Moving Up in the Ranks

Samuel Doe consolidates his power--sometimes bloodily

Stung by worldwide condemnation of the seaside executions in April 1980 that followed his ouster of President William R. Tolbert, Liberia's new head of state, Master Sergeant Samuel K. Doe, promised a quick return to civilian rule and a halt to the killings. Seventeen months later, Doe, 30, remains in power--and the killing has resumed. In June, 13 soldiers were executed after confessing to a plot to overthrow Doe and his People's Redemption Council (P.R.C.). Last month five members of the P.R.C. itself, including Doe's deputy, Thomas Weh Syen, were shot after a military tribunal convicted them of planning to assassinate Doe. TIME Nairobi Bureau Chief Jack White, who witnessed the 1980 executions, returned to Monrovia last week and sent this report:

From his ruthless elimination of potential rivals to his obvious fondness for the perks of office, all the signs indicate that having tasted power, Doe is in no hurry to relinquish it and return to the barracks. He has started to shed some of the military image; in-place of the camouflage fatigues and jaunty beret that were his trademark in the early post-revolution period, he now occasionally wears well-tailored suits. The modest Honda Civic in which he drove himself last year is seldom seen these days. Instead, he races around Monrovia in a chauffeured black Mercedes-Benz limousine flanked by motorcycle police with wailing sirens. A hairdresser comes to his suite in the Israeli-built Executive Mansion each morning to fluff up his luxuriant Afro. As one Liberian official puts it: "He is getting comfortable as the head of state."

Perhaps the most significant signal of Doe's intentions came in July, when he promoted himself from master sergeant to general and commander in chief of Liberia's 5,000-man army. The promotion was accompanied by a crackdown on dissent. The twelve civilians in his 17-member Cabinet were drafted into the army with the rank of major, a move that made them subject to military discipline and curbed their ability to speak out in public. Most important, Doe forced a showdown with Weh Syen, his staunchest critic in the P.R.C., who had publicly lashed out at Doe's decision to close the Libyan embassy when it renamed itself a "people's bureau" without Liberian authorization, and to expel nine of the 15 Soviet diplomats stationed in Monrovia on suspicion of spying.

In mid-August, Weh Syen and four other P.R.C. members were arrested and tried by a secret military court. The main charge: plotting to kill Doe and other military leaders. Found guilty, the five men were led past a howling mob to the Barclay Training Center, Monrovia's main military barracks, to be shot and bludgeoned to death in their cells later that night. Besides consolidating Doe's grip on the P.R.C., says a Western diplomat, "the killings were a warning to the former civilians in the Cabinet." One who took the warning seriously was Minister of Planning Togba-Nah Tipoteh, an American-trained economist. Two weeks ago, he sent in his resignation from the safety of the neighboring Ivory Coast, where he requested political asylum.

While the renewed terror has muted Doe's critics, it has understandably done little to reassure foreign investors or Liberian businessmen of stability any time soon. One reminder is the conduct of Colonel Harrison Pennue, a former corporal and Doe loyalist who likes to boast that he disemboweled President Tolbert. Doe appointed Pennue to a P.R.C. committee charged with collecting $36 million owed by private debtors to the defunct Bank of Liberia. So far, says a foreign businessman, "not one cent" of the millions of dollars in cash that Pennue collected has been turned over to the central bank. On the same day that Doe met with Western diplomats and businessmen to inform them that shakedowns would stop, Pennue ordered his bodyguards to hold down the manager of the government-controlled radio station while the colonel flogged him with a belt. The man's crime: passing Pennue's car. which was stopped along Monrovia's main street. Doe finally jailed Pennue for four days as a "warning" to other P.R.C. members.

Despite the P.R.C.'s excesses, the U.S. Government remains supportive of the regime. While total foreign aid has been drastically slashed by the Reagan Administration, U.S. annual assistance to Liberia has leaped from $8 million during the last year of Tolbert's presidency to $68.3 million this year, an increase, at a time of general retrenchment, that Washington explains as due to the fact that there is "no visible alternative" to the Doe regime. The U.S. is helping to pay Liberia's monthly oil bill of $12 million, supplying more than 20,000 tons of rice at subsidized prices and building new barracks for the army. A team of 100 U.S. Special Forces soldiers arrived in Monrovia on the first anniversary of Doe's coup for joint exercises with the Liberian armed forces. American diplomats insist that they aim to promote a degree of stability that will allow the Liberians to enjoy the "fruits of the revolution." They are also clearly pleased with the pro-American drift of the Doe regime.

That trend worries some Liberian officials. "Most of us feel that America is more comfortable with these people than with some intellectuals who might pursue a more independent foreign policy." says one Monrovia official. "We don't see the U.S. doing much to persuade Doe to return Liberia to the civilians. Unless something unforeseen forces him to step down, we think Doe will be in power for at least five more years." The skeptics are not assured by the fact that a commission has begun to draft a new constitution and is expected to complete it before the end of 1982. Nonetheless, Doe's newly appointed P.R.C. vice chairman. Major General Nicholas Podier, insists that the soldiers will eventually return to the barracks.

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