cc KippsterAs Liberia's Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) moves to address the country's troubled past, Lansana Gberie is entirely confused by the commission's direction and intent. With some US$8 million plus spent on the TRC over a two-year period, considerably more would have been expected from the commission's report than mere woolly, dull assertions. The report's dismissal of the views informing its findings undermines its relevance, Gberie argues, and is only saved from complete insignificance by the sheer outrageousness of its recommendations.
James Joyce was right that history is a nightmare, the African-American writer James Baldwin wrote, reflecting in a somnolent Swiss village on the racial tensions in his country: 'But it is a nightmare from which there is no awakening. People are trapped in history and history is trapped in them.' The words were written about 40 years ago, and were issued out of a specific context. But they seem to have a particular resonance for post-war Liberia.
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