TUBMANBURG, Liberia: A 22-year-old woman in embroidered jeans, a bright top and heeled shoes sips a soft fruit drink through a thick smudge of lipstick.

Meet Black Diamond, one of the most feared woman fighters in Liberia's civil war.

"Mortars are my favourite weapon," she says in a matter-of-fact way, adding that they dispose of even the most obstinate government troops.

"They are the most damaging for those good commanders on the government side," she said, sitting on a verandah on the outskirts of Tubmanburg, where the rebel Liberians United for Reconciliation and Democracy (LURD) have set up their headquarters.

At 22, Black Diamond is the head of LURD's Women Artillery Commandos, a feared unit of female warriors who fought their way into Monrovia alongside their rebel brothers-in-arms.

Three rebel attacks on the Liberian capital in June and July left at least 2,000 dead, many of them civilians felled by mortar bombs. Many were indiscriminately fired by drugged, ill-trained warriors on churches, schools and tin huts, far from any meaningful military target.

Black Diamond denies that she, or anybody else at LURD for that matter, was responsible for killing civilians.

"I am good at aiming. I use short-range (weapons) that don't go beyond the government troops. LURD doesn't kill civilians. Taylor's forces do that," she said, referring to President Charles Taylor, who flew into exile in Nigeria two weeks ago.

Plenty of traumatized Monrovians tell a different story.

"Those bombs the rebels fired, you could not even hear them coming. You would just hear a blast and by then it was too late," said Vicky Sesay, who like many others was badly wounded in the crossfire at West Point, a fishing community built by the ocean. Her husband was killed.

The rebels pulled back from Monrovia and let West African peacekeepers deploy only after Taylor, a former warlord, left on August 11. Last week they signed a deal with the government, pledging to stop fighting and end nearly 14 years of civil war.

Sorry tale

Like many battle-hardened fighters and skinny child soldiers on both sides of the frontline, Black Diamond has a sorry tale to tell.

She joined the rebels' struggle against Taylor in 1999 after being gang-raped by government forces in northern Lofa County.

"There were many reasons, but that was the key one. It made me want to fight the man who caused all that, because if you are a good leader you can't behave like that," she said.

At the time LURD was a fledgling group created by Taylor's old foes from a previous conflict, and Black Diamond went straight into the battle, without training.

She quickly rose through LURD's military hierarchy.

Women are better and more courageous warriors than men, she said, because often they have suffered the worst abuses - such as sexual violence.

"If you are angry, you get brave. You can become a master in everything."

Even her enemies acknowledge her military prowess.

"She is a really good fighter," said Peter Paye, a battalion commander for Taylor's Anti-Terrorist Unit. "I have a lot of respect for her."

Pregnant at the front

The killing of her parents - who nicknamed her Black Diamond when she was a small girl - by Taylor's forces fighting in neighbouring Guinea and Cote d'Ivoire only added to her bitterness.

"I am motherless, I am fatherless, so I don't care. God is my family now," she said.

In fact Black Diamond is not altogether alone. She has a baby girl from a relationship with Colonel Yankee, a fellow LURD fighter. Her pretty face brightens briefly as she talks about "Small Diamond," her 10-month-old daughter.

"I was at the front until I was eight months pregnant. I left her in Guinea. There was no one to take care of her here. But I will bring her back now that the war is over," she said.

As for her own future, Black Diamond says she is tired of fighting.

"We achieved our target: Taylor has left. I want to go to school. Let me know something."

Agencies via Xinhua

(China Daily 08/27/2003 page1)