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Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Reproduced with with permission permission of the of copyright the copyright owner. owner.Further reproduction Further reproduction prohibited without prohibited permission. without permission. A REGIONAL APPROACH TO SECURITY: THE POLITICAL ECONOMY OF CONFLICT

RESOLUTION IN THE LIBERIAN AND SUDANESE CIVIL WARS

by

Aissatou Sidime

submitted to the

Faculty of the School of International Service

of The American University

in Partial Fulfillment of

the Requirements for the Degree of

Masters of Arts

in Comparative and Regional Studies

c Chair: Peter Lgwis, Ph.D

Simona Sharoni, Ph.D iXJ. C~5~iTV )ean of the School of International Service IH ,/uu^^±±r. ifilL Date

1998

The American University

Washington, D.C. 20016

THB AMERICA* UHIYEESITY LIBRARY ^ ^

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UMI 300 North Zeeb Road Ann Arbor, MI 48103

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Dedication

To my sister, Odilla Sidime-Brazier, who inspired me to battle on; To my mother, Kanika U.F. Ajanaku, my aunt, Jacqueline M. Lewis, my father, Moussa Sidime, and To my husband, Theodore A. David Junior, who was my silent supporter.

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. A REGIONAL APPROACH TO SECURITY: THE POLITICAL ECONOMY OF CONFLICT

RESOLUTION IN THE LIBERIAN AND SUDANESE CIVIL WARS

BY

AISSATOU SIDIME

ABSTRACT

The recently concluded Liberian civil war and on-going phase of the Sudanese civil war reveal the

destructive consequences of communal polarization. Both armed conflicts reflect the impact of colonial

policies of communal discrimination or exclusion and the efforts of post-independence governments to

extend state formation in a context of limited resources. These historical processes and belligerents’ actions

led to wars couched in ethnic and religious terms.

Efforts to resolve these conflicts must address not only the short-term motivations of the warring

parties, but also the long-term structural problems that are social, economic and political and the result of

inequality and communal exclusion. It is important for governments, civil society, and donors to work

toward effective power-sharing and a redistribution of resources in these societies.

But of the many actors, this study focuses on regional mediators because they have familiarity with

belligerents and greater potential for gaining the confidence of diverse parties. These factors are crucial in

fostering a settlement and paving the way for prolonged conflict management.

ii

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I wish to thank the Africanists worldwide who seek tools and truths to understand and aid the development of the 52 African countries. Special thanks go to professors Peter Lewis, Simona Sharoni, Timothy Shaw, Thomas Ohlson and Stephen Stedman.

iii

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. TABLE OF CONTENTS

Page

ABSTRACT...... ii

ACKOWLEDGEMENTS...... iii

TABLE OF CONTENTS...... iv

LIST OF TA BLES...... vii

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS...... viii

LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS...... ix

Chapter

I. INTRODUCTION...... 1

What does the literature reveal about African conflicts?

II. RESEARCH METHODOLOGY...... 9

III. THEORETICAL PARADIGMS OF CONFLICT AND RESOLUTION .... 12

The Nature of Conflict

Domestic Security as Foundation of Regional Security Violence as inherent to State Building Military Build-up and State Development: A Symptom of State Fragility

Interest Aggregation and the Impact on Conflict External forces impede domestic development Proxy Wars Ethnicity as a basis for Federalism or Power-sharing: Independence Movements and Imperialism Self-reliance: Cover for communal/ethnic interests

iv

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Chapter Page

Regional Security

Conflict Management and Avoidance of Violence

IV. CASE STUDY ONE: RELIGION BACKFIRES AS TOOL FOR STATE PENETRATION IN SU D A N ...... 31

Colonial State-Building: The Historical Context The Dual Mandate of British Economic Policy

Post-Independence Period: The Politics of Religion Armed Conflict and The 1972 Addis Ababa Accord The Post-Nimeiri Period

Economic Constraints: “Hydropolitics” and Oil

Religion’s Role

V. CASE STUDY TWO: ETHNICITY AS TOOL TO MINIMIZE DEMANDS ON WEAK STATES RULING ...... 65

Historical Roots: Quasi-colonialism The United States’ Sole “Colony” Settler leadership takes control but continues racial and ethnic stratification

The Scramble for the Hinterlands and forced labor Tubman tentatives at inclusion and the end of settler rule

Demands of Foreign capital clash with inclusion Enclave Economy: Firestone Tire and Rubber Company and Iron

Armed Conflict the First Indigenous Ignores Demands for Change

Regional Mediation has Impact: Yamoussoukro IV Accord Diamonds, timber and warfare Building on Yamoussoukro IV

v

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Chapter Page

Exclusivity undermines accords

Abuja Accord and The End Game The United States begins to actively intervene Spillover wars in the

VI. MEDIATION, ANALYSIS AND CONCLUSION...... 115

Causes of Exclusive Conflict Causes of Inclusive Conflict and Successful Mediation Culture and Conclusions

BIBLIOGRAPHY...... 127

vi

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. LIST OF TABLES

Tables Page

1. ’s Population by Province, 1955-1973 ...... 56

2. Average Household Income by Sudanese Province in 1973 ...... 57

3. Value of Liberia Exports (in Sm illion) ...... 80

4. Structure of Liberia’s Exports (in Percent) ...... 81

5. Liberian Budgetary Expenditures, 1971-1980 (in $ m illion)...... 82

6. U.S. Foreign Aid to Liberia, 1971-1980 (in $ m illion) ...... 83

7. U.S. Aid to Principal Clients in A frica ...... 90

8. U.S. Economic Support Fund Programs for A f r ic a ...... 91

9. U.S. Humanitarian Assistance to Liberia during Civil W a r ...... 107

10. Composition of UNOMIL military component as of January 19,1996 ...... 108

vii

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

Figures Page

1. Map of S u d a n ...... 30

2. Most Food-Insecure Administrative in IGADD, 1990 ...... 51

3. Indigenous Ethnic Groups in L iberia ...... 62

4. Map of Original Liberian dining Settler T im es ...... 63

5. Regional Transportation Systems that link Liberia, and G uinea ...... 64

viii

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS

Liberia

ACS American Colonization Society

AFL , Krahn-dominated army of the former president Samuel Doe

CRC-NPFL Central Revolutionary Council-NPFL, splinter group led by Charles Taylor's former supporter Tom Woewiyu

ECOWAS Economic Community of West African States, a regional grouping comprised of 16 West African states

ECOMOG Economic Community of West African States Cease-fire Monitoring Group

INPFL Independent National Patriotic Front of Liberia, splinter group of NPFL (see below) led by

LDF Lofa Defense Force led by Francois Massaquoi in Lofa

LFF Liberian Frontier Force military unit

LPC Krahn-based led by

LNC Liberian National Conference made up of more than 1,000 representatives from civil society and the warring factions

LNTG Liberian National Transitional Government

MOJA student-led Movement for Justice in

NPFL National Patriotic Front of Liberia led by Charles Taylor

PAL Progressive Alliance of Liberia now known as Progressive People Party (PPP)

PPP Progressive People Party, see PAL

PRC People Redemption Council

TWP True Whig Party dominated by Americo-Liberians

ULIMO-J United Liberation Movement for Democracy-Johnson, Krahn-based splinter group led by Roosevelt Johnson

ix

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(JLIMO-K United Liberation Movement for Democracy-Kromah, Mandinka-based splinter group of ULEMO led by Alhaji Kromah

UNOMIL United Nations Observer Mission in Liberia

Sudan

DUP Democratic Unionist Party led by the moderate Khatmiyya

IGADD Intergovernmental Agency for Drought and Development, a regional grouping comprised of six states in the

NA Native Administrations during the British colonial period

NAS Allied National Forces for National Salvation

NDA National Democratic Alliance, exiled opposition group that includes members of the NAS, DUP, UP, Sudanese Communists Party, and Southern regional groups

NIF National Islamic Front led by Dr. Hassan al-Turabi

NUP National Union Party made up of mainly Khatmiyya

RCC Revolutionary Command Council

SAF Sudan Allied Forces, military wing of the NDA

SANU Sudan African National Union led by William Deng

SPLA-United Sudanese People’s Liberation Army-United splinter group of SPLM led by commanders Riak Machar and Gordon Koang (now called the Southern Sudan Independence Movement)

SPLM/A Sudanese People’s Liberation Movement/Army led by John Garang de Mabior

SSIM see SPLA-United above

TMC Transitional Military Council

UP Umma Party led by Sadiq al-Mahdi and comprised of mainly Mahdists Ansars

x

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INTRODUCTION

Increasingly, security occupies a key position in African affaires as new conflicts arise in the post-CoId

War era. Many already economically weak African regimes had little, if any, domestic legitimacy - despite

international recognition - and subsequent security collapses sealed with the Superpowers’ pulling out of

Africa at the end of the Cold War. The resulting absence of a hegemonic force/state led to a security crisis.

Security, in the traditional sense, is defined as protection against the arbitrary threat and use of physical

force. * It can be expanded, however, to include political and social stability as well as economic self-

sufficiency.

Security has been a tenuous goal sought by post-independence African states throughout the thirty

years since independence. Sub-Saharan African countries recognized from the outset that issues of national

security and political stability were of the utmost importance in creating an atmosphere conducive to

economic growth and investment. They had limited success, however, in achieving national or regional

security. The Liberian and Sudanese colonial governments attained limited power and security through

coercive, authoritarian practices and/or patrimonial rule. But that security has gradually eroded over the

past decade as these and many other Sub-Saharan countries faced challenges from ethnic or class groups

that had not shared proportionally in the distribution of resources or who had not seen their taxes

reinvested toward economic development. Threats to the security and legitimacy of those states have been

intensified by the economic decay tied to a global recession and downturn in the terms of trade for African

primary exports in the mid-1970s and mass suffering under the austerity of structural adjustment programs

1. Stephen Stedman and Thomas Ohlson, The New Is Not Yet Bom: Conflict Resolution in South Africa. (Washington, D.C.: The Brookings Institution, 1994).

1

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in the .^ Sometimes the resulting conflicts took on ethnic aspects, as in Sudan, and other times they

were exacerbated by extra-regional actors as in the U.S., Cuban and South African roles in .

This security crisis has been further exacerbated by the wave of political liberalization that hit Africa in

1990 as part of a global movement toward mass popular participation.^ Although traditional perspectives

posited a positive, direct correlation between popular participation and state legitimacy, this wave of

democratization triggered an increase in internal conflicts facing the regimes. Furthermore, while

liberalization of the political process may offer the best hope for the peaceful channeling of concerns and

disputes, state and popular legitimation of this avenue of demand aggregation will be long in arriving; this

pattern was revealed by the slow, minimal gains that have been achieved in the seven years since the

political liberalization processes began.

Bilateral negotiations and multilateral interventions often have been insufficient in resolving conflicts.

Similarly, much of the contemporary analysis in international relations and comparative politics has been

insufficient in analyzing the roots of the conflicts and mechanisms for resolving them. This may be due in

part to the fact that analyses of conflicts in general and in Africa, in particular, tend to ignore the political-

economic roots of such conflicts and focus more on the warring parties and on getting those actors to

negotiate a settlement. The conflicts have thus raged, resurfaced or heightened in intensity. Many salient

questions remain for further study: Are armed conflicts actually intractable and thus continue interminably?

Are there differences in the outcomes negotiated by regional or Superpower mediators? What other

insights might emerge from a regional approach to understanding and resolving armed conflict that first

identifies the causes of the security crisis? Can such an approach account for the recurrence of “old”

conflicts? What are the obstacles to this approach posed by examining the conflict maintained as part of the

Cold War bipolarity?

2. Fantu Cheru, The Silent Revolution in Africa. (New Jersey: Zed Brooks Ltd.,1989);K.N.M. Sonko, “Debt in the Eye of a Storm: The African Crisis in a Global Context,” Africa Today, vol. 37, no.4, 1990: p. 15-26; Timothy Shaw, (ed.), The Political Economy of Foreign Policy in ECOWAS. (: St. Martin’s Press, 1994).

3 .1. Shiyji, “The Pitfalls o f the Debate on Democracy,” ifda dossier, vol. 79, October/December 1990, p. 5; Goran Hyden and Michael Bratton, (eds.), Governance and Politics in Africa. (Boulder, CO: Lynne

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 3 By focusing on the social, political, economic and cultural roots of armed conflict, this study attempts

to move analysis of African conflicts and their prospects for resolution beyond stagnant, traditional

approaches that focus on individual actors toward an inclusion of the internally- and externally-generated

political economy of the conflicts that impose or constrain their resolutions. Thus, the study will reveal the

degree to which demands for resource access and redress of those demands are integral to the outbreak and,

more important for Africa, recurrence of protracted, regional and ethno-national conflicts, as well as the

implications of those findings for methods of resolving the conflicts. This more holistic synthesis can be

accomplished by situating the security crises in their historical and regional contexts. In this study,

regional security crises are identified as those in which actual physical violence threatens or has occurred

as part of the same conflict in more than one country or in which factions in various countries are disputing

for access to the same resources. The study’s objective is to begin an interdisciplinary dialogue among

fields of international relations that would eventually synthesize the traditional focus on the influences of

individual agents with analysis of the external constraints posed by the global political economy toward

stability and conflict resolution. Unlike current approaches in peace and conflict resolution that identify

processes and then attempt to apply them across sociopolitical and cultural contexts, this study accounts for

the historical specificity of various conflicts.

A key to understanding African insecurity is the analysis of conflicts in states lacking established

governance, that is, rules of engagement that foster the rise of an active civil society. This civil society

must hold government accountable through political mechanisms that are nonviolent.

What does the literature reveal about African conflicts?

Armed conflict in Africa has typically surfaced as violent, protracted battles between ethnic groups.

With the lack of Superpower interest in Africa following the end of covert hostilities with the Russia,^

Reinner, 1992). 4. M. Clough, Free At Last? US Policy toward Africa and the End of the Cold War. (New York: Council on Foreign Relations Press, 1992), p. 12.

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 4 Africa once again faces a resurgence of such “identity”- based conflicts. Identity conflicts are not,

however, the result of “primordial sentiments”, as Clifford Geertz offered, but the rational result when

individuals are denied the opportunity to address needs in a non-violent manner, as Sarah Berry maintains.

Three pertinent bodies of literature from international relations - conflict resolution, comparative politics,

and political economy - offer additional insight into the roots of African state insecurity and the subsequent

propensity toward armed conflict. Most of the contemporary research on conflict has focused on the

behavior of individual actors or groups in the conflict in line with the rational choice assumptions and

game theory that were popular at the onset of conflict studies or more recent social psychology and human

needs theory.^ These approaches focused on identifying actors, power capabilities and ways of getting

actors to the negotiating table; they frequently overlooked the fact that conflicts often continue whether

leading actors have similar perceptions of the war’s outcome.

The study of conflict in Africa has been overshadowed by Zartman's works that focus on discussions of

the differences between internal, typically ethnic- or religion-based, and external, or interstate, wars.

Internal physical conflicts were later identified as “protracted,” or what LeMarchand calls “intractable" and

unsolvable until warring parties perceived a “mutually hurting stalemate.”^ The largest body of literature

has focused on the role of third parties and mediators. ^ These approaches are inadequate because they

seek to achieve a stability which is predicated on maintenance of the status quo thereby making it

impossible to explain or to study change. Conflict in and of itself is both a catalyst for and the result of

inevitable change. So any attempts to explain conflict and keep it from becoming violent must focus on

developing a permanent mechanism for managing change.

5. Steven J. Brains, Game Theory and Politics. (New York: Free Press, Macmillan, 1975).

6. I. William Zartman, “Inter-African Negotiations,” in John W. Harbeson and Donald Rothchild, (eds.), Africa in World Politics. (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1991b); Francis M. Deng and I. William Zartman, (eds.), Conflict Resolution in Africa. (Washington, D.C.: The Brookings Institution, 1991).

7. Marina Ottoway, “Mediation in a Transitional Conflict,” in I.William Zartman, (ed.), Resolving Regional Conflicts: International Perspectives. (Newbury Park,CA: SAGE Publications, 199 lb).

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 5 Moreover, this approach tended to exclude external factors, such as the regional or global political

economy, that may have affected the outbreak and resolution of conflicts. Scholars such as Richard Falk

attempted to create a more dynamic paradigm by studying conflict as an avenue of change and by

examining the way it is tied to a regime’s norms, called normative theory.** Normative theory, however,

was rather impractical in its support for a world order It is based on the belief that all nations will subsume

their individual interests and cultures to those of a global body or code. Such a situation is highly unlikely

given that international relations are based on a respect for each country’s borders and autonomy. At a

micro-level, culture is at the root of individual identity and few people are willing to relinquish their sense

of historic self for another’s view. Only recently some scholars have successfully incorporated these

historical and regional factors into the analysis of conflict.^ Likewise, some analysts have turned away

from a focus on formal institutions and processes, such as the state or United Nations, to examine more

informal, grassroots efforts at resolving conflicts. More recently, in acknowledging the narrowness of

traditional approaches, conflict resolution theory has been expanded to incorporate and to reflect the need

for solutions that not only end the immediate conflict but also address needs/disputed resources that are key

factors in preventing future conflict.

Political economy studies have focused on colonial remnants, arms sales, and the buttressing of

dictatorships that are harmful to countries’ political and economic development by Cold War superpowers

and other Western governments. This field has also included studies on terms of trade and countries’ roles

in the global economy and their effects on available resources - factors that have facilitated or hindered the

8. Richard Falk, The Promise of World Order: Essays in Normative International Relations. (, PA: Temple University Press, 1987).

9. Timothy Shaw, (ed.), The Political Economy of Foreign Policy in ECOWAS. (New York: St. Martin’s Press,1994); Stedman and Ohlson,1994.

10. G.O.Faure and G. Sjostedt, “Culture and Negotiation: An Introduction,” in G. Faure and J.Z. Rubin, (eds.), Culture and Negotiation: The Resolution of Water Disputes. (Newbury Park, CA: SAGE Publications, 1993).

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 6

breakdown of the political system [which Almond points to as being more key than the state] 11 and the

outbreak of armed conflict. In examining conflicts based on identity, which Northrup defines as “ ‘an

abiding sense of selfhood, the core of which makes life predictable [in the physical, psychological, social

and spiritual aspects] to an individual,’” other researchers such as Norton and Connor have examined the

links between modernization and personal expectations as well as the politicization of ethnicity. Mueller,

Huntington and Rupesinghe studied the effects of political development, democracy and elections in

preventing wars in multi-ethnic states. However, the links between the global political economy and

domestic security remain unresearched. Key to understanding security concerns are studies in political

economy that have examined the relationship between states and capital reproduction,^ the links between

a country’s role in the global economy and that country’s internal politics, ^ and the ways in which

popular organization has been hampered^ or facilitated by the economic demands of foreign capital and

the global economy.^ Recent literature on regionalism and on the rise of regional economic blocs also

has implications for understanding individual state autonomy.^

The protracted conflicts in Africa are grounded in disputes over access to political power and oil

revenues and in the colonial governments’ discriminatory practices in allocating administrative positions

11. Gabriel Almond, “The Development of Political Development,” in Myron Weiner and Samuel P. Huntington, (eds.). understanding political development (Glenview,IL: Scott, 1987), p. 158.

12. I.Wallerstein, The Modem World System. (New York: Academic Press, 1974) Keller in Rustow & Erickson, 1991.

13. M.F. Kelly, “Broadening the Scope: Gender and Economic Development,” Sociological Forum. vol. 4, no. 2 (December 1989); J. Mittelman, “Marginalization and the International Division of Labor: Mozambique’s Strategy of Opening the Market,” African Studies Review, vol. 34, no. 3 (December 1991): pp.89-106.

14. Deyo in G. Gereffi & D. Wyman, (eds.), Manufacturing Miracles: Paths of Industrialization in and East . (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press,1990).

15. I.L. Markovitz, Studies of Power and Class in America. (New York: Oxford Press, 1987); Evans and Haggard in Deyo; Gereffi, 1990.

16. S. Gill and D. Law, The Global Political Economy: Perspectives. Problems and Policies. (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1988).

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and educational opportunities. ^ For example, the British governed the Sudan through a system of

“indirect rule” to accomplish what Lugard terms the country’s “dual mandate.”^ The colonial governors

were instructed by the Crown to extract agricultural resources at minimal costs and were allotted slim

budgets and limited military support. While the wars can be solved, imposing process models or one set of

“universal” standards of human behavior is insufficient for replacing the culture of violence that reigns. It

seems clear also that the only differences between internal and external conflicts lie in the types of

resources under dispute, not how they should be resolved. Third party mediators remain key and such roles

will be most effectively filled by representatives from regional organizations based in the area of conflict

(given that Western nations are offering diminished military, economic and political commitments to intra-

African issues). Joint regional efforts are best because the multilateral approach - unlike bilateral

mediation - would not be viewed as hegemonic or favoring one actor over another. From the Namibia-

Angola resolution it is clear that where a common enemy and similar resource demands exist within a

region, termination of the conflict is facilitated by a joint, regional resolution proposal. Moreover, regional

organizations tend to commit to a complete resolution of the conflict because member states face the

economic drain of refugees and the continual destabilization of internal and regional efforts at political and

economic growth when conflict recurs.

This study attempts to provide more tools for analyzing and resolving African conflicts by beginning to

merge theories that focus primarily on human agency and approaches that emphasize structures by

incorporating comparative literature on political economy. Throughout the post-colonial period and

increasingly since 1989 African states have been challenged by more vociferous demands for pluralist

political and social reforms. Thus it is probable that nations and regions throughout Africa will be forced

to manage a wave of armed conflicts during the remainder of this decade. To accomplish this goal,

Africans need tools that are both historically based, taking into account the global political economy, and

17. Sarah Berry, No Condition is Permanent: The Social Dynamics of Agrarian Change in SubSaharan Africa. (Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press, 1993), p.27; J.O’Connell, “The Ending of the Nigerian Civil War: Victory, Defeat and the Changing of Coalitions,” in Roy Licklider, (ed.), Stopping the Killing. (New York: New York University Press, 1993), p. 190.

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 8 pertinent to filling resource demands. This study reveals that traditional approaches to conflict resolution

have proven insufficient in explaining protracted and “ethnic” conflicts; it also attempts to introduce a

broader, regional approach that examines the roots of conflict based on the principle of resource

management and on the relationship between internal and external factors.

18. Berry, pp.36 &40.

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. CHAPTER TWO

RESEARCH METHODOLOGY

The bases of regional insecurity and warfare lie in state fragility and the relative ease with which

conflicts expand beyond state borders. The underlying assumption is that “conflict,” per se, is neither good

nor bad, but integral to the process of having interests met. Furthermore, the political system, in accordance

with Almond, is a non-violent mechanism for voicing opinions, addressing concerns, distributing resources

and redressing grievances. Yet when that system fails, often at the distribution point, conflict takes on

violent manifestations. While the perception that the state listens to popular voices is key in the short-term,

resource re-distribution is the sole way to ensure long-term stability.^ This axiom renders the historical

and current global political economy crucial in understanding and explaining the roots, or lack thereof, of

political stability in African countries. Each conflict should thus be examined according to its five phases

that are the two inclusive stages of cooperation and competition, two exclusive stages of heightened tension

and oppositional conflict and the final security crises in which armed conflict typically breaks out.^O

Rather than focusing on the application of one theoretical perspective of conflict analysis and

resolution to the two case studies, this thesis will isolate the causes of each state”s insecurity, determine

which approach best explains each armed conflict and develop an approach that addresses their regional

dimensions. In accordance with standard practices in case study theory, this study will examine two on­

going (Liberia and Sudan) conflicts as reported in academic and popular periodicals; the salience of these

19. Timothy M. Shaw, and E. John Inegbedion’s “Alternative Approaches to Peace and Security in Africa,” in Jorge Rodriguez Beruff, J. Peter Figueroa and J. Edward Greene, (eds.), Conflict Peace and Development in the . (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1991): p.259. 20. see Figure 12.1 for a tabular depiction of theses phases and their corresponding behaviors in Wallace Warfield, “Public-Policy Conflict Resolution: The nexus between culture and process,” in Dennis J.D. Sandole and Hugo van der Merwe, (ed.), Conflict Resolution Theory and Practice: Integration and Application. (New York: Manchester University Press, distributed by St. Martin’s Press, 1993), p.180.

9

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 10 cases lies in the fact that the Liberian and Sudanese wars currently are being approached horn a regional

perspective by mediators, and with a degree of success. The study will interpret the information by first

identifying key warring actors, elite groups and military leaders (who have often attempted to fill the gap

left by an ineffective government or to assume power for parochial reasons) and their interests as they

relate to demands for access to disputed resources. The role of international and regional forces in laying

the groundwork for and facilitating the conflict is key in studying past mediation attempts. Disputed

resources will be broadly classified as political, social, cultural and economic in nature in accordance with

George Kent’s classifications of violence.^ *

The initial chapter offers a theoretical discussion of previous approaches to analyzing security, conflict

and conflict resolution in Sub-Saharan Africa that delineates the strengths and weaknesses of each. The

second component of this study involves a comparison of the common colonial and post-colonial histories

of state formation. The patterns of state development in Liberia and Sudan are significant because both

states have been unable to manage the inclusionary phases of participation and resource distribution and

thus devolved into security crises.

The study also includes a discussion of the security crises, that is, the civil-regional wars and focuses

on inclusive tendencies in resolution of the disputes - negotiation of the 1972 Addis Ababa Accord in

Sudan that ended the 18 years old civil war and the election of Samuel Doe in 1980 which brought into

power the first ethnically, indigenous - as well as exclusionary practices such as

Nimeiri’s repeal of the 1972 agreement in 1986 and the systematic culling of political opposition by Doe.

This final component will identify the short- and long-term factors for conflict in the two regions and

explore the following central questions: How have resolution processes in these two conflicts addressed or

avoided the main issues of contention and the underlying demands for resource access? What were the

optimal points at which grounds for the non-violent settlement of disputes could have been laid? What

mechanisms were set in place? Whose interests were served by those mechanisms? Whose interests were

21. George Kent, “Analyzing Conflict and Violence,” Peace & Change, vol. 18, no. 4 (October 1993).

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 11 ignored? The thesis concludes with an examination of the regional initiatives in conflict resolution and

their implications for the regional conflicts in and the Horn of Africa.

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. CHAPTER THREE

THEORETICAL PARADIGMS OF CONFLICT AND RESOLUTION

The Nature of Conflict

To comprehend, predict, or prevent violence, theoretical premises must begin with an understanding of

conflict itself. Rather than interpreting conflict as a negative manifestation, or as evidence of the

breakdown of the political process, it should be viewed in more than its normative component. It is a

dynamic and necessary process. In the words of John Burton,

“Conflict, like sex, is an essential creative element in human relationships. It is the means to change, the means by which our social values of welfare, security, justice and opportunities for

personal development can be achieved... Indeed, conflict, like sex, is to be enjoyed. ”22

Building on Maslow’s hierarchy of human needs, Burton separates conflict into the pursuit of three

ontological and, thus, universal “needs”: identity/justice, recognition/ “the social good,” and autonomy/

“democracy.

Domestic Security as Foundation of Regional Security

In the first key glimpse at regional security, O’Neill posits that regional security can be disaggregated

to the domestic security of each individual state in a region. He holds that domestic security is a function of

22. John W. Burton, World Society. (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1972), 137-138, as quoted in Dennis J.D. Sandole, “Paradigms, Theories and Metaphors in Conflict Resolution: Coherence or Confusion,” in Sandole and Hugo van der Merve, (eds.), Conflict Resolution Theory and Practice: Integration and Application. (New York: Manchester University Press, distributed by St. Martin’s Press, 1993), p.6.

23. Burton, “Conflict Resolution as Political Philosophy,” pp. 56-59.

12

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the “openness” of the ruling regime. It is not surprising then that O’Neill views liberal democracy as the

most open and, thus, most stable and desirable political structure.

In citing the “constitutional democracy” of India as exemplary, O’Neill maintains that pluralist politics

are an inherently more stable manner of dealing with conflict because citizens are “relying on the ballot

box rather than them ilita ry .O ’Neill downplays the inequity of participation (any discussion of who

can participate) and the barriers to full participation that are often constructed by existing regimes when he

equates legislation with actuality in stating that despite the limitations on participation “sooner or

Iater...they will find their way back to it [openness].” For O’Neill constitutional democracy is not only the

end goal of nation-building but also the insurance for an open political system. But he overlooks a key

factor in political development: the quality of participation. O ’Neill focuses on tying internal security to

the processing of popular demands: “...Internal security depends upon their accommodation to and

acceptance of pressures for change.”^ Regimes must be willing to redistribute power among greater

numbers of groups.

Violence as Inherent to State Building

A separate vein of research has revealed a clear historical link between violence and state penetration of

the society and economy. While violence has historically played a role in state building, the time frame for

consolidation of the state’s consensual hegemony has been the key factor in determining differences in the

level of violence associated with present-day state building.

24. Robert O’Neill, “Regional Security and World Order in the 1980s,” in Mohammed Ayoob, (ed.), Regional Security in the Third World:Case Studies from Southeast Asia and the . (London: Croom Helm, Ltd., 1986), p. 37.

25. O’Neill, p. 55.

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From the three decades prior to the Westphalian Treaty until the 1800’s, European states faced

constant popular dispute.^ Charles Tilly’s seminal work on the development of western European states

describes the role of state violence as costing

“tremendously in death, suffering, loss of rights, and unwilling surrender of land, goods, or labor...The fundamental reason for the high cost of European state-building is its beginning in the midst of a decentralized, largely peasant social structure. Building differentiated, autonomous centralized organizations with effective control of territories entailed eliminating or subordinating thousands of semiautonomous authorities...Most of the European population resisted each phase of the creation of strong states.”-^

Cohen, Brian and Organski later developed a model that saliently predicts the endemic role of violence in

state-building. Cohen et al postulate that young states are more prone to use violence to control people and

gain resources because they have little popular support for the state’s centralization of power. Or, “new states

attempting to increase the level of power resources are likely to display a higher level of collective violence

than old ones because they tend to be at a much lower initial level of state power.”^^ But, they add, economic

development appears to counter the need for violence. In that framework, the conflicts in Africa and other

Third World countries are not abnormal but inevitable components of nation-building. Ayoob builds on this

model to explain the higher intensity and frequency of violence occurring in present-day developing countries.

Ayoob posits that compressing the time frame for state making has caused the condenscing of violence

associated with that process:

“...today’s Third World state makers are under tremendous pressure to complete this extremely complicated and costly process in only three or four decades rather than three or four centuries. As a result, the process of ‘primitive central state power accumulation’^ has

26. see Charles Tilly, “Reflections on the History of European State-Making,” in Tilly, (ed.), The Formation of National States in Western . (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1975); and Joseph Strayer, On the Medieval Origins of the Modem State. (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1970).

27. Tilly, p. 71.

28. Youssef Cohen, Brian R, Brown and A.F. K. Organski, “The Paradoxical Nature of State Making: The Violent Creation of Order,” American Political Science Review, vol. 75 no. 4 (1981), p. 905.

29. Youssef Cohen et al, p. 902. quoted in Mohammed Ayoob, “The Security Problematic of the Third

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to be speeded up tremendously. The various phases of state and nation building, which were undertaken and completed...without any significant amount of premeditation in the case of early Europe, have to be undertaken and completed deliberately and simultaneously within a time-bound framework of ridiculously short duration.”^

A second difference that accounts for the increased intensity and degree of violence in developing

states is the attempted development of a modem society in a context that is still “pre-modem” in terms of

wealth creation. This involved creating a welfare state without the necessary economic development that

would sustain the various popular demands that must be met in that society. A final and more recent

obstacle arises from opening the already vulnerable states (due to their inability to address the demands of

a modem society) to unlimited mass politics, i.e., the wave of democracy movements, before those states

had sufficiently “penetrated” (gained acceptance from) their societies and “standardized” regimes.^ *

Lastly, Ayoob claims that the political contests are viewed as “life or death issues” because the basic

organizational structures for politics, economics and society are still contested.^ ^

Military Build-up and State Development: A Symptom of State Fragility

Much of the literature on the effects of military expenditures on domestic policy has focused on its

links to the national economy. In fact, perceived national security needs have played a direct role in the

scope, timing and trajectory of economic development plans as well as the geographic location, technology

mixes and patterns of wealth ownership in all countries.-^ in some regions, national security is

World,” World Politics, vol 43 (January, 1991), p. 269.

30. Ayoob, “The Security Problematic of the Third World,” pp. 269-270.

31. Penetration and standardization precede open popular participation and resource redistribution in Stein Rokkan’s four-stage model of state formation and nation building as outlined in Ayoob, “The Security Problematic of the Third World,” footnote 22 on p. 270.

32. Ibid, p. 45.

33. Ethan B. Kapstein, “Economic Development and National Security,” in Edward E. Azar and Chung-in Moon, fcds.V National Security in The Third World: The Management of Internal and External Threats. (College Park, MD: Center for International Development and Conflict Management, 1988),

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synonymous with economic development. This view was promoted by the great powers most heavily in the

post-World War period.

Frightened by the two wars that were waged, due in part to the isolationism of great-power foreign

policy, the United States shifted from its isolationist approach to linking its own security to that of a

system. The announcement of this shift, which has dominated international dynamics in the past four

decades, was outlined by U.S. Secretary o f State Dean Acheson in lobbying for the first international aid

bill, the 1950 Act of International Development. Acheson specified the act as a “ ‘security measure’ ...an

essential arm of [U.S.] foreign policy, for our own military and economic security is virtually dependent on

the economic security of other p e o p l e s . ” ^

However, development through military expansion in the Third World does not support the rise of self-

sustainable growth. In fact, states’ attempts to diversify their economies as backward linkages to military

expenditures have only resulted in further dependence economically, militarily and politically. Andrew

Ross points out that many countries accepted military linkages because of very low interest rates and

flexible payment plans (i.e., the Soviets offered arms at 40 percent discounts and 2.5 percent interest rates.

Plus payments could be made in soft currency or commodities.) that “made military dependence appear

relatively benign. Once addicted to foreign arms, developing countries found it difficult to terminate

dependence on North suppliers.”^ They depended once again on former colonial powers for the bulk of

arms; needed foreigners for technical aid, advisors, and trainers; and had to align politically with the

supplier during the Cold War to keep munitions flowing. The dependency continued even after Third

World countries developed domestic defense industries because of their inability to internally produce

pp.137-138.

34. David Baldwin, “Economic Development and American Foreign Policy: 1943-1962,” (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1966), page 75 as cited in Kapstein, “Economic Development and National Security,” in Azar and Moon, (eds.), National Security in The Third World: The Management of Internal and External threats. (College Park, MD: Center for International Development and Conflict Management, 1988), p. 146.

35. Andrew Ross, “Arms Acquisition National Security: the Irony of Military Strength,” in Azar and Moon, (eds.), National Security in the Third World: The Management of Internal and External Threats. pp. 152-187.

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either the necessary or sufficient quantities of inputs. Munition-making skills also failed to transfer well to

other sectors and the resulting, few jobs ran counter to the labor-intensive professions needed for the

broader society.36 Thus, arms acquisition has been another source of insecurity due to African states’

reliance on external forces for supplies. That insecurity is reflected in a further eroding of national

autonomy in choosing weapons suppliers, by the dispersion of weapons among nations and domestic

groups, as well as the compulsion to support the primary suppliers in their international endeavors.

Additional research reveals that military build-up is a symptom of the insecurity experienced by states

in what Kenneth Waltz aptly described as the anarchic international state-system.-^ in this system, the

strongest states impose their own system or force others to stand down in fear of an opponent’s power. The

primary source of this power is military stockpiling, as in the Cold War nuclear arms build-up between the

United States and USSR. However, that buildup-as-bulwark syndrome occurred in the Third World as well.

Developing countries went from annually spending $4 billion on arms imports (at this time the sole method

of acquisition) and accounting for 8 percent of all global arms expenditures in 1960 to spending $35 billion

and accounting for 20 percent of the imports in 1981.38 in part this build-up can be explained as the result

of many newly independent nations’ attempts to ensure their territorial integrity. However, in comparing

this percentage of acquisition to national revenue levels and annual government budgets, it becomes

apparent that Third World countries spent budgetary proportions well in excess of the amounts spent by

pre-1950 states. By 1983, the total expenditures on arms by all Third World countries amounted to $223

billion.39

36. Nicole Ball, “The Political Economy of Defense Industrialization in the Third World,” in Andrew Ross, (ed.), The Political Economy of Defense: Issues and Perspectives. (New York: Greenwood Press, 1991), pp. 175-201.

37. Azar and Moon, “Rethinking Third World National Security,” in Azar and Moon, (eds.), National Security in The Third World: The Management of Internal and External Threats. (College Park, MD: Center for International Development and Conflict Management, 1988), p.4.

38. Ibid., p.4.

39. Ibid.

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While Azar and Moon identify this “coercive-behavior” as a characteristic of the international state

system, it also appears that the nature of the domestic political economy in African states is so fragile, or

insecure, that many African regimes retained control over their populaces only by reverting to what

Charles Tilly identified as the basic source of legitimacy for states: physical coercion. In Azar and Moon’s

words: “The capacity to coerce, kill and destroy becomes an important source of power and thus the

preeminent safeguard for national security.”^ Ensuring this source of power becomes a primary concern

and thus the massive arms build-up.

Interest Aggregation and the Impact on Conflict

External forces impede domestic development

In examining security through systemic theory in which the state system supersedes domestic relations,

Buzan reveals the source of claims that popularly legitimate states, or “unified states,” hinder the

development of coercively legitimate, or “anarchic” states. Where the legitimacy of a regime is in dispute,

as in “anarchic states,” then interaction between stronger and weaker states necessarily means that unified

states choose one domestic actor over another and thereby support one faction over the other. Intervention

by a unified state not only sways the balance of power among factions in the anarchic state but also affects

the progress of any dispute of conflict, even to the extent of exacerbating the conflict. In fact, interaction

between states in which there is an “asymmetrical balance of power not only increases the intensity of the

domestic rivalry but also impedes progress toward a more unified, stronger state by preventing a natural (in

the sense of based on local resources) victory of any one unifying faction in the country. *

Furthermore, external intervention has been plagued by the paradox of insufficient support to a weak

regime, i.e., Moscow’s commitment to Mengistu in Ethiopia and the MPLA in Angola. This paradox is

characterized by

40. Ibid.

41. Buzan, pp. 29-35.

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“massive political and military investment (the latter largely in the form of arms transfers and military advisers) in insecure regimes on the part of the superpowers, which nevertheless stops short of a final commitment to save them when the chips are down, adds substantially to the problems of insecurity that many Third World regimes face; for it makes the regimes more reckless, more repressive and less flexible on the mistaken notion that they would be bailed out by their superpower patrons when in dire straits.”4 ^

Proxy Wars

Because the advanced industrialized countries have incorporated the developing countries into the

international state system in an auxiliary capacity, the security of those weak states is not viewed as crucial

to sustenance of the global system.4^ This inconsequentiality left Third World countries vulnerable to

external machinations in the era in which the threat of “mutual assured destruction” by nuclear weapons

eliminated the option of direct combat between those powers (usually advanced industrialized European

countries and the two traditional contemporary superpowers) possessing nuclear warheads.44 Africa and

other parts of the Third World became the surrogate battlefields for these major power conflicts. Ayoob

points out that the armed conflicts also served “as a way of letting off steam” to preempt Third World

challenges to unfavorable “core values” that are at the heart of the international state system and as an

arena for the testing and marketing of arms and new weapons systems.4^ Arms sales also provided

insurance for Western power access to key raw materials such as oil and minerals. Thus the system

“impinges upon the security of Third World states in a fashion extremely deleterious to those states.”

It is interesting to note that while Ayoob correctly identified the self-reinforcing nature of the

international security regime, which was accepted by all major powers including the then-, as

42. Mohammed Ayoob, “Security in the Third World,” International Affairs , vol. 60, no. 1 (Winter 1983/1984): p. 49.

43. Ibid, pp. 47-48.

44. Ayoob, “The Security Problematic of the Third World,” p.257; and Ayoob, “Security in the Third World,” pp. 47-48; see for in depth discussion of the development of proxy wars Robert S. Litwak and Samuel F. Wells, Jr. (eds.), Superpower Competition and Security in the Third World. (Cambridge: MA: Ballinger, 1988).

45. Ayoob, “Security in the Third World,” pp.47-48.

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well as the lack of significance that Third World security held for this global system, he nevertheless

incorrectly predicted the streng-iening of the Third World in the global security regime. This presupposes

a disequilibrium in the current phase of the 350-year-old state system due to U.S. technological

hegemony.46

Ethnicity as a basis for federalism or power-sharing: Independence Movements and Imperialism

Superpower intervention, or imperialism, during the Cold War is traditionally cited as a key source of

on-going domestic instability. Meddling by the great powers is considered the primary cause for the

collapse of the unity that had arisen during the nationalist movements of the 1950s and 1960s. However,

revisionist thinkers, such as Buzan, maintain that the removal of external intervention actually eliminated

the factor, a common enemy, that had united African groups and leaders. With this hypothesis the recent

rise in armed conflict within developing countries can be explained. Old disputes surfaced after the

compression valve of Cold War machinations was lifted in the late 1980s. Buzan goes so far as to

distinguish between “positive unity” that reflects a “coherent cultural group,” and “negative unity” that is a

social construct rooted in opposition to a common enemy.47 His major contribution is that instability is

linked to the nature of unification: whether unification stems from common ideals about how the world

should be constructed or from the sole desire to oppose a perceived collective threat.

Attempts to minimise violence through military and administrative recruitment along communal lines

pose an obstacle to consensus building and efficiency. Allotments have to be made to provide services to

each communal group, thereby resulting in redundancies. Furthermore, Azar and Moon posit that

fragmentation of the bureaucracy and politicization of all micro- and macro decisions occur as policies

46. Ibid, pp. 50-51.

47. Buzan, p. 26.

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become based on “national values” as perceived by each communal group/*** Thus, in their assessment,

security policy must include assessments of the threat and the domestic capabilities available for

responding to that threat and the manner in which security policy is developed, called the “software,” so

that ineffective practices - such as power distribution via ethnicity - are avoided. This is an argument that

only partially explains the collapse of federalist states such as . Azar and Moon are simply applying

the argument for legitimacy based on popular consent to a specific context, one of addressing a security

threat.

Self-reliance: Cover for communal/ethnic interests

On the other hand, Park and Park are unconvincing in their claims that demands for the right to develop

autonomously, that is, free from external intervention, are solely a smoke screen for com m unal interests.

Park and Park make this statement based on some questionable assumptions, primarily that self-reliance

stems from a sense of superiority: “Self-reliance as a belief system is essentially ethnocentric in that it

promotes a Weltanschauung that a people have a unique character and a superior heritage that enables

them, as a nation, to nurture their own existence in relative autonomy from other societies.”^ The concept

that individuals who live in a context and know the complexities of that environment are thus best suited to

suggest what changes would improve it is a logical one. It is based on knowledge of a given area.

Regional Security

To determine which actors have the best knowledge and impetus to manage conflicts, the theoretical

discussion must become transnational in scope. Key theorizing on regional security, particularly by

48. Azar and Moon, “Legitimacy, Integration and Policy Capacity: The ‘Software’ Side of Third World National Security,” in Azar and Moon, (eds.) National Security in The Third World: The Management of Internal and External Threats. (College Park, MD: Center for International Development and Conflict Management, 1988), pp. 88, 90, &95-96.

49. Hans S. Park and Kyung A. Park, ‘Ideology and Security: Self-Reliance in and North Korea,” in Azar and Moon, (eds.) National Security in The Third World: The Management of Internal and External Threats. (College Park, MD: Center for International Development and Conflict Management, 1988), p. 104.

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Mohammed Ayoob and Bany Buzan, centers on the centrality of the state and global state system in

notions of regional security. Typical analyses of security issues in the Third World have focused on the

traditional components of the external orientation and maintenance of the international state system but

also included alliances established between developing countries and the Western and former Eastern

blocs.50

The concept of regional security has developed through many stages. Important phases include Walter

Lippman’s original definition based on a state’s ability to protect its “core values”; the Hobbesian systemic

view of protecting the “order” and “collective interests” of the “international society” as expressed by

Martin Wight and Hedley Bull; and Keohane and Nye’s proposition, following the global economic crisis

of the 1970’s, that individual national security was inextricably linked with the security of the system and

thus the two were “interdependent.”^ ^ This view is tied to the ground rules for interaction in the existing

international state system as presented in the 1648 signing of the Treaty of Westphalia.

Ayoob points out that this system was self-legitimizing: That is to say, over the following three

centuries, interactions among the European states that were conducted according to the Peace of

Westphalia institutionalized the concept of the “state system” and reinforced the validity of those

participating s t a t e s . ^2 It also legitimized the notion that ensuring territorial boundaries, or state security,

took precedence over individual or domestic concerns. And the propagation of the state system, by

stressing “alliance security,” took precedence over both the state and individual c o n c e r n s .53 However, as

Ayoob points out, “alliance security” has been inadequate in addressing Third World conflicts because the

50. Ibid., p.43.

51. Ibid., pp.41-42.

52. Ibid., p. 42.

53. Mohammed Ayoob, “The Security Problematic of the Third World,” World Politics, vol. 43, (January 1991): p. 262.

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alliances were temporary and fluid, deficient deterrents and incapable of preventing the collapse of state

structures.^

It was only recently that discussions of “security” returned to the state-centric focus but only in

reference to the Third World. “Third World” is used in a generic sense as outlined by Ayoob: The Third

World comprises those countries that share a colonial past, an “unequal encounter” with the European and

American powers as well as “attributes of economic underdevelopment and social dislocation” due in part

to their interaction with the West and the manner in which decolonization occurred.In that context, the

protection of “core values” was tied to culmination of the nationalist movements of the 1960s and the

consolidation of the post-colonial regimes’ power against external forces.

Thus, key components of internal security are the history of state formation and the level of popular

legitimacy held by the ruling regime. This legitimacy is threatened not only as part of the natural

progression of nation-building (that is, by groups that have different “core values”) or because regimes

came to power through coercive means but also by external forces.^® Ayoob points out that the

Westphalian state system that has created European states that have not only popular legitimacy but

“unconditional legitimacy” limits the role that weak states, those lacking high levels of popular legitimacy

and social cohesion as in Africa, can play in both transnational political and economic arenas. These

externally imposed limitations further undercut the legitimacy of the weak states by constraining their

economic power and their ability to accumulate surplus that could be used to address popular demands and,

thereby, increase the state’s popular legitimacy. The primary method for doing this was by creating a

central international financial institution, the International Monetary Fund, to maintain the health of the

global financial system over the health of any national e c o n o m y57 . The influence assigned each state in the

54. Ayoob, “The Security Problematic of the Third World,” p. 264.

55. Ayoob, “Security in the Third World,” footnote 8 on p. 43.

56. Ibid., pp. 44-46.

57. Caroline Thomas, In Search of Security: The Third World in International Relations. (Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner Publishers Inc., 1987), pp.39-52.

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IMF’s decision-making body was stacked in favor of the European powers and . The IMF

acknowledges the arbitrariness of its power allocation in the Brandt Report: “Quotas (voting power) were

distributed on the basis of the perceived economic and political importance of countries rather than on their

demand for reserves as such; they were based on trade and international reserves including gold holdings.”

The Fund generally sidesteps facing its involvement in destabilizing governments: The Fund’s legal expert

Joseph Gold responds that “some of these forces may be the result of external circumstances, such as the

state of the world economy, and not the result of a member’s own policies, but the member nevertheless

may have to adapt its policies to the situation.”^ So, when faced with an internal threat that is supported

by external forces, the regime will “externalize” the threat - delegitimize the challenge as being the

encroachment of foreign powers on state sovereignty - and thus invalidate claims of the opposition.

There are three other obstacles to the success of regional security groupings: regime rivalries or

apprehension between states; a lack of “standardized” political, economic and fiscal mechanisms; and most

significantly, great power interference.^ in fact. Western countries and the two great powers have

blocked the development of regional security organs in the traditional sense of using trade and commodity

price guarantees as leverage. Also, in attempting to facilitate development with financial or logistical

assistance, these advanced industrial countries have hindered the regional organizations’ creation of self-

sustaining, specialized and efficient bureaucracies: “The more intimately a superpower is committed to

supporting a regional security grouping, the more dependent upon it the regional powers tend to

become.”^®

Buzan adds significantly to the theorizing on regional security and the criteria for defining a region

with the inclusion of both cooperative aspects, referred to as amity, and conflictual aspects, referred to as

enmity, of the neighboring countries’ activities. The patterns and intensity of amity and enmity among

58. Ibid, p. 52.

59. O’Neill, pp.39-45.

60. Ibid.

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nations combined with border disputes, common ethnic populations, ideology and historical labor and

economic ties define the geographic areas that comprise individual “security complexes.”** 1 Key to our

understanding of the role that regional organs can play is Buzan’s insight that “security complexes” are a

response to an anarchical system and the tendency for its effects to be mediated by geography.Buzan

implies that the competitive aspects of regional security and its cooperative aspects that entail protecting a

region from anarchy are both strengthened the closer a state is to the center of the complex. Thus, the idea

of the “security complex” suggests the likelihood that regional organizations make good mediating forces

against the insecurity posed by the state system to Third World countries.

Conflict Management and Avoidance of Violence

These theories of state-building, security and interest aggregation return the theoretical discussion to its

origins by refocusing on conflict. Thus, mediation of conflict must entail a restructuring of the manner in

which a society resolves problems, coined “prevention.” This new approach must hold as a tenet that

“policy formation based on the political philosophy that satisfaction of human needs [not just the

opportunity to satisfy those needs, as is promoted under the legalistic framework of Alternative Dispute

Resolution] that are universal must be the ultimate goal....”**3 Burton’s approach opens the door for more

long-range analyses of conflict and conflict resolution that promote the cooperative aspects of conflict over

the competitive and crises phases.

Burton, similar to political economists, points out that global capitalism poses a significant obstacle to

human needs-centered resolutions:

61. Barry Buzan, People. States and Fear: An Agenda for International Security Studies in the Post- Cold War Era, second edition (Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner Publishers, 1991), pp. 189-190.

62. Buzan, p. 191.

63. Ibid, pp. 60-61; for earlier discussions of human needs-based explanation of conflict see Arthur Koestler, “The brain explosion,” Observer (London) (15 January 1978).

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“[Capitalism and Communism] have necessarily been authoritarian with their privileged classes in controL.Both make that same assumption that the person is wholly malleable and can be socialized or coerced into required behavior. No increase in the courts, police, or Alternative Dispute setdement processes can make up for the inherent deficiencies of these systems.”^

Additional theorizing on the links between the individual’s inability to address basic, human needs and

violence surfaced in the late 1960’s as Johan Galtung’s theory of “structural violence” in which structures,

such as the market economy or property rights, limit individuals’ options for addressing their needs.

Galtung wrote, “The important point here is that if people are starving when this is objectively avoidable,

then violence is committed, regardless of whether there is a clear subject-action-object relation, as during a

siege yesterday[,] or no such clear relation, as in the way world economic relations are organized t o d a y . ” 6 5

Violence that benefits a specific person, called personal violence, is also a component of structural violence

if “when the structure is threatened, those who benefit from structural violence, above all those who are at

the top, will try to preserve the status quo so well geared to protect their i n t e r e s t s .”66 in Galtung’s

theorizing, peace is the absence of both personally and institutionally created obstacles to achieving full

potential.

The idea that structures can create a framework conducive to violence as a reaction to perceived

differences between desired and actual states was expanded to its current most salient form in Ted Gurr’s

theory of “relative deprivation” (RD). In its simplest form, the degree of relative deprivation is directly

correlated to the discrepancy between “value expectations” (what a person thinks he is entitled to) and

“value capabilities” (what she believes can be acquired). “It is the tension that develops from a discrepancy

64. Burton, “Conflict Resolution as Political Philosophy,” p. 62.

65. Johan Galtung, “Violence, Peace, and Peace Research," Journal of Peace Research, vol.6, no. 3, (1969): p. 171.

66. Ibid, p. 179.

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between the ‘ought’ and the ‘is’ of collective value satisfaction and that disposes men to violence.The

probability of armed conflict rises proportionally as the relative deprivation intensifies and broadens to

encompass more people’s basic needs. Gurr also removes normative values associated with relative

deprivation, also called conflict, when he asserts RD “is the fundamental source of both innovation and

destruction in human affairs.”^ The most volatile, or “pre-revolutionary,” situation arises when a group

acquires more desired values and begins to experience a sense of rising value capabilities only to have it

reversed unexpectedly, as happened in many post-colonial societies.^ One final vein of conflict resolution

that holds weight in explaining African conflicts is the concept that an individual’s identity and group unity

are based on opposition to an “other,” essentially that humans need enemies against which they can define

themselves.^®

Dennis Sandole attempts the most comprehensive explanation of the roots of and possible approaches

to resolving conflict in applying a melange of available theory. For Sandole, crafling a resolution process

should involve the selective application of all available theories of conflict - the realist approach that views

violence as a rational mechanism for pursuing personal goals, the “idealist” view that defines violence as

the response to “frustrated goal seeking,” as well as structural analysis based on class differences and

institutional inadequacies - with the objective of getting the mediator and ultimately the combatants to view

conflict no longer as zero-sum “competition” but rather as a process of “cooperation.”^ ^ Sandole reduces

the root of protracted conflict to the combination of competitiveness and Realpolitik.

67. Ted Gurr, Why Men Rebel. (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1970), p. 23.

68. Ibid, p. 22.

69. Ibid, pp. 28 & 52.

70. Sandole, “Paradigms Theories and Metaphors in Conflict Resolution: Coherence or Confusion,” in Sandole and Hugo van der Merve, (eds.). Conflict Resolution Theory and Practice: Integration and Application. (New York: Manchester University Press, distributed by St. Martin’s Press, 1993), pp. 15-16; see also George Simmel, Conflict and the Web of Group Affiliations. (New York: Free Press and London: Collier-Macmillan, 1955) and Vamik D. Volkan, The Need to Have Enemies and Allies: From Clinical Practice to International Relations (Northvale, New Jersey: Jason Aronson, 1987).

71. Sandole, pp. 3-6.

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Finally, many of Africa’s complex and protracted conflicts have been labeled as “ethnic” or “identity”

conflicts because identity has been used as a key organizing force. Even while many scholars trace the

roots of those divisions back to the “Balkanization” of by great powers at Yalta or the

practices of colonial administrations, the saliency of ethnicity is often viewed as an imposition o f external

forces on the indigenous peoples. However, the rise of tribes in the Horn of Africa occurred primarily in

response to European im perialism .^ Clans and lineages began organizing as “tribes” to increase their

political strength vis-a-vis the colonial power. In addition, “ethnicity” is a social construct particularly in an

area where much fission and fusion of groups has occurred, thereby blurring “separate” identities. In some

instances, ethnicity is a tool for organizing peoples both to limit population movements in scarce territory

by creating “we-they” (or us against them) consciousness and to prepare for warfare by giving a group

common interests to p r o t e c t . 74

More recently, ethnicity has been the mechanism through which elites limited access to power.

Individual groups took control of the state and promoted their ideals under the guise of “national interests”

thereby creating states ruled by elites from single or very narrowly defined ethnic groups in what Ali

Mazrui termed “ethnocracy.”^These exclusionary practices led to the current material stratification

among “ ethnic” groups: In the “ethnocratic” state there is a correlation between patterns of social,

economic and ethnic stratification. The point at which this small ruling elite began imposing its values, its

culture, on unincorporated groups, was also the point at which the basis for armed conflict between “us”

72. for further discussion of how ethnic groups were split among numerous states as great powers divided central Europe, see Buzan, pp. 211-212.

73. Katsuyoshi Fukui and John Markakis, (eds.), “Introduction” to Ethnicity and Conflict in the Horn of Africa. (Athens, OH: Ohio University Press, 1994), p. 3.

74. Fukui and Markakis, p.5; also David Turton’s materialist view that developed from research on the Mursi in which groups organize in relation to each other through exchange and warfare. In terms of conflict, ethnicity is the “mode of organization” for people who “engage in common action and share common interests;” from Turton, “Political Identity and Warfare: The Survival of An Idea,” in Fukui and Markakis, (eds.), F.thnicitv and Conflict in the Horn of Africa, pp. 17 & 26.

75. Fukui and Markakis, pp.9-10.

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and “them” solidified. Thus, African conflicts are not over cultural differences but cultural oppression and

material inequities that were perpetuated by the ruling regimes. “Ethnicity is an ideological form, not the

substance of the conflict and like all ideologies it is not a cause but a symptom of social disorder.”^ In

the Sudanese conflict, that social disorder has involved age-based conflict between the Pari ruling age and

youth in the SPLM ,^ the parochial interests of the Dinka and universal goals of Garang and other SPLM

founders,and the social aspirations of political elites and the Khartoum regime.

76. Ibid.

77. Eisei Kurimoto, “Civil War and Regional Conflicts: The Pari and Their Neighbors in South-Eastern Sudan,” in Fukui an Markakis, (eds.), Ethnicity and Conflict in the Horn o f Africa, pp.95-111.

78. M.A. Mohamed Salih, “The Ideology of the Dinka and SPLM,” in Fukui and Markakis, (eds.), F.thnicitv in the Horn of Africa, pp. 193-197. It is interesting to note that although the Dinka are the largest “ethnic” grouping, at one million in the only ethnic census taken in 1955, in Southern Sudan they are actually the result of intermarriage among the Nuer and other Nilotic peoples. The Dinka have cultivated a warrior society (with themselves as the “masters of men” or monyjang) and waged wars against other foreigners called the jur (such as other Nuer, and Mandari and Fertit groups; see also Francis Deng, The Dinka of the Sudan. (New York: Holt, Reinhardt & Winston, 1972) for further discussion of the two tiers of Dinka society (the warriors and the peacemakers).

79. Yoshiko Kurita, “The Social Bases of Regional Movements in Sudan: 1960s- 1980s,” in Fukui and Markakis, Ethnicity in the Hom of Africa.

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Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. CHAPTER IV

CASE STUDY ONE: RELIGION BACKFIRES AS TOOL FOR STATE

PENETRATION IN SUDAN

State-society relations in Sudan are characterized by far greater conflict than cooperation. Since its

independence from the British in 1956, Sudan has had three military governments and has been driven by civil

war for 30 of its 42 independent years. The current civil war began in 1983 between the regime of then-ruler.

Col. Jaafar Nimeiri and a southern, rural people’s secessionist movement. The movement was subsumed under

a larger call for an open, secular system of governance. Previous attempts to reconcile the divergent regional

demands resulted in a single 1972 peace accord which led to a coalition government with the Communists and

later with the southern Anyanya revolutionaries, the SPLA predecessors. The war has been presented by

international media as a conflict between Northern Arabs and Southern Christians and animists, who oppose

the imposition of sharia (Islamic law), in the southern provinces of Bahr El Ghazal, Upper and Equatoria

and the . The 12-year-old battle, however, is just the continuation of a decades-old struggle

over resources, political inclusion and ultimately the nature of the Sudanese state that has its roots in a British

colonial heritage.

This thesis examines the manner in which patterns of political inclusion and exclusion, and on the other

hand, capitalism shaped the Sudanese context during the colonial and post-independence regimes resulting

in its current fragmentation. The study includes a discussion of domestic policies and ruling interests as

they relate to such external factors as the impact of neighboring regimes, international commodities

markets, and state system. The recurrent theme is that the origin of the Sudanese state’s fragility lies in

disputes over access to political power and commodity revenues that were promoted by discriminatory

31

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 32 practices of the colonial governments in allocating administrative positions and educational

opportunities.**®

Colonial State-building: The Historical Context

As in many of its other colonies, the British governed the Sudan through a system of “indirect rule” due

to what Lugard calls its “dual mandate.”*** The colonial governors were instructed by the Crown to extract

agricultural resources at minimal costs and were allotted slim budgets and limited military support. With

the exception of the first phase of Nimeiri’s regime (1969-76), the subsequent post-independence regimes

continued the British exclusionary political practices and skewed pattern of regional economic

development.

The roots of the current weak legitimacy of the Sudanese state lie in the contradictory nature o f the

British colonial regime that resulted in advantages for the northern regions and political and economic

isolation for the South. Sudan was divided between its joint conquerors, Egypt and Britain, under the 1889

Anglo-Egyptian Agreement, also called the Condominium. Egypt regained “nominal” control of Northern

Sudan from the Mahdi family for assisting Britain in gaining a foothold in in such a way as

to avoid conflict with the French and Belgian powers who controlled most of the r e g i o n . **^ The South, on

the other hand, was destined to isolation, an outcome that was finally officially stated in the 1930

80. Sarah Berry, No Condition is Permanent: The Social Dynamics of Agrarian Change in SubSaharan Africa. (Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press, 1993), 27; J. O’Connell, “The Ending of the Nigerian Civil War: Victory, Defeat and the Changing of Coalitions,” in Roy Licklider, (ed.) Stopping the Killing, (New York: New York University Press, 1993), p. 190.

81. Berry, pp. 36 & 40.

82. Muddathir Abdel-Rahim, “Sudan:Recent History,” in Africa South of the . 1994. p. 813.

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 33 “Southern Policy.” The Southern Policy planned to link the South with the British colonial government in

the East African Federation (comprised of Tanzania, Kenya and Uganda).

The British garnered control of Sudan after Sir Herbert Kitchener defeated the last Mahdist ruler.

Khalifa Abdallahi ibn Muhammed in September 1898. The British had entered the country to avenge the

fatal defeat of General Gordon 13 years earlier during the initial Mahdist revolts in Khartoum.®^ Other

reasons for sudden British interest in Sudan included preventing the French from taking Bahr el-Ghazal

from Zaire (then French Congo) as part of the last ‘scramble for Africa.’^ In addition, according to Holt,

Daly and Paul Henze, the British wanted to strengthen the Triple Alliance by preventing the Khalifa from

attacking the Italians (already weakened in the region through their defeat at Adowa by Ethiopian ruler

Menelik H) at the border town of Kassala.^

Once Sudan was acquired as a concession from the Egyptians, it was essentially ignored by the British

until World War I. At that time, the British turned to one faction of the traditional religious elite, the

Mahdiyya, for support in exchange for economic concessions to the group’s leader Sayid al-Mahdi.^

Then, to counter the political base that al-Mahdi was developing through his economic projects, the British

began promoting to Mahdist rivals, the Khatmiyya, the idea of “development as a bulwark” against

83. P.M. Holt, “Introduction to the Second Edition,” in Francis Reginald Wingate. Mahdism and the Egyptian Sudan, second edition, (London: Frank Cass and Company Limited, 1968), pp. vi and xii; Peter Malcolm Holt and M.W. Dalv. A History of the Sudan: From the Coming of Islam to the Present Day. fourth edition, (New York: Longman, Inc., 1988), p. 111.

84. Peter Woodward, “Sudan: State Building and the Seed of Conflict,” in Peter Woodward and Murray Forsyth, (eds.), Conflict and Peace in the Horn of Africa. (Brookfield, VT: Dartmouth Publishing Company, 1994), p. 82.

85. Holt and Daly, p. Ill; Paul B. Henze, The Horn of Africa: From War to Peace. (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1991), pp. 70-73.

86. Mahdi was given extensive agricultural licenses and land rights that were used to build an empire from cotton and millet production and oil exploration by his corporation Daiwat al-Mahdi, Peter Woodward, Sudan 1898-1989: The Unstable State. (Boulder,Co: Lynne Rienner, 1990), pp. 50-50; Peter K. Bechtold, Politics in Sudan: Parliamentary and Military Rule in an Emerging African Nation. (New York, London: Praeger Publishers, 1976), p. 76.

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 34 Mahdist plans to once again dominate Sudanese society. This machination marked the beginning of a

pattern in which the British attempted to control political development and power relations in Sudan.

Following the 1924 Mahdist-Ied revolt, the British instituted the Native Administrations (NA). The NA

turned governance of the country over to “tribal” leaders thereby addressing the Northern intelligentsia’s

demand for indigenous political access while limiting their influence.^ The NAs, thus, delayed the

creation of a modem bureaucracy that could have paved the way for a future efficient, independent rule

and reduced the strength of nationalist tendencies germinating in Egypt and among Southern Sudanese.

Sudanese state-building was eroded most by the British implementation of the Southern Policy

immediately after the signing of the Condominium. This policy reflected the long-standing practice of

British govemor-generals to ignore the South and British goals of blocking the powerful Mahdiyya’s

attempts to spread Islam and separating the two regions to link the southern provinces with Uganda.The

concept of separating the country first arose in official British discourse in 1919. Efforts to separate the two

regions began with Governor-General Wingate’s support of Christian missions in the South, the promotion

of education in English to the exclusion of all Arabic after the 1928 language conference in Rejaf, the

prohibition of the Muslim dress called jellabiyya, and the creation of regional militia, such as the Equatoria

Corps, to supplant northern troops.A document written for the Milner mission stated that “ ‘the

possibility of the Southern (black) portion of the Soudan [sic] being...linked up with some central African

87. Woodward, Sudan 1898-1989. p. 77; Peter Woodward, “SudanrState Building and the Seed of Conflict,” in Peter Woodward and Murray Forsyth, (eds.), Conflict and Peace in the Horn of Africa: Federalism and its Alternatives. (Brookfield, VT: Dartmouth Publishing Company, 1994), p. 83.

88. Francis A. Lees and Hugh C. Brooks, The Economic and Political Development of the Sudan. (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1977), p. 10; Woodward, “Sudan: State Building and the Seed of Conflict,” p. 83.

89. Holt and Daly, p. 125.

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system’” had been “ ‘borne in mind’.”90 While the North was provided with college-level educational

facilities, the South was deemed too “backward” to justify expenditures in human capital development and

limited to the study of basic literature and technical skills.91

Then, in 1 9 2 2 , this indirect rule, under which administration o f the country was left “in the hands of

native authorities...under British supervision” even if it were necessary to “re-create it,” moved officially to

isolate the S o u t h . 9 2 Under the Passports and Permits Ordinance o f 1 9 2 2 , the South was classified as a

“closed district,” thereby excluding trade with the North and limiting the opportunity for southerners to

migrate northward in search of work.

The historic religious rivalry between the two leading sufi orders, stemming from al-Mahdi’s successful

revolution in 1881 to free Sudan from the Turco-Egyptian rule that had been supported by the Khatmiyya,

directed much of the country’s subsequent political development and exclusionary tendencies. The

Khatmiyya leaders, the Ashiqqa, joined either the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) or National Union

Party (NUP) that drew their political base from the northern nomadic peoples; where as the Mahdists

formed the Umma Party (UP) among the Ansars and urban dwellers in , Kordofan and the White

Nile. However, the two religious groups had few ideological differences since they both favored creation of

an Islamic state and held similar disdain for the Southern p o p u l a c e .93

Still, regional forces encouraged conflict rather than cooperation between these two Sudanese groups as

early as the initial nationalist movement that surfaced in the Graduate’s Congress in 1938. Egyptian leader

90. Ibid, p. 139.

91. Woodward, “Sudan: State Building and the Seed of Conflict,” p. 84; Woodward, Sudan 1898- 1989. p. 48.

92. Holt and Daly, pp. 136-138; the British created ulemma and sufxs by supporting challenges from pro-British upstarts against traditional rulers. Woodward, “Sudan: State Building and the Seed of Conflict,” p. 83.

93. Bechtold, pp. 80-82; Woodward, Sudan 1898-1989. p. 68.

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 36 Nasser refused to allow Sudanese independence and financed the Khatmiyya's push for “Unity of the Nile

Valley.” This policy bolstered two of Egypt’s key interests: 1.) Avoiding the political empowerment of its

old rivals, the Mahdi, who led the UP that favored cooperation with the British; and 2.) protecting Egypt’s

access to the Nile River (the primary source of water for the region) that begins in Sudan. While Egyptian

financial and political leverage were being used to build a united Arab empire to the northeast of Africa,

the Ethiopians provided assistance to Southerners demanding independence. Ethiopia’s attempt to

influence its northern neighbor’s internal politics was sparked by the fear that Egypt would attempt

assimilation of Ethiopia, after being bolstered by its success in Sudan, and that Ethiopian forces would be

drastically out-numbered and ill-equipped to stave off the attack.

In 1943, regional differences were exacerbated by the British govemor-general’s creation of an

advisory council in northern Sudan while continuing to ignore southern demands for self-determination.

The establishment of this Advisory Council for Northern Sudan constituted recognition of the North’s

nationalist aims and partial validation of those claims by the B ritish.^ Thus, Northerners gained some

political power, via limited access to the British colonial machinery that ruled the country, but the

Southerners remained disenfranchised and disconnected from avenues of interest articulation. The British,

furthermore, maintained control over the council by choosing the three council leaders to the exclusion of

the intellectuals in the Graduate Congress that had served as a nationalistic breeding ground in the previous

decade. Southern concerns were managed by encouraging southern leaders to accept unity, despite a desire

for full separation, and to support a handful of Southern representatives in the first Executive Council and

94. The supreme leaders, sayyids al Mirghian and al-Mahdi, of the two rival groups were the sole Sudanese allowed in preliminary discussions on the regional composition of the Advisory Council. This resulted in the majority o f the advisors being appointed from the western regions that comprised their social base; opposition by local leaders was addressed by creating a “back bench” of rural nazirs, chosen with thesayyids' approval, Woodward, Sudan 1898-1989. p. 74.

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Legislative Assembly that would be elected in 1948.95 Even devolution of power under the Local

Government Ordinance in 1951 failed to reduce the hegemony of Khatmiyya and Mahdists.96

The Dual Mandate of British Economic Policy

Under British rule, economic development was restricted to a 100-mile radius around the Khartoum-

Gezira r e g i o n .97 The primary industrial contribution by the British was the development of a

transportation network of railway and steamer service between 1900 and 1955. However, the main purpose

for this development was to facilitate the extraction of exportable raw materials, particularly cotton, sugar

and indigo, that had been introduced in Sudan by the Egyptians during the 1820 s . 9 8 This transportation

system was key in the rise of several (oil, soap, cement, shoes and canned meat) of the current processing

industries in the post-World War II period. In addition, the British administration built the Sennar dam to

facilitate irrigation of the Gezira agricultural project to produce cotton for Lancashire and built Khartoum

college.99 They also imported concepts of governance, civil service and individual property rights. ' ^ 0

However, British labor usage during railroad construction, exacerbated by offering higher-than-average

95. Governor-General, Sir John Robinson agreed to the Advisory Council’s demand that the South be included in the new self-government (despite significant opposition based on his assessment that a lack of economic and political capacity would result in the South being dominated by the North) to maintain peace with Southern leaders who attended the 1947 Juba Conference; Peter Bechtold, p. 31.

96. Ibid, p. 76

97. Lees and Brooks, p. 141.

98. Ibid, pp. 8& 72; Bechtold, pp. 46-47; The railway was extended to link key cities in Kassala, Blue Nile and Kordofan to Khartoum and ports Sudan and Suakin on the , Holt and Daly, pp. 125-126.

99. Irrigation to sustain cotton production, which had begun in the Gezira plain of Kassala province immediately after the establishment of the Condominium, was funded by £3,000,000 from the British government in 1913; Holt and Daly, p. 127.

100. Lees and Brooks, p. 9.

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 38 wages, conflicted with agricultural labor needs and set the stage for the misuse of Southerners in the

economic arena as well.

The early years of the Condominium thus allowed the continuation of domestic slavery that had begun

under the Turco-Egyptian and Mahdist rule. ^ This practice endured, although increasingly less frequent,

well into the 1920s along the Ethiopian b o r d e r . The British also allowed the continuance of a

subsistence economy in the South, in part, because of the lack of commitment to overcoming climatic and

geographic obstacles that included the Sudd, the swamp that had halted the Islamc jihad decades

earlier, a long rainy season and the Tsetse fly. Essentially the colonial administration deemed that Britain's

cotton demands could be met most cost-effectively by promoting production in the more arid North and

using southerners as cheap labor, and thus ignored the South. In fact, to ensure its continued access to

cheap raw materials, British economic aid was made contingent on acceptance of its proposed self-

determination program and the institution of parliamentary democracy. 1 ^ The success of the Gezira

project, which had been ensured for political and economic reasons with infusions of cash - totaling

£14,920,000 in guaranteed loans from the British government by 1924, sparked a myriad of similar

Northern development schemes, including al-Mahdi’s White Nile pump and sharecropping p ro je c t.^

But it resulted in only a single Southern project to increase agricultural production in the Zande region of

Equatoria after the Southern Policy was abolished in 1 9 4 6 . ^ Even then, Britain retained economic

101. The British waged “pacification wars” and allowed “punitive raids” in the form of burning villages and confiscating cattle to decrease Southern rebellion to continuance of slave trading.

102. Holt and Daly, p. 126.

103. Taken from records in the Department of State, Record Group 84, Sudan 1943-55, National Archives, Washington, D.C..

104. The Gezira project generated some cheap cotton for the British textile industry but was more a source of patronage for supportive Northern leaders; ibid.

105. Woodward, Sudan 1898-1989. p. 81.

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 39 control over its former colony by offering aid following the collapse in global demand during the Great

Depression, a series of crop diseases and locust infestations, and by remaining the primary purchaser of

Sudan’s single cash-crop, cotton. The Sudanese government lost more than 50 percent - from £E6,981,590

to £E3,653,394 - of its government revenue between 1929 and 1932. ^ Thus, structural concerns, such as

the unequal economic development among regions, and, most recently, the demands of global capitalism

further eroded the Sudanese state’s ability to manage popular requests. Regional struggles, sparked by

unequal modernization and rooted in this center-periphery dependency, later were converted by elites and

the military into “ethnic and religious” struggles, that is struggles centered supposedly in cultural

differences.

In summary, the exclusive tendencies in Sudanese politics began with the British govemor-generals’

decision to include only the two sayyids in policy discussions that shaped the structure and regional and

religious compositions of the future state. The role of Islam in the state was codified when the two sayyids

supported the Khatmiyya’s more proactive stance toward the spread of Islam over the more pro-Westem,

pro-foreign direct investment position of the Mahdists. The historic rivalry between the two ideologically

bound elites was promoted by both the British and Egyptians. Last, the British claim that the South was too

“backward,” too primitive, to be included in the political and economic processes was camouflage for

economic interests that relied upon cheap labor, or in the case of slaves - relatively free labor - provided

by the South. This economic need, when matched with a respect for the Muslim leaders that stemmed from

the formidable strength of the Mahdiyya in Egypt, fueled the restriction of the three Southern provinces in

travel, as well as in the domain of political and economic developm ent.^

106. Holt and Daly, p. 140.

107. Francis Deng taped interview with author, April 26, 1995 at The Brookings Institution, Washington, D.C.; Milton Viorst, “Fundamentalism in Power: Sudan’s Islamic Experiment,” Foreign Affairs. (May/June 1995), pp.48-49.

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 40

Post-Independence Period: The Politics of Religion

Armed Conflict and The 1972 Addis Ababa Accord

With no apparent avenues to access political power, Southerners began armed conflict with Ismail al-

Azhari’s newly elected government immediately following the declaration of independence on December

19, 1955.108 As early as 1952, the British accelerated the process of turning administrative and policing

duties over to the Sudanese, called “Sudanization,” after seeing signs (in the form of general strikes, mass

protests and the arming of factions throughout the countryside) of the forthcoming civil war. They also

began shipping personal property to the United Kingdom so as to leave the country ahead of the departure

date specified in their own self-determination program. This initial battle was waged until 1972 between

the Anya Nya rebels on one side and the Azhari-Mahdi-Khatmiyya governments and General Ibrahim

Abboud’s military dictatorship (following a 1958 coup) on the other side. The northern parties’ attempt to

form a regional government for the South in 1965 was hampered by divisions within the southern political

leadership over whether to accept a federation or to demand total independence. This fragmentation, along

with poor communication, weak organizational structures and insufficient finances, later hindered the

Southern parties in capturing much of their own region in the 1968 elections. 109 Only in 1969 were the

rebels finally organized under General Lagu’s Southern Separatist Liberation Movement and William

Deng’s Sudan African National Union.

The first phase of civil war began in 1953 as intermittent skirmishes. The battles spread in August

1954, four months before independence, when southern troops mutinied after learning they would be

108. This conclusion was drawn from the Khatmiyya’s (DUP) success in challenging the confederation proposed by the South and backed by the Umma Party; see Joseph Sweeney, United States Liaison Officer to Khartoum, to State Department, September 29, 1954; Sudan 1944-1954, Department of State Records, Post Files, Record Group 84, Washington, D.C.: National Archives.

109. The Southern parties captured only 5.5% of the total votes in the 1968 elections; Bechtold, pp. 95- 95.

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 41 reassigned from the Equatoria Corps to the North. Roving unorganized “bandits” waged war from the bush

until Col. Joseph Lagu, a former officer in the government army, organized the guerillas into Anya Nya,

which refers to the poison extracted from the head of a Gabon viper. * Under Col. Lagu, the guerillas

captured the morally symbolic army post at Pacalla in September 1963. The resulting battles brought about

the collapse a year later of Sudan’s first military regime under Major-General Ibrahim Abboud. The new

civilian regime under Sir al Khatim el Khalifa moved to reconcile the regions by providing a general

amnesty to all southern rebels and convening the March 1965 Roundtable Conference o f northern and

southern representatives. But before the conference’s 12 delegates could implement regional autonomy for

the South, the newly elected government resumed warfare and began steps to adopt a new Islamic

Constitution.

The one example of successful coexistence, after Jaafar Nimeiri’s regime took power in a bloodless

1969 coup and negotiated the 1972 Addis Ababa settlement, was undercut by the resurgence of the

traditional Islamic parties. Communist Party officials, who supported Southern autonomy but hedged on

attempting the coup, were then invited to join Nimeiri’s RCC. The regime began systematically routing the

traditional leaders (Mahdi and Ansars) from positions of power and usurping their property to forestall a

coup reversal, m A month later, Nimeiri publicly acknowledged the need to grant Southerners some form

of local autonomy. But it was not until the Communists attempted a coup after Nimeiri announced “there

was no room for the communists in the Sudanese revolution” that Nimeiri granted the South regional

autonomy with a democratic parliamentary system in October 1972 in Addis Ababa. It was a “pragmatic

reform” designed to build popular support for a leader who had created enemies of the conservative

110. Bechtold, p. 37.

111. Nelson Kasfir, “One Full Revolution: The Politics of Sudanese military government, 1969-1985,” in Rov Harbeson.fed.1. The Military in African Politics. fNew York:Praeger. 1987), pp. 146-147.

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 42

religious right. Communist left, and major Superpower that had been funding the government. * ^ with

mediation help from the World Council of Churches and All Africa Council of Churches, the parties

decided: 1.) The three southern provinces would have their own elected Regional Assembly and an

appointed Regional Council and President; 2.) The Regional Council would handle all policy except

defense, foreign affairs, currency and finance; 3.) English would be taught in Southern schools although

Arabic would remain the official language; and 4.) Anya Nya forces would be incorporated into the

Sudanese army’s Southern command.

But in 1983, Nimeiri was coerced into adopting the Muslim sharia, or legal code, to maintain his

regime. Ever the pragmatist, Nimeiri had to develop a method for dealing with pressure from the Muslim

Brotherhood that had pushed for an Islamic constitution in 1967. After surviving four coup attempts by

soldiers and Libyan-backed Ansar exiles, Nimeiri secretly agreed to allow Sadiq al-Mahdi (leader of the

Mahdi Ansars) and Hassan al-Turabi (a Muslim Brotherhood leader and current political head of the

Sudanese government) to return in official posts. * *4 Al-Turabi immediately began advocating for sharia.

“This would have given us some power,” al-Turabi was quoted as saying in The Middle East. I ^

Following a cut in subsidies for food and gasoline, urban riots raged in 1979, 1981 and 1982 and further

eroded Nimeiri’s power. In May 1983, Nimeiri broke the Addis Ababa Agreement by splitting the South

into three sub-regions under the pretext of preventing domination by one ethnic group, the Dinka. Nimeiri

112. Kasfir,p. 150.

113. Christopher R. Mitchell, Conflict Resolution and Civil War: Reflections on the Sudanese Settlement of 1972. (Washington: Center for Conflict Analysis and Resolution, George Mason University, 1989), pp. 5-9.

114. William Brewer, U.S. Ambassador to Sudan between 1973 and 1977, confirms Nimeiri narrowly escaped one such coup attempt in July 1976 by Ansar exiles who had crept back into Khartoum with support of ’s Quaddafi, in Malcolm Thompson’s “Interview with Ambassador William D. Brewer,” (Washington: Association for Diplomatic Studies, Foreign Affairs Oral History Program, Georgetown University, Aug. 2, 1988), p. 40.

115. Kasfir, p. 155.

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 43 claimed the split would give the Nuer and Equatorian peoples individual political influence. This marked

the first significant attempt by a Khartoum regime to undermine the Southern cause by stressing ethnic

differences among Southerners. ^ ® He concomitantly restructured the Southern administrative district of

Equatoria into three smaller geographical groupings. Nimeiri’s decision to re-divide the South was sparked

by his increasing dependence on fewer and fewer people, one of which was Vice President Joseph Lagu.

Nimeiri told then-U.S. Ambassador C. William Kontos that “as an old politician who had followed the

course of events in the South closely he had come to the conclusion that partition would engender too

much opposition and too great a political upheaval.” ^ ^ Yet he later allowed himself to be swayed by

Lagu’s petitions for re-division that “reflected a minority tribal point of view.” But the partition occurred

against the will of the majority of southern Sudanese. Nimeiri then allowed the military to shift Southern

battalions resulting in a revolt led by Col. John Garang de Mabior and Southern battalions. Southerners

saw these changes as means for limiting their collective power in dealings with the federal government.

Nimeiri’s final divisive act was to pronounce that sharia would become the basis for Sudanese laws and to

set up stem religious courts that adopted the sharia directives for criminal punishment in September. He

had become a “bom-again Muslim” and installed a Sufi Mullah, an Islamic mystic, in the palace. When

asked why he had reversed himself on re-dividing the Southern province, Nimeiri answered Ambassador

Kontos by saying, “God had decided that I should be head of my nation. His word is inscribed in the Koran

116. Woodard, “Sudan: State Building and The Seed of Conflict,” pp. 86-92. Nimeiri’s action played up the historic rivalry between the Dinka and Nuer and fears of the much smaller Fetit group. But the Nuer quickly ended the clashes and rejoined SPLA. Ethnicity as a source o f contention took greater hold in subsequent regimes: In eastern Equatoria, the Latuka and Toposa were armed by the Khartoum military to fight the SPLA in 1989. The military later used the Baggara Arabs in South Kordafan to attack the Dinka; Deng, in his interview with this author, points out that the ethnic division was in fact a construct because today’s Dinka are actually a mixing of the original Dinka and Baggara Arabs through intermarriage.

117. Thomas Stem, Interview with U.S. Ambassador to Sudan 1980-83 C. William Kontos, (Washington: Foreign Affairs Oral History Program, Association for Diplomatic Studies, Georgetown University, February 12 and 24, 1992 and March 10 1992), pp. 112-117.

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and I therefore take my guidance in helping my people from it.” * *** Ambassador Kontos suggests that

Nimeiri's reasoning was skewed by fertility medication he had been taking.

Nevertheless, Nimeiri received large doses of U.S. aid because he was the sole supporter o f Egypt’s

Sadat in the Middle East. * *^ It also helped that he split with the Sudanese Communists, broke economic

ties with the Soviets and began to oppose the Ethiopian rebels. After three years, the U.S. had given

Nimeiri $150 million in military and economic assistance. *20 fje was the United States’ bulwark against

anti-Western movements in neighboring countries. So when the South revolted under the SPLM, the

Eritreans responded by backing the Southern rebels. The Libyan armed forces began supporting rebels in

the western province of Darfur because Nimeiri and Khaddafi were developing a “vitriolic hatred; they

would call each other harsh names,” Ambassador C.William Kontos r e c a l l s . *21

Simultaneously, these obstacles to co-operation were reinforced by the machinations of Egyptian,

British and Ethiopian forces. The Addis Ababa agreement was undercut by both Egyptian and Libyan

interference. Libya vacillated between supporting Nimeiri’s opposition, such as the Khatmiyya’s

Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) and Mahdi’s Umma Party (UP) that favored the creation of on an

Islamic state during the liberal (initial) phase of his leadership, and the Nimeri government following his

limited adoption of sharia in 1983. The Egyptian government resumed pressure for unification of the two

countries to counter its ostracism by neighboring Arab countries following the signing of the Camp David

Peace Accords with and to bolster itself against the rising Islamic movement that challenged the state

118. Ibid, p. 116.

119. Lillian P. Mullin, Interview with U.S.Ambassador to Sudan 1977-80 Donald C. Bergus, (Washington: Foreign Affairs Oral History Program, Association for Diplomatic Studies, Georgetown University, January 24, 1991), pp. 228-9.

120. Thomas Stem, Interview with U.S. Ambassador to Sudan 1980-83 C. William Kontos, pp. 105- 106.

121. Ibid.

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 45 and sparked the assassination of Pres. Anwar Sadat in 1981. The 1982 signing of a 10-year plan for the

political and economic integration of the two countries, as well as Egyptian military aid to the Sudanese

government’s southern campaign, were viewed as direct threats to Southern political influence. These

externally driven divisions would resurface during the current rounds of armed conflict with numerous

intra-regional agents supporting either the Khartoum government or the southern rebels. The end result was

that Nimeiri weakened politically, and, his popular mandate having taken a serious blow due to the strain

of economic austerity measures taken in light of collapsing terms of trade in the early 1980s, was

overthrown by junior military officials soon thereafter.

The Post-Nimeiri Period

While Nimeiri was visiting the United States, Lt.Gen. Abd ar-Rahman Swar al-Dahab, under the

broader auspices of the Allied National Forces for National Salvation (NAS), led a bloodless military coup

on April 6, 1985. On hearing that Nimeiri’s one-party state led by the Sudanese Socialist Union had been

toppled, Garang called a ceasefire. The political climate became only slightly stabilized during the

Transitional Military Council (TMC) that followed Nimeiri’s overthrow. The TMC alleviated some

hardship by turning towards Libya, Ethiopia and the then-USSR and gained popular support by promising

to end sharia and to break military ties with Egypt following free elections in April 1986. The initial, post-

Nimeiri negotiations took place between trade unionists and Umma Party officials in the NAS, and the

Sudanese People’s Liberation Movement (SPLM) in March 1986 in Addis Ababa. The NAS-SPLM,

despite the DUP and NfF boycotts of the conference, released the Koka Dam Declaration requesting that

the TMC: 1.) Repeal Islamic laws of 1983; 2.) Adopt the secular constitution passed in 1956 immediately

after independence; 3.) Annul the military pacts (with Libya and Egypt) “which impinge on Sudan’s

National Sovereignty;” and - Garang’s primary demand since the resumption of the war - 4.) Center the

constitutional conference on addressing the “basic problems of the Sudan and not the so-called problem of

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southern Sudan.” ^ 2 The Koka Dam Declaration is significant because it laid the guidelines against which

subsequent government policies would be measured.

This agreement, however, was not implemented. A new coalition government was formed among the

traditional political parties (with al-Mahdi again as its leader) and included four ministerial posts for the

Southern parties. Newly-elected Prime Minister (and signatory of the Koka Dam Declaration) Sadiq al-

Mahdi abrogated the agreement to remove sharia by endorsing the 1968 constitution that codified Islamic

law. The SPLM started a new military offensive to reclaim the southern towns of Juba, Wau, Malakal and

Benhu, with Ethiopian assistance. Mahdi responded by opening talks with Garang in Ethiopia. Then, after

the government’s indecisive dry-season military offensive, Mahdi wrote a letter, titled “An Initiative

Project for the Peaceful Solution-National Call,” stating that a modified Koka Dam Declaration “ ‘has

objective bases which will pave the way to the national constitutional conference. ’” 123 Mahdi offered to

replace sharia with laws based on “Sudanese legal heritage” for non-Muslims. Garang refused his

concomitant offer to join the coalition government in the special capacity of Minister of Peace and Unity

and denounced the letter as insufficient because it promoted substituting sharia with “ ‘a legal position

based on diversity in a way which satisfies the aspirations of Muslims in areas of Muslim majority and the

aspirations on non-Muslims in other areas.’” 124

In fear of losing the war after the SPLM began capturing Northern towns including Kurmuk,

government representatives in the DUP began secret talks with the SPLM in Ethiopia. These talks

concluded with a “transitional charter” that: 1.) Stressed Sudan’s commitment to multi-party democracy,

2.) Asked the government to replace sharia with an alternative legal code before a constitutional

122. Ann Mosely Lesch, “Negotiations in Sudan,” in David R. Smock, (ed.), Making War and Waging Peace: Foreign Intervention in Africa. (Washington: United States Institute of Peace Press, 1993), p. 116.

123. Taken from a broadcast on SPLA radio, April 20, 1987 as quoted in Lesch, “Negotiations in Sudan,” p. 118.

124. Ibid.

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 47 conference, and 3.) Reinstated the South’s status as an autonomous regional government (which had been

stipulated in the 1972 Addis Ababa Agreement with Nimeiri). This tentative step toward open discussions

on the nature of the future Sudanese state was rejected by al-Mahdi as treasonous and exclusionary for

omitting the NIF. Mahdi, instead, asked parliament for sole authority to accept the charter, convened the

constitutional conference without following the terms of the DUP-SPLM agreement and gave cabinet seats

to NIF members in May 1988. The NIF refused to accept the DUP-SPLM agreement despite a broad

coalition of political and trade union support for the agreement. Since Dr. Hassan al-Turabi, leader of the

National Islamic Front (NIF), was appointed Deputy Prime Minister, no further discussions of a secular

state have been held.

Subsequent strikes in Khartoum and the DUP’s resignation from the coalition government created an

opening for NIF expansion o f its power within the government. A military ultimatum in February 1989

demanded that Mahdi either terminate negotiations or increase military spending. Mahdi then reversed

himself by replacing the NIF with DUP and NUP leaders in a new cabinet, endorsing the DUP-SPLM

agreement, renegotiating the defense pact with Egypt, and, on June 29, initialing a draft bill to suspend

sharia the following month in preparation for a September constitutional conference. Before a special

parliamentary meeting could be called the next day to vote on the bill. Brigadier Omar Hassan Ahmed al-

Beshir seized power.

The NIF’s influence and its hardline stance toward Southern demands have gained increasing popular

support since Omar Hassan Ahmed al-Beshir took power in July 1989. Beshir returned negotiations to

point zero. As the prime minister, minister of defense and commander-in-chief of the new junta - the new

15-member Revolutionary Command Council (RCC) - Beshir annulled all previous agreements with the

SPLM stating, “ ‘Each side must formulate its own peace scenario and then sit at the table to negotiate

every clause and point...It is like it (the DUP-SPLM accord) never existed to us. The conditions included in

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that agreement are inadmissible to u s . ’” ^ 5 Beshir also stated that negotiations would not begin until a

cease-fire had been declared by the SPLM and that any negotiations must allow the implementation of

sharia. Beshir agreed to exempt non-Muslim provinces from only a few stipulations in the sharia. He then

brought in Ethiopia, Egypt and Kenya as mediators in July during a month-long ceasefire. The Khartoum

government, however, simultaneously called for a national referendum on sharia which was sure to be

approved by a majority of the urban Muslim population and began forced conscription in plans for the

most extensive military campaign yet in the South. In response, southern rebels stepped up attacks and

recaptured Kurmuk. Mediation sessions led by both Zairean Pres. Mobuto Sese Seko and former-U.S. Pres.

Jimmy Carter in late 1989 and 1990 were unsuccessful. Beshir further enhanced Southern fears of Muslim

domination by signing the May 1990 “declaration of integration” with Libya.

Turabi and the NIF have been able to withstand opposition from the traditional leaders and professional

groups thus far because of religious authority that arises from couching the war in terms of

Islamic/Mohammedan ideals, because of a shift in the war in favor of government forces, and because they

employed thousands of young men who had been jobless due to the country’s economic stagnation. ^ 6

They had also systematically incorporated themselves into all levels of the state bureaucracy and most civic

institutions; after the coup, key jobs in the judiciary, armed forces, trade unions and educational systems

were just reassigned to supporters. ^ In fact, Turabi has been so successful in consolidating NIF control

over the bureaucratic, political and economic arms of the country that relatively moderate Muslims, such as

former prime minister Sadiq al-Mahdi and the Khatmiyya/DUP, and the few non-Muslim voices that

remained in the parliament after the coup, such as Southern representative Mahti Mateh Malawal, became

124. Taken from a news conference, Reuter, July 7, 1989, as quoted in Lesch, “Negotiations in Sudan,” p. 124.

125. Deng interview, April 26,1995; Prendergast interview, March 15, 1995.

126. Viorst, p. 55.

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virtually pow erless. ^ 8 February 1991, the Khartoum government reinstated a penal code based on

sharia that temporarily exempted the Southern regions of Equatoria, Upper Nile and Bahr from 5 o f the 186

codes. 129

Following the overthrow of Mengistu, a long-time SPLM supporter, in May 1991, Garang was forced

into unconditional negotiations for the first time in meetings with U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for

African Affairs Henry Cohen and the RCC representative. These negotiations were delayed by 1.) The

appointment of Muslim fundamentalist Tayib Ibrahim Muhammad Khair as governor of Darfur in the

south; 2.) An unsuccessful coup attempt that Beshir later blamed on the National Democratic Alliance

(NDA), comprised of SPLM, opposition members from the UP and DUP, and military officers; and 3.)

Fighting among SPLM forces after commanders Riak Machar and Gordon Koang created the SPLA-United

(now called the Southern Sudan Independence Movement) split with the SPLM on August 28, 1991. The

field commanders based in Upper Nile disagreed with Garang’s demand for a unified, secular state.

Reflecting their frustration with the protracted war, the dissidents stated,

“Even though a sizeable minority in the North believes in genuine unity based on equality, justice

and freedom...the Sudan will be condemned to perpetual war unless some drastic action is taken

fairly soon... .The only feasible course of action to bring about peace is for all to accept the fact

that the North and the South need as a matter of urgency a period of time for separate existence.

They can unite in the future whenever the will develops from both sides. That will be a more

meaningful and lasting unity than an imposed one. Unity can wait but peace should not.’”

127. Deng interview, April 26, 1995.

128. Abdel-Rahim, p. 815.

129. Declaration by “SPLA Two,” led by Riak Machar, Lam Akol, and Gordon Koang, reprinted in Sudan Update, September 24, 1991, as quoted in Lesch, “Negotiations in Sudan,” pp. 128-29.

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 50 This fragmentation of the SPLM hindered Nigerian-led mediations that were also sponsored by the U.S. in

1992. In October 1993, Beshir dissolved the RCC after being named president of a new civilian

government in preparation for elections. In January 1994, Machar rejoined the SPLM under Garang's

command. ^ This facilitated a resumption o f negotiations in March 1994 under mediation by the regional

organisation, the Intergovernmental Agency for Drought and Development (IGADD). IGADD, made up of

Sudan, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Uganda, Kenya, Djibouti, and, at one point, Somalia, intervened as a result o f the

1992 Horn of Africa humanitarian summit. IGADD had been created to deal with the droughts and famines

that hit six Horn of Africa countries during the mid-1970s and 1980s. Discussions of ways to increase the

region’s food supplies and to improve food distribution quickly led to discussions of the civil wars raging

in three-member states that directly accounted for one-third of the food insecure, that is, people whose

sense of security is threatened by a lack of f o o d . [See Figure 2 below] In pursuing sustainable

economic development, IGADD decided, that regional economic integration could not be wholly

successful until the violent conflicts had been resolved. After surviving the drought of 1990-91, the

member states appointed a subcommittee consisting of Kenya, Uganda, Ethiopia and Eritrea, led at

different times by Eritrea’s Issaias Afewerki, Kenya’s , and Uganda’s .

130. Deng taped interview with author, April 26, 1995; Prendergast taped interview with author, March 15, 1995.

131. Warfare directly contributed to a third of the region’s 45 million people who faced food insecurity, which includes lacking access to food staples, being unable to pay food prices, and being dependent on imports or donor aid to have sufficient staples. Sudan accounted for 27.7% o f the region’s food insecure, see Figure 1. in Michael Hubbard et al., “Regional food security strategies: The case of IGADD in the Horn of Africa,” Food Policy. February 1992: pp. 12-13.

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„im c

Fig. 2: Most Food Insecure Administrative Regions in IGADD, 1990. Source: See Figure 2 in Michael Hubbard et al., “Regional food security strategies: The case of IGADD in the Horn o f Africa,” Food Policy. February 1992: p. 14.

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission 52 The core of IGADD’s mediation approach is its May 1994 Declaration of Principles which states peace

is “an imperative, whether it is to be based on the unity of the country, some form of functional

decentralization, or outright partition.” Its fundamental principles for a unified Sudan are: 1.)

Decentralization within the framework of federation or confederation; 2.) Separation of religion and state

referred to as “a necessary condition of equality among the various religions practiced in the country;” 3.)

Power-sharing rather than partisan democracy to discourage voting along ethnic lines in the “winner-take-

all syndrome” that rules electoral democracy; 4.) Economic justice; 5.) Respect for fundamental rights that

would create a mechanism for addressing “potential conflicts between religious and international norms;”

and 6.) An independent judiciary. ^

Secondary mediation goals address the right to self-determination that IGADD defined as inalienable:

“While giving priority to unity does not mean foregoing the right to self-determination, creating

appropriate conditions for unity enhances the prospects for the right of self-determination to be exercised

in favor of preserving that unity as a matter of choice." ^

A significant step in resolving the conflict came when Issaias changed tactics by proffering his

expertise in guerrilla organizing to Garang and two Northern sectarian political movements. ^ This offer

addressed many of the Southern rebels’ previous military problems that stemmed from having a splintered

organization. Ground reports also showed that, at this point, Garang was receiving military aid from

Uganda, Israel, Zimbabwe, and perhaps from Namibia and the United States and these countries were “an

implicit threat that if Khartoum rejects them there would be increased and accelerated assistance to the

132. As quoted in “Sudan: Can Neighbors help?” Humanitarian Monitor. (Addis Ababa: InterAfrica Group) February 1995:Number 2.

134. Ibid.

134. Prendergast taped interview with author, March 15, 1995.

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opposition.” ^** With backing and threats from U.S. Ambassador Melissa Wells, IGADD coerced

Khartoum into considering the principles. But after a new round of state representatives, led by Dr. Ghazi

Salah al-Din Atabani of the National Islamic Front, entered the mediation talks, Khartoum reversed itself

by stating that secularism and self-determination were completely unacceptable because promoting sharia

throughout Africa was an obligation. IGADD then called on the Organization of African Unity and the

United Nations to place additional pressure on the parties. IGADD eventually shifred from mediating

toward a resolution to strategizing on ways to contain the Sudanese government.

The war has taken quite a toll economically. Al-Hayat reported that the war was costing the

government $3 million a day just as the government was attempting to be re-accepted by the International

Monetary Fund for financing of exportation of oil on disputed Southern fields. ^ 7 The Khartoum

government’s continued focus on this oil has only bolstered Southerner’s distrust and refusals to negotiate

as detailed in the following section.

Economic Constraints: Hvdropolitics and Oil

Post-independence economic growth and conflict management have been undermined by a shift in the

world demand for primary commodities, as well as a lack of diversification and the austerity measures

imposed by the international financial institutions as part of debt relief packages. Initial development

projects that focused on healthcare and education were halted by soaring inflation in the immediate post­

independence period. ^ 8 Distribution of resources, specifically oil near Bentiu along the North-South

135. Ibid.

136. John Prendergast, “Diplomacy, Aid and Governance in Sudan,” Discussion Paper 37, (Washington: Center for Concern, March 1995), p. 16.

137. Joseph Sweeney, United States Liaison Officer at Khartoum, to Department of State, October 23, 1953, Sudan 1943-55 Record Group 84, Department of State, Washington, D.C.: National Archives, p. 3.

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 54 divide and use o f the Nile waters, has been a major point of contention during this period. The South

remains convinced that any discussion of those assets without southern representation will result in the

South’s continued exclusion from receiving the benefits of economic development.

During the independence period, Sudan has often turned to military governments during economic and

political crises, because it is seen as the sole mechanism to restore order and enforce policies that would

ameliorate the situation. The Khatmiyya supported Abboud’s coup in 1958 because it had the two goals of

setting the economy on a path to economic growth, which had been hampered by fighting between the

Umma Party and Azhari’s NUP over whether to request international aid, and of resolving the Southern

question. Although Abboud improved production and distribution of the country’s main cash crop, cotton,

and garnered the international aid needed for industrialization, the regime failed to correct the inequities in

regional industrial development that had characterized the country since British rule and complicated the

Southern question. According to 1970-71 Sudanese Ministry of Industry records, three Northern provinces

(Khartoum, Blue Nile and Kassala) account for 88 percent of all industrial establishments, 95 percent o f the

industrial production and 92 percent of the invested capital. ^ 9 The number of industrial establishments in

1970-71 actually reflected an 18 percent increase from 1966.140 Significantly only one (Bahr el Ghazal)

of the three southern provinces held any industry. This single establishment accounted for 0.5 percent of all

industrial establishments, 0.4 percent of industrial production and 0.9 percent of invested capital. *41

The conflict between the Khartoum government and the South also reflected changes in the economy

of the country. Nimeiri’s regime assumed power just as African economies were facing the first downturns

in world commodity prices due to the global recession brought on by the 1971 and 1973 oil price hikes.

141. From Table 5-4, “Geographical Distribution of Manufacturing Industry in the Sudan,” Lees and Brooks, p. 75.

142. Ibid, p.74

143. Ibid., Table 5-4, p.75.

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 55 Sudan suffered drops in the global demand for cotton and gum arabic, the country’s second largest export

commodity at the time. 142 In comparing regions, a significant disparity existed between income levels in

the North and West (data for the South was unavailable).^^ The Darfur, the focus of extensive debate and

conflict due to its lack of urbanization, despite being the third largest of the nine provinces, showed the

most significant disparity at £S.98 per household as compared to £S172 in the eastern provinces and

£S.236 in Khartoum province.[See Tables 1 and 2] The Nimeiri government’s plans to reduce this regional

disparity by contributing £S.12 million annually to the Southern Regional Fund between 1972 and 1975

and by covering the region’s budgetary deficits also began alleviating this problem. However, attempts to

supplement low domestic savings (which blocked growth in manufacturing) by attracting foreign direct

investment to what was being touted as the future “breadbasket” of the Middle East failed to supply

sufficient revenue. 1^4 At that point Sudan’s recurrent balance of payments problems surfaced and official

development assistance became a recurrent staple of the government revenue. Official development

assistance, in fact, doubled in the initial 1970’s.

144. Ibid., pp. 110-122.

145. Ibid., Table 2-6, pp. 24-25.

146. Typically petrodollars were funneled into conservative projects such as petro-refining, tourism and real estate rather than heavy industry. Arab Fund loans were channeled through the Arab Authority for Agricultural Investment and Development to Sudan to support domestic grain, sugar, sorghum, vegetable, dairy and poultry production but were hampered by a lack of trained managers; Alan Richards and John Waterburv. A Political Economy of the Middle East (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1990), pp. 375-77; Lees and Brooks, pp. 123-24.

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Table 1 SUDAN’S POPULATION BY PROVINCE, 1955-73

Province 1955-56 Census 1973 Census Annual growth rate Northern 873,059 957,671 0.5 % Khartoum 504,923 1,145,921 4.7 Kassala & Red Sea 941,039 1,547,475 2.8 Blue Nile 2,069,646 3,740,405 3.2 Kordofan 1,761,968 2,202,345 1.3 Darfur 1,328,765 2,139,615 2.7 Upper Nile 888,611 836,263 -0.4 Bahr el Ghazal 991,022 1,396,913 2.0 Equatoria 903,503 791,738 -0.7

Six Northern 7,479,400 11,733,432 2.7 Provinces Three Southern 2,783,136 3,024,914 0.5 Provinces Total 10,262,536 14,758,346 2.2

Source: from Table 2-1, “Population Growth by Province,” Francis A. Lees and Hugh C. Brooks, The Economic and Political Development of the Sudan. (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1977), p. 14.

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 57 Table 2 AVERAGE HOUSEHOLD INCOME BY SUDANESE PROVINCE IN 1973

Province Average annual Income(£s.) Northern 124

Khartoum 236

Kassala and Red Sea 183

BlueNiie 180

Kordofan 153

Darfur 98

Average for Six 189 Northern provinces

Source: from Table 2-6 “Average Income Households by Province,” Francis A. Lees and Hugh C. Brooks, The Economic and Political Development o f the Sudan. (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1977), p. 25.

The continued slump in cotton and other commodity prices in the late 1970’s forced Nimeiri to identify

other mechanisms, such as oil exportation, for acquiring much needed capital. In 1983, Nimeiri decided to

allow Chevron to ship out newly-discovered petroleum, via a pipeline from Bahr el-Ghazal to Port Sudan

on the Red Sea. This move, coupled with his attempt to redraw the North-South boundary line so that all

oil would be in the North, sparked a dread among Southerners that the South would receive significantly

less or none of the oil revenues and the secondary economic development that would spin off the creation

of a petroleum industry. Southern leaders viewed this economic policy as a reinforcement of the historical

trend toward uneven development and halted the project with renewed warfare. ^

147. Prendergast, In The Horn of Africa. (Washington: Center of Concern, undated), p. 40.

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Southerners cite an additional cause for concern, “hydropolitics.” Hydropolitics, John

Prendergast’s terra for the wrangling for control of the Nile and distribution of Nile waters, fueled Egypt’s

alliance with the repressive Mahdiyya in the early part of the 20th century, and the RCC’s recent support

for the NIF’s Islamicization of the Sudan - and the rest of the Horn. Southerners opposed Egypt’s and

Sudan’s joint decision to construct the Jonglei Canal to catch runoff from the Nile during the rainy season -

thereby providing additional water for the northern Sudan and its neighbor - on the grounds that it would

also reduce the marsh lands that provide water to the Nile in the South. This water is key to Southern

nomadic pastoralists. Southern rebels have blocked canal construction since resuming the civil war in

1983.

The resumption of the armed rebellion in late 1983 left Sudan vulnerable to greater external

intervention especially from the United States and international financial markets. Nimeiri initially backed

off promises of economic investment and infrastructure improvements in the South which further

heightened tensions. He was then forced to further undercut Sudan’s food self-sufficiency by eliminating

food subsidies and devaluing the currency in exchange for additional aid from the International Monetary

Fund and the United States. ^ 9 This policy came during one of the worst drought periods in the south and

138. “Hydropolitics” is a term coined by John Prendergast for the power straggles over water in the Horn of Africa in Prendergast interview, March 15, 1995. The Nile waters ran from Ethiopia to Egypt via the Sudan and are the primary source of fresh water in the region. The centrality of water in regional issues was reiterated recently by executive director of Egypt’s dam at Aswan, Muhammed Al-Amir Othman, when he said “A breach of the 1959 (Nile Water Agreement that specifies the amounts of Nile water to go to Sudan and Egypt each year) treaty is like a breach of our border,” in Amy Dockser Marcus, “Egypt Faces Problems it Has Long Dreaded: Less Control of the Nile,” The Wall Street journal. August 22, 1997: p.Al.

139. The Mahdiyya, supporters of Sadiq al-Mahdi’s great-grandfather and rulers in the first independent government in Egypt, came to power under the successful independence wars against the British in the latter part of the 19th century.

140. Prendergast interview, March 15, 1995; Anthony Shadd, “Egypt’s Neighbors Stake Claim to Nile,” The Tennessean. World News Extra, August 19, 1995: p.10.

148. Since 1985, at least 30% of Sudanese government expenditures have been on defense and

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 59 west of the country and the rest of the Horn of Africa. The sharp rise in food and fuel prices during the

1984-85 drought paved the way for the TMC’s bloodless coup in March 1985. Neither reversion to typical

Sudanese politics nor al-Turabi’s regime have changed the economic landscape, primarily because of the

significant level of resources being channeled into the war and the massive ecological destruction.

Religion’s Role

Finally, the Sudanese civil war is embedded in historical practices dating to the colonialists’ decision to

invest in the educational, technical and political development of the North, while ignoring the South. Post­

independence politics have centered on Khatmiyya and Mahdist battles to gain dominance and to retain

control of the Sudanese government; as a result, the Sudanese government avoided remedying the

economic injustices begun dining colonialism and did little to engender Southerners’ allegiance to the idea

that a united Sudan must include the South. State consolidation was further hampered by the manipulations

of extra-national actors and “factionalism” within the ruling coalition over how to resolve the Southern

issue. 150 The ethnic context of the battles reflects a pattern in which the Khatmiyya and Mahdist elites

acted as “political entrepreneurs” and “mobilizers for gain.” 151 That pattern was instituted through

colonial rule via the Native Administrations and “Sudanization” processes, but is grounded in the two

security; The Economist Intelligence Unit, “Country Profile l987-88:Sudan,” “(London: EIU, June 1987), p. 56; Since 1986 Total external debt has equaled more than 89 percent of gross national product, peaking at 220.7 percent in 1991 (date of the last available figures), with the bulk coming from short term debt relief and concessionary loans, The Economist Intelligence Unit, “Country Profile 1994-95:Sudan,” (London: EIU, December 1994) p. 37; Cotton production dropped 100 percent between 1989 and 1990 and continued to decline, The Economist Intelligence Unit, “Country Profile 1994-95 :Sudan,” p. 18.

149. From George Kent, “Analyzing Conflict and Violence.” Peace & Change. 18,4 (October 1993): p. 377.

150. Hamid Mowlana and A. E. Robinson. “Ethnic Mobilization and Communication Theory,” in Abdul A. Said and Luiz R. Simmons, (eds.), Ethnicity in An International Context (New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Books, 1976), p. 55.

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 60 groups’ economic and political aspirations. This process also created a clientist state in which, first the

British, and, later the two sayyids, doled out political and economic opportunities to supporters. The civil

war was the inevitable result when state legitimization was not achieved through consensual means. The

paradox is that while war has hindered development in Sudan, it has served the economic interests of

specific groups, such as the Baqqara and Misirya murahaliin who, in serving as mercenaries for the army,

also profit from cattle raiding and slave trading. * ^2

Central to the veil of the war has been the discussions of the role that religion plays in life and social

mores, and, by extension, state laws. The media have portrayed the war as a battle over whether Islamic

mandates, called sharia, should be codified. In dispute are sharia that allow crucifixions, stonings,

whippings, and amputations. Furthermore, sharia exempts non-Muslims from capital punishment and

allows them to practice their beliefs in private, if they pay a special tax, called a jiziah. But, non-Muslims

also would be barred from holding executive or judicial posts. ^ Historically, sharia was applied to

personal matters, such as marriage and divorce, in northern and western Sudan. The current extension of

sharia to state governance arose with interpretations by Hassan al Banna, founder of the Egyptian chapter

of the Muslim Brotherhood. The movement was invigorated by the Khomeini revolution that established a

Muslim state in Iran. Claims that the war is sparked by religious differences are belied by statistics that

showed 85 percent of the Southern population was either Muslim or animist when the wars began. * ^4

But the viability of a federalist state remains questionable. At first glance, it appears that, until Nimeiri

decided it was more politically expedient to impose Muslim law on Sudanese society and to usurp Southern

autonomy by reconfiguring the South, the two ideologically opposed groups co-existed peacefully.

151. Africa Watch Group, Denying “The Honor of Living” Sudan, a Human Rights Disaster. (London: Africa Watch Committee, March 1990), pp. 96-97.

152. Prendergast, In The Horn of Africa. (Washington: Center of Concern, undated), p. 59.

153. Thomas Stern, Interview with U.S. Ambassador to Sudan 1980-83 C. William Kontos, p.108.

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 61 Woodward, however, has challenged that assessment by identifying the 1972-83 period as more of a truce

and not the basis of a new state in which all groups participated fully. Furthermore, federalism as an option

has lost some of its salience because the NIF has used the term to promote what Southerners see as a

Muslim rule (by appointing Muslims and NIF supporters as heads of the major financial and economic

planning ministries in Southern regional governments).

One final aspect pertinent to understanding state formation in Sudan is the role of the economy. Elite

economic interests were linked with those of the center, in terms of providing primary commodities and

low value-added goods. However, the Mahdists who prospered were not the traditional “comprador” elite

in that their economic interests were filtered through their religious concerns. At times, that religious

context overrode economic interests (i.e the Khatmiyya refusing economic aid). The state also managed

some limited control over transnational corporations, as in getting Chevron to supply Baqqara mercenaries

during raids in exchange for retaining oil concessions. The inverse perspective suggests multinationals and

regional neighbors used both regional factions in Sudan’s conflict as it was convenient to their own

interests.

The Sudanese polity’s multi-national characteristics, which arose as part of the colonial misalignment

of nation-states and which were exacerbated by structural differences, pose additional problems for future

state consolidation and security. ^ ^5 While the option has not been formally discussed since colonial times,

a reconfiguration, so that Southern groups are joined with communal bases in neighboring countries, or a

larger regional confederation, may offer the sole sustainable option. While the NIF-RCC (in neighboring

Egypt) jihad would continue, it would be balanced by a larger non-Muslim regional population.

154. Abdul A. Said and Luiz R. Simmons, (eds.), “Introduction.” Ethnicity in An International Context. (New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Books, 1976), p. 18.

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3 ZLl

3

c -p>

Fig. 3. Indigenous Ethnic Groups in Liberia Source: from map in Yekutul Gershoni, Black Colonialism:The Americo-Liberian Scramble for the Hinterland. (Boulder, CO: Westman Press, 1985), p. 118.

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J

'tjrrfv Zcitrieisrtf

Fig. 4. Map of Original Liberian Counties during Settler Times Source: from map in Yekutul Gershoni, Black Colonialism:The Americo-Liberian Scramble for the Hinterland. (Boulder, CO: Westman Press, 1985), p. 121.

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C^wr f-X P-14*

-X

Fig. 5. Regional Transportation Systems that link Liberia, Sierra Leone and Source: The Economist Intelligence Unit, “Country Profile, Guinea, Sierra Leone, Liberia, 1994-95,” (LondonrEIU Ltd., April 1994) un-numbered page.

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. CHAPTER V

CASE STUDY TWO: ETHNICITY AS TOOL TO MINIMIZE DEMANDS ON

THE WEAK STATE RULING LIBERIA

Historical Roots: Quasi-colonialism

The parochial interests of factions in the Liberian conflict are rooted in the path that ruling elites chose

for expanding state penetration. Much of Liberia’s political history until 1847, when the republic's

Constitution was amended to include universal suffrage, reflected a tendency to exclude indigenous

participation in the government to the advantage of descendants of former American slaves, called

Americo-Liberians. Most significant is that the ruling True Whig Party (TWP) remained exclusive until

TWP candidate was elected president in 1946.^^ Tubman began a campaign to

incorporate indigenous ethnic groups into the power structures but had to balance popular demands against

the demands of foreign capital. William Tolbert, who succeeded Tubman in 1971, shifted policies toward

non-Westem countries, establishing relations with the then-USSR in 1972. He also reverted to the pre-

Tubman practice of the True Whig Party leadership that ignored indigenous ethnic groups and, later during

the global recession, general popular demands. This exclusive approach to addressing popular interests was

exacerbated by global downturns in iron and rubber prices, thereby paving the way for Samuel Doe’s and

Charles Taylor’s bloody coups.

156. Prominent members of the and young TWP, called the Saturday Afternoon Club, met weekly with the president to discuss politics over drinks. The club was only open to Liberians and government employees of American descent thereby excluding most indigenous people from the channels of political participation and interest aggregation; Office of Strategic Services, information dated May 1, 1944, distributed July 14, 1944, Liberia, Restricted records of OSS, Department of Defense, document #W818 declassified Nov. 9, 1974 as #NND730013, Washington, D.C.: The National Archives.

65

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The United States’ Sole “Colony”

From its inception as a distinct country the Republic of Liberia was dependent upon the United States.

The coasdand between Sierra Leone and the Cote d’Ivoire was setded by some 16,400 freed American

slaves between 1822 and 1892.^7 Another 5,700 Africans who had been released from trading ships by

the British and American navies under the agreement that they would help populate the new settlement.

Along this grain-producing section of the Guinea, settlers encountered an indigenous people who had

survived waves of regional ethnic battles to forge a homogeneous society linked by trade, marriage,

conquest and migration. ^ 8 The indigenous peoples had blended through migration waves: Namely, the

Mende who moved up the during the 15- 16th centuries into Liberia and the lands of the Vai,

Susu and Loko of Sierra Leone; the Mano o f Guinea who emigrated into areas populated by the Gbandi,

Gbundu and Lomo in eastern and northeastern Liberia; and the Mandinka slave traders, called Dyula, who

supplied the Portuguese after 1461 and also brought Islam to the Vai in Liberia. By the 16th century three

large groupings, the Kru along the coast, Mende in the forest belt and Kissi and Gola who comprise the

originals had been pushed into the forest. 159 [see Figure 3. Indigenous Ethnic Groups in Liberia, at

beginning of chapter] The Kru eventually moved into central Liberia, the hinterlands and even into the

Cote d’Ivoire.

This new resettlement project for former slaves began confiscating their coastal lands through

machinations of American philanthropists, including Southern slave owners and abolitionists. In 1797, the

American Society for the Colonizing of Free People of Color in the United States, later shortened to the

American Colonization Society, announced the plan to transport African immigrants to Britain from which

157. Christopher Clapham, “Liberia: Recent History,” Africa South of the Sahara. 23rd edition, 1994, p. 493.

158. Yekutul Gershoni, Black Colonialism: The Americo-Liberian Scramble for the Hinterlands. (Boulder,CO: Westman Press, 1985), pp. 2-4.

159. Gershoni, p. 1.

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they would be carried to Fourah Bay in Sierra Leone later. Leading ACS members included abolitionists

Granville Sharp and Dr. Rob Furley; Southern slaveowners who feared that free Africans would become

vagrants and incite subversion among slaves; pro-slavery supporters such as House Speaker Henry Clay,

Robert Harper, and Randolph; and New Yorker Harmanus Bleeker who thought that the way to avoid

white retaliation against overpopulation and crime was to remove Africans. The ACS convinced the

Virginia legislature in 1816 to pass a resolution for “the purpose of obtaining a territory on the coast of

Africa, or at some other place, not within any of the States of territorial governments of the United States,

to serve for an asylum of such persons of colour as are now free, and may desire the same, and for those

who may hereafter be emancipated within the commonwealth.” *®® Land was purchased with British help

beginning in April 1819 and with a $100,000 donation that US President Monroe gave in 1819 along with

a ship, provisions and US navy escort to pacify the abolitionists. Liberia’s capital, Monrovia, is named in

his honor.

On February 8, 1820, the first ship with 86 immigrants set sail with the secondary mission of

Christianizing the indigenous people: ACS leadership announced in an address that the mission would

“convert through them [the black immigrants] the wide regions of African barbarism, heathenism, cruelty

and desolation into a garden of civilization and to make it into a prominent portion of Cristendom.” *®* It

is reported that U.S. Navy Lt. Robert F. Stockton placed a loaded pistol to the head of King Peter to force

him to sign over the deed for Mesurado, one of the immigrants’ first landing p l a c e s . Between

1822 and 1867, 18,858 immigrants were shipped to Liberia. About 6,000 of the number were slaves taken

160. Ibid, p. 6.

161. Ibid, p. 9.

162. George Klay Kieh Jr., Dependency and The Foreign Power of a Small Power: The Liberian Case. (San Francisco: Mellen Research University Press, 1992), p. 26.

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from the Congo and then freed before reaching the W e s t . 163 Between 1820 and 1832, an ACS agent

served as chief executive officer of the settlement establishing a form of colonial power that had a three­

tiered society which placed the U.S. colonial agents and their fiinctionnaries at the top, mulattoes and light­

skinned immigrants in the middle, and darker-skinned immigrants and lasdy the Congoes and indigenous

peoples in the bottom tier.164 Uprisings in 1822 and 1832 resulted in a split within the colony along ACS

donor lines so that the contingent controlled Cape Palmas beginning in 1834; New Yorkers took

Port Cresson in 1834; and the Mississipians took Greenville in 1836. The ACS created a commonwealth of

the three settlements in 1839 only after deciding this three-way division was wasteful. ^ 5 But by 1841,

ACS turned over day-to-day operations of the settlement to a light-skinned immigrant, -bom

Joseph J. Roberts.

Settler leadership takes control but continues racial and ethnic stratification

Light-skinned immigrants moved to assume leadership on July 26, 1847 with a Declaration of

Independence modeled afrer the United States’ own declaration. Roberts was inaugurated as president on

January 3, 1948. A key aim of state-building, ensuring internal security, was undermined immediately by

the definition of peoplehood embodied in the declaraion’s preamble, “We the people of the Republic of

Liberia were originally the inhabitants of the U.S. of North America.” !66 inclusion and stability were

further eroded by the steep obstacles to political participation that the immigrants placed before the

indigenous people: Before receiving suffrage, an indigenous person had to be classified as “civilized”

163. Gershoni, p. 8.

164. Kieh, p. 27.

165. Gershoni, p. 12.

166. Kieh, p. 29.

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which meant he had cultivated his own plot of land for at least three years and adopted Christianity and

Western values. The tension soared after the settlers’ council passed a law in 1838 allowing immigrants to

keep indigenous children, up to the age of 21 for boys and 18 for girls, as “apprentices” under the auspices

of “civilizing” t h e m . 167 The True Whig Party (TWP), comprised of wealthy mainly dark-skinned

immigrants, took power in 1877. It became the sole party when the Republican party disbanded in 1911.

The True Whigs retained control for the next 100 years by requiring that all office holders be party

members and that each member contribute one months salary to the party’s coffers on an annual basis; this

practice was directly linked to the regular depletion of the government treasury. *68 por example, in 1948

the payments amounted to about $75,000, or almost one month’s payroll for the entire government. Party

officials nearly revolted in 1948, after President Tubman took 75 percent of that year’s receipts, according

to the party’s General Secretary, M.A. D e S h i e l d . *69 This forced contribution minimized the likelihood

that an opposition party would arise given the probability that members would have to support financially a

second party as well.

The Scramble for the Hinterlands and Forced Labor

A lack of materials and the reluctance of the settler population to leave Monrovia allowed the settlers to

establish tentative control along only a 40-mile wide stretch of the coast between Cape Mount in the North

and Cape Palmas in the southeast. The Berlin Conference o f 1885 gave the French the opportunity to

usurp claim to over 200 unprotected miles between the Cavallo River and Cape Palmas in the South while

the Bristish took both sides of the Mano River and attached them to Sierra Leone. In the struggle for the

remainder of the weak colony, the Liberian settlers sided with the British, who had taken less land, by

167. Geshoni, p. 27.

168. Rupert A. Lloyd Jr., Second Secretary of the American Legation to Monrovia, “The Political Situation in Liberia,” Report No. 7, Office of Strategic Services document number ROl 12, dated Sept. 6, 1948, declassified Feb. 23, 1995 as #NMD765026, Washington, D.C.: The National Archives, pp.2-4.

169. Ibid, p. 6.

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signing the Barclay-Clarke Agreement Britain successfully negotiated boundary agreements with France

in 1901 and set up new customs collecting and judiciary systems. They also organized the Liberian Frontier

Force (LFF), a well-trained military unit designed to establish “effective control” by suppressing the

indigenous populations in the hinterlands and defeating French incursions after 1903. “Effective control’

was stipulated by the British as the prerequisite for British recognition of Liberian borders. * ^0

President admitted that the system of oppression was insufficient but followed the plan

until the British moved to assume full control of the country. In his January 4, 1904, inaugural address,

Barclay stated, “We sought to obtain and did succeed in grasping an enormous mass of territory but we

neglected to conciliate and attach the resident population to our interests.” * 7 * So in 1906, he introduced

his own plan for conciliating the indigenous people. It mirrored the British practice of pushing a dual

mandate of maintaining control and extracting resources by co-opting indigenous leaders. ^77 The so-

called Barclay Plan placed local chiefs in charge of tax collection and law and order in a region, traveling

district commissioners patrolled many chiefdoms, and all courts were made accountable to the president.

The LFF was made the regular army and given greater duties that included protecting trade routes and

regulating inter-ethnic conflict. But the plan also upheld the political exclusion of the natives by

maintaining that a person could vote only if he owned land but also stating that “tribal” peoples could only

hold land collectively and choosing chiefs rather than allowing the people to select their own leaders. For

example, in the election of the Temo clan chief of the , the Americo-Liberian government

170. , Effective Immediately Dictatorship in Liberia, 1980-1986: A Personal Perspective, unknownrSeptember 1988, p. 5.

171. Gershoni, p. 36.

172. Ibid; Kieh, p. 38.

173. Kieh, p. 32.

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recognized Gunda Saini because he favored the governm ent.^ 4 His opponent, Momo Fahnbulle, was

appointed to oversee road construction along the southern board for not opposing the selection.

This relationship ended only when the British moved to take full control by making Liberia a

protectorate. In February 1909, one of three LFF creators, Major Robert Mackay Ladell used LFF forces to

revolt. The Barclay-Clarke Agreement with Britain was terminated. Subsequently, the setders returned to

their original Western ally, the United States under Pres. Howard. The U.S. shored up all remaining border

disputes with the French by 1911 and sent in economic help. Under Liberian Pres. Charles King, the

1920’s saw an intensification of the practice of choosing indigenous chiefs according to professed loyalty:

No regard was paid to the traditional legitimacy of an appointment. ^ After the Americans left, the

Americo-Liberian commissioners began to manage the regions as their own personal property which

allowed for the use of forced labor and leaving people as collateral, called “pawning,” that is also at the

root of hostilities between Americo-Liberians and indigenous peoples. * ^6 in two examples involving

high-placed government officials, Secretary of War James Cooper and the Acting Secretary of the Interior

used indigenous people and the wives of LFF soldiers in “near slavery” on their plantation. They made

$20,000 in profit in 21 months. When the two were charged for the illegal act of forcing people to work,

Pres. King dismissed the charges and re-appointed the two men. In the most egregious case that came to

international attention, the Fernando Po incident, Postmaster General Ross and LFF Capt. Howard entered

the labor contracting business by ordering laborers in the hinterlands to move to the coastal town of

Greenville under the pretense that they would be selling rice. Between 600 and 800 men in 1924 were then

forced onto Spanish boats to work on the cocoa-producing island of Fernando Po. Pres. King also ordered

each chief in one district to send 100 men to Jourharzan village from which they were than led to

174. Gershoni, p. 40; Lloyd Jr, p. 16.

175. Ibid, p. 59.

176. Ibid and Kieh, p. 33.

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Greenville as well. ^ Due to rising opposition, Ross’s permit to recruit 300 laborers was terminated;

minor legal changes were made to prohibit profit-making from wages paid to workers and to establish a

bureau that would oversee labor recruitment. But in 1928, with the help of the law offices of ex-President

Arthur Barclay, his nephew and then-Secretary of Foreign Afffairs , and Vice President

Yancy, Ross signed a new contract to provide 1,500 laborers to the Syndicate Agricole de los Territorios

Expandes del Golfo de Guinea. The League of Nations finally stepped in and investigated the human rights

violations between April and August of 1930 finding

“that labor has been made use of in Liberia ... that labor recruited by county superintendent and district commissioners for public purposes, we find, in many circumstances has been diverted to private use on farms and plantations of high government officials and private citizens, that none of this labor has been paid, though paid labor may exist on the plantations; on the other hand, in Maryland some of it has been made to pay large sums to plantation owners to be released from a term of unpaid and unfed labor ... that a large portion of the contract labourers [sic] shipped to Fernando Po and French Gabon from the southern counties of Liberia have been recruited under conditions of criminal corruption scarcely distinguishable from slave raiding and slave trading, and frequently by misrepresenting the destination.”^

Subsequently, Pres. King resigned and Yancy and Ross were convicted.

But exploitation of the indigenous peoples did not halt with these convictions. According to one

intelligence source for the U.S. Office of Strategic Services, now called the Department of Defense, the

judicial system was built overly large with the intent to “provide political favorites with government

positions from which they may exploit the natives.” Chiefs were fined for isolated infractions and

177. Gershoni, pp. 63-65.

178. Ibid, p. 65.

179. Office of Strategic Services, “Liberia - Solution for United State Action By Individual With Long Residence in Liberia,” document number L-44207 dated Sept. 9, 1944, declassified Nov, 6, 1975 as #NMD750120, Washington, D.C.: The National Archives, pp. 2-3.

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beaten before their people, while Americo-Liberians often escaped unpunished. The United States

sporadically enforced the League of Nations decree to right the wrongs under agreement with Edwin

Barclay that the problem would be rectified under his subsequent administration. It was not until 49-year-

old William Tubman was elected president in 1944 that indigenous peoples gained any political access.

But, even initially under Tubman, it was made clear that the UN Charter as it relates to human rights,

would not be applied to indigenous peoples: “The Liberian native is the Americo-Liberian’s source of

sustenance. Any suggestion that the native be given an opportunity to express himself in the government

would be strongly opposed,” an OSS agent reported after Tubman’s speech. 1 8®

Tubman tentatives at inclusion and the end of settler rule

Tubman, the first president descended from freed slaves, did make a few embracing gestures. He

started by choosing Claren L. Simpson, who had ties with the Vai people, as his running mate. His tenure

was marked by subsequent steps to bridge the division between Americo-Liberians and indigenous

peoples. Under the Unification Policy, chiefs were accepted into the long-ruling True Whig Party. In 1946,

all property owners, regardless of ethnicity, were given suffrage. In the hinterland, this translated into

suffrage for every male, at least 21 years of age who paid a hut tax. 18 * Of the total population of about

850,000, only about 20,000 people were eligible to vote until 1945. In light of the traditional mores and

system of patronage that linked all chiefs to the president, extending suffrage actually boosted support for

180. Office of Strategic Services, “Liberia And the Atlantic Charter,” confidential document number 83441 dated May 7, 1944, declassified Nov, 9, 1974 as #NMD730013, Washington, D.C.: The National Archives, p. 1.

181. Lloyd Jr., pp. 14& 22.

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the True Whig Party: Societal norms required that all villagers follow the political suggestions of their

chiefs who, in turn were directed by party leaders and ultimately the president. ^

Tubman also held three unification conferences in 1954 and 1963 in Maryland, Nimba and Lofa

counties as part of revamping the political system. In 1964, political districts were realigned so that there

were four instead of three interior counties that each had popularly elected representation equal to the

immigrant-led counties. ^ But representation still fell far short of popular percentages: Natives

comprised 984,120 or 97 percent of the population, immigrants were 23,475 or two percent and alien

Africans were 8,875 or one percent. ^ By 1955, TWP was the sole de facto political party. Plus,

there still was no political party primarily designed to represent 98 percent of the population.

Demands of Foreign Capital Clash with Inclusion

Enclave Economy:Firestone Tire and Rubber Company and Iron

Liberia’s lack of high-quality rubber and palm oil kept European interests to a minimum but also hurt

its development later. ^ When Roberts took over as president of the First Republic in 1841, the new

country was at an immediate disadvantage due to the lack of educated Africans and termination of

additional immigration after the Civil W a r . ^ 7 Roberts gave numerous concessions to large farmers in

order to harvest comwood that was used in dyes until the Germans developed synthetic substitutes, sugar

182. Ibid, p. 27.

183. Robert Reinhart, “Historical Setting,” in Harold D. Nelson, (ed.), Liberia: A Country Study. (Washington, D.C.: Foreign Area Studies Division, American University, 1985), pp. 47-55.

184. Ibid, p. 34.

185. Kieh, p. 80.

186. Gershoni, p. 5.

187. Ibid, pp. 14-18.

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cane that was in high demand during the Civil War but lost appeal once the was reopened for

trade, and coffee that was a relatively stable commodity until the Brazilians began expanding their coffee

plantations in the 1880s. At this time, a lack of internal security, technology and skills hindered the First

Republic from accessing iron ore and higher quality diamonds. By 1871, the new colony was requesting

the first aid, 100,000 British pounds at 7 percent interest for 15 years, for road building. ^ Only 70

percent of the request materialized within the country. And only $20,000 ever reached the Liberian

treasury, contributing to the ouster of Pres. Edward James Royce. The recession of the 1880s pushed the

immigrants to seek government positions and turn toward skimming of treasury profits so that only one-

third of all customs duties ever reached the government treasury. ^

Future loans required that the Liberian government relinquish control of its import/export markets. For

another 100,000 pounds in 1906, the British were given receivorship of the customs service. In 1911, a 40-

year, $1.7 million loan with the United States, Britain, France and Germany required that both imports and

exports be managed by the foreign powers to the extent that they could suspend or appoint officials, block

the legislature from passing laws that affected government funds and supervise the army. 190 Then in 1926,

Liberian leaders gave private enterprise, the Firestone Tire and Rubber Company, control of one million

acres of land for the exploitation of rubber during the next 99 years in exchange for a $5 million loan from

the Finance Corporation of America. In the process, entire communities were displaced and became a pool

of ready labor for plantation work. 191

188. Kieh, p. 38.

189. Gershoni, p. 19.

190. Kieh, p. 39.

191. Betty Lamb and Ezekiel Pajibo, “Liberia, Land in Conflict,” (Washington, DC: Africa Faith and Justice Network, February 1993), p. 3.

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The country began its contemporary cycle of raw product exportation by allowing foreign companies

to set up enclave operations in the 1920’s. Firestone Tire and Rubber Company opened the economy in

1926 after receiving a 4 percent concession in the pre-World War II days. Millionaire tiremaker Harvey

Firestone sought rubber to meet a rising demand in the auto industry at prices cheaper than the British were

offering. The U.S. government assisted Firestone’s continued penetration of the country. For example,

when Firestone began struggling to feed its burgeoning workforce and began importing 5,000 to 7,000 tons

of rice per year to feed its 25,000 plantation workers, the U.S. Economic Mission began seeking methods

to improve rice production in 1948.192 U.S. policies also facilitated the economic invasion by other

foreign companies when the U.S. Senate refused to give another $5 million loan to the struggling nation in

the 1930s.193 g0 Firestone was followed by four other Western companies (B.F. Goodrich Company,

Liberia Company, Dutch-German Salala Rubber Coporation, and Italian-owned Liberian Agricultural

Company) to give foreign investors control over 73 prcent of raw rubber production through 1981. 1^4

The U.S. government, however, did intervene again when its own economic or military interests could

be enhanced. For example, Liberia was significant because palm oil was a critical component in the U.S.

steel industry and, so, held for quite some time on U.S. stockpile lists for the U.S. Economic Missions;

Liberia was a source of the iron needed for steel production and a large amount of the palm oil. Many other

African sources were cut off as the British government cornered the market with palm plantations in

192. Oscar W. Meier, “American Foreign Service Inspection Report,” United States Economic Mission at Monrovia, in Department of State records dated April 15,1948, declassified Feb. 23, 1995, as #NMD765026, Washington, DC: The National Archives, pp. 3h and 3v.

193. Reed Kramer, “Liberia: A Casualty of the Cold War’s End,” Africa News Service, 1995, on the Internet at Pan Africa News: Special Report downloaded Oct. 22, 1996; Christian Suter, Debt Cycles in the World Economy: Foreign Loans. Financial Crises & Debt Settlement 1820-1990, (Boulder, CO; Westview Press, 1992), p. 151.

194. Donald Whitaker, “The Economy,” in Harold D. Nelson, (ed.), Liberia: A Country Study. (Washington, D.C: Foreign Area Studies Division of American University, 1985), pp. 162-163.

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Nigeria and the (). 195 During World War n, the Allied Powers were rallied to provide

hard currency in the form of military aid. That hard currency was used to build infrastructure that included

the $20 million port of Monrovia, Roberts International Airport and the main road into the interior. *96

Roberts Field later became a major transfer point for American soldiers battling in Northern Africa and

Southern Europe. Roosevelt approved lend-lease funds for the port in 1943 as a way of beating the

Germans to iron deposits. Republic Steel then built a rail line and roads into the interior to access the 20

million to 30 million tons of very pure iron ore in the Bomi Hills about 42 miles from the Port of

Monrovia. 197

American capital investments amounted to $65 million by 1949.198 From 1934 to 1948, Liberian

exports soared from $546,168 to $15 million, and imports, from $85,686 to almost $9 million. Total

government receipts went from $467,964 to $3.4 million with very little spent on education, public health,

roads and utilities, or agricultural and commercial developm ent. 199 Under Tubman, Liberia intensified its

policy of seeking external foreign direct investment, much of which came from the United States and

thereby established the outward-orientation that continues to characterize the country.

Tubman’s reign was also marked by a tendency to side with Western countries and corporate interests

as a means of acquiring foreign direct investment. For example, he mediated on behalf of the enclave

economy in wage disputes. Wages were held at 20 cents a day for 20 years at Firestone’s Harbel plantation

195. “Synopsis of The Liberia Company’s position,’ attached to Department of State confidential Memorandum of Conversation dated April 13, 1949, declassified Feb. 23, 1995 as #NMD765026, Washington, DC: The National Archives, p. 3.

196. Whitaker, 'The Economy,” p. 143-44; Meier, p. 3h.

197. “Synopsis of The Liberia Company’s position,” p. 6.

198. Department of State, “Political, Economic and Cultural Development in Liberia, (As requested in a Circular Airgram of December 3, 1949),” declassified Feb. 23, 1995 as #NMD765026, Washington, DC: The National Archives, p. 2.

199. Ibid, p. 3.

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before worker protests forced an increase in 1950.200 Only after President Tubman stepped in to

encourage laborers to return to work and to suggest that Firestone meet minimal demands were wages

raised slightly.201

Then, Tubman introduced the Open Door Policy in 1944 to attract foreign direct investment into the

interior. It had the dual effect of providing roads and education for rural people while also making it easier

to recruit laborers and soldiers and collect t a x e s - 2 0 2 By the 1960s, 25 companies had joined Firestone.203

Republic Steel Corporation of the United States, through the Liberian Mining Company, was shipping iron

ore from Bomi Hills by 1951 and LAMCO (Liberian-America-Swedish Minerals Company) was shipping

from Nimba to the port at Buchanan by 1961. In exchange for as much as 40 percent concessions in 1954,

Liberia’s GDP soared to a high of $ 190 million in 1960 due primarily to increased iron mining and new

rubber plantations.204 Enclave activity comprised 3 8 percent of GDP with rubber and timber being key in

200. Department of State, “Notes on meeting called by Judge N.V.Massaquoi and M. Conger Thompson with strikers held at F.A.S.A.Clubhouse on January 6, 1950 (by F.L. Helm, Labor Department),” document in section 560.2 “Strike Settlement at Firestone & Terms,” declassified Feb. 23, 1995 as #NMD765026, Washington, D.C.: The National Archives, p. 2.

201. Edward R. Dudley, “Strike Situation at Firestone’s Harbel Plantation,” confidential pouch sent Dec. 20, 1949 to Department of State. Department of State confidential document in section 560.2 “Plans Emergency Evacuation * Firestone Strike,” declassified Feb. 23, 1995 as #NMD765026, pp. 1-2; Embassy Telegram No. 320 sent Dec. 27, 1949 to Department of State, Department of State secret document in section 560.2 “Plans Emergency Evacuation * Firestone Strike,” declassified Feb. 23, 1995 as #NMD765026, p. 1; Embassy Telegram No. 325 sent Dec. 31, 1949 to Department of State, Department of State secret document in section 560.2 “Plans Emergency Evacuation * Firestone Strike,” declassified Feb. 23, 1995 as #NMD765026, p. 1, all at Washington, D.C.: The National Archives; and Letter from the Executive Vice President of Firestone Plantations Company dated Feb. 1, 1950, sent to Ambassador Edward R. Dudley, Department of State document in section 560.2 “Strike Settlement at Firestone & Terms,” declassified Feb. 23, 1995 as #NMD765026.

202. Kramer, downloaded Oct. 22, 1996.

203. Reinhart, p. 51.

204. Whitaker, p. 144.

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the agriculture sector while cement, explosives and oil refining raised the manufactured component to 17

percent of GDP.

The sole problem was that state policies created a situation where all managerial and technical positions

were held by expatriates.^®^ The income gap only widened so that per capita income reached $273

nationwide but only $50 for subsistence agriculture that impacted 70 percent o f the population. ^®6 But,

when rubber workers began striking in 1961 over wages and discrimination in promotions. Tubman

dismissed their claims as Communist-inspired. In 1963, he turned his sights towards internal consumption

with a program named Operation Production that was supposed to make rice production self-sufficient in a

country where rice was the primary staple. But then a shift in global demand occurred during the 1960s and

world rubber prices were dramatically impacted. Iron ore production, always much less lucrative, began to

usurp rubber’s place as the largest contributor to GDP. 2®"7 (see a j 5 0 Tables Three and Four) The slump in

rubber prices also coincided with the first International Monetary Fund restructuring plan in 1963 to pay

the country’s $200 million in foreign debt. Seven additional re-schedulings and five stabilization programs

were instituted through 1985.^®^

205. The indigenous population had been kept uneducated according to state law, in Reinhart, pp. 51- 52.

206. Whitaker, p. 151; from Figure 3.1 in Kieh, p. 41.

207. Through 1974, manufacturing grew at an average annual rate of 12 percent and agriculture grew by 5.6 percent, but manufacturing comprised only 9 percent of GDP while traditional agriculture of mainly rice and cassava made up 18 percent of GDP, in Whitaker, pp. 146-156.

208. Suter, pp. 154-55.

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 00 o 8 33 7.7 7.2 33 33 5 25.6 58.2 65 65 3 102.2 1 16.4 1 151.3 3 10.2 3 1980 5' 4.9 1 1 ' 1 1 10.5 8.5 ' 8.5 6 6 9* 290 ’ 290 10.6' 18.3 ' 18.3 312’ 9 43 56 6 : 6 56 39.6 ' 39.6 50 1 ' 50 1 96 .8 ' .8 96 ' 27.1 43.1 '43.1 34.8 1318' 91 4.4 14.4 91 1012.7 1979 3.6 14.4 14 4 14 319 30 3 56 56 3 25.3 37 37 3 69.2 ' 87 8 46.7 127.2 830.3 7 8.8 43 3.8 3.4 8.1 6.1 4.2 5.9 780 34 34 8 59 59 1 24.3 52.6 81.5 76.5 23.6 21.4 115.8 273 273 5 274 4 1977 1978 6' 2.2’ 6.6' 2.7 ' 2.7 4.5' 4.1 ' 4.1 16.6! 53 ' 53 3 217' 32.4! 25.9 56.2 ! 56.2 58.5' 31 .6* 31 1 12.7' 1 100.5' 837.5' 1976 56 1.8 3.6 4.4 4 5 18 4 18 1 2.8 1 20.2 94.8 86.8 46 46 3 734.4 293.6 327.9’ 1975 ! 4 Table 3 Table 43 '43 56 3.6! 5.6' 5.9 8.5 j8.5 3.2 4.3 | 4.3 17.6' 25 25 9 ’ 75 ' 75 6 74 ’ 74 8 35 35 6' 26.1 6 1 5 ' 68 68 8' 720.9 1 262.2 ' 262.2 1974 na 54 1.9 3.4 5.5 5.1 197 15 8 15 37 37 4 53.1 52.5 27 27 1 42 42 9 49 49 3 ' 29 9 564 564 2 1973 na VALUE OF LIBERIA EXPORTS (in Smillion) 1 .5 1 1.5 2.6 8.2 6 16 4.4 6.1 4.6 15.7 13.3 53.4 31 .7 31 27.8 54.8 46.7 1 82.7 1 481 .4 481 1972 8 4 1.3 0.1 na 16.1 16.4 32.5 29 54.8 25.3 40.3 1 50.6 1 419.7 1971 } ITEM Printing Office) Printing shownas Table in 3.3, p. Kieh, 44. Source: Compiled Source: offrom Ministry Planning and Economic Affairs, TradeExternal of Liberia, (Monrovia: Government 1971-1980. Rubber Latex Re-exports 7 Iron Ore Iron Lump Diamonds 28.2 Logs and Lumber ! Saw Saw Timber Other Domestic Exp' 2.7 Palm Palm Products 'TOTAL 2.2 j Fine Fine Concentrates ' 30.2 Pellets Crepe Coffee , Cocoa 1

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Table 4 STRUCTURE OF LIBERIA’S EXPORTS (in Percent)

ITEM 1971 1972 1973 1974 1975' 1976 1977 1978 1979 1980 Iron Ore 65.1 67.7 60.7 65.5 74.4 71.9 61.1 56.4 54 51.7 Lump 16.4 17.3 16.7 17.2 14.2 12.8 5.3 3 3.4 1.3 Fine 22.2 19.8 16.1 18.7 22 22 25.8 26.2 24.6 25.2 Pellets 14.3 20.3 16.4 18.9 24 24.8 18.2 15.6 18 19.4 Concentrates 12.2 10.3 11.5 10.7 14.2 12.3 11.8 11.6 8 5.8 Rubber 13.2 10.7 13.3 16.1 11.7 11.7 13.2 14.2 16.3 17 Latex 6.5 5.8 4.9 7.2 5.1 4.7 5.4 6.6 5.8 7.3 4^ Crepe 6.7 4.9 00 8.9 6.6 3 7.8 7.6 10.5 9.7 Diamonds 11.4 11.7 15.2 7.5 4.7 4.7 4.8 6.2 7.4 5.6 Logs and Lumber 3.2 3 5.1 4.4 3.2! 3.2 5.8. 9.6 9.3 10.9 Coffee 1.6 1.7 1.6 1 1.1 1.1 9.6 5.2 5.1 5.5 Cocoa 0.5 0.6 0.6 1.1 1.1 1.1 1.4 3 2 1.7 Palm Products 0.9 0.6 0.8 2.1 0.8 0.8 0.8 0.7 0.8 0.8 Saw Timber na na na na 0.5 0.5 0.8 1.7 1.6 1.2 Other Domestic I.I 1.7 1 0.9 0.9 I 0.9 1.2 1.3 1.3 Re-exports 2.8 2.3 1.7 1.4 1.5 1.3 1.6 1.8 2 4.3 Other 0.2 na na na 0.1 2.7 na na 0.2 TOTAL 178.3 178.4 174 181.6 186.1 179.6 174.3 170.6 170.3 168.7

Source: Compiled from Ministry of Planning and Economic Affairs, External Trade of Liberia. 1971-1980. (Monrovia: Government Printing Office) as shown in Table 3.4, Kieh, 45.

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 00 s> 28 14.2 12.6 15.7 59.5 49.1 20.6 49.5 280.3 19 16 2.7 2.4 8.9 8.9 19.3 33.4 66.8 84.2 na na 1 | 8.2' 6.78.9' 6.4 58.8’ 71.8 35.l! 36.7 33 39. f 39. 42.4 65.5) 236.2 290 77/78 78/79 79/80 7.5 10.8! 13.9 17.9 0.5 1.3' 7.l'6.7) 9.3' 17.8 13.8 11.1 12.3’ 15.1 13.9 18.8' 33.1 33.4' 62.5 28.4’ 44.5’ 64.7) 69.9 71.5 35.3' 178.5 76/77 5 5.9 8.9’ 22.1 31.6 75/76 25' 36.7' 6.4 8.6' 4.4' 4.7' 5.6 14.8' 17.7 23.1 21.7 28.5 na 11.8 6.2’ 25.6' 9.1 5.2 5 .f 0.9 6.9 3.9 0.5 0.4 na na na 11.9 Table 5 Table 1.1 4.5' 0.7' 21.8 22.9 20.8 22.9 4 3.6’ 8.5' 9.4’ 16.1 23' 21.41 2.2' 3.9 4.7’ 5.6' 9.3) 11.3' 3.7' 4' 4.6 4.9' 6 3.6' 3.8' 75.9 89.5 107.7 118.8 133.7 16.2 20.8 24 20.7' 15.1 26.5 33' 35.6 39.2' 52.7) 54.7' j t i Other' 1.4' 3.5' 6 na 0.9 Other 0.3: Defense 3.8) 3.7' 3.7 4.5' 5.3 Industry"1 1.2' 1.2' 3.7 17.4 1.1 LIBERIAN LIBERIAN BUDGETARY EXPENDITURES, (in 1971-1980 $ million) Agriculture) 2.3' 3.6' 5.5 5.6 7.6 10.6 19.6’ 20.6 14.9 Service Area FY 71/72 72/73 73/74 74/75 * * mining, includes manufacturing, energy and construction, Transport & Communication; ** ** includes domestic expropriation and claims contingency reserves; Printing Office) shown as Table in 3.8, p.54. Kieh, Source: Source: Compiled from of the Bureau the Budget, Budaets of the Liberian Government. (Monrovia:Govemment 1971-1980. Debt Debt Service Unallocated*"1 TOTAL TOTAL EXPENDITURES ) Economic Economic Services Other Health Social Social and Community Education Foreign affairs Order and Safety Administration General General Services

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 00 1 3 .5 3 1 1980 11 u 11 0.3 0.2 1979 7.4.9 7 1 3.7 1 7.27.6 1 0 .2 0 1978 5.9 5.9 9.7 5.8 5.8 9.6 0.1 0.1 0.1 1976 1976 1977 n a a n a n a n a n 6.7 0.1 1975 Table 6 6.1 6.8 n a n a n 0.2 0.1 u 11 3 .9 3 0.3 1972 1973 1974 U.S. U.S. FOREIGN TO AID LIBERIA, (in $ 1971-1980 million) Source: Compiled Source: from the Ministry ofPlanning and -1980:Economic Affairs, US R.L., SurveysEconomic of Liberia. 1971 Agency for International Development, Overseas U.S. and Loans Grants, as shown Table in 6.3, 1945-82; Kieh, p. 116. M HilaryM 0.5 Economi cEconomi 5.5.4 5 .7 5 6 TOTAL 8.7 9.6.9 5 Other 2.7 Type 1971

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Dependence on foreign investors to meet debt payments and to fund state programs also spurred

Tubman to oppose the nationalist movements sweeping Africa during the late 1950s and1960s and to push

for development of a moderate charter, under the weight of the Monrovia Group, during the creation of the

Organization of African Unity in 1960. The non-interventionary tone of the OAU charter blocked regional

approaches to disputes and internal conflicts - including the Liberian civil war - throughout Africa’s post­

independence history. Tubman led a regime decidedly pro-American through much of the Cold War and in

1959 signed a mutual defense pact with the United States. Later, the U.S. installed two communications

facilities for diplomatic and intelligence communiques and for relaying the Voice of America across the

In 1976, one of only eight elite U.S. Coast Guard stations was erected to guide traffic along

Africa’s west coast.

After Tubman’s death in 1971, William Tolbert as first provisional president and was subsequently

elected president elected by a special legislative session. As a former Tubman running mate, well-to-do

coffee planter and descendant of a former slave, Tolbert was acceptable. Under Tolbert,

Liberia slightly shifted economic focus toward encouraging domestic and regional economic initiatives that

included creating the Mano River Union with Sierra Leone and Guinea, as well as joining ECOWAS.

However, world demand for iron ore and rubber dropped dramatically in the late 1970’s. Even a new

concession of 99 years rather than the average 20 years, could not help Firestone offset the negative impact

of the recession on rubber sales. Combined with inflation in the prices of manufactured products, Liberia’s

foreign debt soared from almost zero in the early 1950s to $744 million. The budget deficit jumped to $100

million a n n u a lly .In te rn a l instability increased when local markets began to run out of rice, a staple

that Liberia had exported until rubber harvesting usurped food production beginning in the 1930s. The rice

shortage was caused by the shift in labor toward mining and construction, population growth after World

209. Reinhart, p. 64.

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War II and marketing decisions that kept rice prices low in urban areas.2*0 Rice imports had been

steadily increasing from 35,000 tons in 1965 to 59,000 in 1971. When world prices rose in 1973-74,

imported rice fell to 34,000 tons in 1975. Then in 1979, Tolbert raised the price of rice from $22 per 100

pounds to $26. In response to the ensuing Rice Riots, he instated an even larger subsidy, $3 million in FY

1979-80, that dropped prices to $20 per 100 pounds. Student protesters pushed the subsidy even higher to

$5 million in FY 1980-81. The country’s consumption of pricey imported rice, consequently, rose to

100,000 tons in the early 1980s accounting for 70 percent of the rice actually on the market. Three-fourths

of that rice came from the US Food for Peace Program Public Law 480.

Liberia’s reliance on U.S. foreign aid peaked in 1972 but continued to grow in relation to international

debtors. In 1972, America provided 87 percent of all foreign aid. The U.S. supplied an average 58.9

percent annually of all aid between 1971 and 1980.2** At that time, American investors accounted for an

average 46.7 percent o f all FDI and an average 23.9 percent of all trade. The government also depended on

foreign loans to fund much of the largely unproductive National Socio-Economic Development Plan

(1976-1980)that pushed debt to nearly quadruple previous levels.2*2 On the international financial

market, the economic and political instability and world recession sparked a capital flight that nearly wiped

out the Liberia banking system: It lost about 96 percent of the money in the government banks, dropping

from $55 million in 1979 to $4 million in 1980.2*3 USAID, that had built the country’s hydroelectric

plant on Mt. Coffee during prosperous days, stepped in with $208 million in economic assistance, $150

million of which were grants, between 1980and 1983. But Tolbert’s political base quickly eroded when

he limited those profiting from the skimming by dropping the older guard of the True Whig Party from

210. Whitaker, pp. 158-159.

211. from Table 6.4, Kieh, p. 117.

212. Suter, p. 155.

213. Whitaker, pp. 147-148.

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political posts, halting the decades-old practice of automatically remitting part of public employee’s

salaries to the TWP coffers and putting an end to the near monopoly on rice production that Pres.Tubman’s

son and Tolbert’s own son-in-law, William Tubman, had controlled for many years.^ ^ As the wife of one

of the 13 Tolbert-era officials later lulled by Doe’s men explained further to U.S. Ambassador Harold E.

Horan who served in Liberia from 1979-1981, “ ‘They use to have a saying in Liberia - they’ve a

marvelous sense of humor - that when Tubbman (sic) went up in the tree to eat apples, he’d shake the

branches so that some apples would fall to the ground for others. But then when Tolbert went up in the tree

to eat apples, he didn’t shake the limbs.’”215 Then-U.S. Deputy Chief of Mission Julius W. Walker Jr.

reiterated the idea that Tolbert undermined his own government because, as an indigenous person told him

just after Tolbert was assassinated, “ ‘Liberians feel that out of every dollar Tubman stole he kept a dime

and gave 90 cents back. But of every dollar Tolbert stole, he kept 90 cents and gave a dime back.’”216

Tolbert also shifted international policies toward non-Westem countries, establishing relations with the

then-USSR in 1972 to expand aid sources but eventually reverting to the pre-Tubman practice of ignoring

indigenous ethnic groups and, later during the global recession, general popular demands. His weakening

reign was signified by an attempted coup by Prince Brown, the Assistant Defense Minister. He was elected

in October 1975 only because no candidate ran in opposition while the country was in economic recession.

214. Reinhart, pp. 61-63.

215. Charles Stuart Kennedy, “Interview with Ambassador Harold E. Horan,” (Washington, D.C.: Association for Diplomatic Studies Foreign Affairs Oral History Program, Georgetown University’s Lauigner Library, March 30,1989), p. 32.

216. Charles Stuart Kennedy, “Interview with Ambassador Julius W. Walker Jr,” (Washington, D.C.: Association for Diplomatic Studies Foreign Affairs Oral History Program, Georgetown University’s Lauigner Library, April 2, 1992), p. 104.

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 87

Horan said the U.S. only refrained from removing Tolbert, as it did later with Philipines leader

Ferdinand Marcos “because of the U.S. interests we thought were param oun t. ”21?

Armed Conflict

Samuel Doe: The First Indigenous Leader Ignores demands for changes

Armed conflict began after President William Tolbert, one of Liberia’s largest rice farmers, raised rice

prices 50 percent in 1979.218 Tolbert had given enormous subsidies to large planters (many of whom

were Americo-Liberian) of rubber, cocoa and coffee that brought in the bulk of the country’s hard currency

but not to small local rice farmers. Rice prices rose initially from S22 per 100 pounds to S26. Rice Riots

broke out when unemployed youth, called “back street boys,” began migrating en masse from

economically depressed rural areas to cities. About 10,000 “boys” joined with 2,000 students to destroy

$40 million in property.21 9 Tolbert responded by requesting military aid from Guinea’s Sekou Toure to

close the state university where the Progressive Alliance of Liberia had rallied protesters. He also passed a

Sedition Law in October 1979 to make stikes illegal and punishable. Opposition groups continued to

develop and coalesced into the Progressive People Party (PPP), but its leaders were arrested after a

midnight protest in which marchers requested Tolbert’s resignation. Before they could be tried for treason

in , United States-trained Master Sgt. Samuel Kanyon Doe led a non-commissioned officers’

coup in which Tolbert was killed on . Doe had 13 senior Tolbert officials, all True Whig Party

members, executed on international television. The coup was hailed by U.S. Assistant Secretary of State

217. Kennedy, “Interview with Ambassador Harold E. Horan,” p. 33.

218. Kennedy, “Interview with Ambassador Julius W. Walker Jr.,” p. 96.

219. Reinhart, pp.64-67.

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Richard Moose as a response to “the corruption of the Tolbert government” and “general indifference

of the ruling elite to the plight of the people at l a r g e . ” 2 2 0

Doe assumed control of the new government, named the ruling People Redemption Council (PRC), and

gained U.S. support by promising a return to civilian rule through election but successively limited

individual liberties and political discourse. The constitution was suspended and political parties disbanded.

Doe promoted himself to the rank of Five Star General, Commander-in-chief and Chair of the PRC. He did

allow civilian involvement by allotting 12 of the 17 council of ministers slots to the three opposition groups

that had fought him - the True Whig Party (TWP), PPP and student-led Movement for Justice in Africa

(MOJA).

From the outset, it was clear that Doe had no ideological slant but was merely taking advantage o f an

opportunity: After drinking several beers with other disgrunded soldiers on a beach near the Presidential

Palace, the spontaneous decision was made to invade Tolbert’s home. Once Tolbert was found dead. Doe

called on the United States to help stabilize the situation. Since Doe led the only faction with some control,

the U.S. embassy chose to deal with him to protect military and economic interests in the country.221 As

then-U.S. Ambassador to Liberia Robert P. Smith puts it, “They had murdered William Tolbert, who was a

very dear friend of mine, and the other members of the cabinet with whom I had been very close. And yet

here they were, the new government. It was clearly not in our national interest to see the country go down

the tubes, so it fell to me to do what we could do to sustain this young man in steering along a certain

course, which we managed to do with great difficulty.”222 U.S. embassy officials were summoned often

and at odd hours to help Doe find solutions to problems including disarming the roving bands of solidiers.

220. quoted by Kramer, downloaded Oct. 22, 1996.

221. Kennedy, “Interview with U.S. Ambassador Robert P. Smith,” (Washington: Association for Diplomatic Studies Foreign Affairs Oral History Program, Georgetown University’s Lauigner Library, February 28, 1989), pp. 49-50; Kennedy, “Interview with Ambassador Julius W. Walker Jr.,” pp. 103,108 &114.

222. Kennedy, “Interview with Ambassador Robert P. Smith,” p. 51

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It was during this time that the embassy also agreed to support Doe with a four-fold increase to S50

million in aid.223 with U.S. President Ronald Reagan's inauguration, U.S. annual financial support for

Liberia almost quintupled, from $17.6 million in 1979to $95 million. In September 1980,the IMF also

stepped in with standby financing in exchange for a cut in the import subsidy on rice, a freeze on new

government hires, and salary cuts that equaled 25 percent of the highest-paids’ wages and 166 percent of

the lowest paid workers’ take-home pay. By 1985, Liberia had received $402 million from the United

States.224 Smith explains, “So it was a question of hanging in there and doing what we could to moderate

the behavior of Sergeant Doe and his government. And I think we were relatively successful, as was my

successor, Bill Swing,... pumping in a great deal of American aid, especially to the military, since the

unhappiness of the military with their lot was one of the main causes of the coup.”225 ^ exchange. Doe

followed the U.S.’s lead in foreign policy: He closed the Libyan mission in Monrovia after Washington did

the same in 1982;Doe ordered reductions in the size of the staff at the Soviet embassy; and he also broke

Liberia’s long-standing isolationist tradition to develop diplomatic ties with Israel after the 1973 Arab-

Israeli War.

The increasing dependency of Liberia on the U.S. was typified by the country’s role in the U.S. battled

to overthrow Moammar Quadaffi, Libya’s leader. Special CIA covert activity, coordinated by Reagan's

advisor William Casey, was directed from Liberia to support Chad in overthrowing Libya through a 1986

bombing raid on Tripoli. “Casey selected Doe as one of 12 heads of state from around the world to receive

support from a special assistance program.... to provide both extraordinary protection for the leaders and

223. Kennedy, “Interview with Ambassador Julius W. Walker,” p. 129; Walker was Deputy Chief of Mission at the U.S. Embassy from 1978to 1981.

224. Kramer, downloaded Oct. 22, 1996;Sawyer, p. 34.

225. Kennedy, “Interview with Ambassador Robert P. Smith,” p. 52.

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otherwise unobtainable information for the CIA... this gave the CIA and the White House a huge stake

in keeping the Liberian regime in place.”226

Table 7 U.S. AID TO PRINCIPAL CLIENTS IN AFRICA FISCAL YEARS 1961-1980, (in million $)

Country Principal Client Total Aid Client Aid Client Aid % of Total Ethiopia 817 458 56.06 Kenya Daniel Arap Moi 1043 652 62.51 Liberia Samuel Doe 807 532 65.93 Somalia Said Barre 884 822 92.99 Sudan Jaafar Nimeiri 1801 1443 80.12 Zaire 1164 889 76.38

NOTE: Liberia is one of the top five countries deriving financial support, military assistance and political legitimacy from the United States. The U.S. was the country’s sole arms provider during the mid-1970’s. Only with that aid were Doe and the other leaders able to survive as long as they did.^27 Sudan received arms from a mixture of western and producers and the People’s Republic of China.

Source: from Table 10.1 in Michael Clough, Free At last? U.S. Policy Toward Africa and the End of the Cold War. (New York: Council on Foreign Relations Press, 1992), p.78; Table 10.1 was compiled from various years of U.S. Overseas Loans and Grants and Assistance from International Organizations by the Agency for International Development in Washington D.C..

226. Kramer, downloaded Oct. 22, 1996.

227. Michael Clough, Free At last? U.S. Policy Toward Africa and the End of the Cold War. (New York: Council on Foreign Relations Press, 1992), pp. 45 & 79.

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Table 8 U.S. ECONOMIC SUPPORT FUND PROGRAMS FOR AFRICA FISCAL YEARS 1961-1980 (in million $)

Country 1961-65 1966-70 1971-75 1976-1980 Total Ethiopia 3 0.3 na na 3.3 Kenya na na na 14.5 14.5 Liberia na na na 10.2 10.2 Somalia na na na 5 5 Sudan na na jna 40 40

Source: Michael Clough, Free At last? U.S. Policy Toward Africa and the End of the Cold War. (New York: Council on Foreign Relations Press, 1992).

For awhile, the United States' approach seemed to work. Doe doubled the minimum wage immediately

after the coup,228 and appeared to relent in December 1980 when a group of MOJA, PPP and senior

military advisors led by Amos Sawyer requested the establishment of a National Constitution Commission

and the drafting of a process for a return to civilian constitutional rule. Doe acquiesced because the

commission posed no direct threat to his regime since no timetable was requested. He wanted to lead the

historic task of developing a new constitution for the country, and the United States supported the idea.^29

A mixture of professionals, academics, businessmen, clergy, and civil servants began work in July 1981

backed by overwhelming and diverse popular support. Over 10,000 tape recordings of the issues were

circulated at public hearings in 40 locations. But it was not long before Doe began seeking ways to co-opt

the proposed electoral system to ensure he would have little political opposition and be eligible to run for

president. The first signs came in late 1982 that the military government was having second thoughts, when

Doe made a statement suggesting that economic recovery was a pre-condition for return to civilian rule and

228. Henry Bienen, “Populist Military Regimes in West Africa,” in John W. Harbeson, (ed)., The Military in African Politics. (NY: Praeger Publishers, 1987), pp. 53-61 .

229. Sawyer, p. 19.

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then requested the enormous sum of $2.5 billion from the US, European Economic Community, Japan

and South Korea. In March 1983, he announced that anyone planning to run in the 1985 elections had to

resign from office by April 30 or be ineligible, but this economic disincentive did not stop several

candidates from resigning in compliance. According to Sawyer, Doe then asked that he publicly

recommend that “a postponement of return to civilian rule until the economic picture improved.... My

unwillingness the make such a statement pushed the Commission one step further in a potential conflict

with the militaryleader. ”^30

Then Doe’s regime faced its first crisis when Brigadier Gen. Thomas Quiwonkpa, who in the initial

days following the coup reigned in rampaging soldiers to re-establish order in the country and to reassure

the international community, began calling for a return to civilian rule in 1983.^31 Quiwonkpa was backed

by workers wanting control of factories, civil servants wanting a merit-based system, dissenting students,

Liberian entrepreneurs breaking with the Chamber of Commerce, market women seeking greater control

over market venues, and urban unemployed demanding economic r e l i e f . ^32 The coalition cried out for a

non-aligned foreign policy, fiscal responsibility and accountability, and many social reforms that included

abolition o f the hut tax, IMF guidelines, and experienced technocrats. Quiwonkpa also was dismissed from

the army and, after an attempted military coup, fled to Guinea. But several villages in ,

Quiwonkpa's home county, were destroyed in retaliation. Relatives of the Gio and Mano people executed

in Nimba would later become willing recruits for Charles Taylor’s National Patriotic Front of Liberia.233

Doe also placed the judicial system under a broad network of special military tribunals that led to

230. Ibid, pp. 20-21.

231. Lamb and Pajibo, p. 3.

232. Sawyer, p. 2.

233. Max Ahmadu Sesay, “Bringing Peace to Liberia,” in Jeremy Armon and Andy Carl ,(eds.), ACCORD: An International Review of Peace Initiatives: The Liberian Peace Process 1990-1996. (London: Conciliation Resources, 1996), Issue 1: p.l 1.

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bloodletting. He chose to reestablish control through force and division of “spoils” among the Krahn

members who were set up as the core of the ruling force. “The over-riding [sic] concern of the military

government would be to stay in power and accumulate,” Sawyer wrote. 234 Prior to Tolbert, soldiers were

recruited from the peasantry of the Lofa, Bong, Nimba and Grand Gedeh. Tolbert chose to focus on

younger people who could be easily trained in the new military academy; choosing from among the urban

unemployed was also offered as an antidote to crime and vagrancy in the cities.235 Doe simply took

Tolbert’s practice of recruiting soldiers from the urban unemployed to an extreme and began ethnicizing

the military as well. He fomented ethnic strife by attacking the Gio and Mano people of northern Liberia as

part of military purges and alleged counter-coups. The Krahn later also restricted the Grebo as part of

establishing control over . But, the PRC was plagued by instability so that of the

original 17 councilmen in 1980, only five were left by 1985: Six had been executed, one fled for his life,

four took involuntary retirement after being released from prison on treason charges, and one was killed in

a car crash. More than ten attempted coups were uncovered by Doe’s people; therefore, he purged the PRC

that had paved his ascension to power and then dissolved it in 1984. He established an interim

government, promised to return to civilian rule in Decree #88 of July 1984 and lifted the ban on political

parties. 23 ^

But he simultaneously turned to the Constitutional Assembly, a group of elected representatives who

were empowered by the commission, to suggest final changes to the constitution that would make it

possible for military leaders to stand for election. The assembly complied by adding a section that

empowered the legislature to decide which categories of individuals would be ineligible for participation.

234. Sawyer, pp. 3-4.

235. Ibid, pp. 5 &13.

236. Bienen, p. 58.

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Doe then increased his age to meet the minimum age requirment of 35 requirement by “blaming a

reporter for giving him a false age in the first place at the time of the coup,” despite having publicly

celebrated his 29th, 30th, and 31st birthdays with much fanfare.237 Finally, Doe placed former members

of the PRC in key positions in the national assembly under his leadership as head of the interim

government. By continuously monitoring and restricting the influence of other military leaders, such as

Maj. Gen. Nicholas Podier who led the interim assembly, Doe also hedged against overthrow by

commissioned officers still in the government.

Civic groups suffered similar oppression. Student and workers’ unions were especially targeted. The

Student Union of the and the Liberian National Student Union (LINSU) immediately

endorsed Doe because many of their leaders had been detained for months after protesting Tolbert’s

domestic and foreign policy. During a protest just one month after Doe took power, they requested a

timetable for a return to civilian rule. In response, the Doe regime distanced itself from LINSU and then

issued Decree 2A banning competitive student politics on school campuses. ^38 The greatest attack on the

universities occurred August 22, 1984, when the Executive Mansion Guards raided the University of

Liberia in response to rumors that Amos Sawyer, then-dean of the university and future government leader,

had plotted to overthrow the government and bum down Monrovia. In response to follow-up protests. Doe

ordered the Defense Minister to “move and remove” all students and staff from the campus, during which

several were flogged, raped and killed. Secondly, just two months after workers rallied in support of Doe

under the organization of the Movement for Justice in Africa (MOJA), Doe issued Decree 12 that declared

all strikes illegal. LAMCO mine workers had been striking to get benefits that had been negotiated two

years earlier. The close ties between the government and LAMCO officials were reinforced when the

237. After the revised constitution was ratified by referendum, Doe rewarded most assembly members, 30 of 59 representatives, by giving them positions in the new Interim National Assembly that he created in 1984; many later formed the core of his National Democratic Party of Liberia and Doe’s new government after he took the October 15, 1985 election; Sawyer, pp. 23-24.

238. Ibid, pp. 10-12.

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LAMCO Chief of Plant Protection, who was also the Chairman of the Joint Security Force of Liberia in

Nimba County, reportedly used LAMCO equipment to round up 70 people who opposed the government.

They were then killed on LAMCO property during paid working hours.

The second crisis came after Doe declared himself victor in the October 1985 presidential elections with

50.9 percent of the votes. For the first time in Liberian history all adults, Americo-Liberian, indigenous,

landed and hired laborers, were allowed to vote under the new PRC constitution and Second Republic. But

the election commission initially changed the rules and refused to allow party representatives to view the

counting of the ballots but later amended the ruling to allow representatives to stand 15 feet away. The

election commission then disregarded the counts taken at the polling booths in favor of a 50-person

committee appointed to re-count the ballots because they allegedly had been “contaminated” by bribed

polling o f f i c i a l s . 2^9 Numerous international media agencies chronicled election improprieties that

included burning ballots, switching ballot boxes, intimidating voters, open and multiple voting at some

military posts and the 50-person committee cited “glaring irreg u larities. ”240 three opposition parties

allowed to run in the election protested the results which gave Doe’s National Democratic Party of Liberia

22 of the 26 senate seats and 51 of the 64 house seats and, since ballots were counted behind closed doors

without any of the opposition’s representatives present.241 Despite mass protests against the election

239. Ibid, pp. 29-31.

240. For example, Bacchus Matthews of the United People’s Party, Edward Kesselly of the and Tuan Wreh and Harry Greaves of the Liberian Action Party were arrested for an assassination attempt under the testimony of the alleged assassin and detained for a week while their properties were destroyed; Amos Sawyer was sidelined until three weeks after the election on the grounds that he had not completed financial records pertaining to his roles as former chairman of the Constitutional Committee; and the UPP was disqualified on the grounds that it espoused “ideologies foreign to Liberia” and that its leader, G. Bacchus Matthews, who had loyally served Doe following the 1980 coup, was “a socialist...trained saboteurs to engage in seditious activities against the state,” in J.Gus Liebenow, Liberia: The Quest for Democracy. (Bloomington, IL: Indiana University Press, 1987), pp. 286-289.

241. Forty-five percent of the ballots were counted over a week’s time while the remaining 55% was counted in three days, in Liebenow, p. 296; Chester A. Crocker, “Recent Developments in Liberia,” a

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results, the U.S. accepted the results as “a beginning, however imperfect,” as Assistant Secretary of

State Chester Crocker put it.^42 The House and Senate passed non-binding resolutions calling for an end

to U.S. aid, but the Reagan administration ignored the request

During Liberia’s elections, Washington’s attention was turned to Libya again with the hijacking of

Trans World Airline flight from Athens to Rome. “We were prepared to use every lever against Tripoli,

and Monrovia had an important part” according to one unnamed intelligence officer with field experience

in Africa as cited in Kramer’s “Liberia: A Casualty of the Cold War’s End.” Roberts Field in Monrovia

also became key in US airlifts of military aid to UNITA forces in Angola in 1985. Quiwonkpa then staged

an unsuccessful coup attempt on November 12 from Guinea in which Quiwonkpa was killed.

Doe took office in January 1986 but began systematically removing possible challengers - under the

pretext of eradicating corruption - and replacing them with his own family members and members of his

ethnic group, the K r a h n .^43 This resurrected images of the historical domination of one group over the

remainder of the populace. The Liberian Council of Churches intervened in for the banned political parties

by advocating an end to the human rights violations and military subversion of the return to civilian rule.

The church’s role shifted into a mediatory one as post-election conflict intensified. The reconciliation talks,

as they were called, disintegrated when Doe threatened to use military force to stop the intervention.^^

Then Doe threw a wrench into the economy: He decided to mint $100 million new coins and introduce

reprint of Crocker’s statement before the Subcommittee on African Affairs of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on December 10, 1985, Department of State Bulletin: (86) No2106, pp. 54-55; Clapham, p. 493.

242. Kramer, downloaded Oct. 22, 1996.

243. Ibid, p. 4; The PRC vice chairman Thomas Weh Syen and four other cabinet ministers were dismissed for conspiring against the government; Chea Cheapoo was dismissed as Minister of Justice in September and Matthews was canceled as foreign affairs minister in November.

244. Sawyer, pp. 14-15.

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them slowly into the economy.245 This created, not only, spiraling inflation, but also, the development

of a black market for Liberian currency, problems in banking transactions, shortages of commodities

including salt, baking powder and milk, and hoarding. Selective retrenchment to meet IMF requirements

had little impact because it was carried out to create vacancies that were then filled by Doe’s cronies.

Under such financial and political strain, hopes for addressing popular demands basically vanished until

Charles Taylor’s NPFL invaded on December 24, 1989.

Civil war broke out when Charles Taylor, a former Doe cabinet member, led an incursion from the

Cote d’Ivoire on Christmas Eve 1989. Taylor’s National Patriotic Front of Liberia (NPFL) engaged the

Armed Forces of Liberia in the North. The war to eliminate Doe took on an ethnic character as the Armed

Forces of Liberia (AFL), dominated by Doe’s Krahn, began targeting Nimba County once again to wipe

out the Gio and Mano who predominated there and comprised the majority of Taylor’s forces. A March

1990 split within the NPFL, resulting in the formation of the Independent National Patriotic Front of

Liberia by second in command and military strategist Prince Yormie Johnson further complicated and

extended the war. In June 1990, the three parties began battling for Monrovia while the United States,

which had propped up Doe with about $500 million during his first five years in power and had taken over

the Liberian economy in the early 1980’s to ensure the country did not default on international loans, sent

warships to the Port of Liberia to remove only American citizens and other foreigners.^46 Doe was

captured by INPFL while visiting the ECOMOG base in September 1990 and subsequently tortured to

death.

Just one month earlier, the Economic Community of West African States had voted to intervene to

protect regional security. “An ECOWAS Cease-fire Monitoring Group (ECOMOG) (was) established in

Liberia for the purpose of keeping peace, restoring law and order and ensuring that the cease-fire is

245. Ibid, p. 7.

246. Ibid.

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respected,” the six-state alliance declared.247 ECOMOG was comprised of forces from Nigeria,

Ghana, Guinea, Gambia and Sierra Leone. It is significant that the Cote d'Ivoire was not included since

Taylor forces are reported to have continually used that country as a base for training and acquiring

provisions. ECOMOG’s purpose was three-fold: I.) Establish an interim government; 2.) Disarm the

warring factions and return them to their barracks; and 3.) Hold democratic elections. Doe and Johnson

supported ECOMOG’s intervention while Taylor opposed the third party’s actions. Peace was delayed by

repudiation of agreements on all sides, lawless forces and factionalism, and mediators' long-standing

opposition to giving any leader of a warring group the chance to hold presidential office.

Regional Mediation has Impact: Yamoussoukro IV Accord

Resolution of the conflict was hampered primarily by Taylor, who controls most o f the county, and

ECOWAS member states, such as and the Cote d’Ivoire, who subverted the group’s stance

on the war. The first true progress toward resolution came in the form of the October 1991 signing in the

Cote d’Ivoire of the Yamoussoukro IV Accord that is based on the ECOMOG mandate. It established the

first clear process for encampment, demobilization and elections for any negotiated outcomes; however,

the accord was only implemented to the extent that cease fires were called. Interim government head Amos

Sawyer controlled Monrovia but a new faction entered the picture from Sierra Leone and Guinea in 1992.

The United Liberation Movement for Democracy in Liberia (ULIMO), comprised of former Doe

government officials and Liberian refugees of Mandinka origin, took part of western Liberia that borders

Sierra Leone. ULIMO initially was supported by the military government in Sierra Leor.e.248

247. Pajibo, “ECOWAS Efforts for Peace in Liberia - A Discussion Paper,” unpublished paper presented at A World Food Day Symposium, sponsored by the Institute for African Development, (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University, Oct. 29, 1994).

248. Sesay, p. 14.

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Diamonds, timber, and warfare

The war was sustained by the factions’ access to income producing sectors and outside markets, as well

as the international community’s refusal to deliver promised financial assistance. First, the Bong Mines, a

key source of iron ore for Germans exporters, was taken over by NPFL and mined until 1992. Then

ULIMO-J , before its organizational split, took o v e r249 . Charles Taylor also is rumored to have bankrolled

his war effort by helping the NPFL to some of Liberia’s forest and illegally selling the timber to the

French, via the Cote d-Ivoire, and by accessing some of Liberia’s low grade diamonds in lower Lofa.

Diamond mining garnered an estimated $84 million in 1988.250 The African Mining Consortium LTD, a

British firm, reportedly paid Taylor $ 10 million a month to transport iron ore on existing rail lines.251 The

LPC reportedly managed a rubber plantation in Buchanan that exported 3,000 tons of rubber in 1994 to

earn $1.5 million - all with support from Nigerian ECOMOG soldiers.

This relationship has muddled intermediary focus by creating a tension between the Nigerian-led

ECOMOG and France. The United States that has historic - almost colonial - ties to Liberia refused to take

a stance on ending the war during the George Bush y e a r s .252 The U.S. recalled its ambassador in 1992 in

protest of “reports that were too substantial to be dismissed” that Burkina Faso was tunneling arms from

249. from “Memorandum to Ezekiel Pajibo, Africa Faith and Justice Network, Washington, DC: ‘Horror in Bong Mines: A Call For Immediate Action: An Investigative Report dated March 15, 1995’” by Alphonso W. Nyenuh, information officer at The Justice and Peace Commission, National Catholic Secretariat, Monrovia, Liberia, dated March 22, 1995, p. 4.

250. EIU, “Country Profile Guinea, Sierra Leone, Liberia 1994-95,” p. 69.

251. Sesay, p. 14.

252. French, “After six Brutal Years, Peace is celebrated in Liberia,” The New York Times. September, 1, 1995, p. 6. The U.S. relegated its role to providing humanitarian relief for the first three years and had donated over $170 million in relief and $50 million to ECOMOG as of mid-1995.

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the French to Taylor.253 The major powers finally decided to act officially: In November 1992, they

passed United Nations Security Council Resolution #788 placing an embargo on arms sales to warring

factions in the country and issued a statement supporting the Yamoussoukro IV Accord. It was three years

before the Security Council finally gave the embargo some teeth by passing Resolution #985 in April 1995

creating a three-member oversight committee that would monitor implementation of the embargo on a

state-by-state basis, investigate reported violations, and recommend penalties for the violations. Still,

despite four years of complaints, the first committee reported in December 1995 that it had received no

reports of violations from member states and had requested reports from NGOs.254

Building on Yamoussoukro IV

A succession of peace agreements (Cotonou, Akosombo and Abuja accords being most effective)

followed as the warring factions attempted to clarify the roles of the interveners and the distribution

mechanisms of the peace process, while also consolidating political power via the battlefield. The Cotonou

Accord was signed in and took effect in July 1993. It lasted six months. The accord marked the

Organization of African Unity’s first engagement in the conflict when the OAU Eminent Person for

Liberia, Zimbabwean President Rev. Canaan Banana, helped to negotiate its terms. At this time, soldiers

from Tanzania, Uganda, and with Rev. Banana’s aide were also brought in to dilute the

Nigerian dominance in ECOMOG. Except for paving the way for the expansion of ECOMOG, getting the

UN into peace-keeping efforts via the United Nations Observer Mission in Liberia (UNOMIL), and

253. French, “Poor land is exerting Big Weight in Africa,”' The New York Times . March 16, 1995: International page.

254. from “Letter dated 26 January 1996 from the Chairman of the Security Council Committee established pursuant to resolution 985 (195) concerning Liberia addressed to the president of the Security Council,” under United Nations, Security Council Distribution General, 2/1996/72, 30 January 1996 on the Internet at gopher://gopher.undp.org/00/uncurr/sgrep /96_01/72 downloaded 11/12/96.

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creating the Liberian National Transitional Government (LNTG), it failed at most other goals:

disarmament, repatriation and democratic elections. UNOMIL, headed by UN Special Representative

Trevor Gordon-Somers, entered in late 1993 and was at almost full capacity, 400 observers, through the

first nine months of 1994. Then NPFL detained 43 observers in September. UNOMIL’s staffed was shrunk

and retained at one-fourth the suggested number.255

Exclusivity undermines accords

A third problem in resolving the war, according to Liberians, is that only the warring factions had any

input on the terms that were negotiated and finally included in settlement agreements. As key examples,

civilians often pointed to the constant “undermining” of thepopular voice and the first Liberian National

Transitional Government (LNTG). Under the Cotonou Accord, the LNTG replaced Sawyer’s Interim

Government of National Unity in March 1994. Yet, ECOMOG and warring factions ignored Sawyer’s and

populist requests that the LNTG be seated concomitant with disarmament.^^ Furthermore, a change in

ECOWAS leadership brought a new peace accord that was even more restrictive in terms of who was

included in the negotiations just as UNOMIL was being reduced. The Akosombo Accord was promoted by

the new ECOWAS Chair Ghanaian President Jerry Rawlings and signed on Sept. 12, 1994 in Akosombo,

Ghana by only the contested heads of the three main warring factions: Hezekiah Bowen of AFL, Taylor of

NPFL and Alhaji Kromah of ULIMO. Kromah had been living in Guinea for two months when he showed

up to represent ULIMO. The other two leaders had similar legitimacy problems: Taylor had lost control of

his headquarters and home in Gbargna to a number of factions and was headed for Burkina Faso after the

signing. Bowen, a member of the LNTG, was called a traitor by AFL members and then sought protection

255. Sesay, p. 17.

256. Pajibo, “Another Rigmarole in Liberia,” Washington: Africa Peace and Justice Network, dated Sept. 20, 1994, unpublished.

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in ECOMOG headquarters. LNTG head David Kpomakpor expelled Bowen whose immediate deputy

was then selected to represent the AFLA key sign of its fragility was that while Johnson, who

controlled most of ULIMO’s territory in Liberia, was represented during the negotiations, he later refused

to sign the agreement. ULIMO had just split so that Johnson represented the Krahn (ULIMO-Johnson or

ULIMO-Jj and Kromah represented the Mandinkas (ULIMO-Kromah or ULIMO-K).

Moreover, the accord was designed and signed without input from the Liberian National Conference

(LNC), a non-governmental organization-led conference to develop ideas for a new settlement. The LNC

had been create to bring more Liberians into the peace process and thus build popular ownership and

support for any future agreements. The national conference in Monrovia included about 1,000

representatives from political parties (such as NPFL’s political wing, the National Patriotic Party),

professional organizations, women’s groups and some warring factions. The representatives, many who

had attended the March-April 1991 negotiations that preceded Yamoussoukro IV, began discussing issues

of disarmament, repatriation of refugees, election rules, and a new election date at the same time that the

Akosombo negotiations were being quietly concluded. Not surprisingly, Akosombo was vehemently

opposed by the civilian sector because it nullified the existing LNTG and created a new “five person

collective presidency.’” (The LNC and each of the three warring groups would have a representative and

then NPFL and ULIMO would jointly name a fourth person.)

Lastly, the Akosombo Accord gave power to men who had been publicly denounced by civilian

leaders. The accord was signed just three weeks after three of Taylor’s representatives in the LNTG -

Thomas Woewiyu who was LNTG Labor Minister, Sam Dokie who was LNTG Internal Affairs Minister,

and Lavela Supuwood who was LNTG Justice Minister- issued statements denouncing Taylor as the main

impediment to disarmament and an undeterred executioner of Liberian civilians, including Jackson F.

257. Pajibo, “Liberia’s Quest for Peace,” Washington: Africa Peace and Justice Network, dated Nov. 17, 1994, unpublished, p. 1.

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Doe.258 Woewiyu, Dokie and Supuwood then formed a splinter group called the NPFL Central

Revolutionary Council (NPFL-CRC). National Conference participants felt outsiders were ceding their

country to parties that had intentionally blocked the peace process and were giving authority to individuals

who were not the actual leaders of the warring factions. But, with little international support, the Liberian

National Conference was convinced to accept the accord with some changes before it closed session a

month later. Given the frailty of the Akosombo Accord, it was unsurprising that renewed fighting took over

central and southeastern Liberia soon after its signing. Then, Nigeria withdrew 4,000 troops “due to a lack

of logistics” and UNOMIL monitors were reduced from 368 to 90 in response to kidnappings, looting, and

carjackings.

Non-regional negotiators faired no better. President lost significant civilian support as a

negotiator after publicly stating that he would ask the United States government to recognize the LNTG

during the national conference and, in apparent contradiction, arranged a meeting for only the three

warring factions in Accra that spawned a cease fire agreement on December 28. One Liberian lobbyist in

Washington, DC wrote: “It’s not clear what role they would like to see from former U.S. President Carter,

if any at all. It is clear however that Carter’s doublespeak about the peace process in Liberia has only made

the situation muddier.”260 Likewise, the LNC asked the United Nations Secretary General to remove

United Nations Special Representative Gordon Somers as punishment for his involvement in Carter’s

meeting. Carter’s intervention failed to move the parties closer to resolving the war. Compaore’s infusion

of arms in early 1995 rejuvenated Taylor’s NPFL, which had suffered a series of military setbacks, and

delayed a negotiated settlement.

258. Pajibo, “Another Rigmarole in Liberia,” p.l. Jackson Doe was the civilian believed to have won the 1985 election that Samuel K Doe rigged.

259. Pajibo, “Liberia’s Quest for Peace,” p. 1.

260. Pajibo, “Another Rigmarole in Liberia,” p. 2.

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Abuja Accord and the End Game

Although Taylor was able to set himself up as ruler of about one-third of the country, it was apparent by

mid -1995 that he still could not accomplish a military victory. This paved the way for the fourth major

agreement, the Abuja Accord of August 19, 1995, and for the possibility that the heads of the warring

factions could one day rule the country legitimately if popularly elected. The Abuja Accord broke with the

tradition of other accords by allowing the leaders of warring factions to lead the second LNTG and to run

for president in subsequent elections. The Abuja Accord also called for disengagement to occur by the end

of the following month and elections to take place by August 1996. The Security Council endorsed the

accord by passing UN Resolution #1020 that expanded UNOMIL’s role to include observing and

verifying the outcome of legislative and presidential elections in concert with the OAU and ECOWAS.

When the second interim government, including leaders of the three strongest factions, was installed

September 1, 1995, over 150,000 people had been killed during the civil war and another two million to

three million displaced. Taylor had carved his own country, which he named Greater Liberia, in the north

and central regions complete with its own currency so that he could rule from his hometown, Gbargna.261

Taylor’s lack of clear democratic impetus for the war, despite his many claims to the contrary, are evinced

by his statements that the war was divinely ordained. For example, immediately following the installation

of the second interim government Taylor was quoted as saying, “ ‘I just believe in the destiny of man being

deemed by God, and war, whether manmade or whatever, are directed by a force. And so when I say it is

God’s war, God has his own way of restoring the land, and he will restore it after the war.’”262 But, the

Abuja Accord paved the way for five months of peace. During that time, the second LNTG, a six-man

interim government called the Council of State, was led by an un-affiliated English professor, Wilton

261. French, “After six Brutal Years, Peace is celebrated in Liberia,” p. Al.

262. Ibid.

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Sankawulo. The other members were Taylor, Kromah and Boley as its three vice chairmen, LNC

civilian Oscar Quiah, and traditional chief Tamba Tailor who was jointly chosen by ULIMO-K and NPFL.

The accord, in effect, created two tiers: A smaller group of generals who controlled the Council of State

and the larger group that included civilians who were expected to mediate when fighting resumed. The first

major test involved Roosevelt Johnson, who had been excluded from the council; the case signaled the lack

of consensus on the transitional government.

The Abuja Accord began to unravel when Roosevelt Johnson’s troops attacked

ECOMOG peacekeepers in Tubmanburg in December 1995.^63 ECOMOG peacekeepers had been

deployed to begin disarmament and demobilization only 14 days earlier the attack occurred.264 The

ULIMO-J commander in the area claimed ECOMOG forces were siding with ULIMO-K troops and had

arrested unarmed ULIMO-J fighters. ECOMOG’s outposts on the highway and in Tubmanburg were

overrun. ECOMOG reinforcements coming from Kle were intercepted and taken hostage, leaving 16 dead

and 78 wounded on ECOMOG’s side. Ten ECOMOG soldiers were missing in action and ECOMOG arms,

ammunition and equipment were seized. The renewed fighting justified a retrenchment on resettlement.

Many of the warring factions began reestablishing posts they had relinquished. NPFL remained at Saint

Paul river bridge in . ECOMOG was also forced to retreat from Lofa Bridge, Bond Mines, and

Kakata-Bong Mine road and, so, ceased all further deployment. The then-82 UNOMIL observers (of 160

authorized by United Nations Resolution #1020) withdrew on December 30, 1995, and refused to return

until ECOMOG troops redeployed.

263. Justice and Peace Commission of the National Catholic Secretariat, “State of Development in the Peace Process,” Monrovia, dated April 3, 1996 on the Internet 11/12/96 at http://www.afnews.org.ans/ info/lib-jpc.html.

264. United Nations Observer Mission in Liberia, “Fifteenth progress report of the Secretary-General on the United Nations Observer Mission in Liberia,” in United Nations Security Council Distribution General, S/1996/47, 23 January 1996 on the Internet at gopher: gopher.undp.org/00/uncurrsgrep /96 01/47 downloaded 11/25/96.

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The result of the December skirmishes was a reversal of steps toward demobilization and

disarmament. Hoping to avert more setbacks ECOWAS sent its Chairman Special Envoy for Liberia

Ambassador J. Gbeho and the OAU’s Rev. Banana to meet with the Council of State on January 5, 1996.

Simultaneously, the Council began expressing concerns about the need to conclude a “status-of-forces”

agreement that would clearly define ECOMOG’s role in the country. The very next day, the Nigerian Chief

of Defense and Minister of Foreign Affairs reiterated to UNOMIL observers the need for the logistical

support that had been promised yet delayed. On the peacekeeping and state-building side, the U.S.

Department of Defense had pledged S10 million in logistical aid as of June 1996. The USAID Bureau for

Humanitarian Response/Office of Foreign Disaster Relief had provided an additional S62 million for

demobilization, reintegration, resettlement and food. The money came from $75 million pledged at the

October 27, 1995 UN Conference on Assistance to Liberia. But two-thirds of the disbursed funds were

spent on commodities, emergency water, sanitation, and agricultural assistance to NGOs such as Africare,

Catholic Relief Services, Lutheran World Relief, and Medecins Sans Frontieres/H olland.265 The NGOs

served the 4 0 0 , 0 0 0 refugees in Guinea, 3 0 0 , 0 0 0 in Cote d’Ivoire, 2 0 , 0 0 0 in Sierra Leone, 1 6 , 0 0 0 in Ghana

and 4 , 0 0 0 in Nigeria that were displaced over the six years according to the U.N. High Commission on

Refugees. The USAID distribution resulted in total U.S. humanitarian aid of $448,055,215 between 1 9 9 0

and 1 9 9 5 . Only $ 6 6 , 0 2 5 was actually spent on direct assistance for reintegration and development centers.

265. According to the “OFDA Situation Report #1 Liberia” dated June 5 ,1996.

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 107 na na 1990 36,720,951.00 f) 1 na na na nana na na 1991 88,613,780.00 j 88,613,780.00 i na na nana na Itt 66,748^85.00; FY1992 ! na na: na na na 57361,864001 1 na na na! na 75,292,467.00 | 75,292,467.00 FY19M FY1993 IQ Table Table 9 FY1995 37,067,00000' 06,025.00 ’ 06,025.00 ,000,000.00' ’ 497,93800 1 17,431,'781.00' 11,800,800.00 (*,052878.00' 572649,900.00' FY1996 435,000,000.00 ’ 435,000,000.00 U.S. U.S. HUMANITARIAN ASSISTANCE TO LIBERIA DURING CIVIL WAR Allocationof AkI Fined fcr ftaoe to Liberia Regional protracted RdiefOperaticn protracted Services FoodRrltaocioCbltolic Regional Relief Liberia to ftaoe fcr Fined lOTAl. Office of Ineign Disaster Relief IneignDisaster of Office ’ 4,054,87200 7,89025200' Office of Transjtknal Initiatives ■ Technical Assistance Technical ■ Initiatives Transjtknal of Office State DeprOrent/Quuu for Ripulaticn,RefUgx5 and Mgtatian and Ripulaticn,RefUgx5 for DeprOrent/Quuu State Source: Agency US Source: for International Development AID, OFDA Situation #1 Report dated Liberia June 5, 1996.

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Additional peacekeeping measures were delayed by underfunding. For example, the LNTG, UNDP and

International Labour Organization (ILO) were promised $1 million to use in retraining ex-combatants and

war-affected persons as of January 1996. But UNOMIL was underfunded with total unpaid assessed

contributions of $7.7 million, $1,703 million of which was supposed to be used for peacekeeping. 266 The

Trust Fund for Liberia started in 1992 had received $24 million as of January 15, 1996, far below the

planned voluntary contributions of $160 million.

Table 10 COMPOSITION OF UNOMIL MILITARY COMPONENT AS OF JANUARY 19, 1996

Country O bservers MedicalStaff Other Bang lad esh 5 7 •2 China 77 Czech Republic 6 6 Egypt 1 1 II G uinea-B issau 5 5 India 8 8 Jordan 6 6 Kenya 8 8 M a la y s ia 8 8 P a k ista n 66 U ru g u a y 5 5 Total 175 7 8 2 5

Source: “Fifteenth progress report of the Secretary-General on the UNOMIL,” In United Nations Security Council Distribution General, S/1996/47, 3 January 1996 on the Internet at gopher://gopher.undp.org/00/uncurr/sgrep/96_01/47 downloaded 11/25/96.

266. From “Fifteenth progress report of the Secretary-General on the United Nations Observer Mission in Liberia,” in United Nations Security Council Distribution General, S/1996/47, 23 January 1996.

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 109

The lack of resources had a direct positive correlation with ECOMOG's inability for quite some

tinie to enforce mandates outside Monrovia. After a brief cease fire, war resumed in April 1996 when

Taylor tried to have Roosevelt Johnson arrested for murder. Johnson had turned to violence after he was

relieved of his post as Minister of Rural Development for refusing to meet with other interim government

leaders to discuss the clashes with ECOMOG forces. In March 1996, Johnson and one of his generals,

William Karyee, began batding for control of ULIMO-J. When Johnson refused to discuss the matter, the

Council of State recognized Gen. Karyee as ULIMO-J’s new leader on March 5. Under the guise of

reinstating peace in the areas where ULIMO-J had resumed warfare, the NPFL and ULIMO-K attacked

ULIMO-J. NGO observers say the arrest was a cover for the groups’ attempts to profit from ULIMO-J’s

weakness and gain more territory. Observers point out that while NPFL could have claimed to be seeking

Johnson when it cleared the roadblocks, that explanation did not justify its attacks at Bong Mine

and Todee.267 Likewise, ULIMO-K attacked Bomi and Lower Lofa counties.

The factional fighting intensified further. Then, in a decisive battle, Dweh Bawoh was killed in the

crossfire at Sinkor. The Council of State concurred with Taylor and issued an arrest warrant for Johnson on

charges of murder on March 20, 1996. The fighting broke the fragile peace accord that had followed more

than 50 truces and cease fires.268 The seven warring factions split with Taylor and Kromah aligning and

the LPC, and Doe’s former army officers joining Johnson. Frances Massaquoi’s Lofa Defense Force and

Woewiyu’s NPFL-CRC remained on the s i d e l i n e s . 269 Roosevelt Johnson was saved only because U.S.

267. Justice and Peace Commission, “State of Development in the Peace Process,” dated April 3, 1996 on the Internet.

268. John Omicinski, “Liberia in transition to chaos,” The Tennessean. April 1, 1996: World News Extra section, p. 9.

269. United States Agency for International Development, Bureau for Humanitarian Response, Office of U.S. Foreign Disaster Assistance, “OFDA Situation Report #1 Liberia” dated June 5, 1996, on Internet at gopher/gaia.info.usaid.gov:70/00/human_ass_ n_post_trans/ofda/20628-61396, Nov 12, 1996.

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 110

troops spirited him away to Sierra Leone in early May.270 Taylor and Kromah of ULIMO-K were left

calling for Roosevelt Johnson’s prosecution.

But any hope that the adjudication of war criminals could be handled justly through government courts

was eroded by the extreme secrecy surrounding The Council’s judicial appointments in early 1996.

Liberian civilians were further disgruntled because The Council tended to appoint factional loyalists rather

than those best qualified because of expertise in constitutional law.^71 The religious NGOs’ abilities to

negotiate a cease fire were hindered when Bishop Ronald J. Diggs apparently sided with Johnson by

discouraging him from voluntarily surrendering to police authorities. On April 1 2 , 1 9 9 6 , The Council

issued an arrest warrant for Diggs, Bishop Emeritus of the Lutheran Church and Co-Chairman of the Inter-

Faith Mediation Committee, on charges of “hindering law enforcement.’’ Diggs explained that he had

intervened out of fear that Johnson was being unfairly persecuted given that similar crimes committed by

other factions went unpunished.272

The United States Begins to Actively Intervene

Armed conflict finally began to wane permanently on May 26, 1996 when Taylor began withdrawing

from Monrovia, under the watchful gaze of the United States Marine Amphibious Ready Group that had

just been deployed near the Liberian coast. In response to attacks on the American Embassy in Monrovia,

the United States had announced visa restrictions and threats of further action against the faction leaders

270. Nyenati Allison, “Liberian rebel leader airlifted out of country,” The Tennessean. May 4, 1996: p. A4.

271. Justice and Peace Commission, “State o f Development in the Peace Process,” dated April 3, 1996 on Internet.

272. Ibid.

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three weeks earlier."^ x^e Security Council agreed to extend UNOMIL’s mandate through August

31, 1996, eleven days after the planned elections.

Even in the face of yet another deteriorating peace accord, Secretary of State George Moose

acknowledged during the Jim Lehrer broadcast that the United States had always worked from the

assumption that the war would eventually end when one faction had vanquished the others: “We have

attempted with the — in support of the ECOMOG economic community of West Africa, over the last five

years to work towards a framework that would contain that v i o l e n c e”^74 . Moose said the Marines were

deployed also partially in fear that fighting would sway the results of elections in nearby Sierra Leone, the

sight of many refugee camps. This logic could explain why, despite the $70 million that Secretary Moose

states were given by the United States to ECOWAS as of that date, the aid had been insufficient to outfit

ECOMOG forces to proceed with the necessary monitoring and disarmament. For example, during the Jim

Lehrer Online NewsHour, on May 6, 1996, Secretary Moose also stated that an additional $30 million had

been promised in response to “a steady almost imperceptible decline of numbers of ECOWAS -ECOMOG

forces. Clearly that needs to be reversed. That’s part of our reason for offering additional support here.”275

Herman Cohen, Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs under the Bush administration, chided the

U.S. government for not intervening diplomatically in 1990, saying simply in May 1996, “Well, all it

would take is for the United States to have some leadership in the Security Council and say, let’s get this

thing over with and let’s spend the resources that are necessary, and with some U.S. logistics, I think it

273. U.S. Secretary of State George Moose in “Pressing for Peace in Liberia”, Online NewsHour with Jim Lehrer, transcript of May 6, 1996 broadcast on Internet 11/12/96 at http://web- cr01.pbs.org/newshour/bb/africa/may96/moose_ 5-6.html; USAID, “OFDA Situation Report #1 Liberia,” dated June 5,1996 on Internet.

274. Ibid.

275. Ibid.

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could work.”^76 ECOMOG’s number was listed at 6,000 troops as of May 1, 1996, less than half the

number projected necessary to enforce the Abuja Accord. The insufficient funds hindered ECOMOG in

meeting the promised financial support for troops who chose to lay down their arms and join camps for re­

habilitation; in response, the soldiers - many of them illiterate youth who took up arms through forced

conscription - began fleeing the encampments due to a lack of pay and low m o r a l e . ^77 By this point, they

comprised the bulk of the NPFL’s 10,000 soldiers after many adult soldiers were killed in skirmishes with

ECOMOG in 1992-93.

For a while, it appeared that another accord would be abrogated. The NPFL and ULIMO-K began

disputing the prerequisite for elections: Taylor maintained the elections would occur at all costs in August

while Kromah demanded they occur only after disarmament had been com pleted.278 Despite ECOWAS’s

requests and assurance of international aide in restarting the demobilization and disarmament, as of

October 1996, the UN Secretary General Boutros Boutros-Ghali was backsliding on the number of

promised observers.^79 One ray of hope came with President Bill Clinton’s pre-election maneuver of

authorizing S10 million in commodities, services and training for ECOMOG (currently Nigeria, Ghana,

Sierra Leone, Guinea and Mali) under an amended Section 552c2 of the Foreign Assistance Act of

276. Charlayne Hunter-Gault, “Anarchy’s Children,” on the Online NewsHour of May I, 1996 on the Internet 11/12/96 at http://webr01.pbs.org/newshour/bb/affica/liberia_discussion_5-l.htmI.

277. Reed Kramer, president and managing editor of Africa News Service on the Online NewsHour of May 1, 1996 with Charlayne Hunter-Gault. The longevity of peace resides in habilitating the illiterate youth who led the war either voluntarily or through forced conscription, in Howard French, “Poor land is exerting Big Weight in Africa,” March 16, 1995; and Howard W. French, ’’Liberian Teen-Age Soldiers Find Civil War Is Over but So Is Hope,” The New York Times. Sept 11, 1995: p. A l.

278. Africa Faith and Justice Network, “Peace Delayed is Peace Denied,” Around Africa. July 8, 1996 on the Internet at nando.net/ans/wets/west.liberia on July 23, 1996.

279. Segun Adeyemi, “Boutros-Ghali on Strength of UN Mission in Liberia,” Panafrica News Agency Oct. 22, 1996 via Internet.

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 113

1961.280 Nevertheless, elections were pushed back from their original date of August 20, 1996, under

a revised accord. The election was finally held on July 19, 1997. Taylor was elected president with 75

percent of the votes; his party also captured a majority of the parliament seats. According to the 500

international observers, Taylor won “more or less fairly” despite boisterous opposition from presidential

candidate Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf.281

Spillover wars in the region

It was imperative for ECOWAS to see the war to conclusion because of historic links that made the war

a threat to the security of neighboring countries. The region historically is linked by trade routes used by

Mandinka merchants who travel in caravans from Mali to the various coastal cities. Modern-day,

international economic demands also created a tight network of roads and rail lines in Sierra Leone, Guinea

and Liberia to transport precious metals and commodities from the hinterlands to ports for sale on the

global markets, [see Figure 5.] They also provide easy access for the staging of revolt from cross border

camps. For example, the four-year-old civil war in Sierra Leone waged by Foday Sankoh’s Revolutionary

United Front (RUF) had its beginnings in the Liberia conflict. The RUF, from Charles Taylor’s strongholds

originally began fighting to topple Major General Joseph Momoh’s corrupt government but continued even

after it fell in April 1992 because the junior military officers chose Capt. Valentine Strasser to lead the

government over Sankoh. Sankoh, backed by Charles Taylor, claimed Strasser was as corrupt as the

previous leader.282 Strasser struggled to hold onto the government and about 5 , 0 0 0 people had died as of

280. Presidential Determination No. 96-56 dated September 30, 1996 in “Memo for the Secretary of State, The Secretary of Defense,” in a White House Press Release on the Internet, 11/12/ 1996 at http: library.whitehouse.gov/Retrieve.cgi?dbtype = text&id = 7248&query=Liberia. 281. The Economist “Farewell, guns?” July 26, 1997: p. 39.

282. Tina Sussman, “Foreigners Targeted in Sierra Leone War,” The Washington Post Feb. 11, 1995: p. A19.

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February 1995. Similarly the overthrow of Sir Dawda Jawara’s government in Gambia was by former

Liberian peacekeepers.^83

283. Pajibo, “ECOWAS Efforts for Peace in Liberia, A Discussion paper,” presented at A World Food Day Symposium sponsored by the Institute for African Development, Cornell University in Ithaca, NY on Oct. 29, 1994.

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. CHAPTER VI

MEDIATION, ANALYSIS AND CONCLUSION

Introduction

Understanding the Sudanese and Liberian conflicts hinges on examining stages of competition in pre- and

post-independence periods that led to increasing levels of violence in both societies as well as external factors

that built regional climates antithetical to state-building. The most comprehensive conceptual framework for

exam ining the armed conflicts is Ted Gurr’s relative deprivation theory that stresses structural causes of

violence. There were key stages in the rise of relative deprivation, forthwith referred to as RD, among

indigenous Liberians. The first stage, the pre-Samuel Doe period, saw the True Whigs systematically

building roadblocks to the political participation and economic development of the indigenous people. True

Whig leaders allowed the forced conscription of indigenous peoples and denied them suffrage; then, laws

were developed that created an almost insurmountable burden of land ownership as a precursor to

exercising suffrage. The unaddressed RD finally erupted as support for Samuel Doe, a native’s, coup of

Tolbert. Then rising expectations of increased political roles were undercut when Doe began clamping

down on political expression and the press. This transformed the relative deprivation into progressive RD.

It was exacerbated by aspirational RD when Doe rigged the 1985 elections with the quiescent support of

the United States, Doe’s primary donor. Taylor, a braggart lacking any true philosophy for governing the

country, then manipulated that frustration to gain support for his bid to take over the government.

Similarly, in Sudan, the British colonial practice of segregating the South via the application of differential

and inequitable economic and educational policies created the initial critical levels of relative deprivation

for Southern Sudanese. Then, the pressure reached explosive levels when the British reneged on promises

115

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 116 of autonomy and political office to the South by dumping the country on the Mahdists in 1956;

Southerners saw their hopes for improvement quickly snatched away. This pattern was repeated with

Nimeiri’s abrogation of the 1972 peace accord and Al-Turabi’s overruling of al-Beshir’s decision to end

the war in 1995. In a sense the Sudanese government also suffers from RD in its inability to penetrate fully

Sudanese society. Rulers have backed away from a series of opportunities to end the war: 1.) In the late

1960s when moderate Sadiq al-Mahdi struggled to build a coalition government; 2.) during Abboud’s brief

regime when he pledged to create a unified state free of sharia; and 3.) In 1986, when Mahdi ignored the

peace negotiated by the DUP, in favor of an ill-defined negotiation process.

The two sovereign states in the conflicts were "weak” because they suffered from all five aspects of

“developmental crises,” lacking national identities, legitimacy, participation on the part of the populaces,

penetration and distributive capabilities. It should be noted that those crises were in part exacerbated by

capitalism and modernization since, as Bates points out, “Crucial to the emergence of ethnic competition is

that societies as well as individuals tend to be evaluated along the dimension of modernity. Those groups

which are more wealthy...tend to be envied, resented, and sometimes feared by others: and the basis for

these sentiments is the recognition of their superior position in the new system of stratification.’’^ ^

Lastly, as suggested by Ayoob’s theories, the political contests were viewed as “life or death issues”

because the basic organizational structures for politics, economics and society were still disputed.^85 This

zero-sum perspective within the societies also is due to the large quantities of resources available to

developing countries in the form of foreign aid, which was not available to the Western countries during

their period of nation-building, from international monetary institutions. In sum, the lack of isolation has

hindered national cohesion and popular acceptance of the state.

284. Richard Rubenstein, “Dispute Resolution on the Eastern Frontier: Some Questions for Modem Missionaries,” Negotiation Journal. July 1992, pp. 212& 462.

285. Ibid., p. 45.

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Mediation and Other Causes of Inclusive Conflict

Security, like RD and ethnicity, is based on perception. By extension, conflict resolution relies heavily

on the perceptions of all parties. It is insufficient to focus on getting parties to the table as was reinforced

by Charles Taylor’s numerous vacillations on cease fires and demilitarization agreements in the Liberian

war. There must be a commitment from all parties - not only the warring factions but also regional

neighbors and civil society. From dissecting two key negotiation periods in both conflicts - the 1971-72

discussion prior to the Addis Ababa agreement in the Sudanese war and the early stages of the Liberian

crises - it is apparent that mediation of a settlement begins and ends with regional civil society. In both

cases, non-govemmental organizations (World Council of Churches and All-African Council of Churches

in Sudan and the Liberian Council of Churches and National Muslim Council of Liberia under the joint

Inter-Faith Mediation Committee [IFMC]) made the first moves to bring the parties together for talks.

Furthermore, when other agents attempted to usurp their roles, as ECOWAS did in adopting the IFMC's

four mandates as its own and then creating ECOMOG to enforce them, the usurpers had to overcome a lack

of popular legitimacy. Samuel Kofi Woods makes the intuitive statement that NGOs are best suited for the

initial contacting stage because they do not have a legitimacy hurdle to cross given the “moral authority”

they have earned through relief work and providing health and education services. ^86 The cases also

show that the conferring of legitimacy on warring parties is best left to heads of state (such as Emperor

Haile Selassie in 1972 and the OAU’s Rev.Canaan Banana, Ghanaian President Jerry Rawlings or IGADD

head Issaias) while the actual mediations, peacekeeping (protecting civilians) and enforcement of accords

are best left to a consortium such as regional mediators. But central to it all are civic organizations who

fulfill the critical support tasks of 1.) Providing humanitarian relief (similar to the work by Uganda-based

286. from “Civic Initiatives in the Peace Process,” in Accord: The Liberian Peace Process 1990-1996. (London: Conciliation Resources, 1996), pp. 27-32.

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 118 Kampala Committee and Operation Lifeline Sudan), 2.) Training civilians for non-violent means of

political expression (as the Interest Groups of Liberia did with the “stay home” strikes in Monrovia that

kept the city from imploding as the warring parties procrastinated in Liberia in 1996), 3.) Rehabilitating

and re-assimilating the troops (similar to the National Volunteer Programme in Liberia in 1993), and 4.)

Building grassroots support for a settlement (as the WCC/AACC did to successfully pressure faction leader

Col. Lagu into accepting the Sudanese agreement in 1 9 7 2 ) . Just as significantly, when local civil

society is overlooked, it can become a hindrance to resolution as occurred when the Liberian National

Conference steadfastly refused to make presidential campaigns open to warring factions - the thing that

Taylor most wanted and that he continued fighting another four years to get. Now that the groundwork has

been laid, further disaggregation of the mediation processes will reveal other minor obstacles that will

impact the timeliness of the contacting, mediating and enforcement phases.

Both negotiation periods show that getting the warring parties to the table is predicated on generating

the perception that no party will win through military victory. For instance, belligerents in Sudan became

amenable to peace talks in 1971 when faced with Israel backing the Southern rebels and a world financial

upheaval limiting the Khartoum government while Uganda and Ethiopia decided to halt support and

protection of the rebels. Then, unlike the Mahdists or Khatmiyya, Nimeiri’s political base was not built on

affiliations with religious associations but with secular entities. So he was free to negotiate a peace that

allowed southerners to choose their own political leaders. Similarly, why did Taylor finally come to the

table with serious aspirations for ending the war? Traditional conflict studies on Africa would suggest that

it was because Taylor realized he could not expand through military means beyond his stronghold in

northern Liberia. In fact, it was a combination of events that included the western powers having finally

287. Phillippa Atkinson, “Non-governmental self-help organizations,” as quoted in Max Ahmadu Sesay, “Bringing Peace to Liberia,” in Accord: The Liberian Peace Process 1990-1996. (London: Conciliation Resources, 1996), p. 25; Christopher Mitchell, Conflict Resolution and Civil War: Reflections on the Sudanese Settlement of 1972. (Washington, D.C.: George Mason University, Center for Conflict Analysis and Resolution, 1989).

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 119 taken a position in favor of peace by providing additional military aid to ECOWAS rather than

watching from the sidelines and assisting Taylor’s campaign through illegal commerce as they had in the

past. It appears, also, that Taylor began to see a method for controlling the country through legitimate

political means via the Abuja Accord. His options expanded once civilian groups and mediators backed

away from previous demands that any settlement include a proviso banning leaders of warring factions

from serving as president. The implication for future mediators is that any eventual settlement cannot yield

power to any one party or refuse to allow any group to participate.

The study reinforces some of the tenets of traditional political economy by revealing that agents and

groups do act to maximize their own interests in terms of scarce r e s o u r c e s . So, “carrots and sticks" are

useful in getting parties to the table because they address status values of parties (in that the offering of a

“carrot” or “stick” is tangible recognition of a party’s power); however, these incentives are insufficient for

getting parties to move from a competitive stance that promotes violence to a cooperative view that

encourages peace. A solely rational-actor approach often leads to a dance in which warring parties focus on

gaining more “carrots” or avoiding “sticks” rather than on a real transformation of consciousness that

facilitates peace.

On the other hand, mediation of both conflicts was hampered by parochialism of elites, manipulations

of extra-regional actors, mediator impartiality and, by what George Kent has termed as the primary

obstacle to conflict resolution, “factionalism” within a coalition."^ For example, Northern opposition to

the Sudanese government took almost a decade to coalesce into a somewhat unified voice; the primary

Southern group, the SPLM, split twice in the early 1990s and began fighting one another. Factionalism

among Southern rebels in mid-1994 and staunch demands for “self-determination” caused the groups to

miss a chance to test the transitional government's espoused claim that everything was negotiable “within

288. Brams, p. 201; Robert Chilcote, “Alternate Approaches to Comparative Politics,” in Howard J.Wiarda, (ed.), New Directions in Comparative Politics. (Boulder,Co: Westview, 1991), p. 156.

289. from “Analyzing Conflict and Violence.” Peace & Change, vol. 18, no. 4 (October 1993): p. 377.

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 120

the context of a united Sudan.”^® Similarly, conflicting actions of ECOWAS members - particularly

the Cote D’Ivoire’s facilitating of Charles Taylor’s smuggling of natural resources and Burkina Faso’s

providing of military support to the NPFL - resulted in a series of unenforceable peace accords, beginning

with Yamoussoukro IV that Ivorian President Felix Houphouet-Boigny helped negotiate. Clearly, stable

power centers among the warring camps and mediators are a necessity for negotiating a settlement.

Secondly, structural concerns - such as the unequal economic development among regions and ethnic

groupings and, most recently, the demands of global capitalism - have further eroded the states’ abilities to

manage conflict. Ethnicity, in and o f itself, is not deleterious -as it can be a tool for interest articulation

and interest aggregation as well as equitable distribution of r e s o u r c e s .291 However, the case studies show

that sector struggles, sparked by unequal modernization and rooted in the center-periphery dependency,

can and will be converted by elites into “ethnic” struggles. In these cases, the indigenous Liberians and

Southern Sudanese had been largely overlooked during m odernization.^^ Then those in control of the

state apparati, such as the True Whig Party and Doe in Liberia and the Murahillin in Sudan, became

“political entrepreneurs” and “mobilizers for g a i n . ” 2 9 3 The civil wars also embodied aspects of elite

fragmentation in that political elites batded with military elites over how to resolve the Sudanese wars.

Mediation stalled and thus the number of casualties and the amount of damage to physical

infrastructure augmented due to machinations by external agents who viewed the civil wars as mechanisms

290. Charles Harrison, “Sudan rebel groups agree to stop fighting,” Reuters World Service, January 9, 1994.

291. Mowlana & Robinson, p. 53; Jinadu, p. 100.

292. R. H. Bates, “Ethnic Competition and Modernization in Contemporary Africa,” Comparative Politics, vol. 6, no. 4 (January 1974): p. 463.

293. Hamid Mowlana and A. E. Robinson, “Ethnic Mobilization and Communication Theory,” in Abdul A. Said and Luiz R. Simmons, (eds.) Ethnicity in An International Context. (New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Books, 1976), p. 55.

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 121 for exerting or gaining greater control in Africa, for waging ideological wars without loss of life, and

for subsidizing their own defense industries. ^94 The result was actually the propping up of political

regimes (i.e. Tolbert and Doe in Liberia) that lacked popular legitimacy. The OAU, comprised of African

heads of state, effectively renounced its “neutral” role as mediator in favor of promoting the “non­

recognition of secessionist movements” and the inviolability of existing state governm ents.^^ That

position was driven by the fear o f OAU heads of state that intervention would result in new policy that

could backfire if there were ever armed conflicts in their own states. Then the United States distanced itself

from its Cold War allies once there was no longer a need to run intelligence operations from the CIA office

in Monrovia or to broadcast Voice of America messages toward the Middle East following the end of bi­

polar international relations between the East and West. The U.S. position of isolating Sudan for being a

“terrorist state” not only undermined Western intervention efforts but also created a siege mentality within

the Khartoum regime. The current phase of the Sudanese armed conflict reflects a bloody stalemate that is

considered, to use Zartman’s words, the “acceptable alternative for both sides to losing the war.”296 The

rebels gain the upper hand during the rainy season and the government takes back the land during dry

periods.

The case studies demonstrate that regional organizations tend to commit to a complete resolution of the

conflict because it is advantageous to their national interests. They are impelled by the incessant diverting

of economic resources to meet the needs of refugees, the destabilizing effects of recurrent conflict on

internal and regional efforts at political and economic growth, and also the inherently cross-national

294. from introduction to Bruce Arlinghaus, (ed.), Arms for Africa: Military Assistance and Foreign Policy in the Developing World. (Lexington,MA: Lexington Books, 1983), p. 5.; R. D. Kaplan, “The Coming Anarchy,” Atlantic Monthly.

295. Akuchu, pp. 42-44; I. W. Zartman & S. Touval, “Mediation: The Role of Third Party Diplomacy and Informal Peacemaking,” in Sheryl L. Brown and Kimber M. Schraub, feds.). Resolving Third World Conflict: Challenges for a New Era. (Washington: United States Institute of Peace, 1992), p. 250.

296. Zartman, p. 26.

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 122 characteristics of the conflicts due to the colonialist misalignment of states and nations. These ground

zero domestic realities demand that the restoration of security in Sudan and Liberia be examined - and

resolved - within a regional context. Defining a region must include family lineage (nuclear and extended),

commonalities in language (such as Mandinka and Jula in West Africa and Arabic in ),

migration patterns and commercial links. When resolution, that is rebuilding a sense of security for ail

parties, is considered in a from this broader perspective, then regional neighbors are the logical interveners

because their security usually is eroded as the war wages. First, in the Sudanese case, food security in the

arid region was threatened by the slash and bum tactics of both major groups; refugees flooded Uganda,

Kenya and Ethiopia driving up prices and diminishing supplies of scarce food resources. Second, resolving

the conflict is the first step in developing a large regional trading bloc, according to President Daniel arap

Moi who led the IGADD mediators until the more hardline Issaias took over.297 Third, from a physical

safety standpoint, warring factions often seek succor on the border with neighboring countries thereby

sparking cross-border raids that injure uninvolved civilians or becoming a breeding pool for violent

insurrection in neighboring c o u n t r i e s .298 \ regional approach, that is intervention by a peer in the

international and economic spheres, undermines the chance for warring factions to claim mediators’

demands are hegemonic and thereby avoid resolving the armed conflict. For example, Beshir’s RCC and

subsequent transitional government used the United States’ decision to blackball the country for

“supporting terrorism” in late 1993 to avoid calling a cease fire and ending the war. The isolation appears

297. The British broadcasting Corporation, “Kenyan president arrives; discusses East African cooperation and refugees,” November 17,1993.

298. According to a July 25, 1997 broadcast on National Public Radio’s “Morning Edition”, the Sierra Leone civil war was led by 200 prisoners freed by Liberian rebels who picked up opportunists along the way by saying, “You’re my cousin. We’re going to get power and going to get jobs so come with me;” similarly Joseph Kony’s Lord’s Resistance Army is waging a war against the Ugandan government with backing from the Khartoum government. They train kidnapped children to be laborers, sex slaves and fighters in Sudanese camps, according to Laura Myers, “Albright offers U.S. help for children caught in civil war,” Associated Press, December, 10, 1997.

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 123 to have pushed the Khartoum government further away from the West and any proposals that appear to

originate in the west, including the creation of a secular govemment.^^ This implies that mediators are

more effective by exerting pressure through increased interaction than by cutting off ties. U.S. Secretary of

State Madeleine Albright’s recent pledge of economic support to rebels marks a turning point in the West’s

otherwise hands-off approach to the war.

The two cases also support Buzan’s claims that a stable state cannot intervene without seeming to side

with one faction or another. No one state should intervene, or appear to be hegemonic as in the case of

Nigeria during the first phase of ECOWAS peacekeeping. The IGADD coalition and diluted ECOWAS

show that a group of stable states can intervene with some success. IGADD ensured that pipelines for food

aid remain open between Operation Lifeline Sudan based in Kenya, through government held territory to

the South. ECOWAS was successful at containing warring factions enough to restore order in the heavily

populated cities of Monrovia and Buchanan and essentially creating a stalemate that forced the belligerents

to consider other options rather than military victory. The key is that each group was comprised of states

that had different historical relationships with the warring factions and disputed states and thus appeared to

be willing to consider varied options for resolution. For example, IGADD’s stance was balanced by

differences between Kenya that refused to support demands for “full autonomy” and Eritrea that saw its

own decades-long war for independence reflected in the Southern Sudaneses’ claims for self-rule. Second,

it appears each group was stronger than the sum of individual members’ influences; thus, group influence

was weightier than efforts by individual members.

However, a major issue in building regional security in The Horn o f Africa is Egypt’s vacillating role:

Sudan’s strongest neighbor struggles to avoid falling victim to Al-Turabi’s jihad but has discouraged the

299. For example, the Sudanese government has aligned politically with the Chinese in the United Nations and bartered cotton - its primary commodity - gum arabic, com, camels and meat for Chinese aircraft and military equipment, in “Sudan has odd friends,” Foreign Report (Coulsdon, Surrey, United Kingdom: Jane’s Information Group Ltd., December 14, 1995).

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 124

United States against supporting Southern demands for secession.^®® One other problem may be that

IGADD’s decision to issue a veiled ultimatum in late 1993 to the Khartoum government actually backfired

and hurt the entity’s reputation as a fair, unbiased negotiator. So, the mediation process has many

components with various agents - “moral” organizations, regional peacekeepers, heads of state, and NGOs

- being better suited for the different roles.

Culture and Conclusion

This thesis shows that future studies of conflict resolution must address the individual and state

interests from a regional perspective. Examining theories by Buzan and Gurr/Galtung together offer insight

on how to approach regional security analysis. Buzan posits that individual security (addressing Maslow’s

basic needs of life, health, status and freedom) is a key component of national security. Similarly, Galtung

posits that personal violence is the root of structural violence. These authorities concur that neither can be

addressed separately.

Given that many Southern Sudanese are Muslim, it is apparent that the ethnic and cultural explanations

for the war are mainly a convenient but unsubstantiated rationale for the state’s fundamental inability to

extend control over the region (that is Egypt and the Nile waters) and to manage conflict peacefully. The

implications are, however, that resolution must also be built on all facets of regional linkages, including

cultural links. For example, the extended family and the institutions o f civil society that promote co­

operation could serve as grassroots conduits for encouraging the leaders of warring factions to resolve the

war. Among these institutions is the Islamic hierarchy that has imams and men and women’s groups at the

basic level of organization. Resolution in Sudan may not lie in ignoring ethnicity and religion but in using

300. After 10 armed Sudanese were caught following an assassination attempt on Egyptian President ’s life in 199S, the Egyptian government allowed Sudanese opposition members to protest at his palace in Cairo but would not officially acknowledge support for the overthrow of the Beshir-Al- Turabi regime, in John Lancaster, “Egyptians, Sudanese Forces Exchange Fire at Border,” The Washington Post June 28, 1995: p. A35.

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 125 their positive aspects to foster co-operation. Islam teaches that self-actualization occurs only by

following specific rules of living and social interaction, and by extension governance. Milton Viorst

suggests that state-building may be facilitated by using Islam, a common reference for all ethnic and

linguistic groups, to unify the country.-^ Similarly, moderate Muslim law professor, Abdullahi A. An-

Naim, suggests that if moderate Islamic countries, such as Mali and Saudi Arabia, took a strong stance on

the war, the Khartoum government could redefine Islamic politics that is now dictated by sword-bearing

Muslims. There is hope: Within Al-Turabi’s Muslim brotherhood there areulamaa, religious leaders who

are considered the guardians of sharia, who oppose his interpretations of the Koran during this jihad.^®^

The key bridge lies in the fact that the Koran declares that Islam must be the individual, wholehearted

choice of each person, Muslim and non-Muslim. For believers, An-Naim submits that they also have a

choice about which image of God to pursue: “Muslims will always possess a wonderful variety of

understandings of Islam and its role in their lives - the 99 names of God.... some of the names convey a

God who is compassionate and peaceful, while others paint an unforgiving belligerent deity....Muslims

face a moral choice: which [sic] of the 99 names of God will they follow, both individually and

collectively?”^®^ Even Islam posits that the greater jihads entail fighting personal temptation and

corruption of the soul and withdrawing both verbal and physical support for wrong-doing.^®^ As its

stands many moderate Sudanese Muslims have been exiled or fled the country, including one of the last

hold-outs, Sadiq al-Mahdi, in fear of being killed for apostasy.

301. Milton Viorst, “Fundamentalism in Power: Sudan’s Islamic experiment,” Foreign Affairs, vol. 74, no. 3, (May/June 1995), p. 45.

302. Ibid, p. 47.

303. An-Naim, p. 126.

304. John Ralph Willis, “Jihad Fi Sabil Allah - Its Doctrinal Basis in Islam and Some Aspects of its Evolution in Nineteenth-Century West Africa,” Journal of African History, vol. 8, no. 3 (1967), pp. 398- 399 & 407-408.

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 126 To conclude, there will always exist some level of instability in a country. This insecurity results

from the eternal RD that people and groups experience, as Gurr pointed out The key to determining

whether warfare, violence in RD terminology, will result is not only the intensity but the mechanisms for

managing that instability. Plainly, developed states have extensive, internal mechanisms for handling

instability; those mechanisms impact individuals and groups at many levels: Psycho-social in the form of

norms of social behavior; political in terms of allowing the voicing of opinion and amassing of power

when individuals of like interests congregate and hold public office; at the “law and order” level so that

grievances are filed, investigated and adjudicated; and economic in the form of allowing individuals to

seek income.

Long-term conflict management and resolution must include a phase in which previous grievances are

addressed, not just referenced, but actually corrected. Or as George Kent points out, “Asymmetrical

exchange feeds on itself, making the situation more and more asymmetrical.” In other words, the

disparities will not only continue but also intensify. In the Liberian case, this implies mitigating the impact

of unequal exchange in the global economy. In pushing this idea further, the disparities and their resulting

frustration will become fodder for a resurgence of violent conflict - one that would be stronger in intensity

and more protracted. Sudan is a classic example of that coming to fruition: Nimeiri’s decision to forego

fulfilling promises of economic development in the South after the 1972 peace agreement, led to a more

intense experience of relative deprivation on the part of Southerners who wanted no part of a non-secular

country. As these Southerners’ RD intensified there was an concomitant increase in their lack of

willingness to consider future peace offers that were not based on regional autonomy. As in personal

relationships, protracted conflict may be based on new reasons but also is reinforced by historical baggage,

or remembered meanings, that are triggered when future acts occur. In this situation, resolution becomes

much more difficult because the parties must first peel away and address the layers of meaning before

dealing with the most basic value capacity disputes.

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Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 135 U.S. News & World Report. “Andrew Young on Africa: Still the Voice of Dissent,” interview with the U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations, (12 June 1978). [on-line]Available: Lexus-Nexus, Library: MDEAFR, File: ALLNWS.

The Washington Post. “Saving Aid for Africa,” (29 October 1993):A26.

Willis, John Ralph. “Jihad Fi Subil Allah - Its Doctrinal Basis in Islam and Some Aspects of its Evolution in the 19th Century West Africa.” Journal of African History, vol. 8, no. 3 (1967): 305-415.

The Xinhau General Overseas News Service. “IGADD countries need more food aid this year” (28 March 1994):No. 0328026 [on-line] Available: Lexus-Nexus, Library: MDEAFR, File: ALLNWS.

Government Documents

Alexander Kirk, of the American Legation at Cairo, to Department of State, Washington, DC, September 25, 1943, letter No. 1310 includes copies of the Special Legislative Supplement of the Sudan Government Gazette No. 731 dated September 1, 1943 and clippings from the Sudan Star newspaper dated September 1, 1943; January 20,1944, letter No. 1541; Declassified Records of the State Department, Foreign Service Post Files, Record Group 84; National Archives, Washington, D.C.

Anglo-Egyptian Sudan, Declassified General Records. 1944-45, military attache reports No. 592 (March 7, 1944), No. 13869 (April 28, 1944); No. 5073 (September 5, 1944) to Office of Strategic Services, Washington, DC; from Military Intelligence Division, Records of the War Department General and Special Tariffs in Record Group 226; National Archives, Washington, D.C.

Anglo-Egyptian Sudan, Declassified General Records. 1944-45, report to Office of Strategic Services, Washington, DC, May 29, 1944; from Intelligence Division, Records of the Chief of Naval Operations, Navy Department in Record Group 226; National Archives, Washington, D.C.

Anglo-Egyptian Sudan, Declassified General Records. 1944-55, report to Office of Strategic Services, Washington, DC, August 20, 1945, copy of report written by Major Wright, British Commander of Agordat Province in Eritrea, Records of the Office of Strategic Services, Record Group 226; National Archives, Washington, DC. Arthur E. Beach, United States Liaison Officer at Khartoum, to Department of State, Washington, DC; Foreign Service Dispatch Nos. 11, 18, 230 (July 28, 1955; August 2, 1955; June 7, 1955); Declassified Records of the State Department, Foreign Service Post Files, Record Group 84; National Archives, Washington, D.C.

Confidential Operations Memo, United States Embassy in Cairo, to Joseph Sweeney, United States Liaison Officer at Khartoum, April 15, 1954, enclosed in letters to Sayid Ibrahim Hassan El Mahallawi, M.H.R., May I, 1954; Declassified Records of the Foreign Service, Post Files, Record Group 84; National Archives, Washington, D.C.

Department of State, “Notes on meeting called by Judge N.V.Massaquoi and M. Conger Thompson with strikers held at F.A.S.A.Clubhouse on January 6, 1950 (by F.L. Helm, Labor Department),” document in section 560.2 “Strike Settlement at Firestone & Terms,” declassified Feb. 23, 1995 as #NMD765026, National Archives, Washington, D.C.

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 136 Department of State, “Political, Economic and Cultural Development in Liberia, (As requested in a Circular Airgram of December 3, 1949),” declassified Feb. 23, 1995 as #NMD765026, National Archives, Washington, D.C.

Edward R. Dudley, “Strike Situation at Firestone’s Harbel Plantation," confidential pouch sent Dec. 20, 1949 to Department of State, Department of State confidential document in section 560.2 “Plans Emergency Evacuation * Firestone Strike,” declassified Feb. 23, 1995 as #NMD765026; Embassy Telegram No. 320 sent Dec. 27, 1949 to Department of State, Department of State secret document in section 560.2 “Plans Emergency Evacuation * Firestone Strike,” declassified Feb. 23, 1995 as #NMD765026; Embassy Telegram No. 325 sent Dec. 31, 1949 to Department of State, Department of State secret document in section 560.2 “Plans Emergency Evacuation * Firestone Strike,” declassified Feb. 23, 1995 as #NMD765026, National Archives, Washington, D.C.

Joseph Sweeney, United States Liaison Officer at Khartoum, to Department of State, Washington, DC, Foreign Service Dispatch Nos. 41, 51, 83, 98, 180, 181, 185, 5,44, 189, 191, 14, 48, 50, 58, 88,99 (January 10, 1953; January 23, 1953; October 23, 1953, March 21, 1953; June 17, 1953- 2 documents; June 20, 1953; September 15, 1953; September 4, 1953; February 26, 1954; March 4, 1954; July 26, 1954; September 28, 1954; October 5, 1954; October 9, 1954; November 30, 1954; December 8, 1954); Declassified Records of the State Department, Foreign Service Post Files, Record Group 84; National Archives, Washington, DC.

Joseph Sweeney, United States Liaison Officer at Khartoum, to Department of State, Washington, DC, telegram sent, March 13, 1954; Declassified Records of the State Department, Foreign Service Post Files, Record Group 84; National Archives, Washington, DC.

Letter from the Executive Vice President of Firestone Plantations Company dated Feb. 1, 1950, sent to Ambassador Edward R. Dudley, Department of State document in section 560.2 “Strike Settlement at Firestone & Terms,” declassified Feb. 23, 1995 as #NMD765026, National Archives, Washington, D.C.

Office of Strategic Services, information dated May 1, 1944, distributed July 14, 1944, Liberia, Restricted Records of OSS, Department of Defense, document #W818 declassified Nov. 9, 1974 as #NND730013, National Archives, Washington, D.C.

Office of Strategic Services, “Liberia And the Atlantic Charter,” confidential document number 83441 dated May 7, 1944, declassified Nov, 9, 1974 as #NMD730013, National Archives, Washington, D.C.

Office of Strategic Services, “Liberia - Solution for United State Action By Individual With Long Residence in Liberia,” document number L-44207 dated Sept. 9, 1944, declassified Nov, 6, 1975 as #NMD750120, National Archives, Washington, D.C.

Oscar W. Meier, “American Foreign Service Inspection Report,” United States Economic Mission at Monrovia, in Department of State records dated April 15,1948, declassified Feb. 23, 1995, as #NMD765026, National Archives, Washington, D.C.

Rupert A. Lloyd Jr., Second Secretary of the American Legation to Monrovia, “The Political Situation in Liberia,” Report No. 7, Office of Strategic Services document number ROl 12, dated Sept. 6, 1948, declassified Feb. 23, 1995 as #NMD765026, National Archives, Washington, D.C.

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 137 “Synopsis of The Liberia Company’s position,” attached to Department of State confidential Memorandum of Conversation dated April 13, 1949, declassified Feb. 23, 1995 as #NMD765026, National Archives, Washington, DC.

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. IMAGE EVALUATION TEST TARGET (QA-3)

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