Two Centuries of US Military Operations in Liberia: Challenges of Resistance and Compliance

As a young intelligence officer in 2003, I deployed with the 398th Air Expeditionary Group to Freetown, Sierra Leone, in preparation for a possible noncombatant evacuation of US citizens from Liberia’s capital, Monrovia.

At the time, Liberia was in the midst of a lengthy civil war. Two separate rebel factions were bearing down on the capitol, and the country’s president, Charles Taylor, had recently been indicted for war crimes in Sierra Leone.