Two African Countries That Descended into Anarchy

Henry Srebrnik, [Summerside, PEI] Journal-Pioneer

Two small countries adjacent to each other along the northwest coast of Africa have histories very different from those of their neighbours.

The populations of most African states consist of the indigenous people who lived within their current borders before the advent of European colonialism.

But Liberia and Sierra Leone were both founded as places where former Black slaves from North America could start new lives in their ancestral continent.

Liberia was mainly the creation of the American Colonization Society. Settlement of freed slaves from the United States began in 1822, and by 1867, the Society had assisted in the movement of more than 13,000 Americans to Liberia.

In 1847, these Americo-Liberians were able to establish a republic. Nominally independent, it was in effect an American protectorate, governed for some 150 years by the descendents of the Americans who had brought with them the culture of the U.S. south.

The capital, Monrovia, was named in honour of American President James Monroe, a prominent supporter of the colonization project, while Buchanan, the third-largest city, was named for an early governor who was a cousin of another American president, James Buchanan. The country’s flag is a one-star version of Old Glory.

Sierra Leone became a British colony in 1808, and gained its independence in 1961. In 1787, Britain had started to resettle Black Loyalists from the American colonies who had been freed in exchange for their services during the American Revolution, in the new capital, Freetown.

The Crown also offered resettlement to former slaves who had settled in Nova Scotia; they would have a profound influence on the emerging Creole culture. As well, some colonists came from the Caribbean or from England itself.

Both countries would later be undone by ethnic strife. First destabilized by military coups, the civil wars that followed ushered in years of chaos, violence and mass murder.

Although founded by freed American Blacks, Liberia is mostly inhabited by indigenous Africans, with the slaves’ descendants comprising just five per cent of the population.

So in 1980, when President William Tolbert was overthrown by Sergeant Samuel Doe, a member of the indigenous Krahn people who had suffered discrimination at the hands of the Americo-Liberian elite, it marked the end of dominance by the minority.

But things got worse. By the late 1980s, Doe’s arbitrary rule had led to economic collapse, and a former political ally of his, Charles Taylor, formed an opposition group, the National Patriotic Front of Liberia. His armed militia overran much of the countryside, entering the capital in 1990 and killing Doe.

Taylor not only took control of Liberia, but also became involved with a civil war in neighbouring Sierra Leone. He was finally forced out in 2003, but not before an estimated 250,000 Liberians were killed.

Eventually extradited to the Hague, Taylor in 2012 was convicted by a special tribunal of war crimes as a result of his involvement in the Sierra Leone civil war, and sentenced to 50 years in prison.

In Sierra Leone, the descendants of the Creole, or Krio, settlers, who continued to arrive in Freetown until 1855, today comprise just two per cent of the country’s population.

The country’s civil war began in 1991 with an invasion led by Foday Sankoh, of ethnic Temne and Lokko background. His Revolutionary United Front promised to end the domination of the country by the Freetown elite, considered corrupt and incompetent by many in the country.

But the RUF soon became more interested in the money to be made from the sale of “blood diamonds” and plundered the country’s resources. The fighting, which included incredible atrocities visited on people by the RUF, lasted about a decade. At least 70,000 people died; some estimates are much higher.

In 2000, amid increasing evidence of massive human rights violations, British forces were sent to the country by then Prime Minister Tony Blair and defeated the RUF. Sankoh was indicted for multiple war crimes but died in prison in 2003 before the trial took place.

The current president of Liberia, Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, is obviously America’s choice. Educated in the U. S., she had served in the administration of Tolbert before leaving the country after Doe’s coup. She then worked as an economist at the World Bank in Washington. First elected president in 2005, she subsequently won re-election in 2011 in a vote that was boycotted by the opposition.

In Sierra Leone, Ernest Bai Koroma, a former insurance executive, won a second term as president in 2012. He has said that he is still thankful to Tony Blair for the role Britain played in securing peace for Sierra Leone, and the British are playing a major part in rebuilding the country’s economy.

In a sense, Liberia and Sierra Leone have come full circle. Both are again under the tutelage of their former patrons, the U.S. and Britain.