First Liberian Civil War
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
| First Liberian Civil War | ||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Part of Liberian Civil War | ||||||||
|
||||||||
| Belligerents | ||||||||
 Armed Forces of LiberiaULIMO |
National Patriotic Front of Liberia | Independent National Patriotic Front of Liberia | ||||||
| Commanders | ||||||||
| Samuel Doe† | Charles Taylor | Prince Yormie Johnson | ||||||
The First Liberian Civil War was a conflict in Liberia from 1989 until 1996.
Contents |
[edit] Origins
Samuel Doe, the President of Liberia, had taken power in a popular coup of 1980 but opposition from abroad to his undemocratic regime led to economic collapse. At first, Doe crushed internal opposition, but after his Krahn tribe began attacking other tribes – particularly in Nimba County – conflict seemed inevitable.
Charles Taylor, who had left Doe's government, assembled a group of rebels in Côte d'Ivoire who later became known as the National Patriotic Front of Liberia (NPFL). They invaded Nimba County on 24 December 1989. The Liberian Army retaliated against the whole population of the region, attacking unarmed civilians and burning villages. Many left as refugees for Guinea and Côte d’Ivoire, but opposition to Doe was inflamed. Prince Johnson had sided with Taylor in the invasion, but soon split to form his own guerrilla force, based on the Gio tribe.
[edit] Overview
By the middle of 1990, a civil war was raging. Taylor's NPFL soon controlled much of the country, while Johnson took most of the capital, Monrovia. ECOWAS attempted to persuade Doe to resign and go into exile, but despite his weak position – besieged in his mansion – he refused. While making a brief trip out of the Executive Mansion to ECOMOG Headquarters, Doe was captured by Johnson on September 9, 1990, and tortured before being killed. The spectacle was videotaped and seen on news reports around the world.[1]
Peace was still far off as both Taylor and Johnson claimed power. ECOMOG declared an Interim Government of National Unity (IGNU) with Amos Sawyer as their president, with the broad support of Johnson. Taylor attacked Monrovia in 1992, but ECOMOG reinforced the city and negotiated the Cotonou Agreement, a treaty between the NPFL, IGNU and Doe’s remaining supporters (known as the United Liberation Movement of Liberia for Democracy or ULIMO). A coalition government was formed in August 1993.
In September 1994, the Akosombo Agreement attempted to replace the coalition with moves towards a democratic government, but IGNU rejected this. The Abuja Accord of August 1995 finally achieved this, but in April 1996 the NPFL and ULIMO again began fighting in Monrovia, leading to the evacuation of most international NGOs and the destruction of much of the city.
[edit] Chronology
[edit] Rebels trained in the Ivory Coast
The brutal treatment they faced at the hands of the Liberian army drove some indigenous northerners across the border to the Ivory Coast. There, Charles Taylor organized and trained many of them. During Doe's regime Taylor had served in the Liberian Government's General Services Agency, acting 'as its de facto director'.[2] However, he fled to the United States in 1983 amid what Stephan Ellis describes as the 'increasingly menacing atmosphere in Monrovia' shortly before Thomas Quiwonkpa, Doe's chief lieutenant, fled into exile himself. Doe requested Taylor's extradition for embezzling $900,000 of Liberian government funds. Taylor was thus arrested in the United States and after sixteen months broke out of a Massachusetts jail in circumstances that are still unclear.
[edit] The rebellion begins
On December 24, 1989, Charles Taylor and a small group of Libyan-trained rebels calling themselves the National Patriotic Front of Liberia (NPFL) entered Nimba County from neighboring Côte d'Ivoire and initiated a rebellion which became the Liberian Civil War.
The NPFL initially encountered plenty of support within Nimba County, which had endured the majority of Samuel Doe’s wrath after the 1985 attempted coup. When Taylor and his force of 100 rebels reentered Liberia in 1989, on Christmas Eve, thousands of Gio and Mano joined them. While these formed the core of his rebel army, there were many Liberians of other ethnic backgrounds who joined as well.
The Armed Forces of Liberia (AFL) launched counterattacks against Taylor’s forces. Tribal affiliations played a key role in the split between the Krahn, to which Doe and most of his adherents belonged, and the Gio and Mano people, who formed the bulk of the rebel forces. The rebel invasion soon pitted ethnic Krahn sympathetic to the Doe regime against those victimized by it, the Gio and the Mano. Thousands of civilians were massacred on both sides. Hundreds of thousands fled their homes.
By June 1990, Taylor's forces laid siege to Monrovia. In July 1990, Prince Yormie Johnson split from Taylor and formed the Independent National Patriotic Front (INPFL). The INPFL and NPFL continued their siege on Monrovia, which the AFL defended. Johnson quickly controlled parts of Monrovia prompting evacuation of foreign nationals and diplomats by the US Navy in August.
[edit] ECOMOG
In August 1990, the 16-member Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) agreed to deploy a joint military intervention force, the Economic Community Monitoring Group (ECOMOG), and place it under Nigerian leadership. The mission later included troops from non-ECOWAS countries, including Uganda and Tanzania. ECOMOG’s objectives were to impose a cease-fire; help Liberians establish an interim government until elections could beheld; stop the killing of innocent civilians; and ensure the safe evacuation of foreign nationals. ECOMOG also sought to prevent the conflict from spreading into neighboring states, which share a complex history of state, economic, and ethno-linguistic social relations with Liberia.
[edit] Capture, torture and execution of Doe
On 9 September 1990, Doe visited the barely established, newly arrived ECOMOG headquarters in the Free Port of Monrovia. Stephen Ellis says,[3] his motive was to lay a complaint that the ECOMOG commander had not paid a courtesy call to Doe, the Head of State, however, the exact circumstances that led to Doe’s visit to the Free Port are still unclear. Doe had been under pressure to accept exile outside of Liberia. However, after Doe arrived, Prince Johnson’s INPFL arrived at the headquarters and then attacked Doe's party. Doe was captured and taken to the INPFL’s Caldwell base. He was tortured, and then killed, and his torture and execution were videotaped by his captors.
[edit] Struggle for control of Monrovia
Johnson’s INPFL and Taylor’s NPFL continued to struggle for control of Monrovia in the months that followed. With military discipline absent and bloodshed throughout the capital region, members of the Economic Community of West Africa (ECOWAS) created the Economic Community Monitoring Group (ECOMOG) to restore order. The force comprised some 4,000 troops from Nigeria, Ghana, Sierra Leone, the Gambia and Guinea. ECOMOG succeeded in bringing Doe and Johnson to agree to its intervention, but Taylor's forces engaged it in the port area of Monrovia.
[edit] Interim Government of National Unity
In November 1990, ECOWAS invited the principal Liberian players to meet in Banjul, Gambia to form a government of national unity. The negotiated settlement established the Interim Government of National Unity (IGNU), led by Dr. Amos Sawyer, leader of the LPP. Bishop Ronald Diggs of the Liberian Council of Churches became vice president. However, Taylor's NPFL refused to attend the conference.
Within days, hostilities resumed. ECOMOG was reinforced in order to protect the interim government. Sawyer was able to establish his authority over most of Monrovia, but the rest of Liberia was in the hands of various factions of the NPFL or of local gangs.
[edit] ULIMO
The United Liberation Movement of Liberia for Democracy (ULIMO) was formed in June 1991 by supporters of the late President Samuel Doe and former Armed Forces of Liberia (AFL) fighters who had taken refuge in Guinea and Sierra Leone. It was led by Raleigh Seekie, a deputy Minister of Finance in the Doe government.
After fighting alongside the Sierra Leonean army against the Revolutionary United Front (RUF), ULIMO forces entered western Liberia in September 1991. The group scored significant gains in areas held by another rebel group – the National Patriotic Front of Liberia (NPFL), notably around the diamond mining areas of Lofa and Bomi counties.
From its outset, ULIMO was beset with internal divisions and the group effectively broke into two separate militias in 1994: ULIMO-J, an ethnic Krahn faction led by General Roosevelt Johnson and ULIMO-K, a Mandingo-based faction led by Alhaji G.V. Kromah.
The group was alleged to have committed serious violations of human rights, both before and after its breakup.
[edit] UNOMIL
On September 22,1993, the United Nations (U.N.) Security Council established the U.N. Observer Mission in Liberia (UNOMIL). It later deployed 368 militaryobservers and associated civilian personnel in early 1994 to monitor implementation of the abortive Cotonou Peace Agreement, prior to elections originally planned for February/March 1994. Renewed armed hostilities, however, broke out in May 1994 and continued, becoming especially intense in July and August. ECOMOG, and later UNOMIL, members were captured and held hostage by some factions. By mid-1994, the humanitarian situation had become disastrous, with 1.8 million Liberians in need of humanitarian assistance. Conditions continued to deteriorate, but humanitarian agencies were unable to reach many in need due to hostilities and general insecurity. Factional leaders agreed in September 1994 to the Akosombo Agreement, a supplement to the Cotonou agreement, named after the Ghanaian town where it was signed, but the security situation in Liberia remained poor. In October 1994, in the face of ECOMOG funding shortfalls and a lack of will by the Liberian combatants to honor agreements to end the war, the Security Council reduced to about 90 the number of UNOMIL observers. It extended UNOMIL’s mandate, however, and subsequently extended it several times until September 1997. In December 1994, the factions and other parties signed the Accra Agreement, a supplement to the Akosombo Agreement, but disagreements ensued and fighting continued.
[edit] Ceasefire
In August 1995, six years of civil war came to a sudden end as the main factions signed an agreement largely brokered by Ghanaian President Jerry Rawlings. At a conference sponsored by ECOWAS, the United Nations and the United States, the European Union, and the Organization of African Unity, Charles Taylor agreed to a cease-fire and a timetable to demobilize and disarm his troops.
At the beginning of September 1995, Liberia’s three principal warlords – Taylor, George Boley and Alhaji Kromah – made theatrical entrances into Monrovia. A ruling council of six members took control of the country preparatory to elections that were originally scheduled for 1996. Simultaneous elections for the presidency and national assembly were finally held in July 1997. In a climate hardly conducive to free movement and security of persons, Taylor and his National Patriotic Party won an overwhelming victory against 12 other candidates. Assisted by widespread intimidation, Taylor took 75 per cent of the presidential poll (no other candidate won more than 10 per cent) while the NPP won a similar proportion of seats in both parliamentary chambers.
Liberians had voted for Taylor in the hope that he would end the bloodshed. The bloodshed did slow considerably, but it did not end. Violent events flared up regularly after the putative end of the war. Taylor, furthermore, was accused of backing guerrillas in neighboring countries and funneling diamond monies into arms purchases for the rebel armies he supported, and into luxuries for himself.
[edit] Aftermath
The battles were ended by an amendment to the Abuja Accord in August, agreeing to disarmament and demobilization by 1997 and elections in July of that year. Charles Taylor formed the National Patriotic Party which won a large majority and left the country peaceful enough that refugees began to return. But other leaders were forced to leave the country, and some ULIMO forces reformed as the Liberians United for Reconciliation and Democracy (LURD). LURD began fighting in Lofa County with the aim of destabilizing the government and gaining control of the local diamond fields, leading to the Second Liberian Civil War.
In 1997, the Liberian people elected Charles Taylor as President after he entered the capital city, Monrovia, by force. The implicit unrest manifested during the late 1990s is emblematic in the sharp national economic decline and the prevalent sale of diamonds and timber in exchange for small arms.
[edit] Impact
The 1989-1996 Liberian civil war, which was one of Africa's bloodiest, claimed the lives of more than 200,000 Liberians and further displaced a million others into refugee camps in neighboring countries. Entire villages were emptied as people fled. Soldiers still children, committed atrocities, raping and murdering people of all ages, in what became one of the world's worst episodes of ethnic cleansing.[citation needed]
Liberia's civil war claimed the lives of one out of every 17 people in the country, uprooted most of the rest, and destroyed a once-viable economic infrastructure. The strife also spread to Liberia's neighbors, contributing to a slowing of the democratization that was progressing steadily through West Africa at the beginning of the 1990s and destabilizing a region that already was one of the world's most marginal.
[edit] Second Liberian Civil War
The Second Liberian Civil War began in 2002 and ended in October 2003, when UN and US military intervened to stop the rebel siege on Monrovia and exile Charles Taylor to Nigeria. By the conclusion of the final war, more than 250,000 people had been killed and nearly 1 million displaced. Half that number remain to be repatriated in 2005, at the election of Liberia's first democratic President since the initial 1980 coup d'etat of Samuel Doe.
[edit] The future after the war
The new president, Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf, was inaugurated in January and the National Transitional Government of Liberia terminated its power. After fourteen years of war, Liberians may be ready for development of basic services on peaceful terms, particularly electric current and primary infrastructure.
[edit] Armed groups that participated in the War
- Armed Forces of Liberia (AFL)
- Liberia Peace Council (LPC)
- Lofa Defense Force (LDF)
- National Patriotic Front of Liberia (NPFL)
- United Liberation Movement of Liberia for Democracy (ULIMO)
[edit] In fiction
- In the video game Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty, the primary protagonist Raiden (aka, Jack) fought in the Liberian Civil War as a child, as did the primary antagonist, Solidus Snake. Raiden is a member of a child unit, aged 6 (assumedly; based on Jack's fragmented recall of his own past). Solidus trained his squad and kept them under control by having them watch action movies and putting gunpowder in their foods to drug them. Raiden became known on the battlefield as the "White Devil" or "Jack the Ripper" (hence "Jack"). The war revealed his character of an unquestioning killer at heart.
[edit] References
[edit] External links
- The Liberian peace process Accord Magazine Online issue with articles, chronology and text of agreements
