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Liberia: War and Peace 1989-2007: A Research Guide

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 April 2022

Lindsey Badger
Lindsey Badger*
Affiliation:
School of Library and Information Science, Indiana University, Bloomington, IN 47405
*
E-mail: lincampb@indiana.edu
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Extract

The Liberian civil wars spanned fourteen years, from 1989 to 2003. It is estimated that during this time over 250,000 people were killed and more than 1,000,000 were displaced. The wars were covered regularly in American news. Reports characteristically represented the child militias, human sacrifices, and crazed army tactics, including but not limited to soldiers cross-dressing or using nudity as methods of intimidation. Initially, little attention was offered to the greater social and political implications of the war, but recent news coverage and critical research has demanded a change in the way that the civil wars were viewed and addressed, internally and internationally.

The first Liberian civil war was led by the conflicting political factions of Samuel Doe and Charles Taylor. These men were backed largely by members of different groups, divided by existing ethnic tensions. These factions divided further as the war progressed, and the war continued long after Doe's assassination in 1990 and his party's defeat.

Type
Articles
Information
African Research and Documentation , Volume 106 , 2008 , pp. 45 - 58
Copyright
Copyright © International African Institute 2008

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References

Notes

1 Because of the limited scope of the current guide, works by Gus Liebenow, Claude Clegg, and the early works of Amos Sawyer are not included here. They should not, however, go without mention. These authors are seminal to the study of the general history of Liberia and should be consulted in order to understand the history that preceded the civil wars.

2 Web resources that predate 1999, but were not included in Korte's bibliography are included in the present guide.

3 Elwood Dunn, D., Liberia (Santa Barbara, CA: CLIO Press, 1995).Google Scholar

4 This article is also published in the Europa World Year Book 2007. Routledge, London and New York: 2007. 48th edition. Volume II pp. 2799-2815

5 One may also consult Adejabo's book, Building Peace in West Africa: Liberia, Sierra Leone, and Guinea-Bissau, (Boulder, CO: Lynee Rienner Publishers, 2002).Google Scholar

6 Those related to the recent political situation include: Sawyer, Amos, Wesseh, Conmany and Ajavon, Samuel Jr., Sharing the Kola Nut: Understanding Ethnic Conflicts and Building Peace in Liberia: Experiences from Lofa and Nimba (Monrovia: Center for Democratic Empowerment, 2000)Google Scholar; Sawyer, Amos, (The Emergence of Autocracy in Liberia: Tragedy and Challenge, (San Francisco: Institute for Contemporary Studies Press, 1992).Google Scholar