The U.N.’s Squeaky Wheel for Liberia

UNITED NATIONS — Trying to maintain the world’s attention on Liberia is a tough job, but cigar-chomping, in-your-face special U.N. envoy Jacques Klein is willing to do what’s necessary. Klein, a former U.S. Air Force major general, admits that his style is abrasive, but it takes some yelling to get things moving in a country that must start from scratch.

In a report to the U.N. Security Council on Thursday, Klein said that the peace process in Liberia was now firmly on track and that more than 70% of an estimated 53,000 combatants had been disarmed, with fewer children among them than expected.

By the end of the month, 15,000 U.N. troops will be in the country, making Liberia -- which was racked by a 14-year civil war between rebel and loyalist fighters -- the United Nations’ largest peacekeeping mission.

At the launch of a weapons hand-over program in December, more fighters showed up than the U.N. could handle. Then the crowd, soldiers loyal to deposed President Charles Taylor, rioted after finding out payment for the relinquished arms would come only after the fighters completed a reintegration course. When U.N. officials agreed to initial payments of $75, thousands of soldiers swarmed U.N. facilities.

Of the disarmed combatants, 18% are women and 13% are children, figures that surprised Klein. Before the fighting ended, estimates of the number of child soldiers had been as high as 40%.

For the nearly 7,000 children, aid agencies are developing programs to reintegrate them into society and teach them peacetime skills. For the adults, the U.N. and other groups are trying to create jobs.

Election planning for Liberia has begun, though Klein noted that members of the transitional government “are becoming enamored and comfortable in their positions and are becoming less enthusiastic regarding the timing of the October 2005 election date.”

Trying to rebuild a country takes constant attention, and something besides diplomacy.

“I get frustrated. I do yell at people,” Klein said. “When people don’t do their job, I get angry. Sometimes I call commanders in the field and say, if you can’t do the damn job, I will come up and do it for you.”

It also takes money. As of the end of May, only $60 million of the $520 million pledged at a February donors conference had been received. Klein said he had written a letter to every government that had pledged money.

“I tell them, if you want Liberia to work, if Liberia is really the key to stability in Africa, then you have to come through on the pledges you made,” he said. “Why is it only in a crisis that people respond? We need that follow-through.”

Although Sierra Leone’s U.N.-backed war crimes court ruled Monday that it had the right to try Taylor for his alleged role in a brutal decade-long civil war in that country, Klein said it was unlikely Taylor would be tried any time soon. Taylor has been in exile in Nigeria since stepping down in August.

“No one’s interested,” Klein said. “His house is in Liberia. His wife is in Liberia. His suits are in Liberia. He could come back into the country and right up to our doorstep and no one would arrest him. We don’t have the authority, and there are no police who would do it.”

Liberia’s transitional leader, Gyude Bryant, also met with the Security Council to plead with it to lift sanctions on his country to let its economy develop.

Bryant said the country needed help creating jobs for former soldiers so they wouldn’t slip back into crime and conflict.

“Our evolving fragile democracy simply cannot afford this,” he said.