Liberia: A Fragile Peace

Liberia: A Fragile Peace is a perfect follow-up to Liberia: An Uncivil War, picking up the Liberian saga in October 2003, with the departure of the despotic Charles Taylor, the arrival of interim President Gyude Bryant and the deployment of a U.N. peacekeeping force. More than a historical record, however, this film is an ideal case study in how difficult it is to rebuild a society once it has lapsed into anarchy, a condition afflicting more and more nations around the world. The success or failure of the Liberian experience could have long-lasting impact on peace-keeping missions in the future.

Perhaps it was only when Liberians began to deposit their corpses around the gates of the U.S. embassy that Americans were finally shamed into working behind the scenes with ECOWAS and the UN to broker a peace initiative for the country they had founded in 1845. The accords had four major points. First, Taylor would leave Liberia. Second, the UN would deploy a 15,000 strong peace keeping force, the largest UN peace keeping force in the world. Third, this force would oversee the fragile peace and implement a demobilization program for the former combatants on all sides. The rubric for this program was: disarm, demobilize, rehabilitate, reintegrate. It is proving an immense task for the government to provide psychological services, vocational education and job placement for young 'soldiers' who know nothing but 14 years of civil war and have no skills but looting. The young former militiamen remain a volatile element, difficult to reintegrate into the new society.

Finally, the peace initiative called for the formation of a provisional government comprised of recent mortal enemies. This interim government has proven almost as kleptocratic as the former regimes; when you ask for a document to be signed in Liberia you may still be told that, 'my pen is out of ink,' meaning that a bribe will be needed. Although $500 million of international aid had been promised, not much of it had been expended because of this corruption. On a more positive note, a democratic election, the first in the nation's history, was held in October 2005. In the November runoff between a charismatic young soccer star and Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf, a female Harvard-trained economist, Johnson-Sirleaf emerged as the first woman to be elected head of an African state. The question remains: where in the Liberian political class will administrators be found who will be dedicated to government accountability and transparency?

At the time of the film’s release in 2006, efforts to rebuild this war-weary nation were just beginning. Systematically, with UN involvement, basic security has been achieved. Hundreds of thousands of refugees are returning to homes without electricity or running water, with 85% of the population unemployed and 70% surviving on under 70 cents a day. Liberia demonstrates to the international community that reestablishing an economy and civil society requires a long-term commitment. But for a people who had known only death and devastation for decades, peace and hope were finally present on the ground.