The News Review:

- Liberian government forces launch counterattack
- Pak Army Contingent leaves for Sierra Leone.
- Hearing Liberia’s Pleas
- What is the true cost of living? – Expatica
- ACNS3526 Archbishop hears the cries of refugees in the Gambia
- The African Dilemma

Liberian government forces launch counterattack
USA Today – Jul 29, 2003
Ambassador to Liberia John Blaney over the weekend had asked rebels to pull out of the city immediately. Rebels have waged a three-year campaign to oust Taylor, who was elected president in Liberia in 1997 after waging eight years of civil war. He has been indicted by a war crimes court in Sierra Leone for backing that country’s brutal rebels. Monday’s attack on Buchanan opened a second front with fighting led by the country’s smaller rebel group, Movement for Democracy in Liberia. West African authorities planned a summit on Liberia’s crisis on Thursday in Accra, regional bloc spokesman Sunny Ugoh said. Diplomats said they hoped to draw all the key heads of state in the region. West African leaders have promised a multinational peace force for Liberia since soon after rebels launched their siege of Monrovia in early June… President Bush on Friday ordered troops to take up position off Liberia’s Atlantic coast in readiness for any peace mission. Debt-strapped Nigeria, West Africa’s military power, has offered asylum to Taylor and promised to send at least two peacekeeping battalions but says it needs financial help from the United States and others. In neighboring Sierra Leone, a Nigerian battalion of 776 men was moving Tuesday to a U. airport, at the town of Hastings, to train for the mission in Liberia and await any directive. But more West African, U.

Pak Army Contingent leaves for Sierra Leone.
Free with registration – PPI – Pakistan Press International – AccessMyLibrary.com – Jul 29, 2003
RAWALPINDI, Jul 29 : The first batch of Peacekeeping troops of Pakistani Contingent-III left from Lahore Allama Iqbal International Airport Tuesday on a UN chartered aircraft as part of the relief-rotation programme under the United Nations Mission in Sierra Leone (UNAMSIL). Pakistan has so far contributed more than 8,000.
Related: Army to Focus More on Family Support

Hearing Liberia’s Pleas
New York Times – Jul 29, 2003
All Liberian factions say they want us on the ground, and ordinary Liberians have been pleading for Mr. Bush to send troops. Would anybody shoot at us? Probably, but in neighboring Sierra Leone and Ivory Coast, local fighters melted away rather than take on European troops. The ragtag Liberian militias, bereft of popular support, would probably collapse even more quickly. I argued against invading Iraq, but Liberia presents a much more compelling case for intervention. The difference is not that Saddam slaughtered at most 1 percent of his population over the last 14 years, while Liberian warfare has killed more than 6 percent of its population so far. Nor is it that rescuing Liberia would bolster our international stature rather than devastate it… First, Liberia has an urgency to it that Iraq did not: people are being hacked apart daily in Liberia, and if we do nothing, the conflict may spread across West Africa. Second, success can be more easily accomplished in Liberia, using just 1 or 2 percent of the number of troops we have in Iraq, mostly because Liberians desperately want us to intervene. Liberia’s warfare has already infected Sierra Leone, Guinea and Ivory Coast, costing perhaps a half-million lives in all since Charles Taylor grabbed Liberia in 1989. Just as the Rwandan crisis (and Mr. Clinton’s failure to respond decisively) led to a catastrophe across central Africa that has cost more than four million lives so far, Liberia’s civil war could lead to upheaval across West Africa.

What is the true cost of living? – Expatica
Expatica – Jul 29, 2003
In the least developed country, hunger is rife and one in five people survive on less than a dollar a day. In addition to Sierra Leone, the other least developed countries include Chad, Guinea Bissau, Ethiopia, Burkina Faso, Mozambique, Burundi and Niger. Shearer remembered the importance of safety and security abroad when she was in Pakistan in 1999 during the military overthrow of the government. “It was very unsettling to see soldiers on the streets with machine guns, enforced curfews and a lack of information about what was happening,” he said. The focus of the UN report is to change just that, insecurity, injustice and inequality around the world: “The Human Development Report is first and foremost about the idea that politics is as important to successful development as economics,” according to the survey overview. Yet even with the wave of new democracies that has moved around the globe, achieving true democracy has been tough.

ACNS3526 Archbishop hears the cries of refugees in the Gambia
Worldwide Faith News – Worldwide Faith News (press release) – Jul 29, 2003
‘ Archbishop Rowan praisedthe diocese for ‘being at the forefront of the work’. He then said thathe hoped the centre would be ‘a challenge and reproach’ for concernedpeople around the Communion. A young man, 27, from Sierra Leone pleaded with Archbishop Rowan to usehis ‘high office’ to plead the cause of displaced persons. But whenJudah, aged 8, eloquently addressed the Archbishop’s party, women – somecarrying babies – began crying and sobbing as the young child told ofher fellow Liberians that had been victims of ‘rape, torture and death’. Later in the morning Archbishop Williams and Mrs Williams, along withthe Archbishop of the Province, the Most Revd Robert Okine, werereceived by the President and many Government officials. The Presidentpaid tribute to the work of the Anglican Church in The Gambia withspecial reference to the diocesan bishop, the Rt Revd Dr S TilewaJohnson. The Archbishop received a warm and high profile greeting at his arrivalon Monday night in Sierra Leone.
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The African Dilemma
American Daily – Jul 29, 2003
What is it about Africa that seems to defy any kind of modern governance or civilized behavior?

Liberia was founded in 1822 and became a republic in 1847. In this regard, it preceded most formerly colonized African nations that did not achieve independence until the 1960s. In the past fourteen years, estimates of 150,000 dead have resulted from a civil war that has included support for an insurgency in neighboring Sierra Leone. The United Nations, now famous for its inability to do anything substantive, imposed sanctions in 2001. The killings in the streets of Monrovia are testament to the UN?s impotence. Those nations that achieved independence have now had four decades in which to establish democratic governments. Ordinary Africans hoped for the benefits of democracy and the rule of law.