The road to Toulepleu: creating a humanitarian crisis With its new force of Liberian recruits, the government launched an offensive and regained control of Toulepleu in late-January 2003.147 By February, the northern loop of the road from Blolékin to Toulepleu, and much of the area around Toulepleu, was under the control of Liberian fighters allied to the government. According to local observers, the presence of the Ivorian armed forces was minimal, ending at Blolékin, and even the Ivorian army acknowledged that the Liberians were the ones in control in the far western area around Toulepleu.148 The Liberian fighters—in collaboration with local Gueré militia members—manned a series of checkpoints from Gueya, a village east of Blolékin through Péhé, the last town before Toulepleu, to Toulepleu itself. After Blolékin, the Liberian fighters and their Gueré partners were the de facto authorities along the road, called “the Road of Death” by some in Abidjan.149 An eyewitness described his harrowing journey along the road to Human Rights Watch. At Gueya there was maybe one man who was older, maybe eighteen. He was called Nene. Most were young kids, even girls. The mercenaries are children of nine to twelve years, they can’t even control the weight of their guns and they start firing at anything. I saw people shot in front of me…. From Blolékin to Péhé I walked. From Blolékin to Péhé it is all mercenary checkpoints and bodies, all along the way it was mercenary checkpoints and bodies along the road, new bodies and old bodies, maybe three to four weeks old. They force you to work, to bury the bodies…. At Doké, a chief of the mercenaries gives orders for people to bury the bodies. If you have luck they let you go, if not they make you bury the corpses. They use a Caterpillar bulldozer to dig holes, it gets filled with bodies, then they use the Caterpillar to cover the hole…. Me, I only had to bury bodies once, I was lucky. Others, they spend days burying. Me, I had some money so they let me go. For me the day it happened…. they asked me for 5,000. I only had 2,000 and they said, ‘since you don’t have money you have to work.’ I said ‘Okay’ and they said ‘Go over there and bury bodies over there.’ I picked up the bodies, they were all rotten and full of water. I put them in a hole and when we asked about covering them, I was told the Caterpillar would cover the hole. There were women, old people, and children’s bodies along the road…. The majority of the bodies are rebels who were killed. The villagers refused to bury them. There are also the bodies of children who walked and died, and sick people. Some of the children die because of the water they drink, which comes from places where there have been bodies. Adults, they can drink this and it takes longer to make them sick…. All the wells, the mercenaries put the bodies of the rebels in the wells and the well water is the only water for drinking. I saw the bodies in the wells. This water, when you drink it you have to filter it [he holds out his shirt to show how they pour the water through clothing] then you boil it. It always continues to smell. One of the women I was walking with, I was carrying her child on my shoulders. Finally we left it to die. I was crying but I left it. We saw other sick ones who couldn’t walk anymore. Toulepleu itself is secure, the mercenaries surround it, the problem is water and food. The mercenaries don’t want people to leave because then WFP won’t come and give out food…. They said people can’t leave because they don’t want the region to be empty. 150 In Péhé, the last town before Toulepleu, many displaced civilians gathered who had fled the rebel attacks on their villages. People were forced to pay the Liberians in order to eat, and “if you’re unlucky you pay and then the food is finished and you get nothing. The people coming from Toulepleu have to pay at checkpoints to go get wood and go to their fields.”151 This practice was very likely at least partly responsible—along with the disease 147 “’Ils parlent anglais et tuent’: les déplacés fuient les ‘combattants libériens’,” Agence France Presse, January 24, 2003. 148 Confidential document on file with Human Rights Watch. 149 A photograph of members of the FLGO militia, composed of MODEL and Gueré militia fighters, shows them sitting in a car with this name—the Road of Death—painted on the side. The photograph was published in Jeune Afrique l’Intelligent, February 2-8, 2003, p.67. 150 Human Rights Watch interview, Abidjan, March 26, 2003. 151 Human Rights Watch interview, Abidjan, March 27, 2003. Human Rights Watch 38 August 2003, Vol. 15, No. 14 (A)