Liberia, Finishing what America Started

Liberia is unique among the nations of Africa and unique among the nations of the world.  It is the only colony the US ever started.  Emancipators in the US, many of them Christians, search out a place on Africa’s west coast to be a haven for freed slaves.  Between the French colony Ivory Coast and the British colony of Sierra Leno was a strip of land that became Liberia.  The first freed slaves returned in 1821 and a steady stream continued after that.  The first five presidents of Liberia were all American born.  In 1848 the US gave Liberia her independence and she became the first democratic republic on the African continent.  Much of its constitution and even their flag were patterned after the United States.  Even to this day black Americans can apply for citizenship in Liberia.

The county prospered and while there was an indigenous population in the area, through treaties and a few skirmishes the land fell under the control of the Americo-Liberians as they are known to this day. Liberia became so prosperous that at the end of WW I Liberia and South Africa were the only two African countries that were invited to join the League of Nations.  During WW II the US built the port of Monrovia and Roberts’s airport to serve as staging areas for the North African campaigns. By the 1960 the gross national product of Liberia equaled that of Japan.  Liberia is rich in rubber (Firestone has been there since 1926) mining minerals, gold and diamonds. 

Economic problems, taxation of rice (commonly call the Rice Riot), and other factors in 1970s led to a coup in which Samuel Doe seized power, Doe was the first Liberian president of indigenous decent.  Doe had a strong relationship with the US and President Regan but within Liberia favored authoritarian policy labeling any opposition as socialist and illegal in the nation.  An election however in 1985 established Doe as the president of Liberia.  This resulted in the first of many wars.  A counter-coup was launched and briefly occupied the capital city of Monrovia but was unsuccessful but saw the death of over 2000 people. 

On Christmas Eve of 1989 Charles MacArthur Taylor, an Americo-Liberia attacked Liberia and the Doe government.  He and Prince Yormie Johnson, an ethnic African from the country of Nimba, County both formed armies to overthrow Doe (the National Patriot Front of Liberia, NPFL).  This lead to more fighting and the intervention of a monitoring group under the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) in 1990.  Doe was ambushed and captured by the Gio Tribe, loyal to Johnson, tortured and killed.  But the fighting continued to ravage the nation and the capital.  An interim president, Dr. Amos Sawyer, was appointed but resigned in 1994 allowing a Council of State to govern.  Charles Taylor’s army grew through the enlistment and arming of child soldiers.  Taylor was elected president in 1997 following a savage insurgence.  His election, however, sparked the second civil war in 1999.  The opposition forces also grew their ranks by using child soldiers. 

The conflict continued to intensify up to 2003 when the US airlifted Marines into Monrovia to protect the US Embassy and nearly 1000 Nigeria troops backed by ECOWAS arrived to prevent the rebels from destroying Monrovia and committing serious and brutal war crimes to retaliate against Taylor’s brutality.  President Bush publicly called Taylor a terrorists and sent the USS Iwo Jima with 2000 Marines on board to Monrovia with guns trained on the presidential palace.

In addition to the strong arm of the US military a much more peaceful force also is credited to ending the civil war.  Christian women who have lost fathers, husbands and sons in the fighting banned together calling themselves the Women of Liberia Mass Action for Peace.   At one point when the two factions were fighting in Monrovia the women donned white dressed and marched arm and arm into the midst of the battle bringing it to an end.  Charles Taylor fled the country and went to Calabar, Nigeria but there was a warrant issued for his arrest by the World Court.  He had been trading weapons for blood diamonds to further the rebellion in neighboring Sierra Leone (the movie Blood Diamond depicted that atrocity).  He has been in the Hague and his trial began in July of 2010.  Two battalions of UN troops, nearly 15,000, were assigned to Liberia as peace keepers and are only now, in 2010, are beginning to withdraw. 

The Liberian people suffered greatly during the fourteen years of civil war.  It is believed that more than 350.000 people were killed and thousands fled the country to find safety in the Ivory Coast, Ghana and the US.  In 2005 free elections were held and Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, who is of German and ethnic descent, was elected president.  She is the first woman head of state of any African country and the first black woman to be head of any country in the world.  Her task has been to put back together one of the most war torn countries in the world.  The nation’s electrical grid was destroyed in the war and even now electricity is only available in a two mile radius out from the center of Monrovia.  The rest of the country is forced to use generators for electrical power. 

As of 2008 the population of Liberia was 3.5 million.  Many who fled are now returning and it has been said over and over never again.  The Christians of Liberia have said that they must rebuild Liberia and rebuild with Jesus Christ.  The population of Monrovia has gone 500,000 pre-war, and is now 1.6 million people.

A Personal Note from Dan

When I first met Pastor Sisco Nat he was in Ghana having fled from the fighting in Monrovia with his entire church.  During the time of e-mails and phone calls, Ghana told the expatriate Liberians that it was time to go home.  By the time I went to Liberia Pastor Nat had already started to rebuild his church that was destroyed in the war.  I have not met one person in Liberia who did not have a parent, brother, child, cousin who died or vanished during the years of war.  I have spoken with people whose whole families fled into the jungle only to have the elderly and the very young starve to death.  I have heard stories from child soldiers who were forced through beatings and drugs to kill their own parents.  Every building shows the scars of war but deeper are the scars on the human soul.  There is nothing that can erase the hurt this nation, America’s only colony has suffered but they can only be healed by the truth and grace of God.  And the people want to hear, they want to learn, their pastors want to be taught.  They need Christ, they need His truth, and they need His grace.

 As Americans, as Christians I ask you to join with Pat and me in finishing what America started in 1821.  Those people who poured millions into the idea to give freed slaves a home in their native land did so not knowing about rubber or minerals or gold or diamonds.  I consider what they did one of the greatest acts of benevolence the world has ever seen.  They did what they did because they loved freedom and wanted others to enjoy it.  One hundred and ninety years later we can now do what we are doing together with you because we love Christ and want others to love Him also.