For the past week the darling of the media has been Africa’s first democratically elected female head of state, Ellen Johnson Sirleaf of Liberia:

President Bush welcomed Ellen Johnson Sirleaf to the White House on Tuesday, calling Africa’s first democratically elected female head of state “a pioneer.”

In January, first lady Laura Bush and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice attended the inauguration of the 67-year-old Harvard-educated former finance minister. She inherits a war-ruined nation of 3 million with an 80 percent unemployment rate, no running water and no electricity. Despite its diamond and timber wealth, Liberia is among the world’s poorest; ranked 206th in per capita income out of 208 countries on a 2004 World Bank list.

Neither leader publicly commented on U.S. aid to Liberia or Sirleaf’s request for Nigeria to hand over exiled former President Charles Taylor, who is wanted on war crimes charges. Taylor has been indicted by a U.N. tribunal on charges of committing crimes against humanity by aiding and directing a Sierra Leone rebel movement and trading guns and gems with insurgents infamous for chopping off the lips, ears and limbs of civilian victims. [Link]

The shadow of Charles Taylor will dominate Liberian politics for the forseeable future. Taylor is one of the main reasons why I have vowed never to purchase a worthless “rock” for anyone.

After the official end of the civil war in 1996, Taylor became Liberia’s president on August 2, 1997, following a landslide victory in July, in which he took 75% of the vote. The election was judged free and fair by observers, although Taylor’s victory has been partially attributed to the belief that he would resume the war if he lost, and therefore many people may have voted for him simply to preserve peace. For example, his campaign song included the words “he killed my ma, he killed my pa, I’ll vote for him…”

In June 2003, a United Nations justice tribunal issued a warrant for Taylor’s arrest, charging him with war crimes. The UN asserts that Taylor created and backed the RUF rebels in Sierra Leone, which is accused of a range of atrocities, including the use of child soldiers. The prosecutor also said Taylor’s administration had harbored members of Al-Qaeda sought in connection with the 1998 bombings of U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania… [Link]

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p>So that brings us to the negotiations which seek to extradite the scum bag from Nigeria. Many people are afraid that bringing him to justice will cause bloodshed by polarizing the fragile country once again. Some of the negotiations on Taylor’s behalf are being conducted by an American. He is an Indian American evangelical preacher to be precise: Kilari Anand Paul. The most thorough internet account of Paul comes from a 2004 article in the New Republic:

Over the past two decades, Kilari Anand Paul, a self-described “Hindu-born follower of Jesus,” has cultivated a peculiar specialty as spiritual adviser to the scum of the earth. Liberia’s Charles Taylor, Yugoslavia’s Slobodan Milosevic, and Iraq’s Saddam Hussein are among the more infamous butchers to talk with Paul about the moral implications of running a brutal, repressive, and occasionally genocidal regime. In fact, Dr. Paul, as everyone calls him (thanks to an honorary degree from Living Word Bible College in Swan River, Manitoba), has counseled scores of corrupt political leaders at all levels of government, as well as warlords, rebels, and terrorists from Mumbai to Manila to Mogadishu. By Paul’s estimate, he has gone mano a mano with the leaders of every significant terrorist and rebel group in the 89 countries where his ministry operates.

Far from being put off by the wickedness of his flock, Paul’s philosophy seems to be: The blacker the soul, the greater the need for redemption. As the name of his organization suggests, Paul’s aim is to foster global peace, in large part by personally “transforming the lives and changing the hearts” of some of the world’s most ruthless warmongers. It is not a modest goal–then again, Paul is not a modest man. The 40-year-old peace crusader is, in fact, the first to toot his own horn, proffering a laundry list of armed conflicts he claims to have helped resolve or avert in troubled spots like Burundi, the Ivory Coast, Pakistan, and, perhaps most notably, Liberia, where Paul played a key role in coaxing Taylor to step down as president and go into exile last year. [Link]

Through Paul the message was made clear that trying to bring Taylor to justice will lead to more violence in Liberia:

Former Liberian President Charles Taylor thinks a request for him to face war crimes charges is politically motivated and may spark renewed unrest, his spiritual adviser said on Tuesday…

Indian-American evangelical preacher Kilari Anand Paul, who helped persuade Taylor to step down in 2003, held crisis talks with the former warlord at his residence in a hilltop villa in Calabar, southeast Nigeria on Monday and Tuesday.

“He (Taylor) said there will be chaos. Tens of thousands of people fighting. And there will be bloodshed,” Paul told Reuters. [Link]

I am not sure yet what to make of Paul. My own personal biases always makes me suspicious of proselytizers of any religion, especially ones who seem to crave the adulation of the masses. In this case he seems to be serving a purpose similar to that of a criminal defense attorney. People may despise him for who he represents but maybe he serves a necessary function.

By all accounts, Dr. Paul’s overseas peace rallies are sights to behold. Most take place in Africa or India, where villagers stream in from around the countryside to see, as one Indian paper put it, “the mesmerizing evangelist,” who has become a minor celebrity across much of both continents. A “small” rally is defined as an audience of 10,000 or 20,000. Large rallies stretch upward of a million. (GPI claims its largest was three million attendees at a 2001 event in Lagos, Nigeria.) Surrounding the speakers’ podium, on which Paul is joined by local politicos and traveling dignitaries, bodies crowd together in a sea of humanity. “I hesitate to tell people how big these crowds are, because they can’t comprehend it,” says Texas oil billionaire Nelson Bunker Hunt, who served as co-chair of GPI until recently. Until you see the crowds yourself, you assume the numbers are inflated, agrees Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee, who traveled to India with Paul in January 2002. “But there were maybe seventy-five thousand, a hundred thousand,” Huckabee says of the rally he attended. “I’m not sure I ever saw that many people except at a major football game.”

Many of the events include dancing and singing, with choir members numbering in the hundreds. Often, dozens of local street children are brought onstage as Paul challenges families who can afford it to adopt them. And, always, there is a sermon (which can last several hours) in which Paul shares the stories of great peacemakers–Jesus, Mahatma Gandhi, Mother Teresa, and, of course, Dr. K.A. Paul–and calls upon the crowd to accept the gospel of Jesus Christ. GPI supporters who have attended such rallies express awe at the number of souls brought to Jesus, sometimes tens of thousands in one night. [Link]

In the end, I just want to see that after a speedy trial Taylor is able to get his spiritual advice straight from the source and no longer needs Paul.

See also: previous mention of KA Paul on SM.