Photo Credit: Flickr user World Economic Forum
In early July, Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf, president of Liberia since January 2006 and the first democratically elected female head of state in Africa, was accused of having indirectly given funds to former president Charles Taylor, who is currently on trial for war crimes at The Hague. The allegation from the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, an independent body established in 2005 to investigate Liberia’s bloody past, has caught the nation and its foreign backers off guard, as Johnson-Sirleaf is seen as the linchpin of the country’s stability. Even more disturbing is the commission’s recommendation that she be banned from holding public office for 30 years. She has previously admitted that she had formal ties with Charles Taylor as they both rose to prominence fighting Samuel Doe’s oppressive regime in the late 1980s. However, she has denied ever being a member of Taylor’s movement and says she regrets her involvement with Taylor. Considering Liberia’s record, the fact that an independent body could arrive at and publicize such a conclusion is cause for celebration. Nevertheless, removing Johnson-Sirleaf from office could deal a serious blow to her administration’s tangible successes in governance and reconstruction, though these have been tempered by consistent setbacks and lingering concerns.
Five years after the end of its brutal 14-year internal conflict, Liberia continues to suffer from a major governance deficit. The biggest challenge is security reform, entailing not just police and military training, but also the demobilization, disarmament, and reintegration of former combatants. There have been steady gains in the latter effort, with over 70,000 combatants disarmed between 1998 and 2002, and over 75 percent applying to join reintegration programs. Provisions for the return of 750,000 displaced civilians were also implemented quickly and efficiently, and both programs have assisted Liberians with job training and recruitment.
Police and military reform has made slower progress. The old military was deactivated in 2003, and responsibility for internal security was transferred to UNMIL (UN Mission in Liberia). The task of rebuilding the army fell to the United States, while the UN tackled police training. The U.S.-led military reform project was outsourced to the private contractors DynCorp and Pacific Architects and Engineers, whose culturally insensitive approach has complicated the process. Moreover, funding problems have delayed the vetting and recruitment of new soldiers and reduced training on human rights and civil-military relations. To the U.S. government’s credit, the mission has recently received more attention, and a number of Marine Corps advisers were deployed in January to step up training. And despite the delays, the final results have been generally satisfactory. According to a recent International Crisis Group report, army reform is considered “a provisional success,” given that 2,000 Liberian privates have now been trained.
Meanwhile, UNMIL’s police reforms have suffered from insufficient funding, flawed recruitment, and the lack of momentum associated with operations in which no single nation takes the lead. Today, the Liberian police continue to engage in deplorable and often criminal behavior, and have been generally unable to address the worsening internal security situation. The service is also apparently rife with corruption. As a result, the 13,000-strong UNMIL force has stayed on and even increased its numbers in recent years. The police therefore have little incentive to intensify training, which has been far less thorough than the army’s. The one real success story of the UNMIL effort has been the development of the new Emergency Response Unit as a dependable force.
Some have argued that Johnson-Sirleaf should be more actively involved in the reform process, and on some of the other rule of law issues for which the president is directly responsible, she has failed to make substantial headway. Notably, judicial reform has made little progress, and there have been a number of high-level cases in which the course of justice has been perverted. The country’s most prevalent judicial deficiencies include a paucity of trained legal personnel, a lack of infrastructure, and outdated rules of procedure. Impunity also continues to hamper reform, especially with respect to abuses committed during the internal conflict.
Nevertheless, Johnson-Sirleaf’s record is generally impressive when it comes to other pressing governance concerns. Last year, she laid out a three-year poverty reduction strategy with four pillars: peace and security, governance and the rule of law, infrastructure and basic services, and economic revitalization. While progress has been sluggish on rule of law issues, Johnson-Sirleaf has already made a substantial effort to deliver on her other promises. Indeed, in the 2008 Mo Ibrahim Index of African Governance, Liberia moved up six places between 2005 and 2006, placing it at 38th among sub-Saharan countries, with a score of 48.7 out of 100. The area where Liberia’s progress has been the most dramatic is economic development, and here Johnson-Sirleaf, a Harvard-trained economist and former finance minister, has proven instrumental. Recent progress has been fueled by foreign aid and investment, with many companies seeing great opportunities in the nation’s natural resources, which had been neglected during the civil wars. This financial stimulus has driven the rapid development of Liberia’s infrastructure, including schools and hospitals, and facilitated annual economic growth rates of about 8 percent. Johnson-Sirleaf made a campaign pledge to restore electricity to Monrovia by July 26, 2006, and this was accomplished, albeit with significantly less coverage than originally planned. Forest management has emerged as a way to both create jobs and earn export revenues in a transparent and sustainable manner. The president’s “zero-tolerance” approach to combating entrenched corruption has helped to remove an obstacle that had thwarted economic growth and denied Liberian citizens basic services for years. While several high-profile corruption scandals involving top officials have weighed down her efforts, the president successfully oversaw the creation of the country’s first Anti-Corruption Commission, along with the dismissal or arrest of numerous corrupt officials in 2008. On July 10 of this year, she signed a new transparency law aimed at eradicating corruption from the country’s lucrative extractive industries.
The Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s work is of exceptional importance to Liberia’s post-conflict reconstruction process. However, the benefits of President Johnson-Sirleaf’s leadership, particularly with respect to development and governance improvements, are also undeniable. In this case, a line may need to be drawn between those who actively facilitated the civil war and those who were caught up in it and naturally took sides. Johnson-Sirleaf seems to belong to the latter group. Before ruling on the commission’s recommendation, the Liberian parliament should fully evaluate the gravity of the matter, and consider both the gains Johnson-Sirleaf has brought to Liberia and the losses that could accrue if she were forced out of the picture.
Note: This is an update of an entry that was initially posted at 11:27 AM.
