A Tale of Two Countries
A Tale of Two Countries
The Linked Past and Diverging Futures of Liberia and Sierra Leone
“Let those to whom the heavens grant such opportunities consider that there are two paths open before them: one enables them to live in security and, after their death, renders them illustrious; the other causes them to live in continuous anxiety and, after their death, to leave behind an eternal legacy of infamy.” - Machiavelli [Discourses, I.10]
Introduction: The Westernized Africans of West Africa
Sierra Leone and Liberia, small nations on the southwest coast of West Africa, have always had a kind of shared fortune. Founded as colonies for freed slaves, the first by the United Kingdom and the second by the United States, they were early among African nations in having a “Westernized” class of black elites. In both cases, a variety of groups leaving slavery came in and took over the land and set up Western-style governments- in Sierra Leone’s case as a colony of the United Kingdom, and in Liberia’s case as Africa’s oldest free republic of the modern era [Carthage being Africa’s most famous and successful historic republic.] In 1980 the descendants of freed slaves, called Americo-Liberians, were overthrown after a century and a half of dominance in Liberia. This destabilized both countries, had devastating economic consequences, and ultimately led to brutal civil wars which brought child soldiers and “blood diamonds” to the forefront of public consciousness. Both nations have now been at peace for around 20 years, though as some of the world’s poorest nations struggling to make economic progress. At the same time, as readers of this newsletter are well aware, West Africa and the Sahel region have been been suffering from severe political instability and have been home to an outright majority of global coups and coup attempts since 2020. On Friday, November 17th, there was a bright spot in West African politics: Liberia’s President, George Weah, an international football superstar, conceded defeat in a close election while praising the fairness of the process and graciously wishing his opponent and his country the best moving forward. Unfortunately, in the early morning hours of Sunday, November 26th, that success was followed by a coup attempt against Sierra Leone’s President Julius Bio, who won a contested election in June. Bio is lucky to remain a free man in power, given the recent success rate of coups in this region. It seems as if, at least for now, the fates of Liberia and Sierra Leone have diverged.
The histories of Liberia and Sierra Leone, from founding to where they stand today, are complicated, bloody, and bring up many uncomfortable points. This is especially true as the complex natures of both slavery and colonization are poorly understood in our society where history is often simplified into a poorly told morality tale. Slavery may be an obvious, if complex, evil, but the colonization of Liberia and Sierra Leone also has a bad reputation amongst most who know about it, and there is a much more nuanced truth. It’s easy to see why giving freed slaves true freedom and a return to their homes sounds good, but at the same time, for most Africa was no longer their home, and even fewer came from this specific corner of Africa in the first place. Still, the various free black people who settled in Sierra Leone and Liberia, at least those who survived the tropical diseases, in most instances lived much better lives than those who stayed in the United States or Caribbean. These small groups of of settlers set up a Westernized society and contributed a great deal to the economic, cultural, and intellectual development of West Africa. The problem, though, is that in Africa their role was not so different from white settlers on the continent. In both countries, upper classes descended from settlers, called Sierra Leone Creoles in Sierra Leone and Americo-Liberians in Liberia, took control and didn’t bring the natives into their society.
Victor Hugo wrote, "We ourselves respect the past in certain instances and in all cases grant it clemency, provided it consents to being dead. If it insists on being alive, we attack it and try to kill it" [Les Miserables, II.VII.III.] Liberia’s rule by a small minority of Americo-Liberians worked fine when most of Africa was under European empires. Upon Africa’s independence, minority rule in Liberia became a relic of the past. In 1980 those who wanted the past dead succeeded. The nations of Liberia and Sierra Leone fell with that past, and entered into decades of unimaginable suffering, from which they emerged scarred and broken, but somehow still alive.
Sierra Leone: The Empire’s Colony of Freed Africans
The settlement project in Sierra Leone began as a scheme to help the “Black Poor” of London, as many had accumulated over the years due to London’s status as a major trade center, especially since many black men worked as sailors. The main support was charitable, but others simply wanted to be rid of them. Black men were prohibited from many employments and accused of being major perpetrators of crime, which was likely true if they were living in the streets and not allowed good jobs. It’s rare that the government goes along with any nice-sounding charitable program without some cynical motive, so we can’t disregard the entire project on this account. The most famous freed slave of the era, the abolitionist Gustavus Vassa, born Olaudah Equiano, was involved as the provisioner of the mission. In this role he was the first black man to hold a British government post.
The first colony was known as Granville, and suffered from the same problems as the early British settlement of the Americas, which is to say that there were high fatalities from disease, a shortage of supplies, and hostile natives. Like early settlers of the Americas, these free black men, and some white settlers who were along with them, were primarily urban poor and didn’t have pioneering skills such as farming and home building. Indeed, though they had heritage in the broader Gulf of Guinea region, Africa was as alien to them as it was to the white settlers. They also suffered one problem early English colonists in America did not: though they were legally recognized as free by the Crown, the slave trade had not been abolished and slavers were a constant threat.
Granville failed due to disease and conflict, but the British were not done planting people in Sierra Leone. Plans were made for a second colony, Freetown. They started with a group of 400 black “loyalists” who had been evacuated to London following Britain’s humiliating defeat in their war against American independence. These colonists were supplemented by a much larger group of “Nova Scotian” settlers. These were other loyalists who had been given land in Nova Scotia following the war, but found the cold weather not to their liking, as they were primarily from the American South. In these instances the men were already displaced, and were mostly happy to have land of their own in Africa. They were joined by groups of Jamaican Maroons, runaway slaves who had formed communities in the interior of Jamaica and played an uncomfortable but usually tolerated role in Jamaican society, being forced to accept living in a slave society in return for themselves being left alone. In 1807, Britain abolished it’s slave trade and the United States banned the importation of slaves the following year. This was the beginning of a truly admirable and costly process to criminalize the ancient practice internationally, something for which the British Empire does not receive nearly enough credit.
Sierra Leone was transferred from being owned by the “St George’s Bay Company” to a Crown Colony in 1808. When slave ships were captured at sea, most notably by the UK’s West African Squadron, they were taken to St. Helena, Napoleon’s final home. The slavers faced trial and the freedmen who were healthy enough to live were allowed to choose to stay on the island or disembark for the West Indies, Cape Town, or Freetown. It is said that the West Africa Squadron freed 160,000 humans in the time it operated, while the UN office in Sierra Leone says that by 1855 over 50,000 freed slaves had settled in Freetown. Many of these freed men, known as “recaptives,” had never worked as slaves, and didn’t have connections to the native tribes of Sierra Leone, so their best option was to assimilate into the developing Sierra Leone Creole culture. In some instances, they were forced into unfree labor to learn the skills of “free subjects,” which in one way is ridiculous as they had never been slaves so much as temporary captives, but in another way they had been pulled from the jungle and knew nothing of living in Freetown’s society. Some may have tried to return home, though they wouldn’t have had the resources to buy fare [and might distrust getting on a ship.] It also always needs to be emphasized how enormous Africa is: from Freetown to southern Nigeria is the distance from London to Istanbul, while from Freetown to the western Congo is a fair amount longer than the Oregon Trail, and much more arduous. On top of this, they may have been captured and released with their family in Freetown, or alternately sold onto separate ships and had no idea how to find them
The various groups released into the Sierra Leone colony formed a distinctive culture and a language called Krio which remains a lingua franca of Sierra Leone, though it has few native speakers. There was a great deal of personal liberty within the colony. Trade, religion, and education thrived. It was home to the first university established south of the Sahara, and came to be known as the “Athens of West Africa” [though admittedly, people love calling places “the Athens of _____.”] The free black men served as colonial administrators and carried on most trade with the interior. Freetown became a magnet for ambitious men from across West Africa, while a Sierra Leone Creole diaspora also spread across the region, some as laborers but many in educated positions such as administrators, doctors, and Anglican clergy.
Following the notorious Berlin Conference of 1884-1885 where Africa was divided among European powers, the United Kingdom expanded from the Freetown Colony into the rest of modern day Sierra Leone, which was known as the Sierra Leone Protectorate. This was necessary to meet the treaty requirements for claiming land. In this era, the status of Sierra Leone Creoles was reduced in favor of white administrators. Still, their status remained better than in other parts of the British Empire and it had the only European-style university in sub-Saharan Africa for around 100 years. Sierra Leone gained independence in 1961 at the same time Britain was letting go of the rest of its African Empire.
Liberia: The First Modern African Republic
The background and social development of Liberia is in some ways similar to that of Sierra Leone, but also greatly reflects its provenance from an America that was not yet an empire. The process was started by the American Colonization Society, which was mostly founded by Quakers, the pacifist Christian sect. It was also supported by slave owners, who wanted to remove free blacks from society, believing their presence would encourage slave revolts, either through their activism, helping them escape, or simply by their existence demonstrating to the enslaved that it was possible for black people to be free. Monrovia was first settled in 1822, and named after US President James Monroe, who supported the efforts. The project was initially supported by many churches and abolitionists. However, there was harsh opposition from the free black community, who wanted to stay in America, where they had lived as long as most whites in the country.
The Liberian colony suffered from the same problems as Sierra Leone: disease, lack of supplies, and conflict with the natives. The American Colonization Society continued trying to raise money and relocate freed slaved, but only a small amount took the opportunity to leave the country. The black population in the United States grew by an enormous amount during this period, so any plan to remove blacks from the United States was a resounding failure. Liberia did continue to be populated with freed slaves though, including some the West Indies, others freed from slave ships, and Sierra Leone Creoles who came to help support the younger colony. Other state organizations such as the Maryland State Colonization Society started their own independent colonies near Liberia. The free black men formed their own Christian and Anglophone culture, and had little interactions with the natives. The Liberian Colony initially had an unclear legal status and was largely a private possession of the American Colonization Society, who provided governors. In 1847 the Liberian Colony declared independence from the United States, citing the injustice of the mother country, and adopted a liberal constitution similar to that of the United States. However, only the Americo-Liberians and others who had assimilated were citizens. The United Kingdom quickly recognized the fledgling Republic. In 1857, the Republic of Maryland, which had declared independence a few years earlier, voted to be annexed by Liberia after appealing to them for aid in a conflict with indigenous tribes.
The United States was slow to recognize Liberia, in part due to the continuation of slavery in the United States. Abraham Lincoln was initially a great supporter of colonization schemes, hoping to remove free blacks from the country. Without going into it, “The Great Emancipator” was in fact quite racist, even by the standards of the day, and was only interested in the politics of slavery not in the well-being or human rights of black people. The United States recognized Liberia in 1862 and established full relations in 1864. Lincoln lost faith in colonization over time, after his many schemes failed. Many attribute his meetings with the famed abolitionist Frederick Douglass, a passionate opponent of colonization, for changing his mind, though it seems more likely it just never worked out. Emigration from America to Liberia continued on a small scale, and the American Colonization Society, which had transitioned more to charity and aid to Liberia, disbanded in the early 20th century.
From their humble beginnings, the Americo-Liberians did well for themselves, forming a well-educated gentry which integrated some local elites such as tribal royalty. Many early leaders in the colony were quite light skinned, but still would have been classified as black and thus subjected to a a wide variety of legal and personal discrimination in the United States. For the first 80 years or so the great majority of Presidents were born in the United States [and one in Barbados.] Since there were low immigration levels, this demonstrates the reverence for the United States. The first few presidents were from the Republican Party, but the True Whig Party increasingly gained power and held the Presidency for around 100 consecutive years. The Monrovia Masonic Lodge was established around this time, and became the center of the nation’s politics. Though the small group of Americo-Liberians were doing well, the indigenous people were generally unable to vote because they didn’t own property. There was little economic development in the interior, in part due to a lack of a foreign sponsor, though at times the United States showed interest in the country. In the early 20th century, the nation’s longest serving President, William Tubman, introduced universal suffrage for the indigenous, and worked to get foreign investment and modernize the country, with some success. The reality though, is that many indigenous people continued to live at the level they had when the Americans first begin to arrive. It seems clear to me that it was relatively easy to integrate into Monrovia’s Westernized society if people chose to do so, but it wasn’t a popular choice and the Americo-Liberians put little effort into enticing them. Though perhaps less brutal, it’s undeniable that in many ways Africa’s first free black Republic was not ran all that differently from other minority governments in Africa. Regardless, things were showing steady signs of improvement, until 1980 when it all came undone.
The Greatest Freedom and Harshest Slavery
The curious success of Anglophone freed slaves in Liberia and Sierra Leone bears discussion. It is surprisingly hard to find quality information about Liberia’s history online. Wikipedia mostly references a few books total, while there are short references on government websites. There are some scholarly papers behind a paywall. The reason for this seems clear, which is that the story of Liberia doesn’t fit to any commonly held view of how the world should work. To those who want to blame the white man’s evil for society’s ills, the desire to deport free blacks tells a story, but Americo-Liberians forming their own elite class that had similar views of African tribal peoples does not. They started with little capital and only the ideas of the West, so their success cannot be attributed to the unfairness of inherited wealth.
Perhaps it shows the superiority of Western civilization, but that is unsatisfying without universal rights of man, and they held citizenship dear. It illustrates a point for anyone who likes to blame the Freemasons, but that is mostly outdated as a conspiracy and Liberia seems somewhat lost in time in the degree of power Masonry held until 1980. If a man likes to play with skull calipers and believes in late 19th century “scientific racism” it could be argued that they benefited from the mixed African and European heritage of most founders compared to the wholly African natives. It certainly demonstrates that freed slaves would have had the capacity to be successful if there were fewer prohibitions on them pioneering in the American West, in what would have been much easier conditions than settling Liberia. One is left wondering if, knowing what we know now about how long it would take black Americans to get equal legal and political rights, Frederick Douglass would have been supportive of colonization. Those who said free blacks would never be treated fairly in America had a point, insofar as anyone at the time could see into the future. The famous African-American scholar W. E. B. DuBois lived to be 95 and was born the decade slavery ended and died shortly before the Civil Rights Act was passed, meaning lasting legal equality was not in reach of anyone alive at the time. Alternately, it seems once the colony was going the freed slaves and their descendants had good lives in Liberia. However, Liberia was mostly supposed to be a sort of test program for deporting all of the black people, which is entirely different from creating conditions so that those who decided to do so could pioneer new land and have their own society.
Liberia also in many ways discredits the premise that being imperial possessions was what hindered African progress. Being a free republic made it, if anything, harder to access capital. Still, the Americo-Liberians thrived. The only satisfying way to look at this is- and being classically educated they probably did- like an ancient Greek city-state which had a general sphere of influence with the surrounding barbarians. There used to be a much more narrow understanding of citizenship, as a privilege and responsibility granted to founders, their descendants, and those brought in by assent, never intended to be spread to all men. In this view, pre-1980 Liberia was a moderate aristocracy where the citizens had some say in choosing the ruling class.
Alternately, Sierra Leone’s growth demonstrates proud things about the British Empire, while its drawbacks were typical of British colonialism and don’t stand out. It is much easier to find good information about Sierra Leone’s history, because the British are proud of the project. The freed slaves brought to Sierra Leone were already displaced in various ways, and were not convinced to leave their homes because they were unwanted, the “Black Poors” excepted. Further, most British colonies were peopled with such urban vagrants. There was no claim that British colonies should be based on equal rights so it wasn’t hypocritical, though generally some minimum human rights were respected. It was normal that the British should cultivate a Westernized elite class and use them as colonial administrators. It is also normal that as responsibilities grew, the British would send in British administrators to oversee them, marginalizing the local elites they had previously relied on. The use of these practices in much larger colonies such as India and Kenya has overshadowed such problems in Sierra Leone. Most importantly though, Sierra Leone is key to the story of how the British worked to criminalize and end the global slave trade. While Liberia was good for a narrow class of Americo-Liberians but displaced and oppressed natives [if less so than normal colonial rule,] from a utilitarian perspective, Sierra Leone’s role in the British Empire represents far fewer total Africans being displaced than the alternative, while the abolition of slavery is an overwhelming moral good.
There are two important questions about the colonization of Sierra Leone and Liberia and the success of their freedman communities. The first question is why it was only the United Kingdom and the United States who committed to such projects. The second is how pioneers of such a mean background came to form a social and political elite. In both cases, Adam Smith gives incredible insight in The Wealth of Nations, written around two decades before the founding of Freetown.
It is unfashionable in our society where morals are so confused, relative here, Manichean there, to actually discuss the complexities of slavery. What is most important, is that while slavery is always morally bad, there are is enormous variance in how slaves are treated in different places. It may be annoying when the United State and British Empire are treated as unique historical evils, and is generally inaccurate, but it is true that slavery was worse in these places and that it was the least possible to integrate freed slaves into society. Paradoxically, the reason slavery was worse was the freedom of citizens, particularly, secure property rights and political rights. Smith writes,
“That the condition of a slave is better under an arbitrary than under a free government is, I believe, supported by the history of all ages and nations. In the Roman history, the first time we read of the magistrate interposing to protect the slave from the violence of his master is under the emperors.” [IV.VII.II]
It is commonly seen as apologism for various despotates and anti-American bias when the argument is made that slavery “wasn’t the same” somewhere, but there is some truth to it. Under arbitrary government, slaves have a degree of legal protection, because the Prince does not want a slave revolt and their work is of value to the state. In short, a man is not allowed to destroy the value of his own property if that property, in this case the slave, benefits the state. Further, having a degree of protection makes the slave less contemptible to the owner, who sees that the slave has a status in the society higher than inanimate objects or livestock. The slave may, perhaps, also have protections against family separation. Under free government the rulers have to in some way care what the voters think, making it harder to interfere in issues between the slave and the owner. Slave owners having political rights is one of the biggest obstacles to ending the institution. Lastly, the gentle treatment of slaves renders them more useful and intelligent, and thus more able to live as free men [though on the last point, the freedman colonists proved quite capable of freedom.] For all of these reasons, the slave empires that remained at the time of abolition, the Portuguese and Spanish, ultimately found it much easier to integrate slaves into society, and no such colonization projects were ever seen as necessary. It was in the United States, the land of freedom, where the slave was held in the most contempt, for his own lack of freedom.
As far as the success of the colony, relative to the native people, this comes from civilization itself. It is not the capital or specialized skills of settlers which put them so far ahead of the natives, but the general skills and habits of civilization. The recaptives, torn apart from their ancestral villages were easily integrated into a more advanced society. Smith writes,
“The colony of a civilized nation which takes possession either of a waste country, or of one so thinly inhabited that the natives easily give place to the new settlers, advances more rapidly to wealth and greatness than any other human society.
The colonists carry out with them a knowledge of agriculture and of other useful arts superior to what can grow up of its own accord in the course of many centuries among savage and barbarous nations. They carry out with them too, the habit of subordination, some of notion of the regular government which takes place in their own country, of the system of laws which support it, and of a regular administration of justice; and they naturally establish something of the same kind in the new settlement.”
Look up again at the sketch of Joseph Roberts’ house, presumably made around 30 years after the settlement of Freetown. Even coming from slavery, their general knowledge of agriculture, labor skills, and living in an orderly society basically got them to the Victorian Era in a couple of decades. They had virgin land in large quantities and abundant lumber, and immediately moved to a level of social development where they lived in stately plantations and had a kind of Constitution that it took civilization well over 2000 years from the time government advanced beyond despotism to come up with. In short, primitavists not withstanding, civilization simply is a massively better form of social organization than tribal life, but it is hard to get people to learn and adapt, and the Americo-Liberians didn’t really try. Strangely, this kind of reinforces the old piece of slavery apologia that it was teaching them useful trades to later be prosperous free men, except when the time came the people using that as an excuse for slavery didn’t want them to be free, they had just wanted to have slaves.
The End of Minority Rule
After achieving independence in 1961, Sierra Leone suffered from decades of political instability, but nothing which was severe by the standards of post-colonial Africa. At the same time, Liberia’s longest serving President, William Tubman, who oversaw modernization and integration within the country died in office after 27 years. His Vice President, William Tolbert took over the country and sought to implement liberal reforms and navigate the Cold War by making the country non-aligned, but dissension between the Americo-Liberians and indigenous people kept growing, and he became increasingly tyrannical. In 1980, an indigenous army sergeant from the minority Krahn tribe named Samuel Doe led a coup. They brutally murdered President Tolbert and the rest of his cabinet and ended the republic. This led to a sequence of events that would cast Liberia, and with it Sierra Leone, into more than a decade of horrific civil wars. Already poor countries, Liberia’s GDP fell 90% in two decades, while Sierra Leone’s fell by around 50%.
Shortly before the 1980 coup in Liberia, a young man named Charles Taylor had finished an economics degree in America and become the national chairman of the Union of Liberian Associations. In 1979 he met Liberian President Tolbert while protesting Tolbert’s policies outside of the Liberian Embassy in New York. Impressed by the young man, Tolbert invited him back to Liberia to help his administration with Liberia’s growing economic problems. The appointment would be short lived, after the previously unknown [and possibly illiterate] Samuel Doe’s brutal coup overthrew the Americo-Liberian government, beginning a period of persecution against the country’s elites. Though Taylor was associated with Tolbert and was himself half Americo-Liberian, Doe found him useful and appointed him to the head of the General Services Agency, in charge of government purchases. In that position, he was accused of embezzling $900,000, and fled to the United States, where he was ultimately arrested, to be extradited to Liberia. Taylor escaped from prison in Massachusetts in 1985 and disappeared. At the time, Taylor was just some foreign bureaucrat accused of corruption and not a high profile prisoner. Still, it is said the CIA helped him escape, and later, the Defense Intelligence Agency admitted to having worked with him in an undefined capacity in the 1980s. This is curious, as Samuel Doe was US-aligned and severed ties with the Soviet Union, but the CIA is very “big picture,” so it’s not unusual they would be preparing possible successors.
For his part, Samuel Doe ended his period of military rule the same year, implementing a new constitution and holding fraudulent elections. A simultaneously audacious and nuanced dictator, he showed himself winning by a sliver in an election where outside observers believe he only got 25%, leading one anonymous US State Department official to quip,
“They really have to work hard to live up to the tradition of democracy in Africa. The fact that he (Doe) only allocated himself 51% of the vote showed remarkable restraint.”
[You may remember, it is my stance that Omar Bongo in Gabon was overthrown because claiming 65% added insult to injury, but that he could have got away with 51%.]
In 1985 a man named Joseph Momoh became the President of Sierra Leone, as the only candidate in a single party election, which we can at least assume he didn’t rig. The country’s economic situation was increasingly dire, and Doe’s persecution of the Americo-Liberians had increased tension between the indigenous people and Sierra Leone Creoles in the neighboring country. A 1986 CIA report released in “sanitized” form in 2011 expresses concerns that he will be overthrown in a coup within a year. Momoh proved to be an incompetent petty tyrant, but did manage to hold on for a number of years.
Africa has the misfortune that its countries are only known in the West for their greatest tragedies, and they have to be extremely severe to get noticed. Ethiopia is known for famine, Somalia for anarchy, Rwanda for genocide, and Liberia and Sierra Leone for brutal civil wars with child soldiers, blood diamonds, and insane warlords. The conflicts have been immortalized in media such as the [obviously fictitious] “memoir” A Long Way Gone and the novel and movie Beasts of No Nation starring Idris Elba [who is actually of Sierra Leone Creole descent.] The wars were extremely brutal, and there are many photographs and human rights reports you can look at if so inclined. The wars destroyed their societies and drove most of the elite minorities into diaspora [ironically, many Americo-Liberians again crossed the sea to a “home” they’ve never known, and became Americo-Liberian Americans.] Liberia and Sierra Leone were pulled together into hell.
The Time of Wars
In 1989, Charles Taylor reappeared, invading Liberia from Cote d’Ivoire with a few hundred men, calling themselves National Patriotic Front of Liberia [NPFL.] “Intelligence sources” have long believed he had been in Libya receiving training and support as part of Colonel Gadaffi’s “proxy war against everyone.” Along with Taylor was another rebel leader, named Prince Yormie Johnson [Prince is his Christian name, not a title.] The rebellion was rapidly successful, which is strange being as the government’s chief purchaser who fled the country 6 years before could not possibly have been a well known figure. At the same time, one must always remember that in states with low levels of gun ownership and a weak military, a few hundred armed men go a long way. Soon, Doe was facing a country in insurrection and was unable to stop it.
By 1990, most of the country was controlled by rebel forces, but the NPFL had split, and there was an Independent NPFL faction led by Prince Johnson, and they were battling over Monrovia. INPFL forces captured Doe that year, and murdered him even more brutally than Doe and murdered his predecessor. Doe was believed by many to be protected by black magic, and he had been employing as a sorcerer a young man, Joshua Blahyi, who would later be the warlord known as “General Butt Naked.” Blahyi, now a repentant evangelical minister, who would later say he had conducted ritual human sacrifices and practiced cannibalism to gain magic powers to help Doe win the 1985 election [this being the same election that Doe shamelessly rigged through conventional means.] This all being the case, the INPFL cut off Doe’s ears to somehow prove he wasn’t protected by black magic and then continued to mutilate and brutalize him, filming it on VHS to broadcast on national television; Prince Johnson was seen casually drinking a Budweiser in the video while watching the grisly display, some of which was also poured over Doe. It is said to be the first time a Head of State was tortured to death on video. [The video is available on Youtube, though it doesn’t show the actual murder or his ears being cut off. It must have got an exception to Youtube community guidelines due to its historic importance.] One can assume that Budweiser is what the upper class Americo-Liberians drank and Doe’s mansion being stocked with Budweiser was meant to show his corruption and that he was like the previous elites, such as the pigs wearing pants in Animal Farm.
A month before the murder of Doe, the Economic Community of West African States [ECOWAS] invaded Liberia under Nigerian leadership [just as they may still do in Niger.] The mission, called ECOWAS Monitoring Group [ECOMOG,] was made up of Anglophone members of ECOWAS, as the Francophone members Burkina Faso and Cote d’Ivoire supported Taylor. The invasion included troops from Sierra Leone, which at the time was still at peace. Once Doe was killed, the war broadly became Johnson aligned with ECOMOG against Taylor. In early 1991, a leader named Foday Sankoh, who is said to have trained in Libya and entered Liberia with Taylor, started a war in Sierra Leone with an army called the Revolutionary United Front [RUF.] It is widely believed that Taylor met with him immediately before the war and is responsible for starting Sierra Leone’s civil war, something which Taylor denied in his war crimes trial- though he denied guilt about everything. Some sources go as far as to say it was an NPFL invasion or that the troops were “on loan” from Taylor. Foday Sankoh proved to be as psychotic as all of the other warlords in these conflicts, and along with Liberia, Sierra Leone was thrown into a period of unbelievable brutality.
In order to combat the new rebellion by the RUF, Sierra Leone President Momoh recalled troops from Liberia, who had been serving with ECOMOG. I think he would tell you this was a mistake. Disgruntled and unpaid, a group of minor officers led by Valentine Strasser, but including current President Julius Bio, overthrew Momoh and sent him into exile in Guinea, where he would spend the rest of his life. Strasser, 25, became the world’s youngest head of state. He dissolved the Parliament and the rest of government and set up a ruling council. He employed mercenaries paid in diamonds to continue fighting the rebels. There was a short ceasefire, during which the RUF regrouped and the government found itself in even more trouble. In 1996, Julius Bio organized a coup and threw Strasser out of office, sending him on a helicopter to Guinea, just like his successor. As of the early 2010’s, Strasser was a mentally ill alcoholic who sat by the road outside of his mother’s shack: he told a journalist he was never deposed, and simply left when his 10 years of military service ended. Bio, in his defense, held elections 3 months after taking power, but that President was overthrown in another coup the next year. The war continued to rage, with atrocities on all sides, drug addled child soldiers, and mercenaries paid in diamonds. Most notably, the South African “Executive Outcomes” Private Military Contractor entered the country, and as professional mercenaries proved quite effective in a conflict full of children forced to fight.
As this was going on, in 1995 a ceasefire was reached in Liberia, called the Abuja Accords, whereby faction heads and an interim governing council shared power to hold an election. However, heavy fighting broke out again in Monrovia, leading to a major evacuation effort by the United States called Operation Assured Response, which got over 2000 foreign nationals out of the country. Still, after further peace talks, a free, multi-party election was held in 1997. Among other things, the flamboyant Taylor ran on the batshit insane slogan “He killed my ma, he killed my pa, but I will vote for him.” He won 75% of the vote out of several candidates. The country was full of international observers, including Jimmy Carter, who said that the election was fair in the sense that people were allowed to vote and votes were accurately counted. However, because the Americo-Liberians never bothered to educate the indigenous people, the country’s illiteracy rate was estimated at between 70-90% and Taylor had taken over most of the radio stations, giving him a huge advantage communicating with the voters. Further, there had never been multiparty elections and people did not trust their ballots would be secret. Perhaps most importantly, people feared, probably correctly, that if Taylor lost he would restart the war.
Liberia enjoyed a few years of relative peace under Taylor, some refugees even returned home to the destroyed and traumatized country. However, in Sierra Leone the war was grinding on, with the RUF supported by Taylor the entire time, and funded by “blood diamonds” smuggled out through Liberia. The ECOMOG mission had expanded to Sierra Leone and was fighting the RUF, who had also made incursions into neighboring Guinea. In 1999, a UN Mission to Sierra Leone [UNAMSIL] was sent to the country, intended as a peacekeeping force to attempt to implement a ceasefire agreed upon two years earlier. However, the peace broke down and the UN troops were under attack from RUF forces. In 2000, British intervened with a remarkably successful military action, and then at the beginning of 2001 Guinea invaded and also began bombing RUF positions. In May 2001, the UN Sanctioned Charles Taylor and Liberian diamonds, ending the main source of RUF revenue and foreign support. It was a rare instance of sanctions actually working, most likely because it was against a small country and directly relevant to the matter at hand. RUF made a new peace deal, and this one stuck. At the beginning of 2002 President Kabbah declared the civil war over, after 11 years. More than 50,000 people had died and over half the population had been displaced, the economy was ruined, and countless were maimed and traumatized.
As the Sierra Leone Civil War was winding down, war had started again in Liberia. In 2000, a group called Liberians United for Reconciliation and Democracy [LURD] invaded from Guinea, with the support of the Guinean government. Though the public had made a deal with the devil voting for Taylor in hopes of avoiding war, war was not done with them. As before, the war was brutal on both sides with enormous civilian suffering. This time, however, it was the rebels with international support. When the sanctions went into effect, Taylor found himself quickly running out of options. With pressure from all sides and Monrovia under siege, Taylor resigned and went into exile in Nigeria. International African troops and a small number of United States Marines put a stop to the fighting and settled the city’s affairs.
The War in Liberia was over, after 14 years of conflict with a few pauses. Between death and displacement, Liberia had lost around 600,00 people in 2 years from 1989-1991, a quarter of the population. It is estimated between 150,000 and 250,000 people died, the high end being 10% of the country’s population. Countless more were mutilated, raped, or otherwise traumatized. Taylor was indicted by the International Criminal Court in 2003. However, he was given sanctuary in Nigeria until an amended indictment removing charges relating to his actions in Liberia was produced in 2006 [leaders across Africa were concerned about the precedent of leaders being indicted by international courts for actions in their own civil wars.] Taylor was arrested in Nigeria but escaped and was caught again trying to flee to Cameroon. Charles Taylor was convicted in 2012 for a variety of crimes relating to his support of the RUF in Sierra Leone- he was the first former world leader to be convicted in an international court since the Nuremberg Trials. It was considered a major victory for international law. Taylor received a 50 year sentence for war crimes, a life sentence for the elderly despot. He is imprisoned at HMP Frankland in the United Kingdom- the only country which was willing to take him- along with the UK’s most notorious terrorists and serial killers.
George Weah: The Footballer President
After the Liberian Civil War came to an end, an interim government was put in place and elections were held in 2005. The winner was Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, a veteran figure in Liberian politics. Sirleaf, of mixed indigenous and German heritage, is from a family that moved up rapidly when President Tubman began making efforts to integrate the indigenous into Liberia’s government and economy. A Western educated economist, she served in finance positions under Tolbert and Doe, until 1985 when she stood as a candidate against Doe in the sham election and was sentenced to 10 years in prison. She was only imprisoned briefly, as she was allowed to go into exile. She returned to the country to stand in the 1997 elections, coming in second place with around 10%. In 2005, she won the Presidential election. She was Africa’s first female elected head of state. Her tenure focused on reconciliation, repairing the economy, and dealing with Liberia’s enormous debt [which she was able to mostly get relieved, probably due to her ties to international banking.] She won a Nobel Peace Prize in 2011, in recognition for her work towards reconciliation and women’s rights. By all accounts, she was a remarkably successful President, though her regime was increasingly corrupt. But our story is not about her, it is about George Weah, who came in second in the 2005 elections, and would go on to be Sirleaf’s successor.
George Weah was born in Monrovia in 1966. He was fortunate to be educated through high school as a child in a country where government education wasn’t free until the 2000s [and is still of low quality.] His father was a mechanic at LIBTRACO, a tractor company. It needs to be noted that the percent of African workers who are paid in wages [as opposed to subsistence farming or other irregular employment] remains shockingly low, so the skilled work of being a mechanic at a tractor factory was a very good job for an indigenous Liberian in the ‘70s [and probably even more so today, given the economic devastation.] Weah’s mother worked as a marketer, and with those jobs they were able to support 13 children [his official biography describes his grandmother as having “reared” him, which I assume means his parents couldn’t keep 13 children where they worked and sent their wages home to her.] From a young age, Weah excelled at football, which he learned to play with home-made rag balls. I’m not interested in sports, but to anyone who follows this one, Weah was a bona fide superstar, having won FIFA’s World Player of the Year award in 1995 and considered one of the best Africans to ever play the game. He is probably the most famous Liberian of the modern era, at least the most famous for something besides being a war criminal.
George Weah became a hero to to people throughout Africa, with Nelson Mandela calling him “the African Pride” for his humanitarian work and donations to Liberian refugees. But Weah was especially a hero to the children of Liberia, as a rare Liberian they could look up to whose skill got him out of a county of violence and misery, and who wasn’t incriminated in the war that they were being made to fight. He always advocated for Liberians, and in 1994 he acted as a spokesperson for UNICEF. In 1997 he took a position as a UNICEF Goodwill Ambassador. Weah showed a special interest in helping child soldiers- the process of reintegration is an enormous challenge in these situations. He, unsurprisingly, tried to encourage them to follow the peaceful pursuits of education and football and was himself an example of what someone from Liberia to achieve. His official biography says he traveled throughout the country to many dangerous locations and credits him with helping to disarm thousands of child soldiers.
In 2003, a UN Peacekeeping Mission to Liberia, UNMIL, had entered Liberia following the war. That same year, Weah retired as an athlete, moved home, and ultimately decided to enter politics. He started his own party and contested the 2005 election. Weah lost to Sirleaf by 20 points. International observers, including the Carter Foundation, who had re-opened their office in Liberia after leaving under Taylor in 2000, said the election was fair and virtually violence-free. There was still a strong international presence in Liberia at the time at this time, so there were many people watching the election. George Weah initially refused to concede, as his supporters, many of them recently demobilized combatants, raged in the streets. He ultimately did concede after a month. Liberia had held a free, fair, and mostly peaceful election, and elected someone who wasn’t a deranged warlord.
Liberia was a shattered and weak country in 2005. Sirleaf was the most senior and respectable politician the country had, with strong ties to international institutions. She was seen as responsible, peaceful, and very much unlike the men who had destroyed Liberia. It was the right decision at the time. The biggest concern about Weah, despite his popularity, was that he was inexperienced and uneducated, having no education past a Liberian high school- and not an elite Americo-Liberian, but a normal Liberian school. It came out during the campaign that he had dropped out of high school in pursuit of his athletic career. He certainly couldn’t compete with Sirleaf, who had a Master’s Degree from Harvard.
Weah left Liberia and moved to America to pursue an education. After getting an American high school diploma, he got a Bachelor’s Degree in Business Administration and a Master’s Degree in Public Administration, finishing in 2013. I, for one, am impressed by how seriously he took all of this. You hear of people losing a race and then holding a smaller position and getting more experience, or otherwise building a stronger coalition, but I’ve never heard of a celebrity who wants to be a politician doing 6 years of university education to prepare for the task. Granted, DeVry University is no Harvard, but Weah seems to have gone in-person and actually done the work. He was undeniably a “non-traditional student” for whom such universities are designed, being an international sports superstar in his mid 40s.
In 2017, Sirleaf was term-limited after two terms, and Weah ran against a large field in the first round, including Sirleaf’s Vice President Joseph Boakai and the former warlord Prince Johnson. Weah, who inexplicably chose Charles Taylor’s ex-wife Jewel as his Vice President, won an overwhelming victory in the second round, by about the amount he lost to Sirleaf 12 years before. Between Tubman’s 27 years as President and his natural death in office, Tolbert and Doe’s assassinations, the war, and Taylor’s resignation, it was first transition from an elected President to an elected President in Liberia since 1943. At Weah’s request, on the grounds it was no longer necessary, UNMIL left the country after 15 years, the mission considered by all to be a resounding success. Liberia remained very poor and with great challenges, but a democratic country at peace.
George Weah’s Presidency went reasonably well for Liberia. He focused on infrastructure and keeping the country peaceful, allowing political opposition and freedom of speech. Somewhat ironically, he was criticized for his lack of focus on developing the country’s national football team, but of course this is common in politics, the guy worried about being seen as a “dumb jock” can’t actually focus on sports, whereas some nerd who has trouble relating to the people will feel compelled to pour money into it. His collaborative and friendly nature seems to have been a challenge for fighting corruption, which was the big problem of the Sirleaf Administration, despite that everything else went well. When it came time to run for a second term this year, Weah lost to Joseph Boakai, the 78 year old former Vice President. In a quote in an applauding BBC article with too many football metaphors, Weah explains that regardless of some supporters wanting him to fight for his office, it isn’t worth a single person dying over this, and that though the votes were not done being counted, the numbers had been explained to him and he couldn’t close the gap. He conceded on Friday, 3 days after the vote, only behind by a little over 1% with some ballots remaining to be counted. Both Weah and Liberia had changed a great deal since 2005.
George Weah gave a gracious concession speech where he praised Liberia, the electoral process, and wished his opponent the best. Many across Africa were overjoyed; it’s rare enough that African leaders are willing to leave at their term limit, but admitting to losing a close but fair election and bowing out graciously is nearly unheard of in all but a few sub-Saharan countries. The last major example was Goodluck Jonathon in Nigeria in 2015, and he got trounced in that election and is still admired for accepting defeat The last time Liberia had a President leave peacefully after losing an election was its first President, Joseph Jenkins Roberts, in 1856. Liberia has set an example for all of Africa, and even much more developed democracies could learn something about grace and accepting the will of the voters from this small country. By the time Boakai’s first term ends, Liberia will have had peaceful democratic rule with free multi-party elections for over 20 years, and hopefully, the tradition will be firmly in place. For his part, Boakai is left with the unenviable task of fighting corruption without creating political animosities that threaten the peace. Godspeed to him.
Julius Bio: The Democrat Coup Leader
We met Julius Bio earlier, as a young man who was involved in two coups in the 1990’s. Of all of those young men, he is the only one who remained a national figure, and certainly did better for himself than Strasser, the roadside alcoholic. His career culminated in reaching the Presidency in 2018. One way or another, he is now serving his second term.
Bio is described by some as having a “regal” bearing- his father is what is called a “Paramount Chief” in English, of the Sogbini Chiefdom of the Sherbo Tribe. He had nine wives and 35 of children, of which Bio was one of the youngest. As Bio tells it, this means he did not have a particularly privileged background, nor get a lot of attention, as a minor part of an enormous ruling house, which was functionally a village in and of itself. The Sherbro are a small tribe, but were heavily involved in the slave trade before Sierra Leone was founded and ultimately intermarried with the freed slaves a great amount. Bio in many ways had a childhood typical of British petty nobility, reflecting the United Kingdom’s strong influence on Sierra Leone. Though he was partially raised by his older sister, he also spent much of his childhood at boarding school. After finishing his civil education, he went to the military academy at Fourah Bay College, the oldest Western-style university in Africa, mentioned earlier in the article. From there, you know the major events of his life until 1996: intervening in Liberia and returning home to participate in one coup and lead another.
After holding elections, Bio had the sense to leave Sierra Leone before the coup the next year. He came to America, and studied at the American University in Washington DC, getting a Bachelor’s Degree and a Master’s in Business Administration. Bio returned to Sierra Leone in 2005, when the country was at peace, and started a pharmaceutical company which failed, followed by a coffee and cocoa export business which was successful. During this time, in 2007, the businessman Ernest Koroma was elected President, in contentious elections marked by some violence and fraud, but still not bad by the standards of a country which had suffered from years of war. Koroma worked to rebuild the nation’s economy and fight corruption, but there were also complaints about police brutality and infringements on press freedom. In 2011, Bio was selected to stand against him as the head of the Sierra Leone People’s Party in the 2012 elections. Koroma won by a large margin in elections which were considered generally fair and transparent by the Carter Center. In 2018 Bio ran again, this time against Samura Kamara of Koroma’s All People’s Party. By then, the UN Mission had left the country and it was the first elections without a peacekeeping force since the war ended. Though there was some violence and the opposition headquarter was raided on election day, the Carter Center reported that the elections were fair and in keeping with international standards. Bio won in the second round with 51%.
Bio entered office like a bull in a china shop, removing many key government employees including the Attorney General. He reviewed all of the mining contracts and other similar agreements. Most notably he has focused on education, making primary and secondary school free in the country for the first time through an executive order. He’s proud to have been one of the few world leaders invited to a world education summit in London in 2021. In 2022 there were riots protesting Bio’s economic policies and a cost of living crisis in the impoverished country. Several buildings were burned down and some were killed.
When it came time for the 2023 elections, it was a rematch between Bio and Kamara. The elections were marred by violence, including, allegedly by the police against the opposition candidate. Bio claimed to have won the election in the first round, with just over 55%. There were widespread allegations of electoral fraud, including from international observers, who said he should have only got 50%. On top of this, there was violence at polling stations and a general lack of transparency. To hear Bio tell it, he was contacted by the United States and asked to not accept victory in the first round. He said, “When the United States casts doubt on an election that was considered the most peaceful, not my words, but the observers… you are calling for a coup.” I don’t know to which observers he is referring, but certainly not the EU observers who released a preliminary statement immediately after the election which said in the title, “Voters’ commitment to a democratic process challenged by violence.” Either way, already controlling the levers of power, he was able to keep hold of them.
In August 2023, several people were arrested in what Bio called a planned coup attempt. You always have to be skeptical in these situations, since claiming a coup attempt is the oldest and most common way to purge your political enemies. In late November, on a Sunday morning just over a week after Weah conceded, there definitely was an actual coup attempt. Over 2000 prisoners escaped after the attempted putschists attacked a prison. Military barracks were attacked. Given the rate of coup success in Africa recently, [well over 50% for any serious coup attempt] Bio is lucky to survived, but perhaps his experience throwing coups gives him a better ability to resist them. The normal actions were taken, such as imposing a curfew, and 13 military officers were arrested. For now, things are back to normal, but Bio, who is seen by many as illegitimate, will have to always be on guard.
Still, as far as third world despots go, he seems to be a pretty wise leader. I watched a fantastic Al Jazeera interview from shortly before the coup, and he only seems foolish for not seeing the coup coming. I doubt he will make that mistake again:
Coups and coup attempts create a cycle. The leader gets more paranoid, as do the military officers who expect him to purge them. A President’s perceived illegitimacy exposes him to coup attempts, while everyone else within the country seeks to guard themselves against the President. Ken Opalo, who write the An Africanist Perspective substack, recently wrote about avoiding coups in West Africa, and didn’t think a coup attempt in Sierra Leone was that likely, but these things are hard to predict:
While Weah’s concession was a perhaps unexpected bright spot in Africa, political violence has re-entered Sierra Leone and trust in elections has collapsed. Bio has almost 5 years left of this term that he is thought to have stolen, and there is every reason to believe that one way or another, people will try to again remove him from office in a region where military governments have become the norm. The future of Sierra Leone seems grim.
Conclusion: Fates Unchained
Sierra Leone and Liberia have been linked since they were founded with the idea of remedying, or at least alleviating, slavery, the original sin of civilization. To the men who settled them, many brought up in civilization but not allowed to fully participate in it, this corner of Africa was their own wilderness to make a world out of. But, like everyone else, they wanted more land, and more resources. They did little to bring the indigenous people into their cities, and gave them few reasons to want to buy in to the society. Perhaps it would have worked if they kept to cities by the coast, and just traded with the indigenous, but there were diamonds to be had and other land ripe for exploitation, and if they didn’t take it someone else would. Still, the freedman who settled this land rapidly made good lives for themselves, a real classical experiment in designing your own city. It worked until it didn’t, until the time in history where minority rule was ending across Europe’s empires, and there was talk everywhere of self-government and the universal rights of man. The Americo-Liberians did not want to lose their historic dominance, but Samuel Doe came along and killed it. Having failed to educate and bring in the indigenous peoples, the Americo-Liberian and Sierra Leone Creoles were destroyed by them, in the most brutal wars of the modern era. Still, civilization seems to have ultimately prevailed, as their neighbors and the founding countries for whom they had always retained respect and affection were able to settle their affairs and end the bloodletting.
But those shared fates seem to have unfastened. In Liberia, Weah’s concession has solidified democratic civilian rule and free government. It has been said of George Washington that the most important thing he did was leave office, and perhaps that is true of George Weah as well. He could be remembered as as second founder of Liberia, even if his predecessor deserves more credit for rebuilding the country after the war. Meanwhile, Sierra Leone could be headed back into the abyss, with civil government threatened and discredited, and violence having re-entered their political affairs. I often wonder why men refuse to leave office, as being the President is surely a huge pain, and they are old men who could retire in peace- if they fear prosecution they could retire to some other safe haven. Few want to leave though. Machiavelli wrote,
“In the end, almost all men, deceived by a false good and a false glory, allow themselves, either willingly or through ignorance, to pass into the ranks of those who deserve more blame than praise, and having the capacity to create, to their everlasting honour, either a republic or a kingdom, they turn to tyranny, failing to realize how much fame, how much glory, how much honour, security, tranquillity, and peace of mind they are losing through this choice, and how much infamy, disgrace, blame, danger, and anxiety they incur.” [Discourses, I.10]
Rarely is there such a clear picture of two men choosing these divergent paths at the same time. Julius Bio clearly wants what is best for Sierra Leone, and he thinks that is his rule, no matter what it takes. He will have few choices but to live in anxiety and increasingly turn to tyranny to follow that course, always waiting for the next coup attempt or uprising. If he does leave office alive he will most likely be remembered for sending his state back towards the dark. Meanwhile, George Weah, having left Liberia with a shining example and strengthened institutions, will live out the rest of his life in peace, honor, and glory, an example to all of Africa and the world that even after the greatest of challenges, a state can be set on the path to peace and political stability.
Thank you for reading! The Wayward Rabbler is written by Brad Pearce. If you enjoyed this content please subscribe and share. My main articles will always be free but paid subscriptions help me a huge amount. I have a tip jar at Ko-Fi where generous patrons can donate in $5 increments. Join my Telegram channel The Wayward Rabbler. My Facebook page is The Wayward Rabbler. You can see my shitposting and serious commentary on Twitter @WaywardRabbler.
It is incredible how much I learn with writers like you Brad. Thanks for all your work. 2023 was not very kind to me, but as soon as I am back on my feet again, I will make sure to become a paid subscriber.
I don't always agree with you but I have to admit that I learn a lot about Africa reading you. Thank you, this was very good to read and learn.