By 1996, Liberia’s civil war had already survived numerous peace agreements. In a final attempt to end the fighting, the country’s main warlords were brought together into a shared transitional government. The hope was simple: hold the peace long enough to organise democratic elections. Instead, the experiment collapsed. In this episode, Ged Naughton and Dr Aaron Weah examine the events that led to the Battle for Monrovia in April 1996—one of the most destructive episodes of Liberia’s first civil war. They explore why the power-sharing arrangement failed, how old rivalries quickly resurfaced, and why the fighting became known for “Operation Pay Yourself”, as thousands of fighters looted a city already exhausted by years of conflict. Drawing on Aaron’s own research in Impunity Under Attack, they reconstruct the chain of events that turned political tension into open warfare and consider what the battle revealed about Liberia’s fractured politics. They also discuss the role of the transitional government, the appointment of Ruth Perry, and why many historians now see the exclusion of women from earlier peace negotiations as a major missed opportunity. In this episode * Why the Council of State was created—and why it failed. * How a single incident triggered the Battle for Monrovia. * “Operation Pay Yourself” and the looting of the capital. * The role of Charles Taylor, Roosevelt Johnson and the rival factions. * Why Ruth Perry’s appointment marked an important turning point. * Lessons from Liberia’s final failed attempt to negotiate peace between warlords. Transcript Intro Over the last few episodes, we took a side road that led us away from the front lines of Liberia’s civil war to something just as important: how do ordinary people carry on living during such times. We followed Aaron’s own journey through music, friendship and survival. Now we return to the highway. By 1996, Liberia’s latest attempt at peace had brought the country’s rival warlords into a shared government. It was an extraordinary experiment—but one that would end in catastrophe. This is the Battle for Monrovia. 00:00:00 Aaron So I would say the impasses—uh, war—was not, not so different from previous episodes of violence in Liberia, but this was just yet another peace agreement that had failed. It’s a seeder in bringing together—in an arrangement—something that appeared like a collective co-presidency that had Charles Taylor, George Boley, Alhaji Kromah, and other warlords together in an arrangement that was meant to carry Liberia through a certain patch of stability and then transition through elections. 00:00:43 Aaron But then that arrangement collapsed, and it happened so much so that, for the first time since the war started, there were so many warm factions that were initially located in different parts of the country. But because of the collective arrangement—and this was really what made the April 6 War perhaps one of the most destructive in Liberia—because much of the war factions had converged on the city center. In fact, we’re all living there because they now had the head, the different head of the warm factions were now giving power through power-sharing arrangement, and so they were there. 00:01:22 Aaron And because the agreement failed and Liberia went to conflict, and so you have all of these soldiers who were milling around in town, so in this collapse of yet another peace agreement, an opportunity to loot, and an opportunity to—to—to seek a revenge, you know, on so many different levels. And so part of the TRC report finding was that revenge killings in the Liberian conflict—so people who had personal ice to grind with each other—used that occasion to go at different people. And there were still, even though it was 6 years into the conflict, but there was still killing on based on tribal grounds, based on ethnic grounds, those who were of certain ethnic—perceived to be of some rival ethnic group, you were hounded and you were killed. And there was much looting. There were—the UN was there, there were vehicles, and I mean, it was—it was—it was a very violent, violent episode. 00:02:30 Aaron And Stephen Ellis and other Liberian—and other Liberian academia refer to this period as the Battle for Monrovia, you know, where Monrovia became that single space that, in a way, had not been captured. It was occupied briefly before in 1990, but then because of Ecomog, because of the AFL, rebel forces who converged on the capitals were quickly—were quickly repelled. I mean, they were driven out. But April 6 became an occasion where every other warm factions who had previously been confined to the rural parts of Liberia were now physically present in Liberia. And because historically Monrovia has always been Liberia, it was a big deal. 00:03:14 Aaron People wanted to go to some of these plush places, break it down, take out the loot, and pay themselves. And paying yourself was an important phenomenon in the Iprasis War because many of the fighters took on arms for different reasons. They were not being paid. Occasionally, maybe they and their commanders went out on a particular operation and they got some spoils. They got some spoils from whatsoever the operation was. But April 6 War represented the rare opportunity for Monrovia to be torn apart and people could make a way with whatever they had. 00:03:51 Aaron I mean, that was really the sad part of the conflict. And you can’t—you can’t miss an opportunity to act, based on a close assessment of the April 6, to say, “What was the Liberian Civil War really about?” If fighters, senior official military officials, saw in Monrovia an opportunity to—an op—and that’s a part of April 6 that is referred to as Operations Pay Yourself. Operation Pay—yeah, Pay Yourself. 00:05:47 Ged Before we continue, I asked Erin to go back to something he wrote more than 15 years ago. This is his account, and the account of the book Impunity Under Attack, of how the Battle for Monrovia unfolded. 00:06:01 Aaron “One Ulimo-J forces in Kakata heard that Johnson’s home had been searched by Ecomog. Some of the forces, largely loyal to Johnson, saw it as an humiliation of the leader. In protest, they went wild in the city, which lies some 45 km from Monrovia, placing roadblocks along the Kakata Highway, the main route connecting Monrovia to the interior of Liberia, including the NPFL stronghold of Gbarnga. Taylor had found his opportunity. On March—on 8 March 1996, NPFL forces launched a massive attack on Ulimo-J positions in Kakata, Bong Mines, and Todee, with the stated aim of keeping the Kakata Highway open. There is strong suggestion that Charles Tiller brought over some high-ranking Ulimo-J officers in Kakata, who were not loyal to Johnson, and induced them to surrender territory to the NPFL forces. With the acquiescence of these officers, NPFL began a move—NPFL began to move their men and heavy guns into positions previously controlled by Ulimo-J forces, easily routing those who resisted. 00:07:15 Aaron At the same time, Ulimo-K forces were launching renewed attacks against Tubmanburg and other places in Bomi and lower Liberia, now in Gbarpolu County, which were under the control of Ulimo-J. But these attacks did not lead to significant shifts in the territorial control. All these attacks provoked strong protests from Roosevelt Johnson and his loyalists, but probably because of the poor standing with Ecomog, the peacekeepers practically ignored his position. In the midst of all this, elements of K5, a Ulimo-J unit commanded by Ama Yulo went around the vicinity of Roosevelt Johnson Beach House residence in the Sinkor district of Monrovia during the night of the 19th to 20th of March 1996. It is not clear why the fighters wandered around Johnson’s house, but in the altercation that ensued between them and Johnson loyalists, one of the K5 men was killed, identified later as Due Bowo. He was found dead the next morning, a few blocks up the road from Johnson’s house. Charles Taylor seized the moment, invoking this authority as a member of the presidency, and enlisting the support of the Ulimo-K’s Alhaji Kromah, who had his own axe to grind with Roosevelt Johnson. 00:08:40 Aaron Taylor urged on the police to arrest Johnson on murder charges. Incidentally, the director of police, Joe Tate, was an NPFL appointee and cousin to Charles Taylor, and lived on the same block with Johnson. Under the guise of providing protection to Joe Tate’s home, schools of NPFL militiamen now recycled as police special forces began to deploy in the vicinity of Johnson’s home, practically setting up a command post in advance of their move to arrest the Ulimo-J leader. Seeing the situation their leader was in, Ulimo-J fighters began a rapid mobilization at his home to prevent his arrest. The stage was now set for a showdown. Around this time, George Boley, LPC leader and member of the presidency, boarded a plane at the Spruce Fin Airfield in Monrovia on his way out of the country. Before the plane could take off, Charles Taylor arrived at the airfield at the head of a train of heavily armed followers. 00:09:45 Aaron He ordered the plane not to take off until he had inspected the occupants. Incensed by this, LPC fighters, who had gone to escort Boley, surrounded the entrance of the plane. Guns at the ready, and they fired anybody to go on board. Boley himself intervened to end a standoff by ordering his men to allow Taylor to board the plane. Taylor went on the plane, took a closer look around, and disembarked. He left—he left when the plane took off shortly afterward, but some of his men stayed at the airfield. As Boley’s LPC escorts were leaving the airfield, they entered into a row with Taylor’s men, who had stayed behind. 00:10:32 Aaron Within moments, heavy gunfire erupted. The brief firefight that ensued since the violence i
