Liberia is America’s Creation
As the Bush administration ponders the matter of intervention in Liberia, it must consider the historical relationship between America and its orphan state. It has been said recently that Liberia was “founded by freed slaves.” This is incorrect. As Dr. Jeremy Levitt, international law professor and historian at the DePaul University College of Law has argued, Liberia was populated by freed slaves, not founded by them.
Indeed, Liberia was founded by the U.S. government in 1822, which under the Act of 1819 provided $100,000 for the plan. Working with the American Colonization Society, a group dominated by Southern “slaveocrats” and chartered for the sole purpose of providing humanitarian subterfuge for the removal of unwanted free Blacks, the United States exported thousands of American-born Blacks to Liberia. The society drafted Liberia’s constitution, created its first laws and administered its political affairs until the Black emigrants declared independence in 1847. “It was during this period,” Levitt asserts, “Liberia’s autocratic body politic was fashioned and the culture of conflict between settler and indigenous Liberians became ingrained into the socio-political fabric of the country.”
America’s capricious policy toward its abandoned child has only intensified Liberia’s growing pains. The United States failed to recognize its offspring until 1862. The majority of European nations did so by 1855. When America finally acknowledged Liberia, it did so out of self-interest. Liberia boasted a fortune of resources and foodstuffs such as coffee, cotton, grains, ivory, palm oil, rice, spices, and sugar, and it served as a hub for discarded Africans who had been rescued by the U.S. Navy from slave vessels operating illegally off the African coast.
Between 1862 and 1980, America refused to aid the Liberian government in its efforts to suppress massive uprisings from indigenous village-states that deplored the dominion of Black American emigrants and their descendants. In 1980, however, it was America that endorsed Samuel K. Doe, one of Liberia’s most brutal leaders, believing incorrectly that he epitomized “new indigenous leadership in the face of 100 years of Americo-Liberian hegemony.” The Doe regime collapsed in 1990, and again, America refused to send in peacekeepers, even after a quarter-million Liberians had perished. Initially, the United States also refused to back the Nigerian-led Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) peacekeeping mission in the country. Since then, Levitt argues, the United States “has further bastardized Liberia by adopting a policy of relative disengagement.” Bill Clinton was the first U.S. president to visit Africa, but his administration did almost nothing to help end Liberia’s bloody civil war or aid in the nation’s rebuilding.
It is time for the United States to end its enduring policy of indecision and neglect toward Liberia. Given the history between the United States and Liberia, and the urgency of the moment, the Bush administration should lead a U.N.- and African Union-approved peacekeeping force in Liberia, composed of detachments from the United States and the Economic Community of West African States.
The ferocious conflict in Liberia must end, and the United States must aid in this effort. President Bush’s appeal to Liberian President Charles Taylor to resign immediately was commendable, but it must be followed by a real commitment to enforce and maintain the peace. If the United States fails to act, the enduring plight in Liberia and its surrounding states may become more unstable and uncontrollable. Liberia, through Taylor, has been linked to Libya and networks such as al-Qaida. We can ill afford to aid in the creation of more collapsed African states such as Somalia and Sudan. Our benign neglect will only make other African nations prime targets for training grounds and laundering havens for terrorist networks.
There is no easy answer or quick fix when it comes to Liberian intervention. The United States will have to commit substantial resources to this effort. It has, however, a moral duty to act, based upon, among other things, its historical delinquency in supporting its forsaken progeny.
Dr. Matthew C. Whitaker, a Phoenician native, is Assistant Professor of History at Arizona State University in Tempe. He is also an affiliate faculty in African and African American Studies and the School of Justice and Social Inquiry at ASU. He is also Co-Owner and CEO of The Whitaker Group, L.L.C., a consulting firm specializing in diversity and educational curriculum and instruction training.
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