Liberia Is Not for Sale — Not to Miners, Not to Cartels

Senator Amara Konneh’s warning in Washington that Liberia stands at its “most dangerous point since the war and Ebola” should alarm us at home as much as it alarmed his hosts abroad. Opaque mining deals and a surging cocaine trade are buying influence inside our institutions, one official at a time. The reforms he proposes are overdue. But they will mean nothing unless the Legislature passes them in Monrovia, and unless our partners in Washington back them with targeted support rather than speeches.

FOR TWO DECADES, Liberia has told the world a story of recovery: from war to peace, from Ebola to resilience, from strongman rule to two peaceful transfers of power. That story is true, and it was hard-won. But a nation can lose in the shadows what it won in the open. Konneh’s message is that the threat today comes in a briefcase, not a gun. Sometimes the briefcase holds a concession agreement. Sometimes it holds cocaine.

CONSIDER THE MINING sector. It accounts for 12 percent of the economy and nearly two-thirds of export earnings. Yet, by the senator’s count, less than 3 percent of that wealth flows directly to the communities that live beside the pits, the rail lines and the poisoned creeks. Twenty-five-year agreements are negotiated by a handful of officials in Monrovia, then ratified by a legislature whose members, Konneh says, are softened up with jobs, scholarships and “facilitation fees.” Meanwhile, community members who protest environmental damage, in Kinjor and elsewhere, find themselves charged with “economic sabotage.”

THIS KIND OF capture is the more dangerous of the two because it is legal. Nobody goes to jail for signing a bad contract. The damage is spread across a generation, and the bill arrives long after the signatories have retired.

THEN THERE IS cocaine. This year alone, authorities seized 237 kilograms at Roberts International Airport and 3.9 metric tons in Duazon, a haul valued at $317 million. That figure is several times what this country spends on the health of its people. Money on that scale does not merely pass through a country. It buys customs officers, police commanders, evidence clerks and, eventually, elections.

WE HAVE ALREADY seen the first signs. Two agents of the Liberia Drug Enforcement Agency were convicted last month of reselling seized cocaine. A senior police commander was dismissed over a bribe in the same network. The people entrusted with fighting the trade were working for it.

THE PROSECUTION OF former Vice President Jewel Howard-Taylor will test whether the state can handle a case at the very top. She denies the charges, and she is entitled to the presumption of innocence. But the government’s decision to destroy the 3.9 tons of cocaine before trial was reckless. Unless the evidence is preserved and the process is beyond reproach, a conviction will be called a vendetta, an acquittal will be called a cover-up, and justice will lose either way. Liberians deserve a trial that can withstand scrutiny, whatever its outcome.

KONNEH’S PROPOSALS DESERVE serious attention:

• Publish every mining agreement, amendment and beneficial owner before ratification, not after.

• Value iron ore independently, as Botswana did with diamonds.

• Send a fixed share of royalties directly to the districts.

• Preserve drug evidence until final judgment.

• Subject airport, port and enforcement officers to lifestyle audits.

• Pass an unexplained-wealth law with teeth.

NONE OF THIS is radical. All of it is overdue.

BUT WE MUST also say this plainly: the Legislature that Konneh describes as being bought is the same Legislature he sits in. Reform cannot simply be a speech delivered in Washington. It has to be a bill passed in Monrovia. If the Senate is serious, it should begin by refusing to ratify any mining agreement that has not been published in full. That decision needs no foreign aid and no American permission. It needs only the votes.

TO OUR FRIENDS in Washington, the senator’s appeal is fair. The United States stood with Liberia through war, reconstruction and Ebola. It should not now confine its interest to drug busts and photo opportunities. Targeted help would make a difference: court monitoring, forensic audits of the biggest concessions, financial investigators on specific cases, and sanctions on the enablers who park stolen wealth in American real estate. If America turns away, others with fewer scruples will take its place. As Konneh put it, cartels do not ask about human rights.

LIBERIA’S NATURAL WEALTH was meant to be the foundation of our self-reliance. Instead it risks becoming the means by which our institutions are bought, one official at a time. The law must apply equally to the baggage handler and the multinational, to the police driver and the former vice president.

LIBERIA IS NOT yet captured. It is up to us, and to our partners, to make sure “not yet” never becomes “too late.”