Tears for Liberia
"Madness in Monrovia" by James F. Joyce, in Commonweal (June I, 1996), 15 Dutch St., New York, N.Y. 10038.
"Madness in Monrovia" by James F. Joyce, in Commonweal (June I, 1996), 15 Dutch St., New York, N.Y. 10038.
Hailed for more than a century as Africa's only democracy, Liberia now is in the grip of a seemingly interminable civil war. Since 1990, some 150,000 lives have been lost in a land of only 2.5 million. The historical roots of the conflict lie in the country's flawed practice of democracy, argues Joyce, a Jesuit who has worked in the capital of Monrovia and with Liberian refugees in Guinea and Ivory Coast.