Once you say I am Mamadee or Konneh, they will take your documentation from you on the grounds that you are not a citizen of this country[1]
In this article, I seek to demonstrate how both history and the civil wars in Liberia (1989-1996; 1999-2003) exacerbated interethnic and interreligious tensions in Liberia. Using a range of scholarly sources, the article also includes findings of past and current research undertaken since 2006 by Interpeace, a nongovernmental organization that partners with local initiatives to build peace.[2] I intend to provide relevant insights and possible policy suggestions on how best to consolidate Liberia’s fragile peace in the post-election period. While the article deals with complex themes of ethnicity and religion more generally, the article focuses specifically on the dictum that the “first-settler owns all,” or the autochthony ideology[3] that plays an instrumental role in escalating violent conflict. There are three parts to the article: the first part sets the historical background of these tensions; the second part delves into the conflict, and the final part concludes with related policy suggestions to harmonize ethno-religious relationships in Liberia, at least as a temporary measure to consolidate peace across the country.
Located in West Africa, the Liberian state was founded in the mid-nineteenth century by immigrants, most of whom were freed black slaves (settlers) from the United States. From the first, the Americo-Liberian settlers cultivated a stark divide between themselves and the indigenous groups they encountered in the territory. The first Commonwealth Constitution of 1839 limited the privileges of citizenship to colored persons originating in the United States and its territories, effectively disenfranchising over 95 percent of the population. The 1847 constitution further enshrined fundamental and discriminatory differences between the rights of the “citizens” (i.e. the settlers) and the “aborigines” (all others), codifying this difference in administrative practice and even in legal recourse. Thus, while the 1847 constitution laid out civil rights and a plan of government based on the American model, these laws and rights were reserved exclusively for the Americo-Liberian settlers and did not apply to the indigenous Liberians. In 1869 the Interior Department was established to govern all aspects of the hinterland, including the exercise of judicial power over the native subjects “with due regard to native customary law and native institutions.”[4] Stephen Lubkemann, Deborah Isser, and Philip Banks point out in their recent article that the dual legal/administrative system became a primary mechanism for a form of indirect colonial rule that benefitted and protected the political and economic prerogatives of the settler elite.[5]
This discriminatory divide has historically played a central role in the design and exercise of power and has underwritten many of the social tensions that eventually led to a politically violent coup in 1980 and the subsequent quarter century of political volatility and violence from which the country is only now emerging.
Throughout Liberia’s history, the roles of religion, ethnicity, conflict, and discriminatory governance have been intertwined in complex and sometimes contradictory ways. From the outset of the republic, the practice of “Christianity” served as one of the primary markers of differentiation by which the settler elite sought to distinguish itself from the indigenous majority. In their effort to expand—often violently—the scope of the state’s territorial political authority in the second half of the nineteenth and early twentieth century, the settlers often found themselves at odds not only with territorially specified chiefdoms and ethnic groups, but also with the well-organized and already long established networks of mainly Islamic Mandingo traders and other groups such as the Vai and Lorma, many of whose members had converted to Islam.[6] Until the 1920s, the relationship between a settler state that promoted Christianity and reserved it as a mark of socially distinctive privilege and the highly entrepreneurial and primarily Mandingo-based Muslim trading networks vacillated between competition and cooperation (against other indigenous groups). Increasingly, during the 1920s, 30s, and 40s, the tendency was for the settler elite to seek greater collaboration with the Mandingo who were seen as potentially effective allies in trade and in extending governance into Liberia’s hinterland. [7] According to Dr. Augustine Konneh, this led to favorable treatment for Mandingoes especially after 1944 under the Tubman administration, which exempted Mandingoes from mandatory communal labor in road construction and created a number of new Mandingo paramount chieftaincies in Voinjama, Kolahun, and Gbanga, all in an effort to encourage more permanent settlement and the avoidance of capital exportation outside of the republic’s borders. At the same time, the granting of citizenship rights often lagged behind the granting of other privileges, such that the predominantly Islam-professing Mandingoes were only granted citizenship in the 1940s, more than three decades after citizenship was granted to other indigenous groups in Liberia under President Barclay.[8]
Such ambiguous attitudes towards Muslim minorities have been evident not only in the historical postures of the settler-dominated state but also within broader swaths of Liberian society itself. Thus, on one hand, the fact that Islam has been seen as a marker of economic success has underwritten widespread conversion among some groups, especially the Lorma and the Vai, as well as mutually beneficial forms of collaboration, such as that between Mandingo traders and Gio chiefs in Nimba County, who found their prestige, political power, and economic wherewithal considerably strengthened during the pre-war period through their alliances with Mandingo traders.[9] Increasing economic interaction was accompanied in such areas by greater rates of permanent settlement and the creation of closer social ties, not least of which was by intermarriage. Yet, while such practices strengthened ties across religiously differentiated communities in some ways, they also served as a source of potential resentment in others. Thus, the Mandingoes’ eagerness to marry women of other faiths and ethnicities (seen as a way to gain converts to Islam) but unwillingness to tender their own daughters in marriage to those of other religious persuasions (which would be seen as losing daughters to apostasy) was already a source of grievance by other groups prior to the civil war.[10] Similarly, in contrast to chiefs and older generations who had first welcomed and benefitted from Mandingo settlement, some elements of younger generations even prior to the war saw the privileges and success of Mandingo entrepreneurs as exclusionary and detrimental to their own economic possibilities.
The ascendancy of William V. S. Tubman to the Liberian presidency in 1944 brought about the first efforts toward greater social inclusion and the political enfranchisement of indigenous groups. However, while his National Unification and Integration Policy sought to assimilate indigenous Liberians into the national political and economic frame, ultimately neither his policies nor those of his successor, William R. Tolbert, did enough to provide the indigenous Liberian majority with means for meaningful participation in the political process, or the economic benefits of the nation. Mounting frustration culminated in the 1979 rice riots and a military coup a year later in which President Tolbert and thirteen of his government and party officials were assassinated.
The People’s Redemption Council was led by Sergeant Samuel K. Doe, who became Liberia’s first indigenous ruler. However, widespread spontaneous popular enthusiasm for the coup d’état gradually diminished when leaders within the junta began to vie for power, a process that would ultimately lead and contribute to new forms of ethnic polarization that would extend far beyond the “Americo-Liberian/indigenous” divide that had been the predominant one.
In an effort to consolidate his power vis-à-vis potential rivals, President Doe promoted members of his Krahn ethnic group and sidelined rivals who hailed from other ethnic groups. Following Doe’s victory in a 1985 election widely regarded as rigged and his subsequent defeat of an abortive invasion by his primary rival from within the PRC, General Thomas Quiwonkpa, Doe took violent reprisal actions against the Mano and Gio tribal people, whom as the general’s co-ethnics—especially from Nimba—he suspected of abetting the failed coup d’état. This is arguably the juncture at which the Liberian civil conflict began to take on a decidedly more “ethnic” character than had previously been the case.
Certainly, this experience with violent repression fostered resentment toward the Doe regime and its allies among a large number of Gio and Mano, especially in Nimba County where the most violent acts of the Doe government were carried out. This resentment extended not only to Doe’s immediate co-ethnics (the Krahn) but also increasingly to the Mandingoes, a group with which Doe actively sought to develop strong ties and alliances in an effort to create a counterbalance to other ethnic groups, especially the Gio and Mano.
This ethnic tension was deftly manipulated by other leaders who led Liberia through its subsequent fourteen-year civil war. In particular, Charles G. Taylor, in his late 1989 invasion of Liberia through Nimba County, actively sought to play on this resentment in the mobilization of the Gio and Mano, not only against the Krahn but significantly against the numerous and predominantly Muslim-professing Mandingoes living interspersed throughout Nimba.
| Militia Group | Leader | Ethnic Affiliations |
| National Patriotic Front of Liberia (NPFL) | Charles Taylor |
Americo-Liberian, Gio/Mano |
| Independent NPFL | Prince Johnson |
Gios and Mano |
| United Liberian Movement for Democracy | Alhaji G. V. Kromah | Mandingo and Krahn later split into ULIMO-K and J factions |
| Liberia Peace Council (LPC) | George Boley | Krahn |
| Liberians United for Reconciliation and Democracy (LURD) | Sekou D. Konneh | Mandingo and Krahn |
| Movement for Democracy in Liberia (MODEL) | Thomas Nimely | Krahn |
| Lofa Defense Forces | Francois Massaquoi | Loma |
The Abuja Accord and its supplementary protocols of 1996, the thirteenth peace agreement, created a brief truce for presidential and general elections that were won by the main warlord, Charles Taylor. Taylor’s ruthless despotism forced many military and political adversaries into exile. His National Patriotic Party (NPP), a conversion of the rebel National Patriotic Front of Liberia (NPFL), used loyal militia as the new army, having rejected ECOMOG’s (Economic Community of West African States Monitoring Group) desire to carry out security sector reform (SSR). During the civil war (1989-1996), the security sector deteriorated as members of the Liberian security agencies aligned with various factions resulting in what some commentators described as “an amorphous array of warlords and renegade combatants [that] succeeded in holding the Liberian population hostage, whilst perpetrating horrendous atrocities.”[11]
Taylor’s unremitting thuggery and mafia rule backfired in 1999 when a rebellion, masterminded by a Guinea-backed rebel movement called Liberians United for Reconciliation and Democracy (LURD), surfaced in Lofa County. Led by Sekou Damate Conneh, [Konneh?] an ethnic Mandingo, LURD’s key grievance was the Taylor regime’s failure to reconcile the citizenry after the war. By mid-2003, LURD and another rebel group from Southeastern Liberia, the Movement for Democracy in Liberia (MODEL), challenged the government on two fronts, exhausting its fighting resolve. By June 2003, the beleaguered Taylor capitulated and signed a truce and comprehensive peace agreement (CPA) in August. West African troops (ECOMIL) deployed by ECOWAS began implementing the CPA that brought in UN peacekeepers to stabilize and undertake recovery measures in Liberia.
The Liberian war has often been characterized as one driven by ethnic grievances—and thus as a paradigmatically “ethnic conflict.”[12] Yet perhaps what is most significant to note in the Liberian case is that rather than having been motivated by ethnic divisions and grievances that predated it, the Liberian civil war generated or significantly accentuated ethnic and religious identities and tensions that previously had not been significant sources for violent mobilization and conflict. In fact the tendency in most locations prior to the war had been for peaceful co-existence and negotiation of existing religious and ethnic differences through nonviolent means.
The post-war reality is one in which ethnicity and religion have been exploited by leaders to mobilize followers, resulting in the polarization of many communities. In this context historical narratives have been recast and reformulated in new ways. Thus, later generations of some communities who once welcomed outsiders and granted them land now invoke ethnically-based claims to status as the “original settlers” who can challenge and ultimately revoke the rights of other groups that arrived “later.” We see in Liberia the emergence of a form of identity noted elsewhere in the West African neighborhood. This discourse of “autochthony,”—characterized by a growing discussion of who has the most legitimate and “original” ties to land and locality—has played an increasingly prominent role in the competitive democratic politics of countries as diverse as Cameroon and Cote d’Ivoire,[13]Rwanda[14] and Burundi—often, unfortunately, as the precursor to descent or a return to violent political conflict.
My own research has highlighted how potentially inflammatory these war-generated ethnic grievances and divisions remain in post-war Liberia. Potentially explosive competition over land is based on ethno-religious divisions that were generated during the war, both as a result of fighting and displacement and the denial of access by majority ethnic groups. In 2005, returnee Mandingoes from Guinea and other parts of the sub-region faced serious hurdles from their kinsmen in reclaiming their farmland and house plots in Nimba County. Mandingoes were generally regarded as those who supported the LURD offensive against residents of Ganta in 2003. Local authorities seized the disputed properties and distributed them among offended ethnic groups inhabiting Ganta City in reprisal for destroyed, burnt, or looted properties during the LURD attack. The grave situation forced the government to appoint a presidential committee with a mandate to probe the impasse. Later on, the government and UNMIL requested Interpeace’s intervention. Interpeace discovered that besides inter-ethnic tensions in Nimba there were also intra-ethnic disputes and a dearth of conflict management structures.[15]
Another ethnic incident occurred among the Mandingoes and Lormas in February 2010. Mandingoes in Voinjama waged vengeful attacks against Lormas on account of a cell phone-inflamed report that implicated Lormas in burning the local mosque and attacking the local imam in retaliation for the alleged ritual killing of a female student in Konia. At least 4 people were killed and 18 others injured in the misinformation. According to reports from the National Traditional Council (NTCL), the Carter Center, and a delegation from UNMIL and Interpeace, the crisis was triggered by the rumor and provoked by past grievances between the two groups. Despite efforts made by the government to resolve these issues, during a July 26, 2011, Independence Day celebration in Lofa, aggrieved youth of the county sought to disrupt the celebration that had been planned for Voinjama.
The vulnerability of ethnic and religious allegiances to opportunistic mobilization by unscrupulous leaders has been accentuated by the fact that a sense of national identity—a sense of common “Liberianess”—has been severely undermined by the civil war. National identity might thus potentially serve as a potent countervailing force to the fragmentary tendency of ethnicity that was accentuated by the war. An identity of “citizen” that involves a sense of direct relationship to the state, unmediated by participation in an ethnic, religious, or other form of moral community, would need to be cultivated.
Yet this remains a monumental challenge because so many Liberians believe that their entitlements to political participation do not accrue to them in any meaningful way because they are citizens but only as a result of their participation in an ethnic, religious, class-based, or other form of social group. This is perhaps most readily manifested in the ongoing public discussions and divisions over the so-called “Mandingo question.”
Most Muslims perceive that they are discriminated against both by the state and Christians, notwithstanding the secular character of the Liberian state as defined by the constitution. Many Muslims feel they are discriminated against since none of their religious holidays are recognized as national holidays in contrast to Christian celebrations. Also, they consider the difficulty in securing land for ritual needs, such as burials and other unique religious and cultural activities, as signs of discrimination against them. Most Mandingoes feel that their dignity is not valued since they are often referred to as “Mandingo dogs.”
Moreover, this tendency to accentuate identity politics is arguably being reinforced by a democratic process in which not a few politicians have chosen to build an electoral base on these identities and the protection of their access to patrimonially distributed privileges and power, rather than on the basis of issues and identity-neutral programs. Even though the sources of the Liberian war are complex, many observers believe that the war was due to the breakdown of the patronage system and a desperate attempt by influential Americo-Liberians to re-establish themselves as the dominant political force in Liberia. Indeed, the war was not about tribes seeking dominance over one another, as in the case of Somalia and elsewhere, but about influential and dominant individuals exploiting tribal and religious sentiments for political power and opportunism. Following the violent overthrow of the Americo-Liberia oligarchy, Liberia’s political system and power structures were not only interrupted, but numerous patron-client relations were completely shuttled. As Stephen Ellis argues, with the ruling elite deprived of power and its numerous personal networks and patronage-channels cut off from necessary resources, the neo-patrimonial system of Liberia was seriously shaken.[16]
Doe and his military regime re-introduced a similar system of patronage and nepotism, the result of which was that ethnic discrimination gained currency during the 1980s and contributed to the civil unrest. Faced with the adverse effect of the end of the Cold War on hegemonic politics as well as the deteriorating economy, Doe’s ability to support existing patron ties diminished, thereby necessitating the search for local wealthy groups, mostly Mandingoes, for support in return for full citizenship. Accordingly, in the mid 1980s, President Samuel K. Doe amended the constitution of Liberia to eliminate explicit reference to Christianity (and thus the implication that Liberia was a “Christian state”) and expressly permitted the free exercise of religious practices. The language of toleration was joined with the admonition that no Christian sect should have “exclusive privileges or preference over any other sect.”[17] To further strengthen the allegiance of the new patrons, the constitution placed a caveat on the authority to exercise one’s religious freedom by asking all Liberians to heed religious practices that are peaceable and not to “obstruct” others. There were severe consequences. According to the 2009 TRC report, The NPFL—presuming that all Muslims were Mandingoes who were aligned with their adversary, President Taylor—killed many Muslims, particularly in the early 1990s, who were actually unaffiliated with the Mandingo tribe.[18]
The advent of the war in 1989 witnessed the manipulation of tribal sentiments for economic gains. The numerous paramilitary groups fought vigorously and competed against each other in loose and varying alliances for the purpose of power, resources and wealth accumulation. Warlords consistently rejected any form of agreement that they considered not in their economic interest. Once the war started, Taylor found wealth, and the war was increasingly about maintaining that fortune. All warlords wantonly exploited Liberia’s resources to keep themselves and their patronage system supported.
Charles Taylor invaded Liberia in the name of trying to right the wrong for the Gios and Manos. Susceptible to Taylor’s propaganda, these two ethnic groups formed the majority of the fighting forces and comfortably benefitted from the spoils of the war. When the Taylor rebels entered Nimba County, the conflict quickly targeted the Mandingoes, who are mostly Muslim, for elimination. Mandingoes in turn started forming an “alliance of convenience.” The various opponents of Taylor’s NPFL in the early 1990s could be characterized along an ethnic fault-line: ULIMO-K (led by Alhaji G.V. Kromah) represented the economic and political interests of the Mandingoes while ULIMO-J (led by David Roosevelt Johnson) represented similar interests for the ethnic Krahn. After realizing Taylor’s secret agenda of eliminating persons from Nimba and elsewhere in Liberia that he considered a threat, Prince Yormie Johnson broke away from the NPFL at an early stage and established the Independent NPFL. The INPFL did not have any concrete political aims, but its leadership was bent on gaining economic wealth and publicity. Other factions in the war economy included the Liberian Peace Council (LPC), the Lofa Defence Force (LDF), the Liberians United for Reconciliation and Democracy (LURD), and the Movement for Democracy in Liberia (MODEL). These groups and all the numerous small commandos, militias, and warlords with micro combat-units acted autonomously and engaged in war predominantly for profit, status, and economic reasons as part of the new patronage-client system rather than fighting on ideological principle.
The possibility that religiously-signalled ethnicity could re-ignite conflict is significant and too dangerous for the international community or the Liberian government to ignore. Muslims perceive that they are discriminated against both by the state and Christians, notwithstanding the secular character of the Liberian state as defined by the constitution. As mentioned previously, the fact that their religious holidays are not recognized as national holidays and the difficulty in securing land for ritual needs reflect their second-class status.
While I have focused largely on Islam as the most visible form of religious identity that correlates with potentially violent ethnic division in post-war Liberia, it is not the only way in which religion maps identity-based conflicts in post-war Liberia. Christianity—especially in its Pentecostal form—has also experienced remarkable growth throughout Liberia.[19] Both Islam and Christianity have increasingly come into conflict with other traditional forms of spirituality and religion in a growing number of communities.
This is particularly noticeable in the rural communities where traditional secret societies, such as the Poro and the Sande, have historically exercised forms of social power that are now resented and in some cases actively contested by the adherents to Pentecostalism and Islam. They have resisted efforts to recruit their children into these societies or refused at times to conform to ritual exigencies (such as those that require non-members to stay indoors when the “bush devil” comes to town). Moreover, the very different postures of Pentecostals and Muslims vis-à-vis “traditionalists” towards socio-spiritual beliefs, such as trial by ordeal, witchcraft, and the authority of traditional justice practitioners in these matters, has engendered intra-community conflict in many areas. These secret societies and traditional authorities have in turn resented the interventions of the Liberian state and its international partners in these cases, viewing them as undermining legitimate and long-established practices and effective ways for dealing with crime and social malfeasance.[20] Traditionalists view adherence to traditional values as necessary for the preservation of their cultural heritage and the well-being of the community. However, some other parents see the bush school of Poro and Sande as institutions that are undermining their children’s education. The forceful recruitment of their daughters into the Sande or sons into the Poro against the will of children and parents can be a source of strong resentment and tension, particularly due to the lengthy time spent in the bush, ranging from one to three months.
The 1986 Constitution of Liberia stipulates in chapter IV, articles 27 and 28 that Liberian citizenship is guaranteed to persons under three conditions: 1) those who had Liberian citizenship before the constitution came into force, principally Americo-Liberians; 2) Negroes or those of Negro descent by birth or by naturalization; 3) having at least one parent who was a citizen of Liberia at the time of a person’s birth—declaring the need for citizenship upon reaching maturity. However, as this article has shown, most Liberians today believe their rights to land, justice, or political participation are in fact accessed and ensured only through their membership in ethnically or religiously defined groups. Moreover, ethnicity and religion in at least some cases, especially involving the Mandingoes and Islam, are often seen as corresponding. The first line of evidence for this is the noticeable tendency to resort to discourses of “autochthony” that argue for discriminatory privilege based on a narrative of historical antecedence—that is to say that “we” (as ethnically and/or religiously defined) are more “original” than “they” are—rather than equality before the law as “Liberians.”
Clearly, such understandings of enfranchisement and political rights differ from the notions of “citizenship” established in the constitution. These tensions are particularly worrisome and require renewed dialogue among various social groups. Nor can we assume that the democratic process will automatically address these divisions and foster a sense of Liberian citizenry. The continued willingness of some Liberian leaders to use ethnicity and religion to compete for electoral votes means that democracy may just as well serve as a conduit towards greater ethnic polarization as towards its mitigation. We need only witness the ongoing travails of ethnically based democratic competition in neighboring Cote d’Ivoire.
Liberia has yet to live up to the rhetoric of its founding: to foster freedom and to serve as the beacon of hope for the Black race. Social cohesion remains a distant goal that will require a concerted effort to transform ethnicity and religious identity into something other than the exclusionary markers of political mobilization, competition, and discrimination that have colored Liberia’s history and its recent violent civil war.
What then must be done? The international community should not place all its peacebuilding hopes and efforts in the electoral process alone as the end point of intervention in Liberia. Rather, it must pursue programs that more directly and in a nuanced fashion foster continued and constructive intra- and inter-community dialogue that creates a basis for effectively transcending autochthony politics at the micro-level of lived, everyday practice. The article recommends that stakeholders intensify inter-group dialogues with the view of defusing tensions and building momentum for continuous discussions and interactions on critical conflict issues among the different ethnic and religious groups in Liberia.