Liberian Civil War

Liberian Civil War begin when the National Patriotic Front of Liberia (NPFL), a rebel group led by Charles Taylor, launched an insurrection in December 1989 against Doe's government with the backing of neighboring countries such as Burkina Faso and Ivory Coast. This triggered the First Liberian Civil War.[1] By September 1990, Doe's forces controlled only a small area just outside the capital, and Doe was captured and executed in that month by rebel forces.[2]

The rebels soon split into various factions fighting one another. The Economic Community Monitoring Group under the Economic Community of West African States organized a military task force to intervene in the crisis.[3] From 1989 to 1997 around 60,000 to 80,000 Liberians died, and, by 1996, around 700,000 others had been displaced into refugee camps in neighboring countries.[4] A peace deal between warring parties was reached in 1995, leading to Taylor's election as president in 1997.[2]

Under Taylor's leadership, Liberia became internationally known as a pariah state due to its use of blood diamonds and illegal timber exports to fund the Revolutionary United Front in the Sierra Leone Civil War.[5] The Second Liberian Civil War began in 1999 when Liberians United for Reconciliation and Democracy, a rebel group based in the northwest of the country, launched an armed insurrection against Taylor.[6]

In March 2003, a second rebel group, Movement for Democracy in Liberia, began launching attacks against Taylor from the southeast.[6] Peace talks between the factions began in Accra in June of that year, and Taylor was indicted by the Special Court for Sierra Leone for crimes against humanity the same month.[5] By July 2003, the rebels had launched an assault on Monrovia.[7] Under heavy pressure from the international community and the domestic Women of Liberia Mass Action for Peace movement,[8] Taylor resigned in August 2003 and went into exile in Nigeria.[9] A peace deal was signed later that month.[10]

The United Nations Mission in Liberia began arriving in September 2003 to provide security and monitor the peace accord,[11] and an interim government took power the following October.[12]

The subsequent 2005 elections were internationally regarded as the freest and fairest in Liberian history.[13] Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, a US-educated economist, former Minister of Finance and future Nobel Prize for Peace winner, was elected as the first female president in Africa.[13] Upon her inauguration, Sirleaf requested the extradition of Taylor from Nigeria and transferred him to the SCSL for trial in The Hague.[14][15]