Abiodun Alao - The Burden of Collective Goodwill: The International Involvement in the Liberian Civil War

The international involvement in the Liberian Civil War

ABIODUN ALAO

First published 1998 by Ashgate Publishing

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British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
Alao, Abiodun

The burden of collective goodwill: the international
involvement in the Liberian Civil War
1. Mediation, International 2. Liberia - History - Civil War, 1989
I. Title
966.6203

Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 97-77892

ISBN 13: 978-1-84014-318-8 (hbk)

AFL Armed Forces of Liberia

AICF Action Interationale Contre la Faim

BCC Boni County Council

BDF Bong Defence Force

CEDE Centre for Democratic Empowerment

CMO Chief Military Officer

COS Council of State

CREDO Church Related Educational Development Organisation

CRS Catholic Relief Services

ECOMOG ECOWAS Ceasefire Monitoring Group

ECOWAS Economic Community of West African States

EPI Expanded Programme for Immunization

EU European Union

FAO Food and Agricultural Organisation

ICRC International Committee of the Red Cross

IGNU Interim Government of National Unity

INN International Negotiations Network

INPFL Independent National Patriotic Front of Liberia

LCC Liberian Council of Churches

LDF Lofa Defence Force

LNTG Liberian National Transition Government

LPC Liberian Peace Council

LUDF Liberian United Defence Force

MOJA Movement for Justice in Africa

MRM Movement for the Redemption of Liberian Muslims

MSF Medicins Sans Frontieres

NGO Non-Governmental Organisation

NPFL National Patriotic Front of Liberia

NPFL-CRC Central Revolutionary Council of the National Patriotic Liberia

NRCL Nimba Redemption Council of Liberia

OAU Organisation of African Unity

PAL Progressive Alliance of Liberia

PRC Peoples Redeption Council

RUF Revolutionary United Front

SCF/UK Save the Children (United Kingdom)

ULIMO United Liberation Movement of Liberia

ULIMO K United Liberation Movement of Liberia (Kromah Faction)

ULIMO J United Liberation Movement of Liberia (Johnson Faction)

UNDHA United Nations Department of Humanitarian Affairs

UNDP United Nations Development Programme

UNHACO United Nations Humanitarian Assistance Coordination Office

UNHCR United Nations High Commission for Refugees

UNICEF United Nations Children Fund

UNOMIL United Nations Observer Missions in Liberia

UNO United Nations Organisation

USA United States of America

WFP World Food Programme

WHO World Health Organisation

For Africa, almost always at the receiving end of global vicissitudes, the end of the Cold War bestowed a new set of legacies. While the effects of colonialism and the Cold War remain in varied forms, new opportunities and challenges have also emerged. One of such challenges is the increase in the number of failed states. These are those unable to perform the basic quintessential tasks of maintaining law and order within their borders. In the words of Mohammed Ayoob, this problem, characterized by a combination of judicially sovereign but empirically non-functioning central authority may be a source of suffering and disorder well into the twenty-first century.1 The human and material consequences of state failure created a new wave of international involvement in African affairs, sometimes with enormous implications for national sovereignty.2 Issues such as peacekeeping, peace-enforcement, and other attempts at rescuing and reconstructing state disintegration, became recurring features in international politics. The number of non-governmental organizations, too, increased astronomically to cater for the devastation arising from failed nationhood. However, this goodwill has often been controversial. While some blame the intervening actors for going too far, others blame them for not going far enough. Those who speculate on the ifs of history even go as far as to wonder whether there would have been a quicker resolution of these conflicts if there had been no external intervention. While controversies may rage on, what appears beyond dispute is that, in all cases, the involvement has incurred its own burden.

Liberia, Africas oldest independent republic, entered the lexicon of human tragedy with the collapse of its central authority in 1989. With up to 150 000 dead and up to a million people displaced in its civil war, the country, along with nations like Rwanda and Somalia, became a symbol of negative reference. Another Liberia, another Somalia or another Rwanda was what every nation wanted to avoid. The regional implications of the Liberian conflict, too, were profound. Apart from creating refugees for neighbouring states, it added impetus to the war that had been brewing for more than a decade in neighbouring Sierra Leone. In the Gambia, the Liberian war also had a distinct bearing on the military overthrow of its 27 year-old civil rule, and, towards the end of the war, there were allegations of a further Liberian connection in yet another bid to topple the Gambian military government.

The Liberian war evoked a string of paradoxical epithets: it was an internal war with international underpinning; an economic war without respect for economic principles; a personality war by people of conflicting individual personalities; a war against corruption but one that equally became corrupted; a war with its roots in the Cold War era but with consequences in the post-Cold War period; an ideological war by actors of blurred ideological perception; and an ethnic war often without intra-ethnic cohesion. The complex and interwoven ramifications of the war inevitably affected the nature of the international attempts at its resolution. The regional economic organization (ECOWAS) launched the most extensive regional response to a civil conflict in Africa. The United Nations joined ECOWAS in what was to become the first joint peacekeeping mission by the UN and a regional organization anywhere in the world. Several non-governmental organizations found their way into the country. The United States, with long standing historical links with Liberia and some western European countries also stretched forth their hands of goodwill.