ABSTRACT
It took 20 years for peace operations to finally succeed in Liberia. These peace missions occurred from 1990 until 2009, overlapping and continuing after the crises in Somalia, Bosnia and Rwanda. The lessons from these parallel operations can thus be suspected to have influenced the operations in Liberia from both the intervener and the peacekept perspectives. The Liberia missions occurred in a similar setting to Somalia (a failed state), yet they involve a regional aspect, absent in the previous case, and they span a much longer time. The Liberian belligerents were embedded in a politically unstable regional environment, with conflicts also afflicting the neighbouring states of Sierra Leone, Côte d’Ivoire and Guinea. The Liberian factions also benefited from regional support that was mostly due to shared ethnic ties with warring groups in neighbouring countries. Liberia https://s3-euw1-ap-pe-df-pch-content-public-p.s3.eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/9781315637631/0dfd750b-31b3-40f5-9e68-14ffce6d9f0c/content/fig3_1_C.jpg" xmlns:xlink="https://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"/> Source: Liberia, Map No. 3775 Rev. 9, United Nations, September 2014. Reproduced with permission.
