CHAPTER ONE
1.0 INTRODUCTION
1.1 BACKGROUND OF THE STUDY
Liberia‟s internal conflict can be traced back to at least 1847 when it gained its independence from the United States of America. The immediate root cause of the civil war was Samuel Doe a Liberian army master sergeant and his failed promises to institute democratic reforms and return to the country back to civilian rule after the 1980 bloody coup by assassinating president Tolbert and executing thirteen of his cabinet members. Doe‟s military regime was to stay in power until 1985 when he promised to end the system of corruption and redistribute the nation‟s wealth among the people. In 1989, Charles Taylor, a military man who was part of Doe‟s cabinet entered Liberia through, Côte d‟ Iviore seeking to overthrow Doe‟s regime. This resulted in a civil war which was brought to an end by African peacekeepers in 1996. In 1996 Charles Taylor was elected as president of Liberia.
The end of the Cold War witnessed intensification of intrastate conflicts in the West African sub- region. Prior to this era, the West African sub-regional body, Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), had used traditional conflict resolution mechanisms to resolve conflicts. These notwithstanding, with the outbreak of conflict in Liberia in November 1989, ECOWAS employed ECOWAS Ceasefire Monitoring Group (ECOMOG), a military intervention force, in August 1990 as another conflict resolution mechanism. The end goal of ECOMOG was to stop the carnage, destruction of property, and create the conditions for diplomacy and dialogue to be employed hopefully resulting in a long-term political settlement.