Tom Freston of Vanity Fair has a startling piece on a Liberian encounter that he and Ralph Reed had with cannibal-warlord-turned-Christian-evangelist Joshua Blahyi, who once went by the name of General Butt Naked.
Clearly, you need to read the entire article, but here’s a taste:
Because of Mr. Blahyi’s new evangelical status, I asked Ralph Reed, the former head of the Christian Coalition, who was in our delegation, if he wanted to come and meet this self-styled warlord turned evangelist. He was curious and agreed. “I’ve never met a warlord before,” he said. So Ralph and I headed out one hot, humid afternoon in search of the former General Butt Naked, living now in a rundown suburb of Monrovia called the Chocolate City, as in the P-Funk album. George Clinton, like President Monroe, is on the Liberian map.
We were told to look for the general along the side of the road, just after the gritty port area, so he could guide us to his current headquarters. We drove through a crazy-quilt mix of dilapidated architecture—unfinished and war-torn buildings next to concrete huts with rusting corrugated-tin roofs, all framing an endless street bazaar. We spotted Joshua Blahyi next to a ramshackle market. He is a husky, well-built man and gave us a broad smile. He was in a spotless brown army shirt and had on a nametag. We followed him deep into Chocolate City, coming at last to an open-air, half-finished concrete-block structure with a dirt floor, where he runs his ministry for young men from the slums.
A group of Joshua’s staff and supporters, including a minister from neighboring Nigeria in a sharp suit, were assembled to greet us, along his current group of about 20 boys, whom he had handpicked from the slums for his program of rehabilitation that aims to get them detoxed and religious, and give them a craft to support themselves. We sat in a circle of plastic chairs and introduced ourselves.
When Ralph said that he once headed the Christian Coalition, a huge cheer went up. Joshua had the boys stand one by one and tell their stories. All were drug addicts, now in withdrawal. They calmly related their recent pasts as rapists, armed robbers, child soldiers, outcasts from their families, orphans, graveyard dwellers. Several had the hollow, dehumanized gaze you’ve seen in photos of Kalashnikov-toting street toughs.
- By Jim Galloway, Political Insider
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