How to End an Ethnic Civil War: The 2003 Intervention in Liberia

• In Event: How to End a Civil War?

Abstract

In 2003, diplomatic and military intervention successfully ended Liberia’s brutal, 13-year ethnic civil war. Many of the details of that intervention, and the lessons for international actors to help end other enduring conflicts, have never before been revealed or analyzed. This paper relies in part on field interviews in Liberia – with senior officials of all three armed factions in the war – and in Washington with senior U.S. diplomatic and military officials, as well as on documents obtained under the Freedom of Information Act. Two primary explanations are identified for the success of the intervention. First, the United States avoided the common post-Cold War bias towards rebels fighting perceived autocrats, and thus avoided emboldening the rebels to seek total victory, which would have escalated the civil war and exacerbated humanitarian suffering. Second, the United States offered Liberian leader Charles Taylor a “golden parachute” of asylum in Nigeria, despite his alleged war crimes, so that he stepped down peacefully rather than fighting to the bitter end, which would have prolonged the war and increased the human toll. Based on these and other identified lessons, the paper concludes with recommendations for future intervention to help end enduring conflicts.

Author

• Alan J. Kuperman, University of Texas, Austin