Land Reforms and Post-Confl ict Peacebuilding in Liberia

Abstract

Land confl icts have been enduing features of the political economy of Liberia since the repatriation project that brought manumitted blacks from the United States beginning in the early 1820s. 1 Although these confl icts did not constitute part of the root causes of the two civil wars of 1989-1997 and 1999-2003, they helped fuel them in two signifi cant ways. The suzerainty of the Liberian state over communal lands in the rural areas resulted in the disempowerment, impoverishment and alienation of peasants, especially the youth. Having virtually no stake in the country’s peripheral capitalist formation and its associated privileging of the ruling class (the local wing consists of state managers and relatively well-off local business people, and the external wing comprises the owners of metropolitan-based multinational corporations such as Firestone and other businesses), the rural dwellers served as an available pool of recruits for the Charles Taylor-led National Patriotic Front of Liberia (NPFL), the rebel militia that initiated the fi rst Liberian civil war. 2In addition, the two civil wars exacerbated the confl icts over land by, among other things, causing the loss and destruction of land records and by fueling various contestations between the owners, who fl ed their land for safety, and the squatters. These and several other land issues have come to the fore, as the country undertakes the Herculean task of post-confl ict peacebuilding. Clearly, the land issues (both pre-and postwar) have critical implications for the establishment of durable peace in the country. Thomas Reuters puts the case this way: ‘Land tenure is a critical issue in post-confl ict Liberia. Experts widely recognize it as a potential catalyst for further violence and civil upheaval. In a 2008 report, the Liberia Truth and Reconciliation Commission called the land disputes a threat to national security.’ 3 Similarly, even President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf has noted that. . . the issue of land reform, if not swiftly redressed by the government and its international partners, could crop up into another war in the country . . . land reform is needed now to contain futuretroubles . . . land disputes are a major hurdle in the way of attaining genuine peace in the country. 4Against this background, the purpose of this chapter is to interrogate major ways in which the undertaking of land reform can contribute to postconfl ict peacebuilding in Liberia, especially the establishment of long-term stability and durable peace. In order to examine the central research problem, the chapter is divided into four major parts. Part one historicizes the land problematique in Liberia. The ostensible purpose is to provide the historical context in which the various problems have developed and continued. The second section examines some of the major dimensions of the land problematique in Liberia. The third part suggests some land reform actions and their implications for post-confl ict peacebuilding in the country. The fi nal section draws some major conclusions.