Liberia is a small and long-ravaged country in the west of Africa. Its population of three million has endured a lot in past decades: a coup d’etat in 1980, 10 years of military dictatorship under sergeant Samuel Doe, and two civil wars in which a total of 200,000 people perished. An entire generation of Liberians grew up amidst war and economic catastrophe. UNO peacemakers stopped the country’s self-destruction six years ago. Thanks to them over 120,000 fighters laid down their arms. Many of those peacemakers were Ukrainians – both soldiers and law enforcement representatives. Among them was one of the first Ukrainian policewomen to ever go to Africa, the former-captain (now major) Oksana Shumko. We recently met her in her native Brovary, a town near Kyiv.
She was prepared seriously: learning English, training to shoot and drive. The selection was strict and candidates were eliminated at every stage. At the end, out of 150 people, only 18 were left, four of them foolhardy girls. They had a month of boot camp in the Special Peacemaking Center of the Kyiv National University of Internal Affairs (in Vita Poshtova near Kyiv) and passed exams – first conducted by Ukrainian examiners, then by representatives of the Peacemaking Operation Department UNOSAT.
“During the mission, with its road full of danger, rationality and experience define whether you can overcome a hardship, or lose your equipment and even your health,” says Oksana Shumko, current Public and Mass Media Relations Department assistant of the Brovary police head. “For example, during the monsoon season the peacemakers found themselves in situations where their SUVs were sucked in the mud up to the roof, and the officers had to save themselves by leaving the drowning car.
In general, you need to shoot excellent, speak a foreign language and drive a jeep very well. Some features of the Black Continent scared us a bit. There were mangrove swamps, snakes, malaria mosquitoes, mangrove flies, all kinds of diseases and menacing tribes. During one lecture one of the girls started crying. I cried later. But we learned from the experience. Yet the emotions were so intense that one had to let them out, and this helped us manage. For instance, they do not hang the clothes in equatorial Africa but put them horizontally. Mangrove flies lay their eggs in the clothes that hang on the string. The larvae then penetrate into a human body and develop there. Thank God, I managed to escape a fatal meeting with those malicious insects, I did not get sick with any tropical disease, but I had to sleep under mosquito nets treated with insecticide.”
Having received the necessary doses of medicines and vaccines, and taking some icons along with the personal things, Oksana left for Liberia. It was 2006. Only three years had passed since the end of active hostilities. Major Anatoli Lomachevsky, head of Ukrainian contingent (from Vinnytsia Department for Combating Organized Crime), met the freshmen in the Monrovia airport. “Liberians rushed to us, offering the skycap service. We had to tip them – that is how the first dollar was spent. We sent a message via Internet from the airport: everything is ok. The police mission staff appeared to be quite international. In total there were over 2,000 of policemen from 36 countries and about 10,000 soldiers – we had to learn to communicate with all of them.”
They had to rent accommodation from the locals for their own money. Each room of the three-room apartment cost $600. In the improvised dorm four female Ukrainian officers settled in. Later the girls changed the location for different reasons, and at the end of her stay Oksana rented a room for $800. When buying any goods white people had to be ready to pay triple the price, those were the rules.
“After a short study each peacemaker exhibits preferences for work in some field. One of our girls was immediately sent to teach at Liberia Police Academy. Others, including myself, had to patrol for a few months,” remembers Oksana. “As we were not armed, we patrolled with soldiers from Nepal, and only in a jeep. At night there were two squads – Jordanian soldiers secured us. We were also limited in our walks, as for the command the most important thing was to preserve our lives. Once an entire female division from the Indian army was sent to us. They were quite serious women and shot the enemy without delay. I know of one incident when such a lady killed a Liberian that attacked her.
“The people were friendly in general. But different things happened. Once two policemen from Bosnia and a colleague from the Czech Republic, who served in my department, were attacked. The attackers waited in the bushes by the road. When one of our guys approached, he saw a lying body. The Czech had first aid skills and left the car to help. Around 10 robbers jumped out of the bushes. He was very good at hand-to-hand fighting and beat all of them! Few times we saw harsh justice. If one of the Liberians committed a crime and was caught by fellow citizens, he had to go through a very severe trial. They do not treat such people well and can kill for a trivial theft.”
“Ukrainians always do more than necessary”
Later Oksana started working as an administrative officer at the Operation department, where they gathered information about crimes from all over the country, and then reported them to a commissar and sent the materials to New York. Mostly thefts, robberies and rapes were registered.
Oksana Shumko remembers that once they received a call from Bong Mine town, where a five-year old girl disappeared. Somebody spread a rumor that the local police was involved and that they demanded $500 ransom. The police station, which had recently opened, as well as the houses of the policemen, were smashed up and burnt within minutes. People started building barricades, 14 policemen were injured. When the representatives of the police UNO mission arrived (not armed) a huge infuriated mob gathered, around 1,000 people. The armed Nigerian soldiers were still on their way to the place. The coordinator of regional activity and Russian army lieutenant colonel Oleksandr Tihyn was surrounded by the mob. He ordered Ukrainian captain Borys Hrechyshkin, who was with him, to get out of harm’s way. Soon the circle started closing around him and some people threw stones. Tihyn started asking them to calm down. Shortly after the Nigerians arrived. They found the girl’s body: she was killed, disfigured and drowned in the river in a plastic bag. It appeared that her own grandmother and her niece had done it because of the quarrel. Two men were also arrested in connection to the case.
Liberians continue to practice voodoo witchcraft despite the attempts to combat shamanism. Oksana remembers with horror how they arrived in Monrovia and in one of the villages someone had been murdered. The relatives of the victim went to the community chief and asked to help find the killer. He decided to help in accordance with the traditions of the ancestors. A dead body and a mysterious cult object were put into a coffin. The object was to reveal the killer by rattling. The whole procession went to each bungalow in the village. Everywhere, where the rattling was heard, grief came, because according to the shaman tradition…a killer lived there! Thus seven people were soon dealt with. Those were not isolated cases, as mentioned by Oksana in reports.
During the second year of the mission Shumko headed quite a large recruiting department with 30 people that dealt with recruiting the local population for police business and other tasks. They had to reform and renew the police – one of 16 (!) law enforcement agencies in the country. The recruiters as well as current policemen had to be thoroughly checked for involvement in military crimes, weapon and drug trafficking and other offenses. They had to be taught to read and write. Especially the girls, a major part of whom did not have secondary education.
“We worked on the education program for the women who were to serve in the police. When I arrived there, the police had only six percent women. A year later there were already 12 persent. The crime rate in the country is much lower now than in postwar times and it is gradually becoming one of the lowest on the continent,” Shumko proudly claims. “We went across the provinces and looked for girls who had elementary knowledge, giving them a possibility to be educated. The girls finished education in a special college, where in 10 months they reached graduate level. We taught them discipline, explained the dangers of big cities – it is not only a danger to become a victim of frauds, but early love too. Unintended pregnancy was a real problem for education and careers. Then they received a uniform and continued their education in a police academy. As far as I know, now in Liberia they recruit women to units of quick reaction. Actually the weaker sex has great authority: the president of the country for four years in a row is Elen Johnson, the first woman-head of a country in the Africa’s history. She stands out through her tough character and decisiveness, especially in fighting corruption.”
Oksana made a “multilayer” conclusion about her mission. First, Ukraine is not the worst place for living, and our people are decent. Ukrainian policemen are now invited to participate in the peacemaking police operation in Haiti. Why is it so? Oksana states that our people do not just follow the instructions, but always do more. At some point she stopped seeing the mission as a business trip and understood that she needed to come back home.
