By: Musue N. Haddad
The 2003 intervention by the Bush administration in the Liberian crisis, which led to the forcible exile of Charles Taylor, was seen as a welcoming surprise by many Liberians, regional and international human rights groups and advocates. It was also considered a major shift by the United States government in its efforts, to help end human rights atrocities, restore peace and stability in Liberia and West Africa.
While Liberians and other citizens applaud the United States involvement in Liberia, there is still the question:
After over a decade of silence and inaction, what prompted the U. S. to intervene in Liberia?
This analysis will provide and discuss some of the major Cooperate Government Relations tools and strategies that were used to highlight the Liberian situation, and also influence the U.S. government to intervene.
For more than 14 years,Liberia suffered series of conflicts. The Liberian civil war, which was considered one of Africa's bloodiest, claimed the lives of over 300,000 persons and further displaced a million others. Throughout the period of the war, the United States government was called upon to intervene in order to help bring an end to the war and conflicts, and also halt systematic and barbaric human rights violations in the West African state of Liberia. America’s response at that time was that, she did not have any “special interest” in Liberia and that Liberia should be treated as any other country on the African continent.
In the midst of the United States reluctance, groups also opposing the United States intervention including some major U.S. policy organizations and think tanks described the call for U.S. intervention in Liberia as a negative publicity and also an attempt to further stretch thin the U.S. government. Anti-U.S. intervention groups argued that intervention can create a number of problems for the United States, including a rise in anti-American sentiment, diminished American credibility if the mission fails, and also domestic skepticism about future military operations even when legitimate U.S. interests might be involved.
The International Crisis Group, an independent, non-profit, non-governmental organization, working through field-based analysis and high-level advocacy to prevent and resolve deadly conflict, along with several organizations led a campaign aimed at influencing U.S. intervention in the Liberian crisis. The Crisis Group lobbied the United States government to pressure the Charles Taylor’s government to implement a comprehensive institutional reform including the re-establishment of rule of law and also, to pave the way for free and fair elections.
After 14 years of silence, President George Bush began making firm statements on the Liberian situation. Bush publicly condemned the Charles Taylor’s government for its gross human rights and in 2003, Bush asked President Charles Taylor to step down and go into exile. United States marines were also sent to beef up security and help stop the war in that country. The United States action increased international focus on Liberia and the West African region.
Debates: Advocacies and U.S. Policy Action
In their advocacies, the International Crisis Group considered two critical and interlinked elements as important approach during the debate for a successful resolution of Liberia's crisis: the conflict must be recognized as a wider regional one and addressed on that basis, and there must be effective coordination among the key external players, namely the U.S., the UK, France, the UN, the EU and ECOWAS.
While two permanent members of the Security Council, the UK and France, played prominent roles in the peace processes in Sierra Leone and the Côte d'Ivoire respectively, no one had taken the lead on Liberia. The missing link at that time was the United States. The United States was regarded as a missing link because the United States has historical ties to Liberia, and also, most Liberians argued that no peace process would have been sustainable without its involvement. The Crisis Group and its partners maintained that the United States must be encouraged to work more actively – and in close partnership with the UK and France, who were already deeply engaged in related aspects of the regional problem – to preserve the effective UNAMSIL mission in Sierra Leone and establish a similarly comprehensive peace process for Liberia that would ensure neither LURD, LURD-MODEL, nor Taylor's political and military barons fill the vacuum if Taylor is forced from power.
Finding the Missing Link
Although Liberia was faced with scores of grave problems, advocates calling for United State intervention in Liberia realized that in order to capture the attention of the United States, they needed to highlight issues that were vital to U.S policy and also sensitive to U.S interest. Human rights groups and campaigners recognized that the U.S foreign policy was paralleled with global security. In addition, issues that were very sensitive to U.S. interest included, terrorism and Al Qaeda.
Consequently, Al-Qaeda being one of the silent, but potent problems in West Africa became a strategic issue for highlighting the crisis in Liberia and West Africa. Given the evidence of Al- Qaeda and terrorists groups in the region and their association with Taylor, human rights groups illustrated how these groups linked with Charles Taylor and West Africa. Al- Qaeda and other terrorists groups were laundering by trading in cash for diamonds mined in Sierra Leone and Liberia. Moreover, the human rights groups also point out that through Blood Diamond in West Africa, corrupt (Liberian) government officials and merchants supported terrorists’ activities around the world. The coalition also pointed out Charles Taylor’s continuous support for dissidents in the region and his harboring of Al Qaeda members and supporters in Liberian territories. They also underscored Charles Taylor’s continued willingness to use proxy militia fighters in neighboring states and that the fragile peace in Sierra Leone would remain in jeopardy, because of Taylor’s activities in the region. Moreover, the campaigners demonstrated that Liberia’s situation not only a regional issue, with elements already in many parts of West Africa but also in other parts of Africa, particularly in the Democratic Republic of Congo and associates in South Africa. This spill over from West Africa was indication that Liberia problems was set to become a major global concern. The Crisis Group further accentuated that Liberia's internal situation had been the dynamic that was providing fuel for the broader war, and no peace in the region would have been viable until it was dealt with more forcefully.
The Debate
However, as international and regional human rights groups lobbied for U.S. government’s support and intervention in Liberia, within the United States, there were widely divergent views on whether the U.S. government should intervene in the Liberian crisis and if so, at what level. Anti- U.S. intervention campaigners were suggesting that, rather than attempt to stifle regional conflicts through military intervention, the United States should encourage regional initiatives. They argued that Washington must recognize that many regional conflicts were so deeply rooted that no outside party, from within or outside the region, would succeed in ending the fighting.
Some of the most outspoken and highly publicized views pushing against U.S. intervention included CATO Institute, The Heritage Foundation and Kathryn and Shelby Cullom Davis Institute for International Studies among others. Ted Galen Carpenter, Vice President for Defense and Foreign Policy Studies, Cato Institute, argued that by intervening in Liberia, President Bush was violating a 2000 pledge which conditioned such interventions only when vital national interests are at stake. He further stated, "There is not even a peripheral, much less a vital, national interest at stake in Liberia." In supporting Carpenter’s statement, the Senior Policy Analyst of Kathryn and Shelby Cullom Davis Institute for International Studies, Jack Spencer, described the Liberian situation as tragic but said deploying U.S. troops on the ground was “inappropriate and ineffective if the goal is to achieve long-term stability.” He said until the Liberians establish a political settlement, no international peacekeeping force should be deployed.
The Youth for Socialist Action, a group asserting to be a national multi-racial network of young workers, students, feminists and activists, was another organization calling on the United States not to intervene in the Liberia crisis. In its publication, Youth for Socialist Action said:
The civil war in Liberia is indeed a tragedy, but it won’t be ended by U.S. intervention. The U.S. government is not motivated by humanitarian concerns, and the setting up of a pro-U.S. puppet in Monrovia will not end the suffering of the Liberian people. Only the Liberian people themselves can overcome their problems. While we welcome and encourage the sending of medical, food and other humanitarian assistance – we must oppose the deployment of troops, which will only increase the oppression already being endured by the people of the region. Instead of sending troops, we call on the U.S. government to immediately cancel the Third World debt, quite selling arms to feuding warlords & to stop interfering in the internal affairs of Third World nations!
In spite the bold stance taken by many organizations on the debate, some organizations in the United States withheld their stance on the issue; probably the publicized killing of United States troops by Somali militiamen hardened attitudes among most American policymakers and the public about the effectiveness and cost of U.S. military intervention in Africa. Moreover, it appears that cost of the deployment of U.S. troops in Iraq and its impact on the America and its citizens is also another reason why some United States organizations were reluctant to clearly state their positions on the debate. The widely publicized killings of U.S. and other peacekeeping troops by Somali militiamen was being alluded to by groups opposing U.S. intervention in Liberia. Anti U.S interventionists used the case of Somalia and the cost of U.S. military intervention in Africa and the limitations of UN peacekeeping in their campaign against U.S. intervention in Liberia.
However, proponents of U.S. intervention cited a number of interests, both, security related and humanitarian, as justifications for U.S. military involvement in regional wars. The most common argument for U.S. intervention in Liberia and West Africa was that global instability is a threat to U.S. security.
Salih Booker, Executive Director of Africa Action, said the United States had several national interests at stake in Liberia's fate. He maintained that Liberia was at the center of a West Africa scarred by violent conflicts, which was producing costly humanitarian disasters. Booker argued that the United States must help stabilize the West African region. If the United States did not take a stance, Booker said, West Africa would become “a lawless zone attractive to international crime networks including terrorists.” But, most importantly, he emphasized, it is becoming a death trap of the region.
Booker also restated his organization’s position on the debate: (PBS, TURMOIL IN LIBERIA, 2003): The current crisis in Liberia is the result of a previous betrayal of the United States of the people of that country. In 1990, the first President Bush faced a situation that was eerily similar to that now facing his son. Should the United States send in troops to stop a civil conflict, restore order, and allow the Liberians to reconstruct their democracy? The president's father in 1990 had ships off the coast of Monrovia. They evacuated the Americans, they evacuated the Europeans, and they left the Liberians to their fate. I fear that's exactly what's happening once again.
He added, “The U.S. has a unique responsibility in the case of Liberia, not just because of the historic ties, but more recently because it helped create the conditions that have led to this cycle of violence."
As the lobby and debate for U.S. intervention in Liberia continued to expand, some opinion leaders said, American should not only provide relief when it is needed, but should help promote a democratic system and work to stop human rights abuses. They criticized the U.S. response to the Liberian conflict as inadequate, and compared it unfavorably to the United States intervention in Kosovo. Some supporting this view also believed that it would be appropriate for the United States to send in troops to help restore order and protect noncombatants. They pointed to Haiti, Bosnia, and Kosovo as examples of successful humanitarian intervention, and ask why the same could not be done for a country with historic U.S. ties.
Other groups supporting U.S intervention argued that because of the “special relationship” that existed between Liberia and the United States, the U.S. have an obligation to Liberia. The United States association to Liberia began in 1822 when freed American slaves arrived and settled in Liberia. In 1847, Liberia was declared an independent nation by the freed slaves – that was the first thread that would link Liberia to America over many decades. As World War II gave way to the cold War, the U.S. viewed Liberia as an ideal post from which to fight the spread of communism through Africa. The U.S. signed a mutual defense pact with Liberia and built communications facilities in Liberia to handle diplomatic and intelligence traffic to and from Africa. Also, a powerful Voice of America relay was set up. In the mid-1970s, the United States built another military facility, the Omega navigational station, to guide naval ships and aircraft in the Atlantic Ocean. Even after the 1980 military coup, which ended the Americo-Liberian grip on power in Liberia, U.S. political and military engagement remained strong. The government of Master Sergeant Samuel Doe continued to receive support from Washington for much of the 1980s, and in return Doe supported U.S. diplomatic initiatives in the United Nations and other U.S. efforts in Africa. In the late 1980s, with the end of the Cold War, relations between Washington and Monrovia began to deteriorate. When the civil war began in December 1989, many Liberians were disappointed at the U.S. decision not to intervene in Liberia. United States citizens were evacuated from Liberia and hopes for a U.S. peacekeeping force were dashed.
The Liberian government, on the other hand, called for U.S. intervention to protect government forces against rebel forces that were battling against government forces to take over the city.
Washington Representatives
In the midst of the debate, the International Crisis Group realized the importance of a mobilized and effective Washington Representation. Although, the Group president and CEO is based at the organization’s headquarter in Brussels, it realized that effective partners and a strong coalition are the strength for an efficient and effective lobbyist and good leadership. The Brussels office of the International Crisis Group coordinated and collaborated with its Washington’s offices and the International Contact Group. The Contact Group comprises representatives from the UN, United States, Nigeria, France , Senegal, Morocco, ECOWAS, United Kingdom, African Union and the European Union, to align positions on Liberia and help create a peace process including all Liberia's principal stakeholders. Another organization, the Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights foundation, a D.C based, non profit organization was also working along with the Catholic Church in Liberia, and other international institutions advocating for U.S. intervention in Liberia. The Church World Services, based in the United States was another influential force that was engaged with Church Leaders from West Africa and church organizations in Liberia in calling for U.S leadership role in the Liberian crisis.
The Role of Grassroots
Grass root support is essential to advocacy. During the campaign on Liberia, grass-roots support was readily available. Liberians at home defied the government; they organized mass demonstration calling for U.S. intervention in the crisis and human rights violations in the country.
It was evident that the masses frequent and brutal atrocities committed by the Liberian government and rebels against innocent civilians had reached an unbearable level. Taylor placed within various military and paramilitary institutions and government positions members of his rebels. Without any form of training or rehabilitation, these formers rebels were given guns and uniforms. They also carried out the gross human rights violations with impunity. Liberians at home fed up with the brutal human rights meted against them by government officials and its security forces, defied the government; they organized mass demonstration calling for U.S. intervention in the crisis and human rights violations in the country.
In June 2003, during a street battle in the capital of Liberia, Monrovia, citizens collected and piled dead bodies at the front of the U.S. Embassy in Monrovia chanting slogans: We Want George Bush! We Want U.S.! U.S. Please Save Us! It was their way of campaigning for U.S. intervention. Several civilians suffered brutal human rights abuses at the hands of state security officers and government officials throughout the administration of Taylor.
The Inter-faith Mediation Council, a local based religious group was also actively engaged with various religious groups-Christians and Muslims, and with civil society groups, political parties and human rights groups in Liberia and the region, deliberating strategies for promoting international attention on Liberia.
The Liberian Leadership Forum, a local based organization with a commitment to rally Liberians and the international community around a plan to bring an end to the conflict in the country were also campaigning for U.S Intervention in Liberia and West Africa. The Forum comprised 10 Liberian political parties and 14 civil society organizations, and eminent individuals active in the pursuit of peace and democracy. The organization also included leaders of the armed opposition movement against the Taylor government. The Inter-Faith Media Council and Civil Society organization and various political parties had been engaged are in mobilizing support for U.S. intervention. Several local human rights groups including the Justice and Peace Commission, Female Lawyers Association, Child Advocacy among others were actively lobbing for peace and U.S. intervention in the West African situation. These grass root organizations were all either directly or indirectly affected by the flouting of laws by the Taylor government.
Intellectual Validation
Advocates for U.S intervention had on their side many prominent human rights and think tanks groups and individuals from various levels calling for U.S. intervention in Liberia. Emira Woods, Co-director of Foreign Policy in Focus, said U.S intervention in Liberia would enforce the cease-fire and provide security for a political settlement in Liberia. Dr. Jane Martin, a distinguished historian, and a member of Friends of Liberia, a non-profit organization dedicated to Liberia, stressed that the U.S. has a clear moral and historical responsibility to the people of Liberia, and that America has a special interest in demonstrating that it can lead a successful multi-national effort to help Liberians restore peace and democracy. Several organizations including the Catholic Relief Services have produced reports validated U.S. intervention in Liberia. The Movement for Democratic Change in Liberia, (MODEL) organized workshops and seminars for promoting U.S. intervention in Liberia and drafted recommendations that were presented to U.S policy makers for implementations.
Kakuna Kerina, Senior Program Director/Senior Advisor for Africa at the International League for Human Rights said most researchers were using the Liberian and West African situation as a model for conflict resolutions, especially in post conflict societies. She said her organization also worked alongside other organizations in calling for U.S. intervention in Liberia.
Ms. Kerina said her organization in collaboration with other human rights organizations, nationally and internationally were determined to promote human rights in West Africa and other parts of the world, give meaning and effect to human rights values enshrined in international human rights treaties and conventions.
Ms. Kerina, an advocate with impeccable record for efficiently collaborating with civil society organizations in promoting press freedom in Africa, particularly, Sierra Leone during the war, and Nigeria under Sani Abacha’s regime, said U.S intervention was one of the key steps in highlighting the crisis and brutal human rights violations in Liberia and West Africa. She said the prosecution of Taylor in Sierra Leone would set the pace for establishing a tribunal in Liberia to prosecute those who supported and committed war crimes and crimes against humanity, during the war and also during the Charles Taylor’s administration. Based in New York, with representation in Geneva and dozens of affiliates and partners around the world, the International League for Human Rights is a non-governmental, non-profit organization with special consultative status at the United Nations.
Archbishop Michael Francis, Recipient of the 1999 Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights Award, during a visit to the United States in 2003, said the campaign for U.S. intervention in Liberia had the support of many organizations regionally and internationally, including religious groups, academicians and think tanks. He said that the Liberian situation had also become a discourse for stimulating the course of political events not just in Liberia, but elsewhere in the world. Archbishop Francis said, he believed the Liberian situation will help international organizations understand that elections does not necessarily produce democracy as they believed during 1997; disarmament was not carried out and the environment was tensed, resulting to Charles Taylor becoming winner.
Role of Leadership
Leadership is an influential force in human rights work and advocacy, especially in influencing policy change and action in conflicts situations. Leadership involves setting up a structure to accomplish task, as well as organizing and planning, which allows everyone to be part of the solution, in addition to gathering the best ideas. This aspect of leadership was manifested in the campaign used by the International Crisis Group and its partners in the campaign for U.S intervention in Liberia.
Even though the International Crisis Group is headquartered in Brussels, in the absence of its leadership or CEO, staff members and representatives of the organization in Washington, D.C, represented the organizations at various meetings, working sessions and forums held in the United States Capital and the United States. It is apparent that the International Crisis Group and its partners' modus operandi on leadership and organization was based on one the renowned philosopher, Lao Tzu’s concept on leadership, “A leader is best when people barely know he exists. When his work is done, they will say: we did it ourselves.
William Lane, Washington Director for Governmental Affairs at Caterpillar, Inc. and a lecturer at the Elliott School for International Affairs said the greatest source of power available to a leader is the trust that derives from serving followers. He said mutual trust is a shared belief that you can depend on each other to achieve a common purpose. “A good leader knows how to make people function in a collaborative fashion, and how to motivate them to excel their performance and how to balance the team member's quest with the goal of producing synergy - an outcome that exceeds the sum of individual inputs,” Professor Lane said.
It is apparent that the leadership model Lane described was the kind of practices -efficient and effective coordination, teamwork and trust, were the major skills and tools that played major roles in ensuring successful leadership practices, even in the absence of the actual leaders by organizations during the campaigns for U.S. intervention in Liberia
Relationship, Money and the Press
As with all advocacies, relationship, money and the press were important tools for the human rights campaign on Liberia. The International Contact Group and most of its major advocates had representatives in Washington, D.C which gave the groups and their supporters’ upper-hand in their advocacy. Small organizations that did not have offices in Washington, D.C and could not afford permanent or temporary Washington representative were not compelled to be present in Washington because organizations and their affiliates shared a cordial working relationship. This level of relationship resulted led to efficient communication. For example, groups in Liberia communicated and shared their concerns with one another, which were later transmitted to the regional groups or the West Africa offices of the International Crisis Organization or at the Washington offices.
Money
Unlike other advocacies which would demand staggering amount of U.S. dollars, the Liberian situation became a humanitarian concern and therefore did not required huge hard money.
Press
As with many other wars, crisis, humanitarian concerns and human rights issues, the Liberian situation received positive and ample national coverage, particularly during the peak of the campaign for U.S. intervention.
Throughout the months of June to October of 2003 several U.S based media and the press in the United Kingdom, Paris, France, Nigeria and other areas around the world had published materials on Liberia, focusing not only the elites and fighters, but also the lives of ordinary Liberians.
Conclusion
After 14 years of appeal and outcries by Liberians and some international groups for the U.S. to intervene in Liberia, in 2003, the United States finally took a stance- it intervened. Analyzing the efforts by the International Crisis Group and other organizations, it is obvious that innovative strategies and timing do have a lot of impact on the outcome of advocacy, lobbying and or campaigns. The International Crisis Group and its allies were successful because they aligned their campaigns messages with the United States and other individuals and organizations in and out of Liberia; they also communicated how their aspirations can be aligned with the vision of the United States and other policy organizations.
Moreover, the groups engaged in the campaign on Liberia, were also consistent in promoting their goals, which they did with enthusiasm so as to motivate others to make the vision their own. In this way, they succeeded in galvanizing support among Liberians, friends of Liberia, human rights advocates and organizations and other international organizations. By continually researching and publishing updated information on Liberian and West Africa, and also networking, encouraging participation, inspiring a shared vision and showing concern, they continued to gain support which led to the eventual intervention of the United States- calling for the forcible resignation and the exile of Taylor, and ongoing trial at the Special Court for Sierra Leone.
During the campaign, like most lobby, the International Crisis Group and its other organizations met with resistance from not only the Taylor’s government, but also his supporters, and interested parties in the conflict. The government of Charles Taylor as in the past, used its public relations and propaganda mechanism to discredit organizations exposing its human rights violations, while at the same time white wash its image, it did nothing to match its actions with its propaganda contents.
The facts and evidence against the government were consistent and overwhelming. The dossier of statistic and public information against the Liberian government and its threat to the peace and security within the region led some of its supporters to realize that, Taylor had not made good on its words to improve human rights records and institute reforms for development. Other supporters, who were his cronies, knew that their time was up. The media’s eagerness for information on war and violence, and its tendency to focus on the elites played well for the campaigners, as they provided pile of evidence and statistics to the media of President Charles Taylor and his alliance with the president of Libya and Al- Qaeda. This link of Taylor to Al-Qaeda, diamond and stones - a sensitive international issue quickly attracted the media’s, particularly the international media to the Liberian situation. The prolonged Liberian crisis was also an opportunity in helping the international media to have a background understanding of that situation for analysis. The goals and vision set by the International Crisis Group in influencing U.S. intervention in Liberia, the removal and trial of Taylor were achieved because of the efficient and effective use of few Cooperate Government Relations tools. The strategies promoted visibility, integrity and setting examples and trust, which were encouraged and utilized, because the campaigners had the will power to enforce those grandiose values and principles to succeed and most importantly, promote human rights and uphold the rule of law without fear or favor.
Copyright © Musue N. Haddad
