History of the Liberian Civil War
Kromah Is
a Dangerous Liar
[First published in Blojlu's Journal in February 1993]
by Tarty Teh
Alhaji G.V. Kromah is an inveterate liar. He has lied for so long he has gained a certain amount of proficiency that has acquired the aura of the truth. It takes some heavy lying to achieve that effect. Kromah has already reached that point of perfection in the act of avoiding the truth. Kromah is also extremely dangerous. He will kill -- and has most probably killed -- to cover his own tracks and to guarantee the success of his schemes.
Nothing has persuaded me more forcefully in reaching these conclusions than a press release put out in November 1992 by a bunch of moral vagrants Kromah gathered in Tubmanburg to name him "the Supreme Commander of ULIMO" just as he had instructed them to do. By comparison, Charles Taylor is probably more modest than Kromah. Supreme! People who are responsible for mass killings throughout history have in one way or another sought to protect some sort of supremacy -- intellectual supremacy, cultural supremacy, social supremacy, racial supremacy.
About three months ago, Kromah was in Washington, D.C., U.S.A., as "Chairman of the Board of Directors of ULIMO." A somewhat confused U.S. State Department official told me, "I have always thought ULIMO was headed by an Executive Council." What the State Department found more curious was that Kromah also claimed that he was still the chief executive officer of the Movement for the Redemption of Liberian Muslims.
His most recent press release promises to seek the release of Mr. Amma Youlo, the Krahn man who is in prison in Sierra Leone for the killing of General Karpeh. But Youlo said he got his orders from the then newly self-appointed "Chairman of ULIMO" Mr. Kromah. It still worked out just the way Kromah had planned it. Youlo was caught with the smoking gun. Youlo had a lot of power, including the power to kill. Then suddenly, he lost his power and his freedom. Just another idiot spent by a clever Kromah. I don't mean to suggest that Youlo deserves to be freed. There is nothing unfair about his sentence. Killing is still a crime, even if stupidity isn't.
Everybody knows by now that Kromah has made more than half a dozen announcements in which he has overthrown ULIMO leadership to give himself a big title in ULIMO. But the first time Kromah helped himself to a lofty position within ULIMO was about six months ago when he announced on BBC that he had replaced Mr. Raleigh F. Seekie as Chairman of ULIMO. That announcement had come very shortly after the murder of General Albert Karpeh.
I had decided that I would not join those who were accusing Kromah of ordering the killing of Karpeh until I had the opportunity of speaking with Kromah. That chance came for me when Kromah called New York to talk with someone. That person decided to connect me in a three-way telephone conversation.
I asked Kromah one question. "What is your present position within ULIMO?" and Kromah took more than an hour to answer that question. I was not paying for the call, so I had all the time in the world to hear a full and direct response from Kromah. There was none forthcoming after close to two hours of telephone conversation.
But from all the rambling that Kromah did -- interspersed with "I'm coming to your question; why don't you give me a chance to finish my statement!" -- he did not say what his position was. But the impression he left suggested the following possibilities:
 | The Government of Sierra Leone sensed an absence of leadership within ULIMO and decided that Kromah's chairmanship of the organization was the only way out; |
| The constitution of ULIMO had not been ratified since the formation of the organization, hence anyone asserting leadership in the organization did not have a legal basis; and |
| The grassroots membership of ULIMO wanted Kromah so badly that they held him at gunpoint, threatening to kill him if he did not accept the leadership of ULIMO. |
Of course nothing that Kromah said then or since has any relevance to what ULIMO is committed to doing.
This is what Kromah is doing. Every time he makes a public claim -- no matter how outrageous -- one way or another the media pick it up. The BBC and the West Africa magazine have unwittingly helped Kromah in this strategy. At one point West Africa magazine carried a youthful, touchup photo of Kromah, surrounded by a sea of text. It does not matter how balanced the West Africa magazine article was, or even how critical it may have been of Kromah.
The bottom line was that there was his picture on a full page, floating on editorial comments in a respected newsmagazine. If Kromah wanted to raise money from some Arabic-speaking people willing to help an Islamic cause from their petty-cash accounts, the text did not matter. The picture was worth more than a couple of hundred thousand dollars. And that's all Kromah wanted. And that is what he got.
But we should not forget that there are Mandingo people fighting for freedom for all of us. We must not assume that they will follow Kromah simply because he is Mandingo; nor can we afford to say nothing for fear that they may not understand our concern about the dangerous activities of Kromah.
We must make sure also that we don't drag them in the dirt that Kromah is stirring up. Being Mandingo is not the best way to explain Kromah's behavior. Remember Solomon Kamara? He was a Mandingo too, yet he remains a shining example of what ULIMO stands for. «»
Copyrighted (c) Tarty Teh 1993