American Warlord

by Johnny Dwyer

  But that night they celebrated. Chefs had prepared “Barracuda à la Lynn” and an ornate wedding cake.70 Lynn’s father gave a short toast to the audience, but the room clearly belonged to President Taylor. Taylor knew of the struggles Lynn had endured in her relationship with his son. She had sought consolation from him in the face of Chucky’s dalliances. Taylor had little to say on the subject of fidelity, but he offered Lynn words of advice on how to deal with his son. “The patient dog gets the biggest bone,” he told her in private.71

  At the reception, Taylor offered a toast. He referenced a passage from the Old Testament, recalling the story where Ruth, a widow, promises loyalty to her mother-in-law:

  Don’t ask me to leave you and turn back. Wherever you go, I will go; wherever you live, I will live. Your people will be my people, and your God will be my God. Where you die I will die, and there I will be buried. May the Lord deal with me, be it ever so severely, if anything but death separates you and me.72

  In April 2000, four months after the wedding, Lynn went into labor in Orlando. Their honeymoon had taken the couple briefly to Trinidad, then they went separate ways: Lynn returning to Pine Hills, Chucky to Liberia. His absence was a reminder of some of the unchanged truths about him. He was a fugitive in Florida and at odds with the nation of his citizenship. Chucky listened to the birth at the other end of the phone line from Monrovia. They called him Charles Heman Taylor III. For his middle name, they chose the Hebrew word for “faithful.”

  If you laid out the facts of their marriage, it seemed impossible: They lived across an ocean; Chucky was unfaithful and volatile. Then there was Liberia, with its harsh tropical climate, the exposure to violence and disease, and the strange palace politics surrounding Chucky’s father. Chucky hoped to make his own money like other children of the elite. Despite all this, Lynn hoped for normalcy.

  She brought the boy to meet his father six months later. The trip was her first visit since the wedding and the first occasion for their small family to be together. As she settled into the house, she noticed that Danger, the pit bull she had purchased for Chucky, was nowhere to be seen. When Lynn asked one of the house employees what had happened, she received an implausible response. (“Oh-Ma, a coconut fell on her,” the woman said.73)

  She could only suspect that something had happened while she was back in the States—and she knew what Chucky was capable of. When she confronted Chucky, he simply told her that “he shot the dog.”74

  9

  Resources

  Real talk no shame, as this game is the same, hold my beef any day despite da risk and the pain.

  —United States vs. Belfast, EXHIBIT CE-9

  Charles Taylor expected his son to earn his living, to not rely on handouts for his survival, to be a loyal and effective leader. By February 2000, when the newest fighters completed their training at Gbatala, those expectations collided with the realities of his son’s disastrous tenure as the leader of the ATU.1 Chucky had accomplished little more than develop a reputation for brutality and indiscipline. The allegations that surfaced in the press following Nathaniel Koah’s detention translated into a popular fear that defined public opinion of him. In one highly publicized instance, a local newspaper ran a story with the headline “Chucky Shows Compassion.”2 It detailed Chucky’s heroic efforts to rush a gravely injured child to the hospital, but as the embassy reported: “Only by finishing the article did a reader learn that Chucky had hit the child with his vehicle and that the victim was dead on arrival at the hospital.”

  For Charles Taylor, this reputation was a liability. The newest recruits who arrived at Gbatala in late 1999 were men loyal to Benjamin Yeaten, not to Chucky. The competition between Yeaten and Chucky became palpable. Both looked to President Taylor as a father figure. While Chucky was Taylor’s flesh and blood, Yeaten had known Taylor longer—he was a child of the NPFL, coming of age at Tajura and following the revolution into adulthood. When the ATU absorbed Yeaten’s fighters, Chucky did not emerge a more powerful commander of a larger unit. In fact, the president fired his son.

  Chucky wasn’t entirely unprepared. Before losing his command, he had set out to establish himself in business. Liberia’s economy and political system had always operated on a patronage system, where familial and personal relationships were rewarded with jobs, contracts, and positions, and in that respect, Chucky was born into incredible privilege.3 To outsiders, Taylor’s government bore all the markings of a traditional organized crime family: the state-run industries and major export businesses were rackets that Taylor allowed his loyalists to exploit in exchange for a percentage of their earnings.4

  When Taylor took office, he began sculpting legislation that would legalize the wholesale theft of natural resources from Liberia, eventually pushing three laws through the legislature to accomplish this—the National Forestry Law, the broader Strategic Commodities Act, and even the Petroleum Law, which governed any discovery of fossil fuel deposits.5 As strong as he was, Taylor could not always overrule the organs of government and simply impose his will on the nation. He often worked within the legal bounds of an established, if not necessarily functional, government, including a theoretically independent legislature and judiciary. Taylor was even taken to task by the legislature for procedural minutiae. In one instance, after representatives complained that the president had not formally submitted the nominations of several senior appointees, he complied. Most of the time, however, Taylor used these institutions to confer legitimacy on his actions. If he could achieve his political and economic objectives with the mien of propriety, his critics, domestic and abroad, would have less fodder.

  Timber was one of the industries traditionally managed by the nation’s elite.6 To make room for his son, Taylor revoked a number of timber concessions with VH Timber Companies and several Spanish and French logging groups, allowing Chucky to move ahead with a fledgling timber venture, United Timber Company.7 He connected Chucky with the Fawaz family. Two of the patriarchs of the family, Hussein and Abbas Fawaz, controlled a massive timber operation in southeastern Liberia called Maryland Wood Processing Industries. As Chucky made inroads into the business, he found a friend and business partner in Wisam, a son of the family.

  The Strategic Commodities Act effectively handed the state’s assets over to Taylor, designating “all mineral resources especially gold, diamonds, all natural forest resources including logs and timber, unique and rare species of vegetation and wildlife as strategic commodities and grants the president the sole power to execute, negotiate and conclude all commercial contracts or agreements with any foreign and domestic investors for the exploitation of any of these commodities.”8 Taylor would control the necessary checks and balances with respect to trade; the act noted that commercial agreements “shall become effectively binding upon the republic as would any treaty to which the republic is a party, upon the sole signature and approval of the president of the Republic of Liberia.”

  This was bald corruption, giving Taylor unilateral authority to loot the nation’s resources. Nearly all Taylor’s predecessors—Tubman, Tolbert, Doe—had used the office as prerogative to grab resources from the Liberian state to maintain their parties and personal empires, but he took it one step further and made corruption the law. He could not be called a criminal, because he had legalized all the rackets.

  But Chucky and his father could not carry out business without international investment. For all Liberia’s wealth in timber, iron ore, gold, and diamonds, the barriers to entry into the international markets for these commodities were significant. Taylor required not only capital and logistical support but also international partners willing to market Liberian resources. For the most part, it was European and Asian investors, willing to navigate the dangerous and controversial business environment, who stepped into this gap. American investment had not entirely dried up in Liberia. Firestone Rubber, which had been acquired by Bridgestone, a Japanese competitor, continued to extract rubber sap from its vast planta
tion near Harbel and remained very much represented by the U.S. embassy in Monrovia. Beyond the corporate sphere lay a different class of entrepreneur: independent investors seeking riches in Liberia’s gold and diamond reserves. The chief asset many of these investors could bring to the table was the willingness to turn a profit on the back of a wounded and traumatized nation. This was where an investor like Jeff House fit in.

  House was a businessman from Minnesota whose connection to Liberia had been forged in the Twin Cities.9 Thousands of Liberians had migrated there since the beginning of the crisis, making the Twin Cities—next to Staten Island, New York—the largest concentration of Liberians living outside of Africa. House had built a comfortable fortune in real estate and had the reputation as someone who could line up investors. In late 1999 and early 2000, an acquaintance from Minnesota connected him to diamonds and gold in Liberia—an investment opportunity far afield from strip malls and parking structures in suburban Minneapolis.10

  Before traveling to Liberia, Jeff House had been introduced to Israel Akinsanya, the Liberian entrepreneur who stood as Chucky’s best man.11 Then thirty-one years old, he had worked for a small marketing firm in the Twin Cities, where he set down roots.12 Akinsanya, who later became the head of public relations for Liberia’s national oil company, had decided to return to Monrovia following President Taylor’s election. It was there that he struck up a friendship with Chucky, he says, after a mutual friend invited him to a dinner at Chucky’s house.13 Akinsanya knew of Chucky’s reputation but withheld judgment; having a connection with the president’s son would only help him. Akinsanya was startled to find that, despite Chucky’s lack of education, he presented himself as articulate and well read.

  The two eventually grew close, Akinsanya said, though he never viewed Chucky as a peer. When Chucky needed investors to help back mining plans, he partnered his new friend with American connections. The two began working together under the mantle of a company called Resources International. Soon after hearing from Akinsanya, Jeff House was flying to Liberia.

  While both Liberia and Sierra Leone boasted diamond reserves, the two nations differed geologically. Stones from Sierra Leone were pit-mined—dug directly from the rich clay—often by hand. These stones tended to be both larger and more abundant than those found in Liberia, where the majority of mining was alluvial. Miners in Liberia worked the riverbeds sorting through rock and dirt in search of precious stones that had over centuries been washed into the waterways.

  Liberia had developed another revenue stream: illicitly trafficking stones mined in Sierra Leone. This practice, which predated the Liberian civil war of the 1990s by several decades, had been a way for traders to circumvent laws and taxes in Sierra Leone, which did not become independent from the United Kingdom until 1961.14 Traders along the border—many of whom shared familial and tribal backgrounds—moved the stones from the mines in Sierra Leone’s Kono District through northeastern Liberia on to Monrovia, where they were shipped to Antwerp, the global center of the diamond trade. In early 2000, as UN investigators began looking into conflict diamonds, they noticed that Liberia exported quantities of stones that far exceeded the capabilities of its mostly artisanal mining industry and undeveloped geological reserves.15

  Chucky believed that Liberia had vast, yet-to-be discovered diamond resources that could be pit-mined with the right equipment. He looked to Fred Rindel, the South African mercenary who had helped facilitate the ATU training, to obtain investment for the mining venture, drawing unwanted attention to both men.16 In early August 2000 Chucky received faxed copies of several press articles that discussed, in accurate detail, his relationship with Rindel.17 An Africa Confidential story noted Rindel’s presence at the Mamba Point hotel in Monrovia, saying the ex–South African Defense Force colonel “styles himself a mining engineer” even though he was instrumental in training RUF units used to retake large swaths of Sierra Leone’s mining areas. Rindel distanced himself from Chucky, insisting his involvement in mining in Liberia was strictly for “the benefit of the people of Liberia.” Dealing with Chucky “was his father’s wish” Rindel said when contacted regarding their relationship, “perhaps with the intention of keeping him away from the fleshpots and drugs.”18

  For an investor like House, however, Chucky offered the influence of being the president’s son, access to untapped diamond and gold concessions, and detailed satellite imaging that would help guide their exploration. Chucky needed capital—and hoped House could provide investors.

  House returned to the States and embarked on a road show to seek out backing for the venture. He immediately encountered resistance; after speaking with the corporate finance arms of multiple “junior mining ventures in the US and Canada,” he wrote to Akinsanya in mid-August, “it is impossible to attract investment capital in Liberia. There were no exceptions. They stated no exceptions. They stated many reasons but mainly the threat of war, political instability, and the terrible PR of conflict diamonds.”19

  This was an unwelcome revelation. Inside his father’s inner circle, there was little reliable information about how the government was perceived. But doors were beginning to shut—from the inability to attract foreign donors to the increased scrutiny of the United Nations. This posed a fundamental challenge to Taylor: without wealth, he would rapidly lose strength.

  House now had serious misgivings about the project, but he told Akinsanya that he would move ahead with his own money to purchase the concessions and begin alluvial mining, hoping that if they hit “the right spots in the river this will generate a substantial cash flow which will allow us to bootstrap” the later stages of exploration.20 Chucky wanted to assuage House’s concerns about working in Liberia. He responded directly to House’s note to Akinsanya, somewhat incoherently, with a note that read, “As for the question of threats of war, political instability we must remember that the 100 (hundred years) of peace that the world had enjoyed, Africa has not experienced the same and is the last continent of conflict. So it is the ability of a [sic] administration through its political part and National Security Measures that one should analyse and African Administration.”21

  “As for the banning of conflict diamonds,” Chucky wrote, “not only I as an individual but the Government of Liberia fully supports UN Resolution 1306.”

  The resolution Chucky referred to had passed in the Security Council in early July, banning the sales of rough diamonds from Sierra Leone without authorization of the government of Sierra Leone. To give the ban some force, the Security Council created an investigative body—referred to as the Panel of Experts—to report on compliance of parties believed to be involved in the trade.

  The decision was a blow for Chucky and his father, effectively criminalizing a significant source of revenue for the regime. The diamonds flowing from Sierra Leone through Liberia onto the world’s market were estimated to be at 31 million carats between 1994 and 1998.22 This made the need for Liberia to develop its much smaller diamond resources all the more urgent. In his negotiations with House, Chucky eventually acknowledged that the South Africans wouldn’t be able to provide any help for further phases of exploration. House sought out his own geologist, attempting to hire a Czech scientist who was familiar with the region and could provide an assessment independent of the preliminary findings of the South Africans. (It’s unclear whether that relationship ever materialized.)

  To equip the operation, House turned to an ex–Green Beret and veteran diamond hunter based out of Indiana named Daniel Pohle, who had traveled throughout Africa and South America, outfitting diamond- and gold-mining operations with mechanical dredges that automated the laborious operation of separating out precious stones and metals from dirt and mud.23 “I build the toys and make sure people know how to use them,” he said.

  Pohle was also a veteran of West Africa—he had spent time in Sierra Leone during the 1990s, setting up mining equipment in the Kono District while it was under RUF control. As a former U.S. Special Operations sol
dier, he was dismissive of the severity of the fighting between the Taylor-backed rebels and government troops. (“I was there when they were playin’ cowboys and Indians,” he recalled with some bravado.)

  Pohle arrived in Liberia in September 2000. He was there to do the actual labor of mining and to oversee the operation of two pieces of machinery the men had purchased: an excavator and what was called a “diamond and gold plant,” a machine that could move through forty yards of riverbed each hour. He hoped to prove whether diamonds existed in any quantity and had brought along another American to help operate the equipment. House did not make an appearance; instead the group’s local contact was an attorney from the Twin Cities named Ben Houge who ran a school for the deaf with his hearing-impaired daughter deep in the bush.24 Houge was a character that could emerge only in Liberia: a charity worker with a sideline in diamonds. Houge said if all went well, the mining would bankroll the charitable school.