SUMMARY

The Republic of Liberia is one of the few African states that were never dominated by a colonial power, the state was instead founded in 1847 by freed Black slaves from the Americas. The state was founded with the help of the government of the USA, whose constitutional model Liberia also adopted.

The state however became dominated by an Americo-Liberian elite. This elite was toppled by a military coup in 1980, when Samuel Doe took power and centred it in his own hands. Doe expanded the ethnic politics of Liberia further, exacerbating tensions between Liberia’s ethnic groups. Armed conflict erupted in 1989, to some extent along ethnic lines, when the Gio and Mano-dominated National Patriotic Front of Liberia (NPFL) attacked the Krahn-dominated government which they deemed autocratic.

The armed forces of President Doe were formed mainly by Krahns, his own ethnic group, which attacked civilians in order to control the country and those sections of the population that were deemed to be disloyal to the regime. Doe was however killed in 1990 by Prince Johnson’s Independent National Patriotic Front of Liberia (INPFL), and the government came to be controlled by a transitional regime under Amos Sawyer, supported mainly by the peacekeeping forces of ECOMOG.

In 1997 the presidency fell to NPFL leader Charles Taylor after elections that ended the first episode of the Liberian civil conflict (1989-1996). He was ousted from the government seat in the second episode of the Liberian conflict which concluded with elections in 2005, bringing a democratically elected regime into power.

The government of Liberia received support from ECOMOG and some neighbouring states during the first episode of the Liberian conflict, primarily being supported by Nigeria, Guinea and Sierra Leone in terms of manpower, equipment and training. In general the Anglophone countries of West Africa supported the regime, whilst the Francophone countries were somewhat more prone to support the NPFL. This support however fluctuated over the years as power-sharing governments came and went.

When Charles Taylor became president support from the Anglophone neighbours seized, and unconfirmed reports stated that Libya instead took on the role of supporting the Taylor government.

The government of Liberia has been involved in the intra-state and one-sided categories of UCDP organised violence.