Friday, August 22, 2003

Story of the Day! Go WSJ!

This is a story about the women guerrilla soldiers in Liberia. It's a great read. Look for the Florida connection towards the bottom. This is an example of great writing, and I would love to see picture of some of the things described! And imagine being on a battlefield and seeing men dressed like women, in wedding dresses!

In Liberia's war, woman commanded fear, followers
By YAROSLAV TROFIMOV
The Wall Street Journal

TUBMANBURG, Liberia …
In this country, which has endured a
long and violent civil war, a slender 22-year-old woman in a
pink strapless top elicits special dread.

She is known as Colonel Black Diamond, and she commands the
main rebel movement's ""Women's Artillery Commandos.'' It was
this all-women unit that helped spearhead the rebels' push into
the heart of the capital city of Monrovia earlier this month.
That victory, and the seizure of Liberia's second-largest city
by a smaller rebel group, led to the exile of former president
Charles Taylor and a peace pact signed this week.

""Women can do something here, and we show they can do it
better than men,'' said Black Diamond, surrounded by fellow
gunwomen in this jungle town, a few days after her Monrovia
victory. A pistol and a cellular phone hung from her trendy,
wide leather belt. Her jeans were embroidered with roses. Her
fellow guerrillas were equally fashionable, wearing
tight-fitting jeans, leopard-print blouses and an assortment of
jewelry. The number of women in her unit, she said, is a
military secret. ""Men think they can get all over you because
they are stronger, but we can fight more,'' said Black Diamond,
who refuses to divulge her real name. Her fellow soldiers
murmured in assent.

""We fight better than men because we are disadvantaged,''
said an aide, Marie Teeah, 27, who sported a red bandana and
pink fingernails.

Under the terms of the peace agreement, an interim
government will assume control of Liberia in October. On
Thursday, Gyude Bryant, a businessman who is independent of
both rebels and the current administration, was chosen to lead
that government. Meanwhile, in the wake of Mr. Taylor's
departure, a Nigerian-led force, assisted by more than 100 U.S.
Marines, is keeping the fighters apart in Liberia.

It often was pain inflicted by men that brought Black
Diamond and her fellow women into the war. Her unit is part of
Liberians United for Reconciliation and Democracy, the obscure
rebel movement, headed by a Guinea-based used-car salesman,
that emerged from the jungle to briefly seize half of Monrovia.
Many of the women in Black Diamond's battalion joined the group
after suffering from a depressingly common occurrence in West
African wars … rape by soldiers high on alcohol or drugs, who
often were HIV-positive.

Black Diamond said she personally had a ""bad experience''
with soldiers loyal to Mr. Taylor. She added that her mother
was killed by his troops during an attack on refugee camps in
Guinea. Joining the rebels was a natural way to get back at Mr.
Taylor's regime, said Black Diamond.

Male children as young as five have long been recruited into
both guerrilla and pro-government militias in Liberia, Sierra
Leone and other West African countries. But it is uncommon for
women's units to join front-line action. The more common
feminine figures on the battlefields are male soldiers in wigs
or women's clothes, including wedding gowns. This military
cross-dressing frightens some fighters, who believe an evil
spirit has overtaken their opponents. Other guerrilla devotees
of female dress believe that bullets won't hit them if they've
assumed another identity.

The involvement of real women is especially surprising given
that the main rebel group, to which Black Diamond belongs, is
dominated by the mostly Muslim Mandingo tribe. Still, the
group's chief of staff, General Abdullah Sherif, didn't seem to
mind the decidedly un-Islamic looks of Black Diamond's troops
as he drove around Tubmanburg. Shacks in the headquarters town
of the victorious rebels are brimming with supplies they looted
just days ago from the Monrovia port.

Fellow guerrillas speak of Black Diamond and her fighters
with awe, and even male soldiers around her are quick to follow
her orders. She also caught the attention of military men and
civilians in Monrovia. ""These women have no pity, no
sympathy,'' said Corporal Thompson W. Dahn of Mr. Taylor's
Anti-Terrorist Unit militia, who went up against Black
Diamond's women earlier this month. ""They shoot, they get
naked themselves, and they drive me fearful.''

Fighters on all sides of the war were known for killing
civilians. Black Diamond's unit shelled central Monrovia's
Mamba Point neighborhood with mortars, killing hundreds of
people, including some who took refuge in the American
embassy's residential compound.

""The women were the most wicked,'' said Bill Kollie, a
Monrovia truck driver who has had to deal with both rebel and
government checkpoints across the nation. ""If women stop you
at a checkpoint, you can't beg them like you can do with men.
They executed many civilians.''

Jacques Klein, the top United Nations official for Liberia,
agreed. ""Women are always the most fearsome,'' said Mr. Klein,
an American, who is assembling an international peacekeeping
force to disarm militias. Sitting in his office just a few
hundred yards from where Black Diamond's mortars landed, he
dismissed the colonel and her rebel companions as
""superstitious people who intimidate the innocent.'' Then he
added half-jokingly: ""Women are always to be feared. Have you
been to Florida? It is full of women with blue hair who have
killed their husbands.''


The Women's Artillery fighters celebrated the cease-fire by
firing mortars into the jungle. Taking a break from working on
her hairdo, Black Diamond said that her fighters are eager to
return to what they were doing before the war. ""Some will go
back to school, others back to the farm,'' she said. After
leaving Monrovia for the jungle as an 18-year-old, the colonel
herself isn't yet sure what civilian life has in store for her.
""If Taylor tired of the war, I'm tired,'' she said. ""What
will I do? It's gotta be better than it was before.''

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