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.

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