Africa: Subsaharan |
| Africa's most wanted - Charles Taylor and his ties to al-Qaeda |
| 2005-05-08 |
| In Washington last week, the White House suddenly found itself under pressure, even from some usually friendly Republicans, over its demurral in helping to bring an indicted war criminal to justice. Former Liberian President Charles Taylor has been living the high life in Nigeria since 2003, when he was forced out of the Liberian capital of Monrovia as part of a U.S.-brokered deal--despite the fact that a special United Nations-backed court had indicted him as a war criminal. Now Taylor is making trouble once again, the court says, meddling in the outcome of the upcoming Liberian elections and plotting to assassinate the president of Guinea. So when Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo came calling at the White House last week, Republicans, Democrats, and some of the nation's major newspapers called on President Bush to demand that Nigeria turn Taylor over to the court. For the Bush administration, it was a delicate dance with a fragile ally; at the end of the day, there were vague commitments by Bush and Obasanjo to work together to hold Taylor accountable. Behind the scenes, though, there was a lot more going on--in particular, a raging debate over the extent of al Qaeda's influence in West Africa and the question of whether U.S. law enforcement agencies are taking the issue seriously. President Bush summoned Obasanjo to the Oval Office last Thursday, ostensibly to discuss bilateral issues--Nigeria is one of America's biggest sources of oil, and Obasanjo has taken what the Washington Post called "modest but praiseworthy" steps to fight corruption there. Taylor, however, was clearly the elephant in the room. He is believed to have been involved in stoking civil wars in Liberia, Guinea, Ivory Coast, and Sierra Leone. In March 2003, the U.N.-backed body, the Special Court for Sierra Leone, indicted him for leading a civil war there in which his forces allegedly raped, dismembered, and killed tens of thousands of innocents in their bid to control the country's vast diamond mines. In August 2003, American officials helped broker a deal that allowed Taylor safe passage to Nigeria in order to stabilize the chaotic situation in Liberia. At the time, the officials vowed that the Liberian strongman would be brought to justice later. Obasanjo, however, has been reluctant to hand Taylor over to the U.N.-sponsored court without evidence of Taylor's continuing criminal behavior. A host of close observers, meanwhile--including many on Capitol Hill--believe the Bush administration has not pushed Obasanjo hard enough. |
| Posted by:Dan Darling |