MY EXPERIENCE OF LIVING THROUGH ONE AFRICA’S MORE BUTAL CIVIL WARS – MY STORY
(by Henry K. Kulee currently in Monrovia, Liberia)
If you have never been caught up in a war situation, especially the likes of the brutal civil wars incessantly occurring in parts if Africa, your perception, most likely, of war might just not transcend the ghastly images that international news network transmit to you via television, radio, newspaper or the internet. War to you might mean nothing more than the massive humanitarian aid efforts that flood a war zone after a low, a cease-fire or an end to the actual conflict.
Though images of war as are transmitted help in no small way in garnering global support at a variety of fronts, the fact is the actuality of war is far much more poignant. I have come to grasp with this murky realization over the fourteen years Liberia has been at war with itself, a war that has left the country groping in the shadows of its glorious past.
I grew up as an enthusiastic follower of world conflict, past and present. Reading on war history – the World Wars, Viet Nam, Korea, Arab-Israelis and “revolutionary” and independent wars in Africa - was favorite past time activity for me. By the time the Falkland, Iran-Iraq wars, the Granada, Panama, and Lebanon invasions were raging; I had already developed a keen early interest in radio and so, zealously followed them live.
My interest in radio at an early age explains why at age 12 I had already memorized no less than half of Africa’s serving Presidents. I was very informed on global goings-on by then; I could spend countless hours lecturing friends on wars or on who had become head-of-state where and how. Victory of the side I favored in a war dazzled me extraordinarily. In those days the destruction and humanitarian nightmare that punctuate wars didn’t dawn on me at all. I simply viewed the casualties and destruction of war in terms of victory; that winning a war justified death and destruction notwithstanding the enormity; the act of war trilled me, it was an obsession, a fascination!
I tell you what! I was a great fan of the Apartheid South African Defense Force! This might sound weird but it simply revealed the level of my obsession with war. As a Black Africa – though I was young then – you would expect my support for the ANC. The SADF had the military muscles to strike across borders with such ease; that fascinated me!
My rather wacky fascination with war spelt the reason why even I embraced the news of a rebel incursion into Liberia with so much glee. In fact the whole nation became so blasé about the rebel incursion. Then President Samuel K. Doe was a despot; to most Liberians this fact legitimized the incursion. Most believed the President had to go and so means of disposing of him didn’t matter as long as it aided the ushering of the democracy promised by our “Liberators”. President Doe died at the hands rebels! Unfortunately democracy didn’t result; instead a ruthless fourteen-year on-off war ensued. Today, I wonder whether my young inquisitive mind would have accepted war in Liberia as panacea to its long problem of governance had known it would suck fourteen years of my youth and threaten the future of my two beautiful daughters – 12 years later.
My view of war is forever is changed! The brutality and chilling reality of war runs fear down my spine. War to me is no longer about who wins or loses or of its legitimacy. War now to me is much more about the destruction, the death, the massacre, the hunger, the trauma and ….
In fourteen long years, I have witness the evil of war in all shapes and forms: a man killed simply because he turned up on the wrong side of the military divide where his ethnicity branded him an enemy; a young man summarily executed on suspicion of being an enemy fighter; a healthy grizzled bearded man, with protruding stomach bayoneted to death excused of being an official of President Doe’s government, rendering him an enemy; a pregnant woman’s belly slit open to settle an altercation among some wud soldiers on the sex of the child she carried; a man’s rib split open, heart extracted, cooked and eaten; a victim’s intestine dangled across a rebel checkpoint - rebels way exhibiting their war exploit; a queue is ordered formed, a sudden sadistic deafening ‘you!’ shout broke the quiet, a young man looked in the direction of the shout, is ordered off the queue and executed! A man head is rammed with a sledgehammer as a punishment for desertion of his post.
When such gruesome crimes unfold right before your eyes, you realize that war is more than about military superiority. When your little two-year old daughter begins to mimic the sound of guns, you quickly fathom the psychological destruction millions of children caught up in war ravaged societies have to endue then you quickly realize war more than about the side that has the greater armament. What more could crown my experience!
Narrowing an experience of living pretty close to 14 years enmeshed in one of Africa’s most horrendous wars to just few pages is as difficult as attempting to push a camel through a needle whole. The wrongs, the evil, the atrocities… that the war has left in its shadow (wake) are too countless to remember, let alone write about. I sure am giving it a try notwithstanding the monstrosity of the task.
War is war as long as people are killed! However three are specific events or periods that tend to remain, for a whole batch of reasons, in your mind forever. These events kind of form a cyst on your thought line. In fourteen years of on-off bloody conflict three specific events point to my worst experiences
To be continued...