St. Victoria — A book that provides descriptive and compelling accounts of the Liberian Civil War, one of Africa's most brutal and devastating civil wars which spilled over into neighboring countries, has been published.
The book, authored by Liberian journalist Gabriel I.H. Williams, is titled, LIBERIA: THE HEART OF DARKNESS Accounts of Liberia's Civil War and its Destabilizing Effects in West Africa."
To read more about the book or to place an order on line to Trafford Publishing in Canada, please check http://www.trafford.com/robots/02-0107.html>Liberia: The Heart of Darkness. You can also go through http://www.trafford.com and click on Search Desk to read about the book or place an order. The book is 455 pages (perfect bound); price, US$24.95 or C$39.50.
Liberia: The Heart of Darkness explores how Liberia, founded by freed black American slaves as a land of liberty for people of the black race the world over, drifted from one of Africa's most stable and prosperous countries to become a desolate land and a graveyard.
About 200,000 to 300,000 people were killed during seven years of absolute anarchy that saw the collapse of the central government and the emergence of seven major armed factions, which partitioned and controlled various parts of the country.
When the human tragedy began to unfold in Liberia from December 1989, the United States, Liberia's traditional ally which used the country as a strategic outpost, serving among other things, as regional headquarters for the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) during the Cold War, decided not to intervene to end the bloodshed and destruction. The country's civil war started as the Cold War was ending, rendering it no longer vital to U.S.
strategic interests.
The war became so peculiarly horrible that five West African countries, led by Nigeria, took the unprecedented step in African history to organize a multi-national military force to intervene and halt the slaughter of defenseless people and to restore peace. The other countries that made up the West African force called ECOMOG for short, were Ghana, Guinea, Sierra Leone and the Gambia. The U.S., however, supported the ECOMOG force and the West African led peace process to restore peace to Liberia, and is reported to have provided approximately $500 million for emergency relief and the peace process.
The West African countries also acted out of fear that the Liberian conflict might spill over into neighboring countries and eventually destabilize the sub-region. The rebel force, whose invasion of Liberia ignited the civil war, was called the National Patriotic Front of Liberia (NPFL), trained and armed by Libya, regarded to be a leading sponsor of terrorism in the world. The NPFL force also included Libyan-based dissidents from some of the West African countries, who were planning their own revolutions to seize power in their respective countries. Some of those revolutionaries had been involved in unsuccessful military attempts to unseat governments in their countries of origin. Known for its military adventurism in West Africa, Libya saw the destabilization of Liberia as an opportunity to undermine U.S. influence in the region. The U.S. had reportedly executed plans from within Liberia to destabilize the regime of Libyan leader Maummar Gadaffi.
The fears of the West African countries that the Liberian conflict might destabilize the sub-region were confirmed in 1991, when the war spilled into Sierra Leone. A Sierra Leone rebel group backed by the NPFL, which styled itself the Revolutionary United Front (RUF), invaded Sierra Leone from Liberian territory occupied by the NPFL. Foday Sankoh, leader of the notorious RUF, which amputated the limbs of thousands of women and children and looted diamond mines, was one of the Libyan-trained revolutionaries.
Ten years of war in Sierra Leone left an estimated 50,000 people dead, and the entire country almost completely destroyed. The Sierra Leone war ended in January 2002, following the disarmament of over 46,0000 combatants.
Liberia's civil war ended in 1997 with NPFL leader Charles Taylor becoming president of Liberia. Taylor, an ex-Liberian official, escaped from prison in the U. S. where he was awaiting extradition to Liberia for allegedly embezzling nearly one million dollars from public funds, to lead his murderous brand of civil war. Five years since Taylor became president, Liberia has become an international pariah and declared a criminal state.
The United Nations has imposed sanctions on Liberia for the brutal dictator's reported gunrunning and diamond smuggling with the notorious RUF. The sanctions include a travel ban on Taylor, his immediate family and senior officials of the Liberian government, as well as an arms embargo on Liberia.
Meanwhile, former RUF leader Sankoh is in jail and has been charged with murder along with 49 members of the barbaric armed gang.
LIBERIA: THE HEART OF DARKNESS attempts to present a comprehensive account of how Liberia and Sierra Leone descended into anarchy and uncontrollable bloodshed, and how those conflicts also spilled over into neighboring Guinea. Taylor was accused of sponsoring the campaign of death and destruction in order to plunder diamonds and other resources in the region.
Following the September 11, 2001 terror attacks in the U.S., Taylor and the RUF were reported to have been involved in the sale of tens of millions of dollars worth of diamonds to alleged terrorist mastermind Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda network.
LIBERIA: THE HEART OF DARKNESS also reports on prevailing anarchy in Liberia, which forced the Taylor regime to declare a state of emergency in February 2002. Also reported are the widespread abuses of human rights, including brutal clamp down on dissent, secret disappearance and murder of perceived government enemies, and state coordinated plunder of Liberia's resources.
The author, Gabriel I.H. Williams, was in Liberia for almost the first four years of the Liberian civil war before fleeing to the U.S. due to death threats for his journalistic activities. He was managing editor of the leading independent daily, The Inquirer newspaper. He served for six years on the executive committee of the Press Union of Liberia, the national journalist organization that was in the forefront in advocating for human rights and democratic governance in Liberia. Williams has served as a journalism scholar at the United Nations Headquarters in New York, benefited from a number of other international media education programs, and he is widely traveled.
Williams, who hid at a U.S. diplomatic residence for nearly a year between 1990 to 1991 from government death squads, also takes a story telling approach to narrate his personal experiences during the war, and what it was surviving by the day and conscious that your life could be brutally taken any moment. His most terrifying experiences included when he was captured by rebels the first time he ventured out of his hideout to visit downtown Monrovia, named after U.S. President James Monroe, during whose administration Liberia was founded. At the time he was captured, competing factions were fighting for control of the capital. A rebel commander who recognized him as a journalist put a pistol to his head and almost blew it off. Williams believes that he was saved from possible death by divine intervention.
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The book also includes three chapters dealing with historical and contemporary developments relating to the Liberian media, and a chapter on US/Liberia relations. It took Williams eight years to complete the book, which also contains nearly 100 photographs of the death and destruction and many of the major players during the civil war.
To place an order, please contact Trafford Publishing at the above web site/link or call toll-free (888) 232-4444 (US & Canada only). Those outside the toll-free areas can call (250) 383-6864. You can also mail your check or money order. The mailing address is:
Trafford Publishing
Suite 6E, 2333 Government St.,Victoria, B.C. V8T 4P4 Canada. Please indicate the title of the book.
If you have questions about ordering, feel free to send an email to the Orders Department at orders@trafford.com.
The author can be contacted at (916) 362-9551 or email yarvoh@pacbell.net.
