EP37: Charles Taylor

Warlord-turned-politician Charles Taylor served as President of Liberia from 1997 until his resignation in 2003.  While on trial for war crimes in the Hague, the court heard of Taylor forcing his soldiers to practice cannibalism on their enemies, among other heinous crimes- an attitude towards violence encapsulated in his 1997 campaign slogan, “he killed my ma, he killed my pa, but I’ll vote for him.”

Taylor’s story tells us a lot about the mechanics of violence and coercion during both war and peace, and his effect on Liberia, a country still reeling from his reign of terror but also showing signs of moving on, has to be understood with these mechanics in mind. 

My guest for today is Dr Christine Cheng (@cheng_christine), senior lecturer in international relations at King’s College London. Christine has a keen interest in Liberia, a country with a fascinating history, and her 2019 book “Extralegal groups in post conflict Liberia: How trade makes the state” won the Conflict Research Society’s Annual Prize. She also comments on international affairs for the BBC, the Wall Street Journal and Al-Jazeera. 

Transcript

Unknown: 0:05

Hello and welcome to the hated in the dead with Tom Leeman. First some good news. The hated in the Dead has been selected to appear on podcasts radio digital radio station in the United States that plays podcast episodes back to back in a traditional format. The five selected episodes of this podcast won't be broadcast on there until autumn. But it's great news and I'll let you know exactly when closer to the time. This week, the hatred in the dead returns to African looking at Liberian warlord turned politician Charles Taylor. merely describing Taylor as Liberia's president, conceals an unbelievable biography, including military training with former hated and dead subject Colonel Gaddafi escaped from a maximum security prison. The overthrow and murder of Liberia is President Samuel doe in the late 1980s and the investigations of revolutions in multiple West African countries. Following over a decade of near constant civil war in Liberia, Charles Taylor resigned the office of president in 2003 and was eventually found guilty of war crimes. He is now imprisoned in County Durham in northern England. While on trial in The Hague, the Court heard of Taylor forcing his soldiers to practice cannibalism on their enemies among other heinous crimes, and attitude towards violence encapsulated in his 1997 campaign slogan, he killed my mouth. He killed my path, but I'll vote for him. Taylor story tells us a lot about the mechanics of violence and coercion during both war and peace and his effect on Liberia. A country still reeling from his reign of terror, but also showing signs of moving on has to be understood with these mechanics in mind. My guest for today is Dr. Christine Cheng, senior lecturer in international relations at King's College London. Christine has a keen interest in Liberia, a country with a fascinating history, and her 2019 book, extra legal groups in post conflict, Liberia, how trade makes the State won the conflict research society's annual prize. She also comments on international affairs for the BBC, The Wall Street Journal, and Al Jazeera. As well as examining the trials and tribulations of Taylor's life, we had an illuminating discussion about the record of the West at bringing war criminals to justice. Ladies and gentlemen, it's time to introduce Charles Taylor. Hi, Christine, how's it going? Great. Thanks for having me, Tom. It's a pleasure. Christine, we're talking about Charles Taylor today. He was the president of Liberia between 1997 and 2003. He's often referred to as a warlord. To set up our conversation. First of all, why have you devoted quite a big portion of your of your career to studying Charles Taylor? What do you think is notable and interesting about him? Taylor is an absolutely fascinating character. And he's fascinating in so many ways, in part, for the lessons that we in the West should learn about how to deal with non state actors who become state actors, right? They are the most interesting. So people who start from from one side as rebel actors and then come into power. And then of course, now, he has been tried for war crimes in Sierra Leone, actually, and sits in the UK, in Franklin jail, just outside of Durham. And so actually, he's, he's right here, you know, not too far away from where you and I sit, Tom. But just in terms of, you know, my personal interests, my interest is actually in, in Liberia and in state building and in state formation that I come at these topics. In part, if you understand Charles Taylor, you understand a lot of what the kind of person that I guess, does well through war and the mechanisms through which he does well through war. So in this particular case, it's really understanding natural resources and the role that they played and how he exploited them really, really well. You know, as a as quite an inventive businessman if you if you want to put it in those terms. And yes, as long along with being both a statesman and a warlord, right so he he held, I would say many different positions at the same time and that's that's part of the fascination but also the lens through which we look at these issues and how We process somebody like him. I don't think we know what to do with him because he doesn't fit neatly into any of our boxes. And the fact that we don't see him fitting neatly into our boxes, is what makes it fascinating for us to think about ourselves, right. So all of those things, I think, make both Charles Taylor and Liberia and the war to peace transition in Liberia. super fascinating. Liberia is a country with a very interesting founding principle founding moment. Can you tell us a bit about Liberia and how it became a country initially? You mentioned statebuilding? There? Yeah. So Liberia, the story, the myth of Liberia is a glorious one. Right? The narrative of Liberia is one of freed slaves, who left the US and, and founded a new country. But that clashes with the reality of of that, you know, what actually happened? And I think that's the that's the difficulty. Everybody needs a narrative to feel patriotic about where they come from, but, but that, that myths and the reality are quite harshly juxtaposed against one another. So the myth is, you know, way back in the 1800s, the American colonisation society had a number of well, there are a number of freed slaves in the US and then the American colonisation society say, hey, you know, what, a bunch of people both on the left and the frayed of the spectrum, who, for their own variety of political reasons, wanted to support that return of the of these freed slaves, so they could go back to Africa and set up their own Republic. And that, you know, led to some of the the missions that the American colonisation society supported through the early 1800s. And then, you know, that finally succeeded in 1820 or so. And then, you know, that turned into what is now Liberia. But that moment, you know, when all of these things happened, when they actually first got that first first piece of land successfully, it was a pretty violent movement, you know, there was, they came over with the Navy, and they had the captain of the Navy, Robert Stockton came up and took a gun and held it against the barrel of the gun against the head of one of the local chiefs can Peter and said you better hand over this land, or else so there was a nominal trade of land for about $300 Again, in 1821 days, right, worth of goods, pots, pans, beads, basically what we would today consider to be tat and, and they got 130 acres for that $300 at, you know, at the end of a barrel of a gun. And that was the founding of Liberia. So immediately in that founding moment, you have this juxtaposition of US intervention. And those freed slaves and those settler slaves coming from the antebellum south, right. That's the, that's the environment through which they have understood the world, they land in another place, and everybody else is they would consider to be native uncivilised. And, you know, on the other side of things from computers aside, and, you know, the people in the local region in this case, it was, you know, the the Bossa and keep Peters tribe separately. They were, they had their own issues in in dealing with the locals because they were involved in the slave trade themselves, right. So you've got these very two different ideas of how they wanted to run things like how governance should run. And that immediately led to a clash, right. So there's this back and forth between the two, and it just got uglier and messier. And that was the founding moment. And something of an irony, I suppose. And you've already alluded to it that freed slaves from the southern United States, taking a journey across an ocean to take over land of other other Africans, right. I mean, if we if we look at Taylor Taylor was born in 1948. I don't know kind of the degree to which its Liberia status as a free man's kind of Haven, from the 19th century has commanded much sway into the 20th century. But what was Liberia like when Taylor was a child? I imagine that at least the tension between the kind of the American Liberians and the natives as you put it must have still been there when he was born. It absolutely was and the interesting thing are many interesting things about Taylor but one of them was that he was half and half For you Was this his mom was gola and his dad was America. Right? So he sort of had a foot in both worlds. He was middle class from the America side. But, you know, he understood and could have links back to the the native Liberian side. And those tensions were were definitely there. And you saw them rising up through the 1960s and 70s. As you know, you saw decolonization going on around the world and different African countries demanding their independence. And even though that wasn't really quite the same dynamic in Liberia, because it had always been an independent country, and always been ruled by, you know, well, not colonised anyway, in theory, right. So not colonised in theory, but that it was much more of an apartheid state than I think anybody would ever want to admit, right being ruled by one very small set of people making up about 4% between one and 4% Depending on how you count them of the population. These America Liberians, some would call them you know, sometimes they call themselves Congo's, right. So as a class of people, about 4% of the population ruling over the other 96% of the population, controlling the vast majority of wealth of the professions of business, politics, everything, right, this is all really under the control of this very, very small part of the population. And so the rest of the population is clamouring for more access to power to education to opportunities. And that tension is there, right, and it kind of rots. And and that's the beginning of where you see things falling apart. Because up to that point, Liberia has had really been the bastion of stability in Africa, which is kind of crazy for us to think about, right. But it was one of and had long been, if not the most prosperous country in Africa, at least one of the most prosperous countries in Africa. So it's really different from how we think about it today. It used to be seen as just the most stable place in Africa. That was a prosperity that I think, largely Taylor shared in you mentioned that he was pretty middle class. I think it was fairly privileged upbringing really wasn't it? And he indeed, he went to university in the United States. He did indeed. And, you know, he learned from both sides there, right. So he had access to these structures. But again, he sat on both sides of this, because later on, when dough came into power, Taylor was also able to take advantage of that, right? So this is the, you know, he gets to be a bit of a chameleon a political chameleon. And he came in on the coattails of Thomas Chiappa, who killed pot and DOE together were the ones were really the ring. Well, it was actually killed by the who was the ringleader of overthrowing that America Liberian regime and overthrowing the Tolbert regime at the time, and giving power in theory to the native librarians, the rest of the country, the other 96% of the country. And, you know, Taylor Taylor was part of that movement. So he had a place on dose administration, as a controller of sorts, and he was in charge of the General Services Administration, which was basically public procurement. So he had a relatively influential role in that government until the point where Thomas culpa and decided that, you know, things were getting out of hand with dough and and started leading a bit of a movement against him, right. So you could see this kind of behind the scenes. You know, like the preparations to overthrow dough, and then there was a lot of back and forth violence between dough and the con, that he represented. And then the groups that Thomas Keno path represented, and that got ugly, really ugly. And so people could see that this was going down a pretty dark path. Essentially, dough was doing exactly what had been done before. So instead of having the American librarians roll now, and handing out their patronage to other America librarians, you now have Thomas or you now have Samuel doe doing exactly the same thing, but now doing it with a crime right. So you just basically see the repeat this pattern repeat of patronage and corruption, but now with violence. So just to take a couple of steps back there, DOE became the leader of Liberia in 1980. Is that right? 1980 1980. And he was a native Liberian rather than an American Liberian. I I think that you mentioned there that doe and Taylor had some sort of, you know, kind of perhaps quite transactional relationship in government, but they, I think they fell out and, and Taylor was exiled. And this is the fascinating part of it. Alright, so he basically fled to the United States. And they're a doe put out an extradition treaty, and then he was arrested, and, and put in prison for having stolen in theory $900,000 worth of whatever it was that he sold that basically for $900,000 worth of something, and for having stolen it, I think. And so, you know, Taylor says that this was a politically trumped up charge, and just just was not the case. And, you know, so obviously, didn't said that it was the case. And so the United States government took those side and are, it's difficult to say exactly what happened, but he was put in prison for it. But there's the better part of this story, which is that he escapes prison, right. Which is, which nobody, you know, this when I first heard this, I just thought it was conspiracy theory, right, that this could not possibly have been the case he was put in a maximum security prison in the United States. You do not just escape from a maximum security prison in the United States. It just doesn't happen. But escapee did. And at some point, well, and this is this is where the story gets really interesting around and what happened and what didn't, right. So his Taylor's version of the story was, he was led up by the CIA, because you don't want it to lead a rebellion against Dou Dou was threatening was was making noises, making eyes at the Soviets, potentially threatening to be helpful to the Soviets and not be as closely allied to the United States, as was expected of, you know, a patronage kind of situation. And so the United States didn't like this and decided to support this rebellion being led by Chiappa. Qian buckos, in somehow they're alerted that rebellion fails, but in the lead up to planning that rebellion, Charles Taylor was supposed to be helping to, right, so. So the CIA or somebody goes in, sets everything up, tells him that he's going to be released the jail cell doors, the prison cell doors going to be open, there's an escape car for him, and his wife is there waiting. And, you know, the story, there's no reason not to believe this story, because he gets out somehow. And he is supposed to fly back and help out, but that the coup fails, he doesn't make it back. The next thing we know he's in here that he's in Mexico, and then the next time after that, that we hear about, he's in Libya, even Libya? Yes. Yes. With Qaddafi? Did he Did he meet Colonel Gaddafi personally? Oh, absolutely. Not only did he meet him, that was there was a whole band of revolutionaries there. In the Qaddafi training camps. That is how Foday Sankoh from neighbouring Sierra Leone's Revolutionary United Forces. So the rebels that are fighting against the Sierra Leone government, this is where Foday Sankoh needs Charles Taylor. This is also where camp i or a from Burkina Faso ends up becoming the president too. So this is there's a whole gang of West African revolutionaries, rebel leaders in waiting. This is where they all meet and get off these camps. Gaddafi is somebody that's quite hard to pin down ideologically, especially as his kind of quite long time in power continues, he was probably the sort of, you know, an Arab Socialist, an Arab nationalist when he took over it's not obvious. That's what he was, by this point, by the 1980s. Was there a kind of ideology to this to this gamble of of West African revolutionaries? Or was this just a kind of power play? How ideological was Taylor? Do you think? I don't think Taylor was ever ideological. I think Qaddafi was ideological. And in the sense that, I mean, if there is an ideology here, or if there's something that bans them together, it is the, you know, it is the overthrowing of people who have become too powerful. Right, and I think that's the lens through which you can see the commonality of their cause. If you want to be generous about it, if you don't want to be generous about it, then they're basically there to take whatever resources they can from Qaddafi, and then Gaddafi has a friend in the region, right. So I would call Qaddafi a pan Africa Canada's hoping to unite all of the continent together in his, in both his vision as being a kind of socialist revolutionary. And, you know, to some extent he succeeded in Libya in achieving that. And he wanted to export. And literally, I think it was called the Bureau for the exploitation, the export of a revolution or something like that. But that was there was literally a bureau named, so that he could achieve these ends throughout the continent, right. So he had, he had his own ideas about state building, and then how to export those concepts across the continent. So how do we end up in a situation then, whereby Samuel Doe, the leader of Liberia, since 1980, ends up becoming unseated from power at the end of the decade, and ultimately executed? Oh, that is an ugly, ugly story. So through the 80s, things become rather difficult. And doe himself is, like I mentioned, becoming increasingly paranoid. So initially, when he came into power, you know, people really underestimated him. He wasn't even supposed to be in the top job. He was just a frontman, it was killed, but who was the power behind the scenes, and Chiappa didn't want his own head to be chopped off. So he put dough on the throne. But then, of course, you know, it ended up becoming a threat. And so dough had to eliminate the threat and he grew into that role. But as a result, he became very paranoid about power, and rightly so. Right. Like there's there were there were plots to overthrow him. But then the problem was that he responded by violently cleansing everybody in the population that was related to those ethnic groups. And things got really, just really violent. And this is also where you see in that period, where, you know, people like Ellen Johnson Sirleaf are upset like, you know, leaders abroad, who are outside of Liberia, and their close links with the US, right. So there are lots of Liberians living outside of Liberia. And they are upset about what's going on as our librarians within the country. So you can sort of see this movement against doe building up. And, you know, Taylor plays right into that. He started setting up the NPFL, the National Patriotic Front for Liberia, and then in 1989, you know, he's he's relying on on help from the neighbours, and that there are lots of fascinating stories around the relationships with the neighbours as well, right. So in part, some of that comes from Gaddafi. In part, these are personal relationships and older grudges that have lasted throughout the region. So he goes into, he launches his attack from Cote d'Ivoire. And that's because, boy, ye who was the reigning regional, I would say, sort of elder statesman. He has held a grudge against Samuel Joe from something that happened when Samuel doe, you know, when his it's so because of that he is now willing to help Taylor, right, basically as an act of F revenge. So you've got, they're coming in from Cote d'Ivoire, from the north into Nimba. County, you've got Burkina Faso, also very close by and the friends that that he had met from the Qaddafi era. And also because Charles Taylor's NPFL had helped those rebels win in Burkina Faso. So come for is now in power there. Right. So now you've got two states. And then you got arms coming in from from Libya. And so you sort of see like how this is all coming together. And then he invades from the north, and he picks up people as he goes along. Right. So it's not a coincidence that he's coming in through Nimba County, because this is where those that all of that ethnic violence was occurring. So he's picking up people as he's going along, and he's saying, we are going to overthrow Joe. And he's got a very receptive audience for that. And that's how the Civil War begins. I want to try and fill in a bit of Taylor's personality at this point, because you've I mean, he's only probably 40 By this stage by the end of the 1980s. And he's gone to university in the States, escaped a maximum security prison, met Colonel Gaddafi in Libya, and has instigated revolutions in multiple countries in West Africa. Discuss you know, what was the chaos look To give him credit, he's incredibly charming, you know, and, and he is the right person in the right time, and trying to, and arguably trying to do things that maybe needed to be done in a way, right. I don't think that the tailor that we know today needed to be this version of Taylor, I think he could have turned into another version of Taylor under different circumstances. I think he could have been more of a Paul Kagame as brutal as he may be, or 70. as brutal as he may be, right. Like, it's not like those two leaders are, you know, don't have a lot of blood on their own hands. But they are not seeing in the same way as we think about Charles Taylor. And certainly they they are not being held culpable for the things that they have done in the way that Charles Taylor has been held culpable. I think that, you know, constellation of factors may tailor into the person that he was as a result of the way in which this particular war was fought, and the response that came from overseas, right, so, so filling in some of his personality, I think you have to give credit to the fact that he's a very talented communicator, he was always able to speak to the international media in a way that was very convincing. And he had the support of the United States for a reason. This is, this is not a coincidence, right? He was he was good at what he did. He was able to inspire people at as many great dictators do. And he became more and more brutal through the war. And I think there were a couple of moments during the war. But, you know, there was a moment where I remember and again, it's hard to know whether or not these stories are true, but they're in one account of the civil war that I read. The US had promised that he would become president in relatively short order. I think when he controlled about you controlled almost all of the country, everything except for a core big in the capital right now. It's absolutely was the capital this one, sorry, this was after dough had been executed. That your dough, this is not no, this is actually no, sir. This is not this is trying this, basically, you've taken. So in 1989, I think, you know, they enter and then very, very shortly there afterwards, I think within eight months, they're they're controlling about 60% of Library's territory. And then there's this, then there's a period where everything is that's critical as control except for Monrovia, right? So then, what ECOWAS does is the economic economic group of the West African States, they come together and they say, Hey, we need peacekeepers to come in because it's getting out of control. And then the peacekeepers, they put in this this monitoring group or this armed monitoring peacekeeping group, first time it's ever done being done outside of the UN, they bring, you know, they're basically Nigerian peacekeepers with a smattering of Canadians and other countries from West Africa. But primarily Nigerians, they come in, they're supposed to keep the peace. They're really controlling Monrovia that's about it. And then you have this fighting going on. But what was promised to Taylor during that time, because he controlled most of the country basically was on the verge of taking over. And the Americans were going to give it to him, in theory. We don't know if this is true. And then they reneged, right, and he turned into a from that point on, the war just continued. And he had to find other means to find the war, things became more brutal. You just see this kind of, you see this disintegration of of what was left of the state. You see all of these different factions rising up, you see the NPFL, Taylor's group, splintering, you see different other different factions on the other side, you know, splintering off, and this is when things get really bloody, and very, very tangled and confused. And just groups forming and reforming and people fighting each other. You have all sorts of just really, really terrible atrocities happening. This is when you see some of the most bloody photos from that period of the Civil War. Well, this is the remarkable thing, really, I suppose is that, you know, the you've spoken there that Taylor was basically in control of most of the country by the end of 1989. But the the war persists until 1996. Taylor doesn't actually become president of Liberia, technically until 1997. It sounds as if in hindsight, what you're saying is that actually, the end of 1989, the Americans kind of had the maybe they didn't know it at the time, but they had the opportunity actually to bring an end to this violence. By installing Taylor is that is that what basically your view that actually this, we're in hindsight, this was a kind of pivotal moment. So the war starts on Christmas Eve in 1989. So I would say, by I think this all of this happens, basically finishes up, that kind of all the big skirmishes are done, and you've got major control of territory, they're just kind of marching through the country. And by the summer of 1990, Taylor is controlled quite a large portion of Liberia, and then after that, that's when all of the factional fighting really kicks in. And you think, do you think the Americans do you think the Americans have a certain degree of of blame attached to them for sort of turning their backs on on this country? Well, that's another question about turning their backs, as is another issue altogether. But could would we have gotten less violence and fewer people killed? If Charles Taylor had been allowed to take over as as was intended? I think the answer to that, my guess is yes. I don't think we would have ended up I think we would have ended up with other kinds of violence, I think we would have ended up with something that looks more like a, you know, like a comic kind of rule, or 70 kind of rule. But not, not this kind of long drawn out very, very bloody and violent civil war beyond them for people that already been killed, which was, you know, courageous as it was right. But, but it went on for quite a bit longer after that. So I think yes, I think I think some of that some of the worst of the violent excesses could have been, Kurt. Can you? I mean, this is this is, you know, the really awful part of the discussion. I mean, can you go into the details of some of these atrocities, I've sort of had a look on online at them. And they're all full and awful, if nothing else for the number of different methods of terror that Taylor deployed. I don't actually think that what happened in Liberia is unique to Liberia in this sense, right. There were lots of, and there still are, even today, outside of Africa. Lots of leaders and lots of wars that are that are fought in this very brutal way. I mean, I can I can say, I can say a little bit. Yes, sir. I'm gonna give a caveat at the end of doing so. Right. So the caveat is really important. So, you know, things were being done, like having babies being cut out of pregnant mothers, you know, people were being just routinely shot on the street, or, you know, very slight provocations. A lot of this. Some of this was drug fueled, as well, there were a lot of children also involved as child soldiers. So this was one of the great wars that was known as one that was, that had a lot of child soldiers taking part in it. And in part, because, you know, a lot of these kids were saw Charles Taylor is a bit of a father figure. But there was a lot of rape, and but there's still a lot of rape. So that's, it's not, it wasn't absolutely, it was worse during the war. But, you know, the context of, of rape in this sort of situation was even more horrific. And I think we can we can really appreciate from a position of peace, certainly. But torture was pretty routine. And I think, you know, Charles Taylor, could literally just decide your fate by pointing, you know, by just telling somebody to execute you right in front of him, and that was not, there was no was no sense that there was a trial, there was no, you know, hearing for you it was it was a very brutal war. And, and people were killed for all sorts of reasons, not necessarily any that made any sense, right. So there was a lot of vigilantism. people were killed for reasons that often just don't have any rationale either. Right. So the like, I think the violence was much more routine and much more in your face and on the streets than we could ever possibly imagine. But I think that comment about about violence and thinking about violence is is also in or write like, what I'm wary of. And what I become more wary of over time is to I don't want to give the impression that that Africans or librarians in particular, are more violent necessarily than any other group that commits horrible atrocities during war. There was less discipline, there was less discipline, I completely agree with that less professionalisation of the fighting forces. And that fundamentally led to my guess is more atrocities that occurred, and sometimes committing atrocities as my my colleague at Kings writes about Karen Minton. And committing atrocities can be part of a socialisation ritual as well, right to help you integrate yourself into the group. But having said that, I think I worry that we stereotype Africans as being particularly barbaric or brutal. And we can see just based on what's been happening in Buka, with the Russian troops in Ukraine right now, there are some pretty terrible things happening there, too. We can also see those terrible things happening in Bosnia, we can see the terrible torture that is happening in Myanmar. Right, but we can see what's happened with the US and the the torture of detainees in Guantanamo Bay. Right? This is part and parcel of how wars are fought is torture and atrocities and rape, sexual violence, all of that stuff. You know, there are we can talk about degrees of it, and we can talk about disciplinary issues. But yeah, it was terrible. But I want to put a kind of wrapper around that to say, hey, let's let's think about how we talk about these things. Things are other things are terrible as well. Yes. Yeah. Okay. I mean, I want to, I want to return to the issue of how Taylor is remembered. And remembered, as well as as a war criminal, as he's, you know, as he's actually been, you know, convicted as he eventually managed to kind of consolidate some extent of power for more power within Liberia, and he was elected president of the country in 1997. But that's not the end of conflict and Civil War Within Liberia. And ultimately, he has to resign from the presidency from power in 2003. What goes wrong over the next the course of the next six years, that means that Taylor has to resign the position that he's been fighting for for over a decade. So the crazy thing is that he was elected, right, you would expect that if you've got a warlord who's been committing all of these atrocities and abuses over the past eight years, you wouldn't want to elect somebody like that. And yet, people did. Right. And, and part of that, obviously, was Taylor had quite a bit of control over the media space, you know, that the but the campaign, the voting itself was fair. And there were there were election observers, there to watch all of that, but he controlled a lot of the narrative. And then the other thing that's really important to bear in mind as people were sick of fighting, and so they thought that if they elected him and just gave him what he wanted, that the violence would end, right? So we're trying to rationalise like, why would people do something like this? And there was, you know, the, his great campaign slogan, you know, you killed my mom, he killed my pa, all vote for him. Right. That's that was that was his campaign slogan. And do you think that makes no sense? That sounds absolutely crazy. Why would you do that? But the reason for it, I think, you know, if you look deeper into those words, what they're really saying is, this person is really strong, in spite of the fact that he killed my mother, in spite of the fact that he killed my father. He is strong enough to rule this country. And he's basically going to do it anyway. So you know, it's a combination of coercion and intimidation and his campaign slogan, you better vote for me or else and they did. And then I think people hoped that there would be a peaceful period. But of course, the, you know, who gets left out of this political settlement, right, the cons and the mundane goes basically the folks that were allied with the with people who, you know, we're working with, with dough, right. So all of the people that Taylor kicked out are really unhappy because they've been left out of the new political settlement and they want back in how do they do that, well, they basically go away and they rearm. They sit on the borders, and they wait. They wait for their moment and 99 there, they're coming in now from Guinea. And then you know, then they they're coming in from from Cote d'Ivoire, right. So you get the two coming in together, now they decide that they are going to together, throw Taylor out of power. And Taylor himself is very brutal, right. So people do not support him, and how he's really because he's not really changed his ways. He is still causing chaos and reach, notably in Sierra Leone. So all of that means that people don't want to manpower. But you get the violence continuing and returning. And basically from 99 until 2003. So you have this kind of briefly peaceful period 97 to 99, really, and then the war kind of gets going again in 99. And it really culminates in this big battle in Monrovia in 2003. And then, out of the back of that you have the peacekeepers coming in while you have killers convinced to leave, and to go into exile in Nigeria, and you get the American saying to him, you know, it's time to go, and that really is the end of him. So he leaves goes into exile in Nigeria. And then you have the peacekeepers coming in, again from from echo OSs and, and they take over for a short period before the UN peacekeepers come in, and the UN people it's basically the same peacekeepers, and they just put on different hats, right, so they go from, from wearing the ECOWAS hats to wearing the UN hats, and then you get a few more coming in, you get the world's at that time, it was the world's largest peacekeeping mission at that moment. And so you get a lot of international political attention and political will trying to deal with this issue once and for walk for all. And that that really changes the dynamic of things. Right. So yeah, that that is a big political moment. And then from then on, I think Liberia has been able to turn itself around. Just amazing, because I don't think anybody expected that it was very, very uncertain, very touching, go for a few years. You mentioned that, once Taylor resigned in 2003, he went to Nigeria briefly. How was he eventually apprehended after you know, this awful decade or more of a violence and of of, you know, ultimately, as we found out, when he was tried breaking international law, how was he? How was he bought to justice? Oh, this is this is where Taylor really earns his name as The Great Escape Artist. So what happens during this period, and again, there are lots of versions of this story, because you can't, it's hard to confirm. But he, he's in Nigeria, in a villa, and he's been put there and he's supposed to stay there. But this is done by a promise from Obasanjo, president of Nigeria at the time, and Obasanjo promises him, you know, we will take care of you, you know, we won't let you we won't let you be taken. Right. But on the other hand, the the other thing that's happening at the same time is Ellen Johnson Sirleaf really needs for her loans for libraries loans to be forgiven. So she is now president. And she also is trying to resist bring Taylor back into the conversation, right. So she's trying to stay away from this. But in order, in order for her to get these loans forgiven, the US government is demanding that she request that Taylor be brought to justice. And she doesn't really want to do this, but she needs this to be done in order to get these loans forgiven. And then there's a state visit going on to Nigeria. And the President doesn't really want to do this either, because he's made this promise to Taylor. But he has to he has to break this promise in order to make the state visit happen. So what he does, and I think, because how else is as you'll see in a moment and unravels really strangely, right, so Taylor finds out that he is going to be given up, but Assange does not want to be the person that gives him up because he's got a credibility problem, right? He has this reputation to maintain as an African statesman, right. His word is his bond. So what is he going to do? Right, because all of a sudden, Ellen Johnson Sirleaf has demanded for Taylor to be extradited. So now all of a sudden Joe has to comply, and he does but Now, what do you do with, you know, the other, like he can't have both ways. So he tells Taylor, I think this is what happened, somebody tells Taylor that he's going to be extradited. So Taylor makes a run for the border. And what we know, is where he gets caught, he gets caught at the Cameroon border. And there's a lot of money in the trunk. And in the boot, and depending on who you believe, maybe some drugs as well. Right. We don't know who to believe on that. But but there's certainly a lot of money. People say that, you know, he was arrested by the border guard when he was trying to cross the border. And again, you know, he's he's almost escaped. Right. So, and there is, again, a big question out there. And, you know, conspiracy theories abound. But one of them is that the border guard screwed up, the border guard should have let him go. And, and the question is, whether or not that border guard is still alive for having screwed up, or maybe, you know, the theory was that he was this is exactly how it was intended. He was supposed to be caught. And this is exactly what was supposed to happen so that Pope Assange could have his cake and eat it too. Right. So there, this is what I mean by West African politics is very murky, right. The things that happen, and the things that happen are on Taylor, in particular, are very murky. But you know, those are the stories that are out there about about what happened to him. So he gets caught, apprehended at the border, the state visit with the US President goes on. And he gets flown. He has to first be flown back into Monrovia. But people are so terrified because they think Taylor has superpowers, right. So there's, I mean, this is another discussion already, but they you know, they think he has Juju. And so people aren't really scared. So he just basically touches down, changes helicopters, and then gets flown to the Hague. And then you know, from that point on, we get we get the trial. The ultimate part of the trial. I think I'm skipping ahead one, one trial too many actually. He's obviously ended up in Falkland prison in Durham. Now, what was he actually tried for in the end? Well, he was tried for war crimes, not in Liberia. And I think that's the most interesting thing, right? He was he was tried for the war crimes that were committed in Sierra Leone. And that's unusual, right? So there were 11, there was an 11 count indictment against him for crimes against humanity, and violations of the Geneva Conventions and for war crimes. And yeah, for sponsoring the RUF and the armed forces revolutionary council. So, you know, this is, this is unusual, right? To have a hit, first of all, to have a head of state be brought to trial. That's the first thing that's very unusual. And then the second thing is, and that's unusual about this is, he's not being taken to trial for what he did in his own state. But when he did, in a neighbouring state, we were sentenced to 50 years in the end, and he appealed that, but he lost. So he was found guilty of aiding and abetting war crimes. How do you explain the fact that he was never bought to trial for anything he actually did in Liberia, what do you think's going on? You know, it's really funny, because I went back to give a series of book talks in Monrovia for my book, extra legal groups and post conflict Liberia this back in 2018. And I was consistently asked almost in every opportunity in public, you know, what do you think should happen around trials? Right? So should we should we should we run a series of trials to hold people accountable for what happened? And I would say to that, that's really up to the Liberian people. Right? So this is a really difficult one, because you're trading off. In some cases, if you're trying to do it right after the end of the war, if you tried to do this in 2000, and 456, I think it would have been very difficult and potentially quite destabilising, that doesn't mean that the country wouldn't have gotten through it. It just means that it would have caused some degree, maybe a lot of political upheaval, and people were scared of the possibility of returning to war, right. So they didn't want to risk that. And so maybe they that was the reason why it didn't happen then. And you can see in some cases, you know, people get brought to justice decades after the crimes are committed. And I think that might still be the case in the future for Liberia. Maybe the country is ready now. Maybe the country will be ready in 10 years or 20 years. Maybe the country will never do it. But it's really ultimately To Liberians, I, my last episode I put out was about Slobodan Milosevic, who was a, as far as you know, war criminals go was. And I've said this flippantly, but a sort of contemporary of Taylor's as close contemporary. And it struck me how the idea of kind of war crimes, crimes against humanity, bringing heads of state to justice, in this way is still a very new thing. We haven't been doing it for very long. In light of that, how do you think the international community is, is doing bringing genocidal maniacs into this kind of legal framework? Because it's simultaneously very easy, at least to bring cases against them for these things. But it's also very, very difficult to prosecute them, because partly because of what the likes of Taylor and Milosevic do is so awful. How do you think we're doing? Ah, I think fundamentally, the all of these kinds of trials are political in nature. Right. So you only get tried at the International Criminal Court, if, at least mostly up to this point, if you're an African nation, right? If you look at the ICC indictments, if you look at the ICC cases and prosecutions, they are almost all completely Africans with I think, in more recent years, a couple of exceptions. But basically, Africa looks at this and says, you're out to get us in on the US. And as a result of that, you have African saying, you know, we should leave the ICC, right, we should leave this institution because nobody else ever gets charged except for us. Right. So that doesn't think we have to decide, you know, should we let the perfect be the enemy of the good? Or does consistency matter here? Right. So if you're only going after particular people who suit particular political agendas, and some would say, this is really, you know, whoever does or does not suit the Western agenda does or does not get prosecuted? Then you've got you're creating an institutional problem for yourself of credibility for justice. I don't know the answer to this. So I'm going to ask you No, I'm just asking you. Milosevic and rat comb Madej, the the Bosnian Serbs, this didn't happen to them. They were tried not under the ICC because the ICC hadn't come into effect as yet. So they were trying as part of the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia, right that well, the ICT why? I hope I've got that acronym. Right. But the ICT, why? And you know, we had one for Wanda, the ICTR. You know, so we have these kinds of and same thing with Sierra Leone. Right. So that was that did not happen under the ICC, the International Criminal Court, which is situated in the heck, these other ones are these kinds of hybrid courts sometimes made up of international judges, or not, right. So you kind of get these these different configurations of dealing with war crimes. So the question, though, I mean, in theory, now, we're past that, because we've got the ICC, everything is supposed to go through the ICC. And this is the ICC is a complimentary court. Right. So it depends on how well your country and your national institutions and your legal system can deal with trying somebody for workarounds. So to the extent that you are already doing that, then there is there should be no need for an ICC. Right, if your country is already dealing with that. Yeah, so that's a difficult one. I mean, are there then are there people in you know, the other leaders over the last sort of 15 years in the world that you think should have been tried by the ICC? that haven't been? Ah, that's a really difficult one. I'm sure the answer is yes. I mean, there are always people committing and they're always countries that are doing things that they're not supposed to do. And the question is, you know, what constitutes a war crime? And under, under what circumstances will how far up the chain of command Do you want to go right, do you do you go all the way up to the President? So if you look at some of the things that have happened in Afghanistan in recent years or in Iraq. Like, let's just take, for example, you know, what, what has happened with some of the detention facilities that have been run by the Americans? Right. That's, that is run by the Americans. What do you do with that? Right? How far up that chain, do you go? Do you say? Well, you know, George W. Bush himself signed off on on torture. I'm sure that that. I mean, I doubt that that was the case, although we know that the Dick Cheney had something to do with with signing those orders. Well, if not, if, even if they didn't sign them, they did publicly endorse them, I think, Bush when he was asked once at what he thought of torture, he said, Hell yeah, we'll do it. This is the difficulty, right? But but that's he can sign off and say, Yes, I, you know, I agree with it in principle, that, but you'd have to draw, as we were discussing earlier, right, you'd have to draw that chain of responsibility and say, you know, he authorised for this particular thing to happen. And so you have to, you have to create that chain of responsibility, and then you'd have to take this person to court. And I mean, I don't have a great answer to this, as somebody, you know, doesn't work in this way on these issues. But I can say, without a doubt that there are lots of people around the world, lots of leaders, lots of both rebel groups, on the one hand, and, you know, military officers, generals, whoever it may be, you know, state and non state actors on both sides, who have done things that should be prosecuted as a war crime or as crimes against humanity and have not been right for a variety of, of political reasons. That makes a lot of sense, maybe in the larger scheme of things. But also, it's just not practical to try and do it. It's really, really hard to get through. That's a fascinating topic, I'd love to talk more about that we're running out of time, I just want on a slightly lighter note, I want to talk about Liberia now. Liberia is now governed by a man that was also a non state actor for a very long time as the football or George, where you sort of suggested that actually, Liberia has had something of a flourishing since Taylor left office in 2003. You're interested fundamentally in state building in the kind of post Taylor era? What elements of state building in Liberia, do you think have actually worked? I think the number one success is being peace. And you can't take that for granted. I think we sort of do because we have, you know, the proof is in the pudding. Right? You have a peaceful society. And so we say, Oh, of course, it was always going to be like that. But it wasn't. And you know, I was there. In 2005, in the lead up to the elections as back again, in 2007. That was not inevitable. And we should never take that for granted. recurrence of war is as much the norm as anything else. There were 17 peace agreements, leading up to the one that finally succeeded the Aqua peace agreement that was signed in 2003. Right. So if you think about sticking up state building, just from the most basic level, right, the absence, let's just talk about the absence of violence, and being able to, you know, have some control over the course of elements in your society, right, being able to control your police and your military at a minimum. I mean, from in that sense, I think Liberia has succeeded. And that's just nothing to be scoffed at. I think. I mean, I am somebody who's been deeply critical of the corruption problems in Liberia and a lot of other issues in Liberia that could definitely do with some help. Right on the policy side, and but having said all of that, I think it has been a huge success. You go to the library now. And in the streets of Monrovia, things look so different from how they looked in 2005. Right, nevermind, you know, throughout the war, but even in the short time in the past, you know, 15 years, you can just see a flourishing, and it's monumental, it's monumental, but the country has changed in such a positive way over the past 20 years, that you would never be able to recognise it as the same same place at all. Mind you the countryside. The more rural parts of of Liberia still need incredible development are incredibly poor. The roads are terrible. There is no access to services people do not expect I'd like to this day, there's a long, long way to go. But I think the number one thing that has been achieved is peace and some degree of stability. People are not talking about a return to war, and fearful in the same way. And you can sort of measure that in investment, right? Are people willing to build houses. And, you know, for a period, people were not really willing to invest, because they were just worried that it would be destroyed or taken away, there's no point in doing so. And then when people feel more secure, you can see that money flowing back into the country, and you see things being built. And that's basically what you see now, in Monrovia, people would not be doing that if they didn't have faith in the future. And I think that's that's just been the most incredible success. Christine, thank you very much. That was great. Before you go, is there anything that you'd like to promote while you're here any books that you're, you're working on any any, you know, journal articles? Where can people find the stuff that you've that you've already written? So I can if people are interested in Liberia, my book is called extra legal groups and post conflict Liberia, trademarks, estate, and it's available probably on Amazon. And it's published by Oxford University Press. So you can probably get it on their website as well. And, and yeah, I mean, I write a lot on state building and on peacebuilding. And I'm word of peace transitions, and I've done other things, and I'm happy to send you some of the links if there's a place to post them. But otherwise, people can follow me on Twitter. I love commenting on politics, British politics, American politics, African politics, politics, all kinds. And I love just really getting into the depths of conflict and thinking thoroughly about what the aftermath of conflict is and could be and, and how politics plays out in these situations. So yeah, I'm happy to engage on Twitter and other forum. Thank you, Christine. Thanks, Tom. Thank you for listening to the hated in the dead. If you've enjoyed this podcast, follow it on Spotify and Apple podcasts. And for good measure. Leave us a review. You can also follow the hated in the dead on Twitter, Instagram and Facebook, so you never miss new content.