With the departure of Mr Charles Taylor from office and from the country yesterday, Liberia has a real opportunity to escape from the dreadful plight to which his seven years of rebellion to 1996 and six years in power from 1997 reduced it.
A quarter of a million people are reckoned to have died violently in that time, among a population of three million, as Mr Taylor laid waste to a country rich in natural resources, provoking another rebellion against his rule.
Whether this opportunity is taken will depend critically on international pressure and aid to prevent a power vacuum developing after he is gone. It could be filled by yet another round of fighting between youthful militias high on drugs and alcohol and guilty of the most unspeakable atrocities against civilians. It is a measure of the disgust they have created that South African, Nigerian and Ghanaian leaders were in Monrovia yesterday to ensure the handover of power and to oversee the deployment of a West African peacekeeping force.
But it is still unclear if and when the 2,300 United States marines on warships off Liberia will be deployed in anything other than a token fashion. A US presence is essential if the handover of power and the deployment of international aid through the port of Monrovia are to be credible.
The sorry record of a similar regional African force in the 1996-97 transition is a dire warning of what could go wrong on this occasion. The US has a special relationship with Liberia, and a special responsibility for its welfare, following the assisted resettlement of freed slaves in the middle of the 19th century. Now that Mr Taylor has departed, as President Bush insisted he must do if US troops are to be used on the ground, there can be no excuse for more delay and prevarication, much of it driven by ideological argument in Washington about participating in UN interventions.
Unlike in Somalia in 1993, US troops would be welcomed on the ground. Their reputation and discipline would make a huge difference in stabilising Liberia and allowing the political and administrative transition proceed smoothly. The effective use of British troops in Sierra Leone in 2000 and of French forces this summer in eastern Congo, under UN mandates, shows there is precedence for such operations.
The immediate priority now is to secure the port of Monrovia from the rebel force, the Liberians United for Democracy and Reconciliation, in order to allow humanitarian supplies to relieve one million people going hungry in the capital. Once this is done attention will turn to the political transition.
The new president sworn in yesterday, Mr Moses Blah, has been a close associate of Mr Taylor, who said yesterday he hoped to return to the country. Preventing such a political reversion to bloody civil war will be a huge task over coming months. Liberians deserve all the outside help they can get with it.