First Liberian Civil War
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First Liberian Civil War | |||||||
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Part of the Liberian Civil Wars and spillover of the Sierra Leone Civil War | |||||||
INPFL militiamen in 1990 after taking control of much of Monrovia | |||||||
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Belligerents | |||||||
ULIMO (1991–1994)
| Anti-Doe | ||||||
Commanders and leaders | |||||||
ULIMO: | |||||||
Strength | |||||||
450,000 | 350,000 | ||||||
Casualties and losses | |||||||
Total killed: ~200,000 including civilians[1] |
The First Liberian Civil War was the first of
The First Liberian Civil War killed around 200,000 people and eventually led to the involvement of the
Background
Samuel Doe takes power in coup (1980)
Samuel Doe took power in a popular rebellion in 1980 against the Liberian Government, becoming the first Liberian President of non Americo-Liberian descent. Doe established a military regime called the People's Redemption Council and enjoyed support from Liberian ethnic groups who were denied power since the founding of the country in 1847.
Any hope that Doe would improve the way Liberia was run was put aside as he quickly clamped down on opposition, fueled by his paranoia of a counter-coup attempt against him. As promised, Doe held
Coup attempt by Thomas Quiwonkpa (November 1985)
Thomas Quiwonkpa, the former Commanding General of the Armed Forces of Liberia whom Doe had demoted and forced to flee the country, attempted to overthrow Doe's regime from neighbouring Sierra Leone. The coup attempt failed and Quiwonkpa was killed and allegedly eaten.[3] His body was publicly exhibited on the grounds of the Executive Mansion in Monrovia soon after his death.[4]
Mistreatment of the Gio and Mano ethnic groups (1985)
The Gio and Mano ethnic groups were persecuted because they were suspected of treason and were seen as inferiors to the President's own tribe, the Krahn. The mistreatment of the Gio and Mano increased tensions in Liberia, which had already been rising due to Doe's preferential treatment of his own group.
Charles Taylor builds insurgent forces (1985-1989)
First Liberian Civil War (1989-1997)
Charles Taylor's force attacks (1989)
Ethnic conflict and siege of Monrovia
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. Thousands of Gio and Mano joined when Taylor and his force of 100 rebels reentered Liberia in 1989, on Christmas Eve. Doe responded by sending two AFL battalions, including the 1st Infantry Battalion,[6] to Nimba in December 1989-January 1990,[7] apparently under then-Colonel Hezekiah Bowen.[8]
The AFL acted in a very brutal and scorched-earth fashion, which quickly alienated the local people. The rebel invasion soon pitted
By May 1990 the AFL had been forced back to
ECOWAS intervention force (August 1990)
In August 1990, the 16-member
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. The
Capture and killing of Samuel Doe (September 1990)
On 9 September 1990, Doe visited the newly established ECOMOG headquarters in the Free Port of Maher. According to Stephen Ellis,[14] his motive was to complain that the ECOMOG commander had not paid a courtesy call to him as 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. After Doe arrived, a large rebel force led by Prince Johnson's INPFL also arrived and attacked Doe's party. Doe was captured and taken to the INPFL's Caldwell base. He was brutally tortured before being killed and dismembered. His torture and execution was videotaped by his captors.[15][16]
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 ECOWAS created the Economic Community Monitoring Group (ECOMOG) to restore order. The force comprised some 4,000 troops from
Peacemaking attempts (1990)
A series of peacemaking conferences in regional capitals followed. There were meetings in Bamako in November 1990, Lomé in January 1991, and Yamoussoukro in June–October 1991. But the first seven peace conferences, including the Yamoussoukro I-IV processes failed. 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.
ULIMO
The
After fighting alongside the Sierra Leonean army against the Sierra Leonean Revolutionary United Front (RUF) rebels, ULIMO forces entered western Liberia in September 1991. The group scored significant gains in areas held by another rebel group – Taylor's 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:
The group was alleged to have committed serious violations of human rights, both before and after its breakup.
Attack on Monrovia (1992)
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 launched an assault on Monrovia on October 15, 1992, named 'Operation Octopus'[17] which may have been led by Burkina Faso soldiers.[18] The resulting siege lasted two months.
By late December, ECOMOG had pushed the NPFL back beyond Monrovia's suburbs.
UNOMIL
In 1993, ECOWAS brokered a peace agreement in Cotonou, Benin. Following this, on September 22, 1993, the United Nations (U.N.) Security Council established the UN Observer Mission in Liberia (UNOMIL), to support ECOMOG in implementing this peace agreement. UNOMIL was deployed in early 1994 with 368 military observers and associated civilian personnel to monitor implementation of the Cotonou Peace Agreement, prior to elections originally planned for February/March 1994.
Renewed armed hostilities 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 Benin city where it was signed. 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 UN Security Council reduced to about 90 the number of UNOMIL observers. It extended UNOMIL's mandate 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. Disagreements ensued and fighting continued.
Ceasefire (1995)
In August 1995, the main factions signed an agreement largely brokered by Ghanaian President
At the beginning of September 1995, Liberia's three principal warlords – Taylor,
Fighting in Monrovia (1996)
Heavy fighting broke out again in April 1996. This led to the evacuation of most international non-governmental organizations and the destruction of much of Monrovia. The U.S. Armed Forces enacted Operation Assured Response which resulted in the removal of 485 Americans and over 2,400 citizens hailing from 68 different countries.[19]
In August 1996, these battles were ended by the
1997 Elections
Simultaneous elections for the
Aftermath
In 1997, the Liberian people elected Charles Taylor as the President after he entered the capital city, Monrovia, by force. 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 money into arms purchases for the rebel armies he supported, and into luxuries for himself. 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.
After Taylor's victory, Liberia was sufficiently peaceful 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.
Impact
The Liberian civil war was one of Africa's bloodiest. From 1989 to 1996, it claimed the lives of more than 200,000 Liberians and further displaced a million others into refugee camps in neighboring countries.
The 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. It helped slow democratization in West Africa at the beginning of the 1990s and destabilized a region that already was one of the world's most unsteady.
Second Liberian Civil War
The Second Liberian Civil War began in 1999 and ended in October 2003, when ECOWAS intervened to stop the rebel siege on Monrovia and exiled Charles Taylor to Nigeria until he was arrested in 2006 and taken to The Hague for his trial. 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'état of Samuel Doe.
Former president Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, who initially was a strong supporter of Charles Taylor, was inaugurated in January 2006 and the National Transitional Government of Liberia terminated its power.
Charles Taylor was sentenced to a trial in 2003, after being accused of rape and acts of sexual violence, promoting child soldiers, and an illegal ownership of weapons. He denied these accusations but was eventually testified against by his victims. He was then sentenced to 50 years in prison.
Lists
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)
- Independent National Patriotic Front of Liberia (INPFL)
- National Patriotic Front of Liberia-Central Revolutionary Council(NPFL-CRC)
- United Liberation Movement of Liberia for Democracy (ULIMO)
- United Liberation Movement of Liberia for Democracy-Johnson faction(ULIMO-J)
- United Liberation Movement of Liberia for Democracy-Kromah faction(ULIMO-K)
Peace agreements
Peace agreements signed included the:[20]
- Banjul III Agreement (14 October 1990)
- Bamako Ceasefire Agreement (28 November 1990)
- Banjul IV Agreement (21 December 1990)
- Lomé Agreement (13 February 1991)
- Yamoussoukro IV Peace Agreement (30 October 1991)
- Geneva Agreement 1992 (7 April 1992)
- Cotonou Peace Agreement (25 July 1993)
- Akosombo Peace Agreement (12 September 1994)
- Accra Agreements/Akosombo clarification agreement (21 December 1994)
- Abuja Peace Agreement (19 August 1995)
In literature
Liberia during this civil war is one of the numerous locations worldwide depicted in The Savage Detectives (Los Detectives Salvajes in Spanish), a novel by the Chilean author Roberto Bolaño published in 1998, just after the end of this war.
The 2020 memoir by Liberian-American author Wayétu Moore, The Dragons, The Giant, The Women, recounts her family's flight from Monrovia when she was a five year old at the onset of the war.[21]
See also
General:
References
- ^ "First Liberian Civil War (1989-1996) •". 25 July 2016.
- ISSN 0882-7729. Retrieved 17 October 2017.
- ISBN 978-1-61048-881-5.
- ^ "How Quiwonkpa Was Killed". Daily Star 1985-11-18: 5.
- ^ Stephen Ellis, The Mask of Anarchy, Hurst & Company, London, 2001, p.57, 67-68
- ^ HRW, Flight from Terror, May 1990
- ^ Charles Hartung, 'Peacekeeping in Liberia: ECOMOG and the Struggle for Order,' Liberian Studies Journal, Volume XXX, No.2, 2005
- ^ Mark Huband, The Liberian Civil War, p.115, 118-119
- ^ "Liberian church massacre survivors seek US justice". BBC News. 12 February 2018. Retrieved 14 December 2018.
- ^ "Liberia Troops Accused Of Massacre in Church". The New York Times. 31 July 1990. Retrieved 14 December 2018.
- ^ Hubard, p.115
- ISBN 0-932088-65-1.
- ^ Adebajo, 2002, p.75
- ^ The Mask of Anarchy, by Stephen Ellis, 2001, p.1-9
- ^ Armon, Jeremy; Andy Carl (1996). "Liberia: Chronology". Conciliation Resources. Archived from the original on 8 March 2007. Retrieved 26 February 2007.
- ISBN 978-1850654179.
- ^ See Ellis, Mask of Anarchy, 98-99.
- ^ Herbert Howe, Ambiguous Order, 2005, 143.
- ^ "Operation Assured Response". www.globalsecurity.org. Retrieved 16 August 2023.
- ^ "Uppsala Conflict Data Program".
- ^ Talusan, Grace (2 June 2020). "Wayétu Moore Escapes a Civil War in Liberia. In America, She Encounters a New Kind of Danger". The New York Times. Retrieved 30 May 2021.
Further reading
- Gerdes, Felix: Civil War and State Formation: The Political Economy of War and Peace in Liberia, Frankfurt/New York: Campus Verlag & University of Chicago Press, 2013
- Hoffman, Danny. "The City as Barracks: Freetown, Monrovia, and the Organization of Violence in Postcolonial African Cities." Cultural Anthropology. Volume 22 #3 August 2007. pp. 400–428.
- Huband, Mark. "The Liberian Civil War". Frank Cass (1998). ISBN 0-7146-4340-8
- Moran, Mary H. Liberia: The Violence of Democracy - University of Pennsylvania Press, 2008
- Omeje, Kenneth. "War to peace transition: conflict intervention and peacebuilding in Liberia." (2009).
External links
- The Liberian peace process Accord Magazine Online issue with articles, chronology and text of agreements
- https://web.archive.org/web/20120205053206/http://www.c-r.org/our-work/accord/liberia/index.php - Peace process during Civil War
- Website includes photos from Liberian Civil War Archived 21 March 2012 at the Wayback Machine