Leadership in Safeguarding Peace

Liberia's 172nd Independence Celebration July 26th, 2019

Background of the War

Historical: From 1870 to 1980, Liberia was a defacto one-party state ruled by successive regimes of the True Whig Party (TWP).  In 1980, the country imploded as a result of a coup d’etat led by Master Sergeant Samuel Kanyon Doe in which President William Tolbert, was savagely murdered. Doe himself reneged on his promise to turn over power to civilians but instead installed himself as President through heavily rigged elections. A ‘People’s Popular Uprising” aimed at toppling Doe from power began in 1989 and was led by Charles Taylor.  Unfortunately, the “Popular Uprising” turned Liberia into a hell-hole and left more than 200,000 persons dead. Doe himself was captured and tortured to death by rebels in September 1990. Taylor would eventually ascend to the presidency in 1997 but would himself flee into exile in Nigeria in 2003 when rebels opposed to his regime entered the capital city. 

The vision:Inheriting a country that had just come out of years of civil war and militant rule maintaining peace was foundational to President Sirleaf’s presidency. As a leader she compromised on some things, for example not prosecuting former war loads and soldiers who had killed people, or reprimanding those who challenged her leadership. As a leader, she chose to focus on the bigger picture and pick her battles.Some saw this choice as a sign of weakness and others called it an infringement on justice. Justice is as important part of nation building and nation healing. But timing is important. As the first democratic government out of the civil war, nation building was priority for her. Her hope was that, there will be successive governments that would call some of these people out. However, since many of the wounds were still fresh and peace was fragile, Sirleaf started the reconciliation process through creation of Palava Hut, similar to that of Rwanda, where people could air their hurt and grievances and those who were part of the killings could ask for forgiveness. Her experience of the war, the catastrophe it brought and the fear it instilled in everyone, shaped the tone of her leadership. It was important for her to give people the freedom of speech, and movement because they had been so let her down for many years.

Many of the West African Presidents, including current President of Nigeria Muhammadu Buhari attended the Independence celebrations

Actions Taken to Ensure Peace: -

· Sirleaf very quickly had to figure quick wins to give the nation hope and things to look forward to. For example, turning all the lights, just streetlights brought people together. Mothers would send their kids at night to read and do their home-works under the lamp-posts. There was a thrill of hope because they had never seen light in a long time. The war had completely broken the infrastructure of the land including in the city. Before the street lights, all they knew were lanterns and candles and fires.

· Programs for victims of violence were established, for example child soldiers that were now adolescence were put into schools to get them off the street.

· Rape had also become rampant during and after the war. So, she established safe homes for victims.

· Building the economy takes time, but it was part of the solution to sustainable peace because if people were not happy, not employed, they have potential for stirring up violence

· Opening up freedom of speech so that people could air their hopes and visions for the country, and any concerns they had for her as their president, Sirleaf launched a monthly program called conversation with the President. And so, Sirleaf got on the air with a moderator from one of the radio stations and just openened the air and people would call in to share their concerns.

· Part of opening up herself as a President and creating channels for people to air their concerns was to build trust in the government. They had seen successive governments that had left them worse off. And so all of these measures were to try to build this trust and of course in those kinds of conversations, to be fairly frank with them, to tell them, this is no quick fix, you can push a button. Sirleaf was not a magician.

· Managing those expectations was another means of trying to keep the peace. Just stop them from going over that line of civility, because there was still a whole generation of people still who had committed much atrocities and were still capable of violence if tipped.

· Quickly mitigate tensions: Another thing Sirleaf had to do was to keep peace was to respond directly to emergence of riots or complaints and negotiate with people. This was important to put a face to the government and show that there was accountability. For example, in her first year of presidency, Liberian employees at Firestone, a large rubber company, rioted against the company due to poor working and living conditions. Firestone was the largest employer in the country. So anything that brought out those numbers in protest could have been serious problems to the stability of peace of the country. Sirleaf had to go in and to negotiate on their behalf, and calm their complaints, but also stand firm against some of what they were demanding, which was not possible. But at the same time, ensuring that the company begins the process of transforming the manner in which they treated them, for example, better houses- enabling them to have access to electricity, which was plentiful in the plantation. The challenge was finding that balance of ensuring that you're truthful to them and still withstanding the acquisitions.

2011 Nobel Peace Laureate Leymah Gbowee is a Liberian peace activist, social worker and women's rights advocate spoke as national orator at the Independence Celebrations

· Empathy: Having gone through the war and knowing the physiological impact it had, Sirleaf was able to empathize with many of the citizens grievances because Sirleaf understood that not only had they gone gone through period of suffering and that their tolerance was low. Sirleaf had to work with their tolerance until Sirleaf gained their trust. Sirleaf believe Sirleaf achieved that to some large extent because violence can still show its ugly face, but now they are resolving things through the law and not opting to take matters into their own hands. The courts now packed.

· Youth: The most challenging group to deal with at the time was youth.There were a lot of young unemployed people, and she didn't have enough jobs for them. It was also going to take a long time to train them and many were not trainable.

· Civil servants: To ensure peace, Sirleaf needed to build out her team and ensure they were motivated enough to follow in her vision for a reformed Liberia. The civil service that had ballooned out of proportion, but there were poorly paid. The state had become a welfare state with a very small private sector. One of the things Sirleaf made sure Sirleaf was quickly able to do was raise the level of compensation, make sure they got their salaries on time. Her government was able to quickly raise the salary from 20 US dollars a month to $225.

· Build strong relationships with neighboring countries: To maintain peace western, Sirleaf had to build strong relationships with the leaders in our neighboring countries because Liberia was like an epi-center of war zones. And in each of the neigh countries you had large number of Liberians. Many who had either trained, to be a part of, attacking one country or the other. Different warlords in our country, had established little cells in Guinea and Sierra Leone. So, Sirleaf had to make sure that Sirleaf had an eye on the part of the leadership in those countries and to make sure that Sirleaf was abreast on what they were up to. So, the networking among our intelligent forces, was quite important there. They kept track of some of the movements of these people. And, again, Sirleaf formed alliances, with some of the groups in the other countries.

· If there was one thing, Sirleaf wish she could have done differently was to provide more jobs for some of the groups of people. For example, those disbanded from the army, had no means of survival. Sirleaf had tried to put it in a little local currency pension but it was not sufficient. One critique Sirleaf have of the international community is that bringing transformative change to fragile states they need to be able to invest more and take risks. For many people coming out of civil war unless the skill of the support and the timing of the support is there, they, they will fall back into poverty. So, there is a need to implement large scalable programs, and the international community needs to invest and do for these states what they had done for Europe after World War II. The made the decision to rebuild Europe. It was not a question of funds tied to certain measure of milestones or results.

Event on Peace and Reconciliation organized by Traditional leaders on August 29th, 2019