Case Study on Liberia will be posted soon

Hi readers,

Work is going well and im almost done writing chapter 3, which is the case study on Liberia. I´ve already gone through Liberia´s history, the coup of Samuel Doe, who toppled and killed William Tolbert in 1980. I´ve also finished the paragraphs on Liberia´s first civil conflict between 1990 and 1997, after which Charles Taylor came to power, only to plunge Liberia into another conflict while enriching himself and financing the conflict with Timber exports and diamond trade with the RUF rebel movement of Sierra Leone.

I´ve found a lot of information on the criminal network of Taylor and how arms were purchased through international arms dealers such as Victor Bout and Gus van Kouwenhoven. As was already clearly established by several authors, the link between natural resources and the financing of conflict is very clear in the case of Liberia. Not only did the resource exports provide Taylor with the necessary funds, some of his business partners were directly involved in the delivery of weapons to Liberia and Sierra Leone.

Right now im finishing the chapter by looking at the most important sanctions imposed on Liberia, which were above all the commodity sanctions, financial sanctions, and travel sanctions imposed in UNSC resolution 1343 in 2001. For the first time, the UN took the diamonds-conflict connection serious and imposed an embargo on all rough diamonds exported from Liberia. Sanctions on Timber would take two years more to be imposed, as a result of the blocking of timber sanctions by two security council members and big timber importers, China and France.

It furthermore seems that the implementation of individual sanctions such as the freezing of assets and travel restrictions on members of the Taylor regime had a positive effect on ending the conflict. The use of panels of experts to monitor and investigate the busting of sanctions seems to have been quite effective. Since the first expert panel was installed in Liberia in 2001 (together with UNSCR 1343), many valuable information has been found about the network of Charles Taylor. The naming and shaming of individuals and the punishment of those that busted sanctions has been important in depriving the fighting parties in Liberia from their incomes.

As soon as the chapter is finished, I will place it online for comments. In any way, do not cite the article, as it is not a final version of the thesis.