What role does Liberia play in the ongoing civil war in Sierra Leone?
The rebels in Sierra Leone first launched their attacks on its government from Liberian territory in 1991, and they were helped with arms provided by President Taylor, who used diamonds smuggled from Sierra Leone to build his war machine by buying arms from Ukraine and other central European countries. The United Nations Security Council is now considering imposing sanctions on Liberia because of Taylor’s actions fueling the war through the use of these smuggled diamonds. The former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, Richard Holbrooke, has called Taylor the Milosevic of Africa. What has been the position of the U.S. government toward Taylor? In spite of concerns raised by human rights groups and Taylor’s lack of commitment to both domestic and international law, for much of the 1990’s the United States government ignored clear evidence of Taylor’s determination to establish a totalitarian regime and destabilize the West African sub-region. It was a kind of benefit-of-the-doubt appr
