Madness in Monrovia: what led to the Liberian bloodbath.

Liberia exploded again in April. For over a century, Liberia had been heralded as the only democracy in Africa, but as today's interminable I civil war drags on (150,000 people have died since 1990), it becomes clear that the war's deepest roots lie in the origins of Liberia in 1821 as a resettlement colony for freed and fugitive U.S. slaves.

The initial settlement was called Monrovia (as is today's capital) after President James Monroe. Although the United States government assisted the settlement effort, it was antislavery groups that carried out the project. Groups like the American Colonization Society, inspired by Protestant opposition to slavery, searched for ways to repatriate former slaves to the West Coast of Africa, from which many of their ancestors had come. There was little hope of returning these Africans to their "homes"; knowledge of their ethnic identification and native tongues was lost. Furthermore, in the United States there had been intermarriage with other West Africans, and children had been born of liaisons with white masters. The "resettlement" effort was in fact a wholly new "settlement" and the effort took little or no account of the indigenous peoples already living there.

These repatriated slaves were called Americo-Liberians, but were referred to derogatorily as "Congos" by the indigenous groups. The settlement initially operated under the aegis of the Protestant associations and their white American sponsors; the first governor was the cousin of James Buchanan, the last U.S. president before the American Civil War broke out in 1860.

A constitutional, democratic government was established in 1847. But from the beginning, it was flawed in practice, the irony being that a government run by redeemed slaves evolved into a society that repressed its "second-class citizens," the indigenous ethnic groups of the interior. (A League of Nations investigation during the 1930s verified the use of forced labor and the sale of people from the interior as slaves, and the president and vice-president had to resign over the matter.)

While the indigenous peoples of the interior existed largely on subsistence farming, the management of Liberia's national economy fell into outside hands. At a time when nonpayment of national debt was considered just cause for war, Britain, France, and Germany were poised to invade Liberia until President Theodore Roosevelt facilitated the restructuring of Liberia's payments. The supervision of the import/export duties of the ports was taken over by outside agencies. Multinational companies, most notably Firestone Tire and Rubber, held valuable rubber concessions, running the government and the economies of the areas under their control, until synthetic products reduced the value of rubber after World War II. Other natural and agricultural resources--minerals, lumber, coffee and cacao, spices and tropical fruits--were generally controlled by foreign companies. Even today, Liberia's most curious business, serving as a "flag of convenience" country, is run out of New York City. Ships registered in Liberia, but usually lacking any connection to it, sail the high seas without being subject to the safety inspections required by almost all other countries of registration. A Liberian-registered freighter from some third country will be manned by Malaysians or other Asian crews who live and work in unsafe and inhuman conditions. Although the Liberian government receives income from this operation, documentation as to the amount and its disposition has long been a source of contention.

The Liberian government persisted as something of a democracy for over 140 years, though for much of that time it was ruled by one party, the True Whig Party. Other parties were declared illegal soon after their founding. It was rare that a member of the indigenous ethnic groups achieved power, though some traditional chiefs asserted regional authority. Americo-Liberians retained both political and economic dominance through 1980.

Indigenous ethnic groups such as the Gio, Mano, and Kru live on both sides of the border with the Ivory Coast. The Kpelle and Mandingo are found both in Liberia and Guinea. The Krahn, one of the larger ethnic groups, live mainly within Liberian boundaries. Most of these groups are Christian, though some observe traditional animist practices. The Mandingo include a significant number of Muslims, who are traders and small business people. Many of them are relative newcomers to Liberia, having moved over the northern border from Guinea in the late 1960s, after its government exchanged colonialism for a socialist system that was seen as antagonistic to private enterprise.

William Tolbert, Jr., the last of the Americo-Liberian presidents, was overthrown in 1980 in a coup of the armed forces noncommissioned officers, led by Master Sergeant Samuel Kenyon Doe, a Krahn. (Members of the ethnic groups could achieve NCO status, but most of the upper ranks were dominated by "Congos.") The initial popular response to the coup was positive, but Doe's decade of leadership was marked by mistakes and atrocities that included the slaughter of ethnic peoples in the interior counties, a massacre of over 600 people at a Lutheran church in Monrovia, and the summary execution of many suspected of loyalty to the previous regimes or of plotting coups against Doe. Doe's great mistake, and the one that has had the most lasting impact, was his "ethnicizing" of the armed forces. Krahn people were given most of the authority in the military and the most significant posts in the government. The armed forces became almost completely Krahn and behaved more like a faction than a national army. Doe divided ethnic groups as never before.

The first group to rise against him was the National Patriotic Front of Liberia (NPFL) led by Charles Ghankay Taylor. Though itself suffering splits, the NPFL swept through the interior. In 1990, it was poised to take Monrovia when a West African peacekeeping force (ECOMOG), with troops from six nations led by Nigeria and Ghana, was deployed to secure the capital. Despite their presence, infiltrators from another group, the Independent National Patriotic Front of Liberia (INPFL) under Prince Yeduo Johnson, captured Doe and then tortured and executed him.

ECOMOG retained control of the capital. But the irregular rebel groups, including a counter-revolutionary (anti-Taylor) organization, ULIMO (which would also eventually split along ethnic lines), and an NPFL splinter, the Liberian Peace Council, controlled the rest of the country and fought among themselves. Various "Councils of State" were formed over the next five years to try to govern Monrovia and bring peace among the factions. (At least seven accords were reached at one point or another.) The NPFL made a second attempt to take Monrovia in 1992, but were repelled by ECOMOG.

In August 1995, as a result of one of the accords, several of the combatant generals entered Monrovia to become part of a new Council of State. The troops were to be disarmed by ECOMOG, but this never happened.

This year, when the Krahn branch of ULIMO continued to be violent, its leader, Roosevelt Johnson, was excluded from the Council of State by the other members. They attempted to arrest him on April 13, and this led to the current round of violence in Monrovia. Johnson and the ULIMO fighters of the Krahn ethnic group fought their way to the downtown army barracks occupied by the remnants of the Krahn-dominated Armed Forces of Liberia and joined with them. The Krahn took hostages, including ECOMOG soldiers and some foreign nationals, specifically from the Lebanese business community. Their large barracks were then besieged by the Mandingo branch of ULIMO and by the NPFL which is largely composed of the Gio and Mano people who suffered most under Doe.

The scenes from Liberia are grim. War continues; a great many of the combatants are children from the countryside, some as young as ten years old, who commit atrocities often under the complicit eye of adult soldiers. Cholera has broken out. Ship-bound refugees are turned away at neighboring ports. The current chaos in Liberia, with all its historical resonance, is one of the most horrendous and seemingly unresolvable conflicts on the face of the earth today. Many good-willed people have worked for a negotiated settlement, but for five years it has eluded both Liberian nationals and outsiders. Many observers believe that the violence will continue until only one warlord is left standing.

James F. Joyce, S.J., spent six months in 1995 with the Jesuit Refugee Services in Monrovia, and in Guinea and Ivory Coast with Liberian refugees.