West Africa project

10/02/2007

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The West African regional war that began in December, 1989 in Liberia migrated to Sierra Leone, back to Liberia after an initial (1997) disarmament process and elections, and into Guinea in 2000-2001. In September, 2002, war broke out in Cte d'Ivoire, and combatants from the Sierra Leonean and Liberian wars soon became involved in fighting there. While the war in Sierra Leone officially ended in January 2002 and Liberia's war ended with Charles Taylor's 2003 flight into exile in Nigeria, the peace in both countries remains exceptionally fragile.

United Nations forces will draw down to about 3,500 in Sierra Leone in December 2004, at just the time that the Liberian disarmament process is ending and the country begins welcoming thousands of returning refugees. While both countries cling to their precarious peacemaking processes, Cte d'Ivoire remains the most worrying situation in the subregion, with its current situation of neither peace nor war benefiting a small number of Ivorians at the expense of ordinary citizens.

The situation in Guinea remains alarming, with large numbers of ex-combatants from the Liberian war living in Guinea's forest region, and both economic interests and interethnic tensions spilling across several borders. Having published a series of reports on Sierra Leone from 1996 onwards, Crisis Group established a field office in Freetown in July 2001. Crisis Group published its first report on Liberia in April 2002, followed by initial reports on Cte d'Ivoire and Guinea in 2003. The regional office is now located in Dakar, Senegal.