NATIONAL PATRIOTIC FRONT OF LIBERIA
The National Patriotic Front of Liberia (NPFL) was a rebel group that initiated and participated in the First Liberian Civil War from 1989 to 1996.
The military aspects of NPFL were led by Charles Taylor, a former government official who was being sought for trial on charges of corruption, the NPFL took up arms against the regime of Samuel Doe on 24 December 1989. Most NPFL fighters were originally drawn from the Gio and Mano ethnic groups of northern Liberia who were persecuted under Doe's regime.
The military aspects of NPFL were led by Charles Taylor, a former government official who was being sought for trial on charges of corruption, the NPFL took up arms against the regime of Samuel Doe on 24 December 1989. Most NPFL fighters were originally drawn from the Gio and Mano ethnic groups of northern Liberia who were persecuted under Doe's regime. Ellen Johnson Sirleaf served as International Coordinator of the NPFL. Taylor and Tom Woewiyu were also in leadership positions.
In late 1992, the NPFL launched "Operation Octopus" which was repulsed by combined ECOMOG, Armed Forces of Liberia and United Liberation Movement of Liberia for Democracy forces. Another NPFL breakaway group, the National Patriotic Front of Liberia-Central Revolutionary Council, emerged in mid-1994. Prominent figures in the faction were Sam Dokie and Tom Woewiyu, a defense chief in Taylor's alternative government. Both men cited strategic and ideological differences as the cause of their defectictions.
The NPFL was estimated to have around 25,000 combatants and has orchestrated a wide range of human rights abuses including massacres, torture, kidnapping and a number of political assassinations. In addition to the war in Liberia, the rebel group sponsored Revolutionary United Front subversion against the military government in Sierra Leone, partly as a strategy to gain control of the local trade in diamonds.
In preparation for upcoming elections that would take place in 1997, the NPFL reorganized itself into a civilian political party known as the National Patriotic Party. Charles Taylor and the NPP won the 19 July 1997 election with a substantial majority. While international observers deemed the polls administratively free and transparent, they noted that it had taken place in an atmosphere of intimidation because most voters believed that Taylor would resume the war if defeated. |
