From civil war to soccer field, Liberia's amputee team triumphs

From The Guardian in the UK:

Before they play, they pray. A dozen men, all missing a limb, lean on crutches and bow their heads. Shouts from a nearby football match and the sound of cars passing on the road beside us fill the air. The coach mutters an "amen" and the men lift their heads and begin warming-up. They move on their crutches with grace, dribbling around cones at pace, using the inside and outside of the foot.

A premier league team – the Invincible Eleven, for whom Liberia's most famous footballer, George Weah, formerly of Milan and Chelsea, used to play – are training on this patch of sandy scrubland by the side of a main road. But the handful of passers-by who stop and watch are more interested in the men on crutches who call themselves the champions of Africa.

On Christmas Eve 1989, Charles Taylor launched a rebellion in northern Liberia. This tiny country of three million facing the Atlantic on Africa's west coast had been ruled by one of the world's more bizarre dictators, Samuel Doe, who had come to power in a coup at the age of 28. Despite banning political parties, closing down the free press and stealing tens of millions from the state, Doe received full backing from the United States who saw him as sufficiently anti-communist to deserve their support. The fear of another "red" state in Africa prompted the US to back some brutal dictators, Doe included.

Within six months Taylor's National Patriotic Front of Liberia (NPFL) was laying siege to the capital, Monrovia. Civil war racked the country for the next seven years. More than a dozen peace accords were signed and ignored until elections were held in 1997. Taylor threatened to go back to war if he didn't win. His slogan, "He killed my Ma, he killed my Pa, but I'll vote for him", summed up the fear he had spread throughout the country.

Taylor supported a rebellion in neighbouring Sierra Leone, eager to capture its abundant diamond mines. But his interference in other West African countries led to his downfall. Guinea's president, Lansana Conté, backed a new Liberian rebel group, the Liberians United for Reconciliation and Democracy (Lurd), and by 2003 Lurd had surrounded Monrovia. Taylor flew to exile in Nigeria before being arrested in 2006 and taken into the custody of the UN. He is now on trial in The Hague for war crimes and crimes against humanity committed in Sierra Leone.

Part of Taylor's legacy is the thousands of young men in both Sierra Leone and Liberia who are missing limbs. His Sierra Leonean rebels used to chop off arms and legs of men who refused to sign up. In Liberia the amputees tended to be people wounded in battle who couldn't find a doctor in time to save their limb.

Outside every shopping centre in Monrovia, a crumbling city with pockets of affluence, there are amputees begging for change. One of them is Prince Chea, although he'd prefer it if you call him Samuel Eto'o. "I play almost like him," he says with a touch of modesty. Like so many Liberian teenagers, "Eto'o" had dreamed of becoming a professional footballer but he lost his right leg when he was hit by a mortar in 2001. He has no job and little chance of ever finding one. But he still has football. "People know me now," he says.

Eto'o plays centre-forward in Liberia's national side, which won the second All-African Amputee Football Championship in 2008. The team had been runners-up the year before in Sierra Leone, where five nations competed for the title. Although 2009's World Cup was cancelled – funding for amputee football across the world is still hard to come by – Eto'o's dreams of becoming a football star are still very much alive.

Victory in 2008 – they beat Sierra Leone in the final in Monrovia – has also helped to change attitudes among the wider public. After the war Liberia's amputees tended to be shunned. With no public transport system in the capital people rely on a small number of battered yellow taxis to get around. Taxi drivers, however, used to ignore amputees, leaving them with long, painful journeys on crutches.

"They think that we are the men who destroyed the country," says Eric Myers, the federation's vice-president.

Some of those in the Liberian team are indeed veterans of the civil wars. Myers himself fought for Taylor's NPFL. He lost his leg in "an active battle", as he describes it with a smile. "We were not many, maybe 15," he says. His group was caught in an ambush and Myers was on the wrong side. At least 10 bullets hit his leg, from the thigh down to the ankle. It was several days before he was able to find a doctor, by which time many of the bullet wounds had become infected.

Playing amputee football had been "like psychological counselling", he says. "Before we played most of us never accepted our condition. Now we accept it."

Others in the team were civilians caught up in the war. Samuel Eastman, the secretary general of the Liberia Amputee Football Federation, lost his right leg in 1992. His school was in the town of Gbarna, which at the time was Charles Taylor's base.

Eastman heard the rumbling of a plane overhead. Seconds later, it bombed the nearby water plant. His cousin worked there and went to survey the damage. Eastman went with him. They were placing the wounded in a Red Cross jeep when another explosion went off. His right leg, shredded with shrapnel, had to be amputated. "You have to accept it and move on," he says with a shrug.

Eastman has no problem playing in the same team as former rebels. The past is the past, he argues. "If we can come together," he says of his team-mates who fought, "then the whole country can come together."


Liberia is a country on the mend, although progress can be painfully slow. Hand-painted signs are daubed across walls encouraging citizens to pay tax. "Good Taxpayers are Nation Builders", reads one. "Pay your Taxes. Let us All Commit to Building a Better Liberia", implores another.

Liberia's president, Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, a Harvard-trained former World Bank employee and now Africa's first female head of state, has been feted in the west as one of the continent's most visionary leaders. Back home opinions of "Ma Ellen", as she is known, are more nuanced. Her rule has brought a measure of stability and democracy to a country ruled by guns for so long. But allegations of corruption are common and citizens point to the lack of basics such as electricity and water to suggest not enough has been done.

Sirleaf was also forced to apologise to the country's Truth and Reconciliation Commission for her previous support of Taylor, having once helped to finance his rebels. The Commission's recent report recommended she be banned from politics for 30 years, although parliament is unlikely ever to enforce the sanctions.

She is likely to stand for re-election in 2011 when her opponent could be Weah. He stood against her in 2005, winning the first round but losing the run-off. He currently lives in Florida, where he is studying at university, but the political party he stood for is keen for him to return. Weah remains popular in Liberia, not just among football fans. During a time when Liberia tended to be in the news because of war and brutality, Weah's goal-scoring exploits at Milan were responsible for the country's few positive mentions in the international media.

The amputee team hope to have the same effect. Their warm-up has finished and a training match is about to start. Eto'o lines up on one side while two other global stars are on the opposition. Everyone calls Festus Harrison Kaká. Unlike his team-mates, Kaká has been playing on one leg for most of his life – he lost his left leg when he was two. He won the player of the tournament award at the All African Championships and it's not hard to see why. Kaká's movement is by far the most graceful in the team. Running at pace towards the corner, he suddenly plants one crutch in the sand and swings 270 degrees, taking the ball with him. The defender trips over his own crutches and Kaká steams towards goal.

And then there is Drogba. Moses Koli, as his mother called him, was one of Taylor's child soldiers. He signed up when he was 14 after "the enemy" destroyed his village. Drogba is short, no more than five foot, but he puffs out his chest when he talks about the war.

"I was a soldier. I used to go to the front line." He killed "plenty of people", he says. "It was not good but you have to." Like Myers, Drogba was injured in battle. A doctor could have patched his leg up but it would have been several weeks before he could get to one. He doesn't have any regrets though. He just says "It's what happened."

His team-mates call him Drogba because he scores goals. "I will score two today," he says just before the match starts. Five minutes later, he taps one in from a yard out. A few minutes after that he pokes home a cross.

Drogba swings on his crutches in an elaborate celebration, then looks over at me with a "told-you-so" grin on his face as his team-mates – both former rebels and former victims – hop over to embrace him.