Liberian Vice-President Moses Blah, who is due to take power on Monday when President Charles Taylor promises to step down, stepped into the political arena from the same place: a Libyan guerrilla training camp.
The pair returned from Libya in 1989 as part of a 200-strong group dubbed the Special Forces Commandos, the military vanguard of Taylor’s National Patriotic Front of Liberia (NPFL), and started a civil war. During the first three years of Taylor’s reign, Blah returned to Libya as Liberian ambassador, before coming home in 2000 to become a low-key vice president, driving his own car around Monrovia with a single bodyguard. Now the 56-year-old former animal-feed plant operator and father of 14 is due to be sworn in as president on Monday, when Taylor has said he will at last bow to international pressure and step down. He will take theoretical charge of an embattled government that holds only around a fifth of Liberian territory, and only part of its own capital, which has been trapped in a rebel choke-hold for two months. It is also not clear how long his government will last. Thrust into the centre of this political and military storm, Blah remains an enigma to most outside observers. His curriculum vitae has all the hallmarks of a dyed-in-the-wool Taylor clone.
| Here's hoping he won't be there long... |
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