Liberia - The Heart of Darkness Accounts of Liberia's Civil War and Its Destabilizing Effects in West Africa Williams, Gabriel I. H.

On December 24, 1989, a group of Libyan-trained armed dissidents, which styled itself the National Patriotic Front of Liberia (NPFL), attacked Liberian territory from neighboring Ivory Coast. The band of outlaws was led by Charles Taylor, an ex-Liberia government official who escaped from prison in the United States while facing extradition to Liberia for allegedly embezzling nearly one million dollars of public funds. After he fled the U.S. Taylor returned to West Africa, from where he connected with Libya. Sustained by Libyan support, Taylor went to Liberia to spearhead his murderous brand of civil war - a civil war which would last 7 years, cost an estimated 300,000 lives, and devastate a nation intended to be a model democracy on the African continent.