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CAN CHARLES TAYLOR'S APOLOGISTS EXPLAIN HIS TIES TO AL QAEDA?
Double Take
by Ryan Lizza
Post date 11.08.01 | Issue date 11.19.01
On September 19, 1998, the U.S. Embassy in Monrovia, Liberia, was
attacked by the forces of Liberian dictator Charles Taylor. According
to an internal State Department report on the incident obtained by
The New Republic, Taylor's police, pursuing a local warlord seeking
protection at the embassy gates, laid siege to the building using AK-
47s and at least one rocket- propelled grenade. In the ensuing
firefight, one American embassy official was shot in the lower back.
Although the warlord and 23 of his men reached safety in the embassy
compound, Taylor, who had ordered the attack, apparently thought they
were dead and issued a statement of regret over the incident. When a
Liberian government official learned they were alive and about to be
evacuated by air, however, he informed the United States that Taylor
would order his forces to shoot down the helicopters. Taylor
eventually relented, and the men were flown to a third country.
Following the attack, some on the Hill called for closing the embassy. But the Clinton
administration didn't let the incident interfere with its efforts to coddle Taylor,
the man responsible for more than a decade of bloo
dy warfare in Liberia and its neighbors, Sierra Leone and Guinea. Here's one choice
excerpt from the State Department's official response to the attack: "The United
States would like to sincerely thank the Government of L
iberia, and especially President Charles Taylor, for the enormous cooperation and
assistance we received in amicably resolving the situation at the US embassy in
Monrovia.... [W]e look forward to continuing our close coop
eration with the Government."
Why does this matter today? Because we now know, thanks to a detailed report last week
by Douglas Farah in The Washington Post, that something else of great importance
happened in Liberia in September 1998: Osama bin Lade
n's Al Qaeda network opened shop there. According to Farah, one of bin Laden's top
aides, Abdullah Ahmed Abdullah, arrived in Monrovia and met with one of Taylor's
longtime lieutenants, Ibrahim Bah. Together they flew in
a government helicopter to meet with a senior commander of the Revolutionary United
Front (RUF), the vicious rebel army controlled by Taylor that has controlled the
diamond mines of Sierra Leone for the last four years. A
few weeks later two Al Qaeda terrorists wanted for the American Embassy bombings in
Kenya and Tanzania arrived with $100,000 in cash to buy the first pouch of diamonds
from the RUF. Since then, Farah reports, bin Laden h
as raised millions--perhaps tens of millions--of dollars buying cut-rate RUF diamonds
and selling them in Europe. A European investigator told Farah that the Liberian
diamond connection has become so important to bin Lade
n, "that to cut off al Qaeda funds and laundering activities you have to cut off the
diamond pipeline."
This is all very bad news for Taylor's apologists and business associates in the
United States--a motley crew that includes Jesse Jackson, Pat Robertson, New Jersey
Representative Donald Payne, and former Massachusetts De
mocratic Party Chairman Lester Hyman. Until now, they could argue that Taylor was just
a garden-variety strongman, no different than the dozens of others who dot the
political landscape of the Third World. But now we know
that the Liberian dictator is not just a menace to West Africa; he is a menace to the
United States as well.
hat Taylor has ties to Al Qaeda shouldn't be terribly surprising. Since becoming
president in 1997, Taylor has run Liberia like a giant criminal enterprise, attracting
South African mercenaries, Latin American drug lords,
and Ukrainian mobsters to Monrovia. Middle Eastern terrorists were bound to find
their way there eventually.
Indeed, even as the Clinton administration was treating Taylor as a statesman in the
1990s, some observers warned that Liberia was becoming a haven for transnational
criminal syndicates. "When I met with mid-level officia
ls at the [Defense Intelligence Agency], they told me they were sending one alarming
report after another up the ladder at the Department of Defense, but no one was
listening," says Joseph Opala, a professor at James Madi
son University and an expert on the region. "They were warning of RUF/Taylor contacts
with international crime groups in France and the Ukraine. They were concerned about
the RUF helping international drug dealers launder
their cash earnings via diamonds. They were also concerned that [Sierra Leone] was
being used as a transshipment point for drugs from South America and Asia into the
U.S. and Western Europe. They urged me to write someth
ing for the newspapers because no one in the government would pay attention to them."
One reason the Clinton administration didn't pay attention was that here in the United
States, a circle of influential Americans was busy either painting Taylor as a
fledgling democrat or pursuing their own sketchy econom
ic opportunities in Liberia--or both. Jesse Jackson, Clinton's envoy to Africa,
befriended Taylor in early 1998 on a visit to Liberia (see "Where Angels Fear to
Tread," July 24, 2000). When he returned to the United State
s, he held a conference in Chicago to help burnish the warlord's image. He also
encouraged Americans to invest in the war-torn country. (According to Liberian
businessmen, at least one of Jackson's friends eventually used
Jackson's connection to Taylor to get into the telecommunications business in
Monrovia.) Jackson compared the RUF to Nelson Mandela's African National Congress, and
just weeks after bin Laden's terrorists made their firs
t RUF diamond deal, he was in Sierra Leone pleading with civil society leaders to
"reach out" to the notorious rebel group. Most importantly--and ruinously for the
region-- Jackson helped pressure the government of Sierra
Leone to appease Taylor, and to sign a settlement with the RUF, the Lomé accord, that
gave the rebels amnesty and invited them into the government. The agreement soon fell
apart, when the RUF took 500 UN peacekeepers hos
tage.
In Congress, Democrat Donald Payne of New Jersey, another American official cultivated
by Taylor, used his perch on the House Africa Subcommittee to fend off legislative
proposals that got tough on Taylor. As late as 1999
, when Taylor's links to the RUF had been amply documented even by the Clinton State
Department, Payne opposed language in a House resolution accusing Taylor of supporting
the rebels. One Taylor acolyte who had Payne's ea
r was Omrie Golley, a RUF negotiator and associate of Bah, the Taylor underling who
brought Al Qaeda diamond buyers to Liberia. On a visit to the United States in
February 1999, Golley met with Payne and Clinton administr
ation officials and was instrumental in gaining American support for the Lomé accord.
emocrats aren't the only ones who have reached out to Taylor, however. Pat Robertson,
the conservative televangelist and onetime GOP presidential hopeful, actually went
into business with the Liberian dictator. In 1999 a
Robertson company called Freedom Gold inked a deal with Taylor to mine in a
900-square- kilometer section of southeastern Liberia. The Liberian government even
issued a press release in which Robertson was quoted as sayin
g, "I pray that this investment may become a wonderful blessing to the people of
Liberia."
In truth, investments in Liberia generally become blessings only to Taylor. To an
extraordinary extent, Taylor runs Liberia as a personal fiefdom, deciding unilaterally
what to do with the revenues from state ventures. In
deed, his personal control over the country's resources was codified last year in a
new law that states, "The President of the Republic of Liberia is hereby granted the
sole power to execute, negotiate and conclude all co
mmercial contracts or agreements with any foreign or domestic investor for the
exploitation of the strategic commodities of the Republic of Liberia."
In other words, Robertson is in business (Taylor owns 10 percent of Freedom Gold) with
a man who, through his underlings in the RUF, is in business with Al Qaeda. And it is
entirely possible that money washes from one ent
erprise into the other. For as much as Robertson might like to pretend that any
profits Taylor accrues from the Freedom Gold partnership are being used to buy Bibles
for Liberian children, the truth is that Taylor's top f
iscal priority is arming the RUF and maintaining control over Sierra Leone's
diamonds--the same diamonds whose sale funds Al Qaeda.
ut of all the American VIPs who have supported Taylor over the years, perhaps none is
as intimately connected to the dictator as Lester Hyman, a discreet Washington lawyer
renowned in Democratic Party circles. A self-desc
ribed "protege of John F. Kennedy" who once chaired the Massachusetts Democratic
Party, Hyman has been an adviser to eight presidential candidates and helped Clinton
vet nominees for his Cabinet and the Supreme Court. Hil
lary Clinton personally asked her husband to appoint Hyman to the commission that
oversaw the design of the FDR memorial. And, on and off for the last decade, Hyman has
been Charles Taylor's representative in Washington.
The association started in the early '90s, after Taylor invaded Liberia with a small
force and quickly took control of much of the countryside. From a command post in the
town of Gbarnga, Taylor set up his provisional Nat
ional Patriotic Reconstruction Assembly Government (NPRAG). Hyman was hired to
represent NPRAG in the United States, and apparently became a great admirer of the
warlord. In August 1991 Hyman spent a week in Taylor-contro
lled territory. And while human rights groups were documenting Taylor's mounting
abuses, Hyman wrote a Panglossian report on Taylor and NPRAG intended for American
officials. Taylor "considers himself a believer in democr
acy" and "seems very family-oriented," noted Hyman, adding, "His family, including his
little daughter Sharon, were with him often." Of Taylor's notorious child soldiers--
some not yet teenagers--Hyman wrote, "they are ex
traordinarily well-disciplined. Their bearing is erect-- they conduct
themselves as soldiers (saluting, coming to attention, responding to
orders, etc.)." In a personal letter to Jimmy Carter the following
year, Hyman argued that Taylor "has no extraterritorial ambitions
whatsoever; his sole goal is to restore peace, democracy and
prosperity to Liberia." At the time, Taylor was sponsoring the
nascent RUF rebellion in Sierra Leone.
In early 1993 Hyman stopped representing Taylor (apparently because
of financial differences), but when Taylor took power in 1997, Hyman
was one of the first Americans he called. Taylor had just presided
over a war of incredible barbarity that left 85 percent of the
Liberian population dead, injured, or displaced. Yet, in August of
that year, Hyman wrote to him: "With your high intelligence,
charismatic leadership qualities and strength of purpose, I know that
you are capable of achieving great deeds on behalf of your country."
In Washington, Hyman worked tirelessly on Taylor's behalf. He had
dozens of conversations with senior Clinton officials and members of
Congress with influence over Africa policy. He arranged a meeting
between Hillary Clinton and Charles Taylor's wife, Jewel. In a major
coup, the former Massachusetts politico helped convince a Plymouth,
Massachusetts, district attorney to drop outstanding charges against
Taylor stemming from his escape from jail there in 1985. And, of
course, Hyman urged the administration to engage Taylor, which meant
downplaying his government's human rights abuses, and overlooking
Liberia's transformation into a gangster state.
These efforts eventually paid off--for Hyman as well as for Taylor.
For many years, one of Liberia's most consistent and lucrative
revenue streams had been a U.S.-based ship registry company called
International Registries Inc. (IRI). This flag of convenience
register allows ships from anywhere in the world to sail under the
Liberian flag irrespective of where they are based. The register
collects taxes and other dues from the shipholders, keeps a profit
and sends the rest back to the Liberian government. During the civil
war, the company provided some 90 percent of Liberia's total state
budget--but the money went to the internationally recognized
government in Monrovia, not to Taylor's NPRAG. And so one of Hyman's
first missions after Taylor became president was to wrestle control
of the ship registry away from the company that had refused to
recognize Taylor all those years. In 1999, after a mess of
litigation, IRI finally relinquished control of the registry to a new
U.S. company, Liberian International Ship and Corporate Registry,
based in Virginia. The chairman of LISCR? Lester Hyman.
hich brings us back to the RUF and Al Qaeda. For 50 years, IRI
operated its ship registry at arm's-length from the Liberian
government. But it appears that under Hyman, the registry has worked
hand in glove with Taylor. A recent lawsuit against LISCR filed by
IRI put it this way: LISCR "is a major source of Liberia's income for
[financial and military aid to the RUF] and a handy honey pot for
lining the pockets of Liberia's current president, Charles Taylor."
And two weeks ago, a UN report confirmed these charges. It showed
that in 2000, almost $1 million was paid directly by LISCR to
entities involved in smuggling weapons to Liberia (including 1,000
submachine guns from Uganda) in contravention of UN sanctions. The
United Nations has also documented the registry's role in illicit
diamond transactions. The recent UN report concludes that the
Liberian Bureau of Maritime Affairs--the government entity that
oversees LISCR--is "little more than a cash extraction operation and
cover from which to fund and organize opaque off-budget expenditures
including for sanctions-busting." In other words, LISCR funds the
Liberian maritime bureau, which in turn funds illicit weapons
purchases for Charles Taylor and the RUF. (According to the United
Nations, Hyman stepped down as chairman of LISCR earlier this year,
and it is unclear if he is still a shareholder in the company. A
Hyman spokeswoman told tnr that he was recuperating from hip
replacement surgery and unavailable for comment.)
September 11, and Farah's revelations about the RUF's links to Al
Qaeda, put all this in a rather different light. A financial
relationship with Charles Taylor no longer just supports a brutal
African army terrorizing far away people; it tacitly supports a
terrorist organization dedicated to the destruction of the United
States. Last week the cruise line Royal Caribbean appeared to concede
as much when it announced it would no longer use the Liberian ship
registry for its large passengerships. What will it take before
Taylor's American partners and apologists do the same?
RYAN LIZZA is an associate editor at TNR.
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