History of Liberia

Introduction

July 26, 2007 marks the 160th anniversary of independence for the Republic of Liberia, a nation with a colorful social fabric and unique history. In 1822, the American Colonization Society founded Liberia as a colony for free African Americans – one of the few instances in which a social conflict in the United States led to mass emigration on another continent. In 1847, the repatriates declared their independence from the Society, thus launching the first republic in Africa and, after Haiti, the second modern black state. With citizenship having been limited by law to people of African descent since 1847, Liberians consist of various admixtures of Africans indigenous to the area, descendants of Ibo and Congolese who were settled here after being liberated from slave ships in the 19th century, and black immigrants from the United States, the Caribbean and other parts of Africa. After a long period of relative stability and tranquility, in December 1989, the country descended into a brutal and anarchic civil war, which lasted until July 1997. The high level of violence and tension waned with the inauguration in August 1997 of a new government that one month earlier had won in internationally monitored but flawed elections. That the flaw was significant became apparent when insurgency resumed in 1999, coming to a head in 2003. The six-year presidency of Charles G. Taylor was consequently ended that year. An interim government was mandated for two years, following which general elections were held. Ellen Johnson Sirleaf emerged victorious and was inaugurated January 16, 2006 the first female president of the nation.

Pre-Liberia – Social, Political, Cultural and Economic Systems to 1822

Although limited, archaeology and oral traditions reveal a record of human habitation in the territorial entity now known as Liberia that can be traced to antiquity. While precise dates cannot be given, there is some evidence that the area may have been occupied during the Sangoan period of the Stone Age. These earliest settlers are presumed to have been hunters and gatherers with some possible rudimentary forms of root horticulture. They probably were a part of the large Niger-Congo speaking people that populates much of West Africa to this day, and the earliest group in the Liberian area probably spoke a form of what today is classified as the Mel languages, represented here by the Kissi and Gola.

In the eastern section of Liberia, the area inhabited by Kruan-speaking peoples (Dei, Kuwaa [Belle], Bassa, Wee [Kran], Kru, Grebo), there is evidence of a general westward-southwestward movement of these peoples and of their linguistic and ethnic similarities to peoples in the western Cote d'Ivoire. In addition, we know that a branch of these people, the Dei, reached as far as the mouth of the Mano River, on Liberia's western boundary, prior to 1500. In a like manner, linguistic evidence demonstrates the westward spread of the Kuwaa (Belle) just to the interior of the Dei.

The third major population, which settled in Liberia after the Mel and Kruan speakers, was the Mande-speaking peoples, who seem to have moved out of the western savannah and into the forest region. Within Liberia there are three branches of the Mande language family. The Ma (Mano) and Dan (Gio), speakers of the Southern subdivision of Mande, were probably the earliest groups to penetrate and settle in the forest region. The second Mande-speaking group to enter this region was the southwestern subdivision of Mande speakers represented today by the Kpelle, Loma, Bandi and Mende. The third group of Mande speakers is the Vai, a part of the northern Mande subdivision. Their migration may be dated to about 1500, when they reached the coast in the area of the Mano River. The cultivation of grains, particularly rice, has been brought by migrations of Mande-speaking people from the savannah region. It is possible that this latter group also brought the techniques of spinning and weaving, as well as the ability to work metal, particularly iron smelting.

A major nexus for articulation of various ethnic groups and polities were the secret societies found throughout the northwest region. These societies, responsible for training youths in various artisan and other pursuits, were organized into male lodges, known generally as poro, and female societies, called sande. In addition to their educational role, the societies mediated between various polities during times of conflict, and controlled the supply of iron money. The dominance of specialists in these societies is reflected in the use of the same word, zo or zoo, for both high officials of the male societies and for highly qualified artisans.

Indigenous institutions, like the chieftaincy and poro, were severely strained by several centuries of slave trading. The common people (especially in the interior) were as victimized by the trade as their rulers (particularly on the coast) were dependent on it for the guns and jewelry that ensured their prestige. In the 19th century, the slave trade would decline both because it became economically untenable and was opposed by a growing abolitionist movement in Europe and the United States. After Britain abolished the slave trade in 1807, efforts by the Royal Navy to drive slavers from other more frequented markets merely increased the traffic on this coast. However, opposition to the slave trade in the early 19th century provided the basis for a consensus between repatriates and those indigenous Africans who had been victimized by the trade.

The ACS and the Establishment of the Liberian Colony, 1816-1847

Beginning in 1816, the American Colonization Society (ACS), supported by such leading Americans as Senators Henry Clay and Daniel Webster, Presidents Thomas Jefferson, James Madison and James Monroe, worked toward the creation of a colony in Africa for free blacks and manumitted slaves, along the lines of an earlier British effort at Sierra Leone. Implementation of the joint venture began after the U. S. Congress granted $100,000 for the repatriation to Africa of persons brought to America following the "official" American abolition of the slave trade. Between 1822 and 1867, the ACS succeeded in assisting the repatriation to Liberia of 19,000 black people, among them 4,540 freeborn, 7,000 manumitted slaves and more than 5,700 recaptured from slaving vessels.

The ACS "experiment" itself was of historic significance. A group whose ancestors had been exiled from Africa had now returned to the land of their roots, to a country populated by many other African peoples. For repatriates, their return had been motivated in part by the desire for liberty, defined largely as the opportunity to enjoy what they had been denied in America, particularly property ownership and their own institutions. The implantation of the black repatriates on this coast coincided with a pattern that had been charted by groups like the Vai before them and that would be followed after by some Mandingo, as an initial group of traders and missionaries were later joined by other kinfolk. Their path was paved in part by the prestige already enjoyed by their religion and their larger trade networks.

The first settlement by black New World repatriates in the area now known as Liberia was at Cape Mesurado, which was ceded in 1821 to agents of the American Colonization Society by the leaders of several ethnic groups then living in the area, specifically the Dei, Gola and Bassa. That settlement evolved into what is now Monrovia, the capital city. Some of the institutions created by immigrants, like their families and religious ceremonies, were part African, providing a further basis for articulation with indigenous Africans. Others, like the political construction of the Liberian state, were fundamentally informed by the diaspora background of the repatriates. Still others, such as the press and features of the bureaucratic state, were without significant antecedents in repatriate and indigenous cultures and, initially at least, would be operated by self-conscious recourse to explicitly articulated rules. The administrative division of the modern Liberian state has evolved over more than a century and a half of existence from dispersed indigenous communities, coastal settlement/hinterland regions, through counties/ provinces, to the present 13 counties.

Independent Liberia to 1944

Liberia's Atlantic coastline runs to 350 miles, behind which lies a geographically varied interior characterized by low plateaus, rolling plains, mountain ranges, steep hills and tropical rain forests. Located to the west of Liberia is the republic of Sierra Leone; to the north, the republic of Guinea; and to the east, the republic of Cote d'Ivoire. Its tropical climate is determined by its location near the equator and at right angles to the southwest monsoon. The two distinguishable seasons are the dry (November-April) and the wet (May-October). Over 200 inches of rain can fall during the year in coastal areas and less in the interior.

As the terminus of four major West African language groups, Liberia embraces 20 indigenous languages, a few such as Vai, Bassa, Kpelle and Loma with local scripts, and, at least one, Vai, with a developed literature. English is the official language, with a creole form, 'Liberian English," as an informal lingua franca. Some important towns include Monrovia (the capital and location of the free port), Yekepa, Sanniquellie, Voinjama, Ganta, Gbarnga, Cocopa, Zwedru, Harper, Greenville, Buchanan, Robertsport and Harbel. Agricultural products include such food crops as rice (the main staple of most Liberians), cassava, yams, palm products, coffee and cocoa; rubber (Liberia being the sixth largest world producer and largest in Africa); timber resources, and fishing. Mineral resources include iron ore (the major foreign exchange earner), gold, diamonds, and smaller quantities of bauxite, kynite and columbite.

For most of the 19th century, the authority of the Liberian government was confined to a few scattered coastal towns that were inhabited mainly by the repatriates and their descendants, with the rest of what is now Liberian territory occupied by separate polities inhabited by indigenes and governed by traditional rulers. The noncontinuous nature of the early Liberian polity, although an anomaly by Western standards, was relatively common in the West Africa forest belt where the dense tropical vegetation made communication difficult even between relatively proximal settlements. Commercial, political and military reasons prompted expansion, which proceeded along the coast until 1857 when the formation of coastal Liberia was virtually complete with four of the five coastal counties, namely Montserrado, Grand Bassa, Sinoe and Maryland.

The impetus for significant expansion into the hinterland was provided by the 1884-85 Berlin African Congress when European imperialists mandated countries at the conference to demonstrate effective territorial occupation of lands claimed. Trade imperatives also spurred movement into the interior. Inland expansion helped to erase an earlier distinction between the first counties, which had a width not exceeding 40 miles from the coast, and the adjoining territory, which in 1869 became known as the hinterland.

It is only in the 20th century, therefore, that the state solidified into its current form, encompassing an area of about 37,743 square miles. This geographic expansion of the polity produced a population increase, from 45,000 around 1900 to about one million in 1930. It also engendered conflicts, such as the Grebo resistance (1857, 1875 and 1910), the Kru resistance (1915-1916 and 1930s) and the Gola resistance of 1917, to name a few. To enforce the de jure limits of the state, Liberia in 1908 for the first time created a national army, the Liberian Frontier Force.

By the first quarter of the twentieth century, the hinterland was administratively divided into western, central and eastern provinces. Liberia thus consisted of five coastal counties (Grand Cape Mount was created from Montserrado), four territories-Marshall, Rivercess, Sasstown and Kru Coast-incorporated within four counties, and three provinces. The "county jurisdiction," inhabited by a smaller percentage of the population (largely of repatriate descent), came under the authority of the statute law system based on the 1847 constitution, but the "hinterland [later provincial] jurisdiction," where the vast majority of the population lived, did not. Not only did this allow for the establishment by the government of informal control over these provinces, but the character of that arrangement was such as to leave interior Liberia in a politically subordinate relationship to the coastal areas until recent times.

Early Liberia faced chronic financial problems, which further complicated its national life. In response to the "industrial capitalism" that began to replace the plantation system worldwide, enterprising Liberians resorted to commercial trading. An admirable Liberian shipping fleet developed, but, overtaken by international competitors at the end of the 1860s, the main Liberian economic enterprise shifted to government employment. And, in the absence of productive industry to generate funds for sustenance of the bureaucracy, an era of foreign loans was initiated. The first loan of 1871 led to others in 1906, 1912 and 1926. As collateral for these loans, many at high interest rates, state revenues (largely from customs tariffs) were conceded and land and product rights were granted. It was this economic policy that led to the era of concession agreements, the most notable being with Firestone in 1926.

However, Liberia had hardly overcome international intrigue, including American high-handedness during the negotiations of the Firestone agreement when, in 1929, accusations of internal "forced labor" had to be met. The state was censured internationally for complicity in a system, which League of Nations commissioners alleged was "hardly distinguishable from slave-raiding and slave trading." The political fallout from that crisis led to the downfall of the administration of President Charles D. B. King (1920-1930).
To Edwin J. Barclay (1930-1944), his successor, fell the task of unraveling the complications, internal and external, of that episode. Those European powers in the League of Nations that sought to abrogate Liberia's independence by advocating mandate status for the republic were thwarted both because of the contradictions in international relations of the time as well as by the determination of the Barclay government to forestall that possibility. Concerning the issue of governance of Liberia's indigenous population, and the complications caused by the League crisis, Barclay was not so fortunate, as some aggrieved indigenous leaders opted to make common cause with external foes of the state. As a consequence, Barclay adopted a more repressive attitude toward all forms of internal dissent.

The Liberian State under Tubman and Tolbert, 1944-1980

When William V. S. Tubman (1944-1971) succeeded to the presidency, he inherited a country that was no longer threatened with political obliteration by external powers. The value of its historic ties with the United States (including a dependent economic system) was questioned, and a somewhat tranquil relationship existed with indigenous Liberians despite the persistence of problems. The touchstones of Tubman's new approach were: an unreserved embrace of the Western countries in their East/West power conflict; advocacy, with little reservation, of an Open Door Policy for foreign economic involvement in development; and the pursuit of National Unification through accelerated assimilation of indigenous Liberians into the mainstream of an essentially repatriate-created society.

By a legislative act of 1963, a major administrative reorganization was effected, surpassing in scope and impact the establishment of the three provinces. A year later, Liberia was divided into nine counties-the original five coastal counties (including the four territories, to which were subsequently added Bomi and Gibi)-and the four new interior counties of Lofa, Bong, Nimba and Grand Gedeh. With this development, the Liberian state was undertaking a major stride toward the removal of the distinctions between the coast and interior, a process (not simply an event) leading to greater national integration among various ethnic groups.

The legacy of the past lingers, however, reflecting differences in the level and quality of formal education and the accompanying changes in lifestyle and worldview as between inhabitants of the old coast and the old interior. Even though not more than 20 percent of the national population of 2.6 million is lettered, an increasing number of Liberia's youth is clamoring
for literacy and formal education. Such opportunities, once focused on the coastal areas, began making inroads into the interior in the 1960s.

Although Liberia, along with other developing nations, was the beneficiary of phenomenal economic growth in the 1950s and 1960s, it was not accompanied by adequate human development and equity. The vote was extended to women and men who were of indigenous background providing in theory for universal suffrage, but a restrictive property clause was maintained. Administrative improvements in the interior were effected, culminating in the 1964 transformation of the old hinterland provinces to county status. But it must be added that these major internal political reforms only brought representational parity between the about 30,000 repatriates and the one million indigenes. However, the historic economic ascendancy of the repatriates and the absolute political power by the presidency remained.

In July 1971, Vice President William R. Tolbert, Jr. inherited the presidency on Tubman's death (apparently of natural causes at the age of 75). Having survived 19 years as Tubman's vice president, a vantage point that exposed him to the public, his accession to power was received with mixed feelings. Yet the apparently widespread perception of Vice President Tolbert as lacking in political savvy momentarily gave way to a general disposition to cooperate with the "President by constitutional succession" as he began outlining his plans for "a new breed of Liberians" and self-reliance for the realization of a "Wholesome Functioning Society."

When Tolbert became president, he appeared to embrace economic growth with social, economic and political equity: a shift from export-oriented development activity to balanced investment in agriculture, education, health and labor-intensive projects, as well as decentralized planning to meet the needs of specific sectors and regions. Achievement of these objectives required strong and committed political and administrative support, and Tolbert sought the expertise of an emerging Liberian technocratic class (with an important indigenous component), along with the political acquiescence of the traditional ruling elite. The hope entertained was twofold: that the technocratic class (in tune with the real needs of Liberia as well as African development) would translate the strategy into policies that would spell real development, and that the traditional ruling elite would support the effort "on pragmatic grounds" (that is, if they were assured of the diversion of a tolerable degree of development funds to "special interests," and/or if they recognized the pressure from emerging populist political movements).

Tolbert's leadership style produced conflicting signals so that, initially at least, all elements vying for power counted on him for maximum support. The old politicians had hoped that his progressive pronouncements were confined to the rhetorical, and that the "imperatives" of political stability (that is, the status quo) would supersede all else. But the new politicians seemed to have accepted his populist rhetoric as sincere declarations of intent and proceeded, in many instances, to act concretely thereupon. Prominent among these were the Progressive Alliance of Liberia (PAL), the Movement for Justice in Africa (MOJA) and the Liberian National Student Union (LINSU). In this atmosphere of political tension, Tolbert displayed indecision while making common cause with "African progressives" and thus possibly alienating the United States without assurance of a compensatory international relationship. This indecisiveness rendered him a virtual political recluse at the center of a raging political storm.

Liberia since 1980

A successful military coup d'état intervened on April 12, 1980, when a few enlisted men of the Armed Forces of Liberia stormed the Executive Mansion, assassinated President Tolbert and declared that their seizure of power was in order to end governmental mismanagement characterized by "rampant corruption, misuse of public office and violation of human rights." A military junta composed of 17 men was constituted as the People's Redemption Council, and chaired by Master-Sergeant Samuel K. Doe, who also became head of state and commander in chief of the Armed Forces of Liberia (AFL).

Following the public execution of 13 former officials 10 days after the coup, hundreds of civil servants fled into exile, depriving the government of a significant pool of bureaucratic skills, traditions and information. The replacement of an executive presidency with a 17-member People's Redemption Council escalated the corrosion of the state through the formation of cliques around each council member, which fueled deadly fissiparous rivalries among council members. By 1985, the regime had executed 80 persons for political reasons and detained over-600 without trial, usually in connection with one alleged coup plot or another. In August 1984, an army attack on student protesters at the University of Liberia left several dead, many raped and over 100 injured.

These atrocities notwithstanding, the United States supplied more aid to Liberia during the tenure of the military government than to all of the previous civilian governments combined. American aid, which had never exceeded $20 million per annum prior to 1980, topped $91 million in 1985, with military aid increasing from $1.4 million to $14 million annually.

After years of protests and pressure, Liberians went to the polls on October 15, 1985, to choose a president, as well as 90 legislators. There were four candidates in the presidential race, including Samuel Doe. An election-night vote count, made in the presence of representatives of various parties, gave 63 percent of the vote to Jackson F. Doe (no relation to Samuel Doe), standard- bearer of the Liberia Action Party. That count was nullified by the government, and tabulation was turned over to a 50-member committee, which awarded the election to Samuel K. Doe.

After the rigging of the 1985 elections, many in the opposition movement became convinced that the regime was immune to peaceful, purely local pressures and turned covertly to mobilizing military support from neighboring governments, culminating in a 1985 attempted coup led by General Thomas G. Quiwonkpa, with the financial and logistical support of civilian opposition leaders. The coup was successfully suppressed, followed by a purging of the army as well as massive retaliatory violence against allies, clients and ethnic affiliates of Quiwonkpa.

The Liberian Civil War began on December 24, 1989, when the National Patriotic Front of Liberia (NPFL), which came to be led by Charles Taylor and other civilian allies of Quiwonkpa, launched a raid into Nimba County from its base in Cote d'Ivoire aimed at igniting a rebellion against the Doe government. The Front was backed by a formidable but improbable assortment of foreign supporters, united by their antipathy for Doe, including the governments of Burkina Faso, Cote d'Ivoire, Libya and possibly France. Within seven months, the NPFL held 95 percent of the country and was poised to seize Monrovia.

From December 1989 to July 1997, Liberia was embroiled in an intractable and devastating civil war that exacerbated tensions between Francophone countries and Anglophone West African states, fueled the overthrow of a civilian government in The Gambia by junior officers, and helped to spark a civil war in Sierra Leone. More than 200,000 of the country's 2.6 million people were killed. At the height of the war, there were approximately 800,000 displaced within the country, most of whom settled in camps near Monrovia, the capital, with another 700,000 as refugees in neighboring countries. In addition, fighting destroyed many public buildings and significantly damaged the infrastructure, including the water and electrical systems.

The rapid advance of NPFL forces, coupled with evidence of autocratic tendencies, precipitated a series of interconnected efforts by Liberian civilian politicians, West African heads of states and the United States government designed to forestall a military victory by the insurgent group. In June 1990, regional leaders through the framework of the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) organized a mediation committee, with support from the Liberian Inter-Faith Mediation Committee. The mediation committee established a multinational military monitoring group, known as ECOMOG, which landed in Monrovia on August 24, 1990. Under the auspices of ECOWAS, an Interim Government of National Unity (IGNU) was formed by civilian politicians at a conference in Banjul, The Gambia, on August 26-September 1, 1990, with Amos C. Sawyer as president.

As ECOMOG maneuvered to install the Interim Government in Monrovia, it won support from a faction of the NPFL that had broken away under the leadership of Prince Yormie Johnson. Johnson's Independent National Patriotic Front of Liberia (INPFL) had maintained a base at Caldwell, a suburb of the capital. On September 9, Samuel K. Doe was abducted by the INPFL and later tortured to death by Johnson. By April 1991, two other anti-NPFL militias had emerged: Movement for the Redemption of Liberian Muslims (MRM), which was formed by Mandingo supporters of the late Samuel K. Doe, based in Guinea and headed by Doe's former information minister Alhaji G. V. Kromah, along with Liberian United Democratic Front (LUDF), which was formed in Sierra Leone by former members of the AFL. By October 1991, MRM and LUDF had fused into the United Liberation Movement for Democracy in Liberia (ULIMO).

On October 20, 1992, the NPFL launched "Operation Octopus," an all-out effort to capture Monrovia, which brought large-scale destruction and death to the capital for the first time since the war began. ECOMOG's repulsion of the NPFL created a vacuum that a number of groups sought to fill. Several small militias emerged, including the Liberia Peace Council (LPC), Nimba Defense Force (NDF), Lofa Defense Force (LDF) and Bong Defense Front (BDF), while a permanent split developed within ULIMO, between ULIMO-J, headed by Roosevelt Johnson, and ULIMO-K, led by Kromah. By the end of 1994, the various military factions reportedly held the following territories: LPC along the coastal regions of Grand Kru, Sinoe and River Cess; NPFL with northern Grand Gedeh and parts of Bong, Nimba, Margibi and Maryland; ULIMO-J in Grand Cape Mount, Bomi and lower Lofa; ULIMO-K in upper Lofa and western Bong.

In the course of the war, several international conferences were convened in an attempt to negotiate an end to the conflict. These included meetings in Freetown, Sierra Leone, June 1990; Banjul, Gambia, August 26-September 1, 1990; Bamako, Mali, November 28, 1990; Lomé, Togo, February 12, 1991; Yamoussoukro, Cote d'Ivoire, July-September 1991; Geneva, Switzerland, July 16, 1993; Cotonou, Benin, July 25, 1993; Akosombo, Ghana, September 12, 1994; Accra, Ghana, December 21, 1994; Abuja, Nigeria, July and August 1995. The second meeting at Abuja, which proved to be decisive, produced a timetable and plan of action for demobilizing and disarming some 60,000 armed combatants by January 1997; use of force by ECOMOG, if necessary, to enforce compliance; international sanctions against those leaders of military factions who did not comply, including trial for crimes against humanity; elections by May 1997, with the resulting government to be inaugurated in July.

A caretaker transitional government was formed, headed by Ruth S. F. Perry, the first female head of state in modern Africa. The elections, which were held July 19, 1997, drew 90 percent of the approximately one million registered voters. The presidency was won by Charles Taylor of the NPFL, with 75 percent of the votes. The majority of seats in the 25-member Senate and 64-seat House of Representatives went to the NPFL, on the basis of proportional representation.

Although factional fighting practically ceased after the new government was installed on August 2, 1997, fallout from the Liberian crisis continues in the form of a lingering civil war in Sierra Leone. While a peace accord involving the parties to the conflict was concluded in late 1999, implementation remained a challenge as the year ended. And this had implications for the post-conflict situation in Liberia given extensive international reportage of Liberian government hands in the Sierra Leone war.

For Liberia itself, the first few years of the Taylor presidency have received mixed reviews. On the one hand, the government and its supporters point to the restoration of a reunified country after seven years of civil war as a worthy accomplishment, while on the other hand many point to the need for the prevalence of deeds over words if an enduring measure of achievement is to be established. Where words are many, the deeds seem difficult to discern. Instead, highlights of misdeeds seem to match the barrage of government pronouncements. President Taylor himself joined the critics in acknowledging his first year in office a failure. For the second year, he added that the responsibility for the failure was the unwillingness of the international community to aid his government's reconstruction efforts.

Meanwhile, the events that marked the years since the August 2, 1997, installation of the elected government were not ones of comfort. They saw  unresolved allegations of human rights abuse (the Samuel Dokie and other murders); the government's September 2, 1998, announcement of a coup plot; the Camp Johnson road incident of September 18-19, 1998, involving former faction leader Roosevelt Johnson and government forces; and the spillover of this incident into a row between the Taylor government and the United States.

The economic situation was also far from encouraging. A Panafrican News Agency report of November 23, 1999, indicated that the minister of planning and economic affairs put unemployment in the country at 80 percent and underemployment at 75 percent. The head of a donor assessment team made public remarks suggesting the absence of an enabling environment for meaningful donor participation in economic resuscitation.

There was a paradox of a democratically elected government's inability to capitalize on the legitimacy necessary to inspire leadership at home and confidence abroad. With the continuation of war-level international relief assistance in parts of the country, the revival or creation of small-scale industries, the population coped as best it could. With only a few exceptions, the overwhelming attitude of the international community toward the Monrovia regime remained one of a cautious "wait and see." Liberia thus entered the new millennium in perilous domestic circumstances and perhaps as one of the most marginalized of states internationally.

Rather than work to improve Liberians' quality of life, Taylor supported the Revolutionary United Front in Sierra Leone. His misrule led to the resumption of armed rebellion from Taylor's former adversaries. In 2003, armed groups that fought Taylor during Liberia's previous civil war began to challenge him and his increasingly fragmented supporters.

In June 2003, ECOWAS facilitated peace talks among the government of Liberia, civil society, and the rebel groups. On the same day, the Chief Prosecutor of the Special Court for Sierra Leone announced the opening of a sealed March 2003 indictment of President Taylor for his role in atrocities in Sierra Leone since November 1996. In July 2003, the government of Liberia and the rebel groups signed a cease-fire, but none of the parties respected the agreement. Fighting ensued in downtown Monrovia in July and August 2003, creating a large-scale humanitarian disaster.

Under intense international pressure, President Taylor resigned office in August 2003 and departed into exile in Nigeria. This enabled the ECOWAS deployment of what would become a major peacekeeping mission in Liberia (ECOMIL). On August 18, 2003, government, rebel, political party, and civil society leaders signed a comprehensive peace agreement that established guidelines for a two-year transitional Liberian government headed by businessman Gyude Bryant. The UN took over security in Liberia in October 2003, turning ECOMIL into a force that grew to its present size of over 15,000.

A New Era for Liberia

In 2005, the October presidential and legislative elections and subsequent November presidential run-off were the most free, fair, and peaceful elections in Liberia's history. Ellen Johnson Sirleaf defeated international soccer star George Weah 59.4 percent to 40.6 percent, becoming Africa's first democratically elected female president.

President Sirleaf has focused her early efforts in office on re-establishing basic services like water and electricity to Monrovia, for which Liberia has received $30 million (U.S.) from the World Bank.  She also established a Truth and Reconciliation Commission to address crimes committed late in Liberia's long civil war and is working to re-establish Liberia's food independence.

In April 2006, the government released a short-term recovery and development agenda. Objectives include revitalizing the economy, combating corruption, restructuring the country's security forces, rebuilding infrastructure and strengthening governance and rule of law.

In order to continue to get funding, Liberia must demonstrate how it plans to repay its foreign debt of $3.5 billion (U.S.). Liberia has planned a donor conference for February 2007 and hopes to attract international investment in redevelopment efforts. Partly in appreciation of Nigeria's help in securing Liberia's peace, Sirleaf has extended an invitation to the Nigerian business community to participate in business opportunities in Liberia, and exiled Liberians are investing in their homeland and participating in rebuilding efforts.

Taking on perhaps the greatest threat to Liberia's peace and stability, Sirleaf requested the extradition of Charles Taylor from Nigeria to Sierra Leone to face the charges against him. Arrested on March 29, 2006, Taylor was held in a Sierra Leone prison until June 20, 2006, when he was extradited and sent to the Hague to appear before a war crimes tribunal. Great Britain has agreed to imprison him should he be found guilty.

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Source information:
Dunn, D. Elwood, Carl Patrick Burrowes and Amos Jones Beyan, Eds. 
Historical Dictionary of Liberia, 2nd Edition. African Historical Dictionaries, 83. Lanham, Md.: Scarecrow Press. 2001: 1-12.