In its final report, the panel investigating Liberia’s successive 1989-2003 civil wars included Sirleaf’s name in a list of people it accused of being “the financiers and political leaders of the different warring factions”.
These are initial reactions to the TRC’s report since I haven’t read the thing myself:
What exactly are the people on the list being punished for? Over the course of the war, but especially in its early stage, almost every Liberian supported one rebel group or the other. Almost every Liberian who was old enough to understand the stakes took sides in one way or the other. It shouldn’t come as a surprise then that prominent Liberians supported an armed rebellion against a dictatorial, election-stealing, incompetent, run-the-economy-into-the-ground, president (Samuel Doe). Nobody has made an argument against the rebellion. When a political system becomes so oppressive that there are no longer any legitimate channels to voice dissent, rebellions are justified.
However, in classic warlord fashion, Charles Taylor said all the right things. His NPFL called themselves “freedom fighters”. He putatively had no political aspirations himself and would have ceased fighting had President Doe resigned. He promised to remove Doe and restore the true Liberian democracy to the people. There are no speeches of Taylor promising kill tens of thousands of Liberians and export instability to the sub-region. One could arguably make the claim that Charles Taylor was initially earnest in his pursuits only to be subsequently corrupted by the lure of power. It is thus difficult to indict people who supported him then. The distance from the events must not diminish how courageous this was. Fear and loathing were the dominant sentiments President Doe inspired and back then many called Taylor “courageous.” That he would go on to become a war-mongering egomaniac comes after.
The closer Charles Taylor got to Monrovia, the more dangerous the orbit around him became for his closest friends and the “Special Forces” (that original band that was trained in Libya). In his cold, murderous and calculating estimation, each of them posed a legitimate challenge to his ultimate goals. Anyone and anything that would divert the limelight from Mr. Taylor had to go. Any person he perceived as posing a legitimate political challenge had to be eliminated, whether such a challenge were true or not was inconsequential. He proceeded to eliminate them: some of them ‘died on the front’, others died in ‘accidents’ and still others were executed for ‘planning to overthrow’ him. A prominent politician like Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf was an obvious threat to him. She and others of her caliber recognized as much and cut their ties with Taylor. Banning everyone who provided material or other support to a rebel group in Liberia is equivalent to making almost every Liberian of age ineligible for politics. That’s both unfeasible and undesirable.
Now if the TRC can establish continued support, on the part of Johnson-Sirleaf, for Taylor and other warlords long after their atrocious ways had been established, that’s a different thing. This was a war that continued on and off for over 15 years. As in all wars, especially civil wars where most of the victims are civilians, atrocities happened. It is quite clear that some are more responsible than others for these atrocities and in the interest a building a rule-of-law society, they must be held accountable. But such accountability must have limits lest it destabilizes the country and disrupts the fragile peace.
TRC’s are meant to establish objective facts about the past, memorialize the victims and those events, bring the worst perpetrators to justice and establish a way to rebuild. This recommendation doesn’t really do much for the final part and I’m not sure it adequately meets the ‘justice’ criterion.
