MONROVIA, LIBERIA—It’s mid-day in downtown Monrovia and Mohammed Kromah and his friends are mobbing a busy intersection, jumping up and down and shouting at passing cars.
Down the street where it’s quieter, Kromah explains that the boys — all in their mid-20s and all former combatants from Liberia’s 14 years of civil wars — are just trying to attract customers for a car wash, to help them survive on the country’s still-mean streets.
Kromah fought with former Liberian president — and warlord — Charles Taylor and the National Patriotic Front of Liberia (NPFL) and later an opposition faction, United Liberation Movement of Liberia for Democracy (ULIMO-K). He was among those who went through the United Nation’s disarmament and reintegration programs but those projects were short-lived and inadequate, he says.