A Legacy of War? Perceptions of Security in Liberia (Small Arms Survey Issue Brief 1-2011)

Within a 14-year period, Liberia endured two consecutive civil wars in what one scholar has called a ‘descent into anarchy’ (Ellis, 1999). The first war—led by US–Liberian Charles Taylor—started in 1989 and ended with a peace agreement in 1996, only to be followed by the election of Taylor as president one year later.1 The second war began in April 1999, when a group of insurgents of the Liberians United for Reconciliation and Democracy (LURD) infiltrated Lofa County from Guinea. Another group of insurgents, the Movement for Democracy in Liberia (MODEL), subsequently attacked the Taylor government, entering the eastern part of the country from neighbouring Côte d’Ivoire in early 2003.2 The two civil wars claimed an estimated 250,000 lives, decimating the pre-war population of roughly three million people, and displaced as many as 1.5 million people, including 700,000 refugees who fled to another country (Foster et al., 2009, p. 247). Widespread collective violence in Liberia finally came to a halt with the Comprehensive Peace Agreement, signed in Accra in IssueBrief Liberia arMeD ViOLeNCe aSSeSSMeNT