News — libya

The origin of the second civil war was rooted in the previous conflict waged between 1989 and 1996 which saw former rebel leader Charles Taylor become president of the entire nation, following UN-monitored elections in 1997. The country remained at peace only two years before LURD began its military campaign. Most of LURD were Mandingo and Krahn fighters led by Sekou Conneh. Many of them had been part of the rebel group, United Liberation Movement of Liberia for Democracy (ULIMO), which had fought in the first Liberian civil war against Taylor’s National Patriotic Front of Liberia (NPFL) as well as the government of President Samuel Doe.

In September 2000, to weaken support for the rebels from the government of Guinea and Sierra Leone which was now also supporting LURD, Taylor persuaded anti-government dissidents in both nations to form the Revolutionary United Front (RUF). They along with some of his paramilitary supporters began insurgencies and thus expanded the conflict to three nations. His action drew condemnation and opposition from the UN as well as support for Guinea and Sierra Leone from Great Britain and the United States.

By early 2002, LURD troops had outmaneuvered Taylor’s forces and were only about twenty-seven miles from Monrovia, the capital. Under leaders Conneh and Thomas Nimely, LURD troops mounted successful raids that bypassed government strongholds, and in May, they staged a bold attack on Arthington, less than twelve miles from Monrovia.

By early 2003, a second rebel group called the Movement for Democracy in Liberia (MODEL), backed by the government of Côte d’Ivoire, emerged in the south to challenge the Taylor government as well. By May 2003, Taylor controlled only about one-third of Liberia. With rebels closing in on Monrovia from all sides, President John Kufuor of Ghana, then chair of the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), convened a peace conference in Accra to work out a negotiated agreement that would avoid further bloodshed in a four-year conflict that had already taken nearly three hundred thousand lives. When Taylor appeared initially reluctant to support the peace process, Leymah Gbowee formed an organization called “Women of Liberia Mass Action in Peace” which, after a silent protest outside the presidential palace, extracted a promise from the Liberian head of state to attend the peace conference in Accra.

By July, even as peace talks were taking place in Accra, LURD forces reached the outskirts of Monrovia and began a siege of the capital. In the subsequent shelling of the city, over one thousand civilians were killed and thousands more were made homeless. On July 29, LURD declared a ceasefire which allowed ECOWAS to send to battalions of mostly Nigerian troops to the capital as peacekeepers.  As it became increasingly apparent that his government would not survive the siege, on August 11, 2003, President Charles Taylor resigned and flew to exile in Nigeria. Three days later, two hundred American troops landed to support ECOWAS troops. On August 18, the Accra Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA) announced the forming of the National Transition Government of Liberia with Gyude Bryant as president. The agreement also scheduled Liberia’s first post-civil war national election for 2005. In that election, Ellen Johnson Sirleaf became the twenty-fourth president of Liberia and the first woman to head an African nation. Sirleaf continues to hold the office of president, and over a decade after the Accra Comprehensive Peace Agreement was worked out, Liberia remains at peace.

When Mahmoud Jibril stood in Libya’s free elections in 2012 after heading the rebel government that helped overthrow Muammar Gaddafi in 2011, many believed that he could unify the country. Libya, which had then just emerged from a brutal conflict, needed to get back on its feet and Jibril’s supporters felt he was the right man to help steer affairs of the country.

But others were not so enthused about him, considering he had links with Gaddafi. Jibril was an economic advisor to the Gaddafi government in its last years before he joined the revolution in 2011. A few weeks after the uprising began, Jibril was made head of the rebel National Transitional Council (NTC), the interim government that eventually ousted and killed Gaddafi.

Jibril would toward the end of the conflict become the man of the moment in Libya, with his government recognized as the “sole legitimate representative” of Libya by UN states including France, the United Kingdom, the United States, Turkey, and Iran. Indeed, he fulfilled his promise to resign as interim prime minister for the NTC after “Libya’s liberation.”

Becoming the head of the National Forces Alliance, one of the largest political parties in Libya, Jibril contested in the 2012 democratic elections. His party did win the vote but did not grab a majority in parliament. Parliament then chose an independent candidate to become prime minister. Violence broke out again in Libya in subsequent years, and Jibril was forced to leave the country to abroad. Not much was heard from the Libyan leader until this April when his party confirmed that he had died of the coronavirus. The 68-year-old died in Cairo where he had been hospitalized for two weeks after suffering from cardiac arrest. Three days later, he tested positive for coronavirus.

Born in 1952, Jibril graduated in Economics and Political Science from Cairo University in 1975 before earning a master’s degree in political science and a Ph.D. in strategic planning and decision-making from the University of Pittsburgh in Pennsylvania. He then taught strategic planning and decision-making at the university for many years and was behind many leadership training programs in several Arab states.

Jibril did write many books and also served as the head of the Libyan National Planning Council. By 2009, he was working with the Gaddafi government as chairman of the National Economic Development Board (NEDB), which was created to stir up investment in Libya. But by the start of 2011, Jibril had defected to the rebel National Transitional Council after engaging in a project aimed at establishing a democratic state.