Building Better Armies: in Insider's Account of Liberia

Publisher Marketing: Recent events in Mali, Libya, Syria, Afghanistan, Iraq, and elsewhere demonstrate that building professional indigenous forces is imperative to regional stability, yet few success stories exist. Liberia is a qualified "success," and this case study explores how it was achieved. It was written by one of the architects of the program in Liberia, and is targeted specifically for the practitioner. Liberia suffered a 14-year civil war replete with human rights atrocities that killed 250,000 people and displaced a third of its population. Following President Charles Taylor's exile in 2003, the United States contracted DynCorp International to demobilize and rebuild the Armed Forces of Liberia and its Ministry of Defence, the first time in 150 years that one sovereign nation hired a private company to raise and develop another sovereign nation's military. This book explores the theory and practice behind the successful disarmament, demobilization, and reintegration (DDR) of the legacy military and the security sector reform (SSR) that built the new one. Lastly, it considers some of the benefits and difficulties of contracting out the making of militaries. This is significant since the private sector will probably participate increasingly in security sector reform. The book concludes with concrete recommendations that should inform DDR and SSR planning and execution. It is written by a practitioner for practitioners.