Recently in Liberia Category

Maybe they're enraged about those Christians getting in the way of Muslim torches over in Nigeria. "Liberia town hit by sectarian unrest," from the Associated Press, February 27 (thanks to The Religion of Peace):

The United Nations has deployed peacekeepers to a northern Liberian town where sectarian violence has left at least three people dead and forced hundreds to flee.

Local government official George Tengbeh says the violence in Voinjama was sparked after unconfirmed rumors that a mosque had been attacked by residents in another town in the region.

He says Muslim residents in Voinjama went on a rampage Friday, burning down two churches, a clinic, shops and the mayor's residence....

Charles Taylor may find that in accepting this support he has taken on more than he can handle. In my forthcoming book The Politically Incorrect Guide to Islam (and the Crusades) (Regnery) I discuss how the Byzantine Emperor John VI Cantacuzenes appealed to Muslims for help in a dynastic dispute. They came into Europe and stayed.

John VI was not the first Christian ruler to make alliances with Muslims; nor was he the first to pay for doing so. But his alliance may have had the worst long-lasting effects. Unfortunately, the short-sightedness of modern Western rulers makes them all liable to be the next John VI Cantacuzenes. From AP, with thanks to Twostellas:

UNITED NATIONS (AP) -- Liberia's exiled former president, Charles Taylor, received money recently from an al-Qaeda operative and is trying to destabilize west Africa, prosecutors for Sierra Leone's U.N.-backed war crimes tribunal said Tuesday. Chief prosecutor David Crane said Taylor harbored members of al-Qaeda including those who allegedly took part in the bombings of the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in 1997, and was allegedly in contact with a member of the terrorist network as recently as last month.

"Al-Qaeda has been in west Africa. It continues to be in west Africa, and Charles Taylor has been harboring members of al-Qaeda," Crane said, adding that he believes west Africa is going to become the next Afghanistan.

No indication in this piece as to why the "violence between Muslims and Christians" erupted. However, in nearby Nigeria, the international media routinely portrays jihad violence as "Muslim/Christian strife."

This reminds me of the Liberian cab driver who drove me across Washington last year. He was nursing hopes of returning home and running for President of the country, and he discoursed on its internal condition at great length. Along the way he told us that Al-Qaeda was establishing a significant presence in Monrovia, and that they were causing increasing trouble there. I have no independent confirmation of that, so I give it to you for what it's worth. It isn't every day that one can ride a cab driven by a man who has plans to become a national politician in any country -- although another of my colleagues was given a ride in another major American city by a driver whose name stuck in his mind, and who later turned up on FBI wanted lists as a senior member of Al-Qaeda. If he had known who he was driving, he could have stopped a leading anti-jihadist. Thank God he didn't.

From AP, with thanks to Ireneo Funes:

MONROVIA, Liberia, Oct. 29 (AP) - Violence between Muslims and Christians engulfed Liberia's war-battered capital on Friday, with machete-wielding crowds rampaging through the streets and United Nations peacekeepers firing warning shots and tear gas to restore order.

At least three people were killed, crushed under the wheels of a United Nations armored vehicle that was moving in to disperse a crowd, a policeman said.

West Africa, as we have often noted here, is increasingly becoming a safe haven for radical Muslims. From the Washington Post, :

With the end of the brutal conflicts in Liberia and Sierra Leone, West Africa is seldom in the news or on the policy agenda these days. Yet the region is quietly gaining recognition as what it has long been: a haven for al Qaeda and other terrorist groups. Weak and corrupt governments, vast, virtually stateless stretches awash in weapons, and impoverished, largely Muslim populations make the region an ideal sanctuary.

U.S. Gen. Charles Wald, deputy commander of the European Central Command, has been warning Congress and the Pentagon for months that al Qaeda-affiliated groups are active in Mauritania, Mali, Chad and Niger. The trade in diamonds used by terrorist groups, begun under the protection of former Liberian strongman Charles Taylor, continues despite international efforts to curb it. "The terrorist activity in this area is not going to go away," Wald warned recently. "This could affect your kids and your grandchildren in a huge way. If we don't do something about it, we are going to have a real problem on our hands."

From Insight Magazine, with thanks to EPG:

U.S. counterterrorism agents have visited war-torn Liberia to investigate allegations of terrorist involvement in the West African diamond trade, according to the FBI.

A small team of financial specialists from the FBI's counterterrorism division left late last year to probe the shadowy trade in so-called conflict diamonds, Paul Cariker of the FBI told a Howard University symposium last week.

The outcome of the FBI's investigation remains unclear. "The investigation is continuing," another counterterrorism official told United Press International. "To my knowledge there's no smoking gun yet, no proof one way or the other."

Karl Wycoff, associate coordinator for press, policy, programs and plans at the U.S. State Department, told a congressional panel recently that he was not aware of any evidence to back up claims of an al-Qaeda presence in West Africa.

The counterterrorism official cautions that it will be difficult to run the story to ground. "The whole reason these guys might want to use diamonds is because it is hard to follow the trail," Wycoff said. "This stuff is fungible, there's lot of shady characters involved."

But in November 2003, a report by congressional investigators found that the FBI and other law-enforcement agencies weren't even trying to ascertain the scale of the problem. "U.S. law-enforcement agencies and specifically the FBI, which leads terrorist financing investigations, do not systematically collect and analyze data on alternative financing mechanisms" such as cigarette smuggling, counterfeiting and illegal drugs, as well as gems and precious metals, wrote the General Accounting Office.

Last month, the investigators told a congressional panel that it was still unclear whether the government had a strategy for addressing the issue, or what it might be.

Allegations that al-Qaeda and other terrorist groups were using diamonds to help finance their activities and move money around below the radar of law-enforcement agencies on the lookout for suspicious banking transactions first surfaced shortly after Sept. 11.

Washington Post journalist Douglas Farah wrote that after the bombing of two U.S. embassies in East Africa provoked the United States into cracking down on their conventional assets, al-Qaeda operatives arrived in the strike-torn region and began buying up every stone they could get their hands on.

In part, the U.S. counterterrorism official said, the decision to send the team to Liberia was driven by the traction Farah's reporting got in Congress. "Many people [in U.S. counterterrorism agencies] are skeptical of Farah's claims, but he's made a convincing case, and gotten the attention of members of Congress," said the official.

The neglect of possible terrorist involvement in the diamond trade is just one of a host of ways in which the United States is ignoring Africa, which many fear will become the next theater in the global war on terror, according to Vance Serchuk, a researcher who studies U.S. foreign policy at the American Enterprise Institute.

"It's one of the parts of the world where the United States is uncomfortable," Serchuk told UPI, "the kind of place foreign-service officials get posted before they get the job they really want. ... We just don't have the resources we need on the ground there."

Serchuk says that one possible reason officials seem reluctant to give credence to the story is that it is yet another way in which U.S. intelligence failed to follow up on leads that might have helped stop the Sept. 11 plot.

"Let's face it," he said, "if [Farah's] right, it's another huge intel screw up."