Liberia - Dahkpannah Charles Ghanky Taylor and the National Patriotic Front of Liberia (NPFL)

Chuckie, the supreme Zo (chief of chiefs), has pulled off the big one. This member of the Gola tribe is now the prez. Not bad for a son of a servant and a Baptist teacher from Arthington. The only blemish seems to be that Chuck is still wanted in Boston for a 1985 jail break and that his boys played a big part in stacking up the 20,000 stiffs that didn't survive the last war. Charles Taylor (born 1948) started the miserable war in Liberia back on Christmas Eve, 1989. Rumor has it he had been brushing up on Revolution 101 in Libya. The last time anyone knew his whereabouts was back in 1984, when he was Director of the Liberian General Services Agency in charge of buying stuff for the Liberian government. He was accused of embezzling $900,000 from the Liberian coffers, and then he fled to the United States, where he was captured for extradition back to Liberia. He bragged about how he sawed through the bars of the laundry room after bribing his jailors with $30,000. That economics degree came in handy. He went to live in the Ivory Coast, where he assembled an army (actually about 150 people) with the help of the Ivorian president, whose brother-in-law, William Tolbert, was executed by Samuel Doe. He gathered together another 4,000 soldiers from the Gio and Mano tribes from eastern Liberia and began his "rebellion" in 1989. What he actually did was knock Liberia's delicate infrastructure into the toilet for the next 50 years at least. So how does a guy with pals like General Fuck-Me-Quick, Baby Killer and Butt Naked do in politics? Well, he got a personal phone call from Prezzie Bill, Jimmy Carter came over to make sure the elections were nice and tidy, and even Jesse "don't stand too close to me" Jackson is one of his buds. Former attorney general Ramsey Clark was the lawyer who defended him during his 16 months as a guest of the U.S. prison system. Oh, did I tell you that he is violently anti-communist and a devout Baptist?

So now that he is ensconsed in the Presidential Mansion (he actually lives in a swank setup in Congoland) Chuck has taken to wearing suits instead of military fatigues, appropriate for a man with an economics degree from Bentley College in Waltham, Massachusetts. He is a Baptist who has a fondness for the music of Mahalia Jackson, Dirty Harry movies and good living.

How long will the good times last? It's hard to say in a country where life is worth less than a Coke. His enemy is the Krahn tribe (about 2 percent of the population), led by warlord Roosevelt Johnson. Taylor unsuccessfully tried to take Monrovia in 1990 and 1992. When politics did what bullets couldn't, Taylor was made part of a ruling committee, but he overstepped his authority when he tried to arrest Johnson. All hell broke loose, and the United States had to send in the marines to evacuate the embassy and the foreigners stuck in the crossfire. Taylor's choice of media is the KISS-FM radio station in Monrovia. As one of Chuck's new tourism ideas, he has ordered all expat Liberians to return home to get new passports. Uh-huh. We'll be right there, Chuck. Why so hard up for money? According to Chuck, the Liberian government is bankrupt and can't even fight off insurgents from Guinea who have attacked the northern part of the country twice.

Charles Ghanky Taylor

Executive Mansion

P.O. Box 10-9001

Capitol Hill

1000 Monrovia 10, Liberia

E-mail: EMansion@liberia.net

http://www.liberian-connection.com/lc-govn.htm

Diamonds Are Forever

When Charles Taylor married his girlfriend on January 28, 1997, he promised her he would not run for president, but would instead open a business. He lied.