![]() When the cold war was over and Charles Taylor's band of rebels-some of them children-clashed with government forces and other ethnic militias in the streets, the resulting conflict was so frighteningly gruesome that for many it was almost impossible to understand. Media reports and international human rights organizations estimated that at least 200 persons, primarily members of the Mano and Gio ethnic groups, were killed by troops of the Government of Liberia during the counterinsurgency campaign. In response to this insurgency, President Doe launched an unrelenting wave of violence against the inhabitants of Nimba County. Liberian troops and provincial security forces were dispatched to Nimba County to counter the insurgency and indiscriminately killed Liberian civilians without regard to the distinction between combatants and noncombatants. A final cease-fire and peace accord in 1996 was followed by the installation of a transitional government of all factional leaders. Various unpredictable events, like the Gulf war and the consequent US disengagement from Liberia, coincided to turn this into a protracted civil war, with ultimately west African ECOMOG intervention. With explicit support from neighbouring African nations and a large section of Liberia's opposition, Taylor's National Patriotic Front rebels rapidly gained the support of Liberians because of the repressive nature of Samuel Doe and his government. He graduated from Bentley College in Massachusetts and is said to have tastes that run to fine suits and silk ties. Taylor, Doe's former procurement chief, is an Americo-Liberian of both indigenous and Americo-Liberian ancestry. Taylor, invaded Liberia from the Ivory Coast. On December 24, 1989, a small band of Libyan-trained rebels led by Charles G. Several hundred members of the Gio and Mano tribes, that had been ill-treated by Doe, revolted in the northeast. But late in 1989, severe communal violence broke out after a failed coup attempt against Doe. “It cannot be a replacement for justice.The Liberian Civil War, which was one of Africa's bloodiest, claimed the lives of more than 200,000 Liberians and further displaced a million others into refugee camps in neighboring countries.Įlections are scheduled for 1991. “The biggest danger for Gambia is that the commission becomes a talking shop with interesting dialogue about what happened without addressing the need for justice,” said Human Rights Watch Africa researcher Jim Wormington. In Rwanda, where 800,000 died in a 1994 genocide, community tribunals successfully tried abuses.īut rights groups say there can be no substitute for effective trials, although Jammeh has put himself out of the ICC’s reach as Equatorial Guinea has not signed up to the court in the Hague. In Sierra Leone, a U.N.-backed commission uncovered new facts about the roots of a nine-year civil war that ended in 2002, helping to avoid further conflict. Liberia’s similarly failed to make many citizens feel that crimes committed during a decade of civil war had been redressed. Opaque and costly, Ivory Coast’s commission was criticised for not offering specific recommendations to help solve differences that linger after thousands died in a short 2011 war. Still, Gambia will need to learn from others’ experience.
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