MONROVIA, LiberiaThis little country on the coast of West Africa, settled by freed American slaves and long regarded as a trustworthy U.S. ally, has spawned a civil war that won’t go away and now threatens to spread.

By Gus Bode

Since Charles Taylor first led rebel forces into Liberia on Christmas Eve 1989, seeking to overthrow the government of President Samuel Doe, the country has been torn asunder. The descendants of the Americans who long dominated Liberia largely have fled. Doe was slain in 1990 by a splinter group of Taylor’s faction and replaced by a succession of interim and coalition governments. And a Nigerian-led African peacekeeping force has bogged down with little to show for its efforts.

Arrayed against Taylor’s National Patriotic Front of Liberia are a half-dozen forces ranging from Doe’s defeated former government army to motley militias representing rival tribal groups often backed by African peacekeepers.

Taylor was received a week ago by Gen. Sani Abacha, the Nigerian military ruler whose forces have been the mainstay of the peacekeeping force sent to impose order and a new government after Doe’s death. Their unlikely encountertheir firstproduced suggestions of cooperation and revived hopes for the miracle Liberians keep praying will deliver their Tennessee-size country from warring factions.

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But the immediate prospect is for more, not less, conflict, which, according to U.N. estimates, already has killed at least 150,000 and displaced 80 percent of the population.

Regional players now are convinced that unless they solve the Liberian problem, it will come to them, a longtime foreign resident remarked, but so far no one has taken practical steps to do so.

Observers describe the situation as an African version of the domino theory espoused by the United States’ Vietnam War policymakers:weak neighboring states succumbing to creeping disorder as a consequence of a nearby conflict. Adherents draw parallels with Yugoslavia’s former republics, complete with an ineffectual U.N. presence reflecting unresolved big-power policy differences and frustrating distribution of humanitarian relief.

The French keep telling Washington (that) Liberia is an American problem because of Washington’s long connections with Liberia dating back to the 19th century, a European diplomat said, and the Americans tell the French it’s become a major French problem, threatening its regional client states. It’s the old vaudeville gag of ‘After you, Alphonse.’ In the sunset of the Cold War, the United States ended a special relationship with Liberia’s 2.5 million citizens dating from its settlement by former American slaves in 1822. Less than a decade after pouring in a half-billion dollars aid, Washington decided it no longer needed Liberia’s once strategically prized Voice of America transmitters and Robertsfield airport.

Many Liberians in Monrovia still bitterly resent the failure of U.S. Marines stationed on ships offshore in 1990 to land and stop the fighting.

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