Armed gangs of young men no longer roam the streets of this town hacked out of the dense forests of eastern Liberia, an area laid waste by 14 years of war. A United Nations-sponsored disarmament program has brought enough security to Zwedru that traders sell their goods from stalls along the main street without fear of looting, while men sit chatting at the tea shops until late in the evening.

As Sunday's deadline for the disarmament of Liberia's former warring factions nears, most observers are calling the process a success, albeit a qualified one. More than 90,000 combatants have been demobilized and 26,000 weapons destroyed.

But the complexity of truly bringing peace to this war-ravaged nation becomes apparent one evening when angry voices drown out the buzz of conversation at a tea shop. The argument is about money. A one-time rebel commander is demanding a cut from the payments made to his former soldiers, and he doesn't seem to care who hears.

Attempts at extortion like this one are just one of the unintended consequences of Liberia's disarmament program, which has become one of the biggest forces driving the country's woeful economy. According to various officials working on the process, the $300 being paid to each demobilized fighter - totaling some $27 million - is breeding corruption among former commanders and fueling resentment among ordinary Liberians.

Officials say ex-commanders are recruiting civilians to pose as former combatants and briefing them on how pass themselves off as unarmed participants in the war. Those who slip through the screening questions posed by UN military observers are then forced to hand over most of the payment to the commanders; those who fail, particularly the women, often get beaten. Others bypass the screening questions by handing in precisely 150 bullets, the minimum to qualify automatically for disarmament.

Every afternoon in Zwedru, commanders flock to the vehicles dropping off their former troops after the four-day demobilization process to extort a share of the payment. It's a sign that faction leaders retain a substantial amount of control more than a year after former President Charles Taylor went into exile and a transitional government was formed, ending the civil war.

"There will always be unscrupulous commanders who try to benefit from the program," says Clive Jachnik, head of disarmament, demobilization, rehabilitation, and reintegration (DDRR) for the UN mission in Liberia. Mr. Jachnik says the program does not tolerate fraud and cracks down when it uncovers instances of coercion. But he is also critical of policy decisions made before he joined the mission earlier this year. "The planning could have been more comprehensive," he says. "Arms and cash should not be seen to be linked."

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