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Article Excerpt
What were the causes of the second Liberian civil war (1999-2003)? The contingent causes consisted of the failure of the post-first civil war transitional processes such as disarmament, demobilization, rehabilitation and re-integration, security sector reform. In short, the post-first civil war peace-building project was a dismal failure. The proximate causes included the use of ethnic scapegoating by the Taylor government, the regime's abuses of human rights, and its failure to tackle the chronic social and economic problems.
Against this background, the Liberians United for Reconciliation and Democracy (LURD) launched armed attacks initially against the northwestern regions of Liberia on April 21, 1999. As expected, the Taylor regime launched counterattacks against the insurgents, thereby setting into motion the second Liberian civil war.
INTRODUCTION
The tenuous basis of Liberia's post-first civil war order made the reversion to violent conflict inevitable. The shaky foundation of the post-conflict peace-building project was laid by the failure to begin the critical task of constructing some of the pivotal pillars such as security sector reform and national reconciliation. The foundation for peace-building was further eroded by the hasty nature of the disarmament and demobilization processes. Thus, it was just a matter of time before Liberia descended again into the abyss of war and its associated violence and destruction.
With the stage set by the emerging vagaries of the post-first civil war peace-building project, Liberia was plunged into its second civil war on April 21, 1999. (1) The war commenced with armed attacks launched by a warlordist militia, "Liberians United for Reconciliation and Democracy" (LURD). The outfit was an amalgam of members of some of the erstwhile militias that were involved in the first Liberian civil war, disaffected members of the former Taylor-led National Patriotic Front of Liberia (NPFL), and war-time capitalists with interests in the private accumulation of capital. LURD launched its attacks from Guinea, Liberia's neighbor to the north. (2) In March 2003, the ambit of the war was broadened when the Movement for Democracy in Liberia (MODEL), a surrogate organization of LURD, joined the war against the Taylor regime. (3) MODEL launched its armed attacks from Cote d'Ivoire, Liberia's eastern neighbor. (4) Hizkias Assefa provides an excellent summation of the events that culminated in the second Liberian civil war:
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However, as soon as the [first] war was over, and a new government was installed, things quickly reverted to the way they were before the war. Abuse of power, corruption, manipulation of ethnic division, abject poverty, alienation, oppression of a large sector of the population, and hopelessness of the youth were still rampant. (5)
Against this background, the purpose of this article is to examine the causes of the second Liberian civil war. In other words, what were the contingent and the proximate factors that caused another conflagration in Liberia?
THE INTEGRATIVE MODEL OF CIVIL WAR
Several theoretical frameworks have been developed to serve as compasses for navigating the terrain of civil wars. For example, the ethnic model attributes the root causes of civil wars to internal ethno-communal factors. On the other hand, the greed and grievance model pioneered by Paul Collier identifies material resources such as diamonds and oil as the pivots in fueling domestic armed violence. (6)
Given the empirics of the second Liberian civil war, neither the ethnic, greed-grievance nor any single variable-based theoretical framework can provide the analytical animus to explain the causes of the war. Accordingly, I employ the integrative model. The model is premised on the basic argument that civil conflicts arise from a confluence of problems: the "tugs and pulls" of different identities, the distribution of resources and access to power, and competing definitions of what is right, fair and just. (7) From this base, there are several derivatives. First, the government violates basic human rights, including the freedoms of speech, thought, association, assembly and the press. One of the major resultant effects is that all legal avenues for seeking the redress of grievances are virtually non-existent. Hence, the resort to armed violence becomes the only viable option.
Another tenet is the government's failure to provide basic human needs for the majority of its citizens. For example, there is high unemployment, abject poverty, mass hunger, and inadequate health services, among others. The state of deprivation leads to, among other things, the development of a "culture of hopelessness" and desperation. Ultimately, this development, as Raymond Copson correctly notes, "... works as an inducement in persuading people to engage in violence." (8)
THE CAUSES OF THE SECOND CIVIL WAR
Why did Liberia degenerate into another cycle of civil war barely two years after the end of its first civil war? Two sets of interrelated factors--contingent and proximate--were the causes of the country's second civil war. The contingent causes consist of the base factors that were necessary for the occurrence of the war; however, operating on their own, they were not sufficient to occasion the war. Thus, the proximate factors--"ethnic scape-goating," political repression and socio-economic malaise--were needed to serve as the precipitants in occasioning the war.
The Contingent Causes
The major contingent causes were the incompleteness and failure of the major transitional activities--disarmament, demobilization, rehabilitation, and the re-integration of the ex-combatants into the larger society (DDRR), and the critical task of reforming the security sector--and the refusal of the Taylor regime to set into motion the process of addressing the underlying causes of the first civil war--the violation of human rights, economic deprivation and inequities, and social malaise.
Incomplete and Failed Transitional Activities
Three major transitional activities were critical to the success of the post-first civil war peace-building project: Disarmament, Demobilization, Rehabilitation and Re-integration (DDRR), security sector reform, and setting into motion the process of addressing the underlying cultural, economic, political and social causes of the first Liberian civil war. Unfortunately, the execution of some of these activities was incomplete (the DDRR); one was not properly undertaken (security sector reform); and the other was never pursued (setting into motion the process of addressing the undercurrents of the first civil war).
In terms of the DDRR, given the international community's "compassion fatigue," and the resultant resort to hastily organized elections as the "honorable exit strategy," much time was not spent on this critical phase. For example, the disarmament exercise lasted for a total of 72 days (November 26, 1996 to February 7, 1997). (9) At the end of the exercise, 21,315 combatants from the various militias--National Patriotic Front of Liberia (NPFL), ULIMO-K, ULIMO-J, the Liberian Peace Council, the National Patriotic Front-Central Revolutionary Council (NPFL-CRC) and the Lofa Defense Force--were disarmed. (10) Also, over 9,570 weapons and 1.2 million pieces of ammunition were surrendered to ECOMOG, the peacekeeping force, by the combatants from all of the warring factions. (11) Additionally, during search and cordon operations, ECOMOG was able to seize another 122,162 pieces of ammunition and 917 weapons (12) that were part of the warlordist militias, especially, the NPFL's, hidden arsenals.
Another problem was that the lack of...
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