ABSTRACT
On August 4, 1997, Charles Taylor became president of Liberia. As leader of the National Patriotic Front of Liberia (NPFL), Taylor had launched a rebellion against President Samuel Doe in late 1989. Although Doe was killed in 1990 by a rival rebel leader, Taylor continued his armed efforts to seize power in Africa’s oldest republic, thwarted by other rebel groups and a Nigerian-dominated peacekeeping force from the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS; the force was called the ECOWAS Monitoring Group, or ECOMOG). Finally, a peace accord reached in late 1996 called for elections the following year.
