MLDL's_Impact_on_Liberia's_Security.docx

Rural Areas of Liberia Remain Conducive to Regional Threats to Security and U.S. National Interests: The remote, mountainous, and heavily-forested areas of rural Liberia are hard to access, have a limited formal security presence, and have repeatedly proven to be ground zero for breakdowns in regional security. MLDL has successfully strengthened local Liberian security institutions, facilitated working partnerships with the Economic Community of West Africa States (ECOWAS), and is poised to cultivate partnerships with counterparts in Sierra Leone, Guinea, and Côte d'Ivoire to better coordinate combatting transnational crime and other threats to stability in the region.

Examples of past threats originating in the rural areas of Liberia include:

1) The First Liberian Civil War (1989-1997) started in rural Nimba County when Libyan-backed rebels entered Liberia from Côte d'Ivoire. The ensuing war killed over 200,000, shuttered the US company Firestone’s rubber plantation, destabilized neighbors, and required foreign troops (partially US-funded) to bring an end to the conflict.

2) The Second Liberian Civil War (1999-2003) ignited in rural Lofa County by Guinea-backed Liberian rebels. Four years and 150,000-300,000 deaths later, the war required the creation of the largely U.S.-funded UN Mission in Liberia (UNMIL), deployment of over 200 U.S. military troops, and UNMIL civilian police to stop the fighting and maintain peace.

3) The 2014 Ebola crisis entered Liberia through Lofa and Nimba counties and rapidly grew to a global health crisis that ultimately required international intervention including deployment of nearly 2,500 U.S. military personnel and over $2B in funding to halt.

Liberia’s remote and largely unregulated international borders with Sierra Leone, Guinea, and Cote d’Ivoire enable trafficking in drugs, people, and weapons. Beginning in 2002, UNMIL provided a limited stabilizing security presence; however, the mission closed and ceased all operations on March 30, 2018.

Liberia’s formal security services, including the Liberia National Police (LNP), Liberia Drug Enforcement Agency (LDEA), and Liberia Immigration Service (LIS) are largely understaffed and greatly under-resourced. As a result, they have limited visibility into security threats within their areas of operations, do not have robust mechanisms for interagency coordination, and have limited potential to provide security. These shortcomings are highly relevant to US national security because they allow small security threats to grow into dangerous regional or international crises.

How MLDL Strengthens Liberia: MLDL increases security in rural Liberia in two primary ways (see Figure 1). Figure 1: MLDL identifies security threats, facilitates interagency response, and engages community organizations to serve as security service force multipliers in rural Liberia.

First, MLDL helped Liberia establish and maintain an Early Warning Early Response (EW/ER) system to identify security threats soon after they first arise, rapidly making Liberian security actors aware of security threats, and helping them to prioritize which ones to address. MLDL also supports interagency cooperation that facilitates prioritization of joint efforts and efficient use of limited human and material resources to respond to threats. Embassy Monrovia is able to maintain a detailed and realistic picture of the security situation in Liberia’s interior through MLDL’s interior presence and networks.

Second, MLDL-supported citizens, community groups, and non-security sector government organizations have become cooperative and effective partners for formal security actors. For example, MLDL’s community policing and dispute mediation techniques have helped local groups resolve conflicts that otherwise would have been the responsibility of the LNP and/or other understaffed and poorly resourced law enforcement organizations. This frees up security and government resources to focus on issues that cannot be resolved at the community-level.

Without MLDL, Liberian security services would have less knowledge of issues festering outside Monrovia, stretching their resources even further, increasing the potential that smaller security threats would grow to a level that would affect US regional and national security interests. The following three sections demonstrate how MLDL support strengthens the Liberian criminal justice sector, disrupts transnational crime activities, and promotes regional stability and partnership.

Strengthening the Criminal Justice Sector: A major focus for MLDL is to strengthen the structure of law enforcement services and to professionalize their services. MLDL efforts have included training over 750 law enforcement officers in forensics, crime scene management, reporting, human rights, and anti-corruption. MLDL-supported community structures have addressed over 100 cases involving government corruption, and in response to citizen concerns, resulted in increased LNP patrols at night in critical areas and establishment of a new police station to provide better public security. Additionally, MLDL has provided materiel support such as computers, motorbikes, and crime scene investigation kits to law enforcement organizations to better enable them to provide public security.

MLDL efforts have strengthened the interagency cooperation within the Liberian criminal justice system as it supports monthly coordination and status update meetings for over 240 security personnel from 11 Liberian security and regular government organizations (MIA, MOJ, MOD, MOS, NSA, LNP, LDEA, LIS, LMA, INCHR, LRRC) across 14 districts. The agencies use these meetings to coordinate how they will address security issues, and report on their progress addressing issues of mutual interest, which in turn increases the effectiveness, accountability, and efficiency of the justice system. To date, MLDL has facilitated more than 250 instances of such interagency cooperation, and created a direct link for more than 1.2M citizens from over 600 rural communities (see figure 1 for the geographic distribution of the communities) to Liberian security services, strengthening the justice system’s accountability and in hard-to-reach, high-risk areas.

Disrupting Transnational Crime: Transnational crime is a significant focus of MLDL activity and was a primary reason why MLDL was established in border counties. MLDL has helped local security actors address 41 cross-border trafficking cases, including 10 human trafficking cases, and more than 10 cases of trafficking in small arms. In 2016, MLDL supported counties helped address more human trafficking cases than all other counties in Liberia. MLDL members have helped investigations that led to the removal of LIS border guards accepting bribes, and successfully advocated for relocation of two border security checkpoints in Ganta and Gbarnga. MLDL has addressed over 10 small arms international trafficking cases. Furthermore, MLDL assisted Nimba and Lofa county governments to receive authorization from the Liberia Ministry of Internal Affairs to register firearms and reduce cross-border trade. Additionally, in 2017, an MLDL-supported citizen group provided information that enabled successful raids by the LDEA and LNP on criminal hideouts and resulted in the seizure of cocaine, heroin, marijuana, and the arrest of 29 individuals. In that same year, 35% of all heroin seizures in Liberia were facilitated by MLDL-supported security organizations.

MLDL also plays an important role in monitoring and securing Liberia’s borders. For instance, in April 2016, MLDL-supported mechanisms detected an incident of Guinean security forces firing on Liberians over the border as part of a fishing dispute. The MLDL supported District Security Council in Foya District rapidly notified the County Security Council and the LIS, prompting the rapid deployment of a diplomatic delegation to diffuse the situation. Without the MLDL-supported EW/ER infrastructure, the incident likely would have dragged on for weeks before the appropriate level of government intervention manifested, during which time the issue could have grown in severity as has happened elsewhere in Liberia. Since 2015, MLDL has helped address more than 100 transnational issues.

Establishing and Maintaining Partnerships: MLDL excels at establishing and maintaining two types of security sector partnerships. The first type is one that connects Community Watch Forums with district, county and national level security organizations. These “vertical” partnerships enable rapid elevation of security issues to appropriate decision makers that in turn enables faster resolution with appropriate levels of force, and greater effectiveness of Liberia’s justice sector despite limited resources. MLDL maintains more than 30 such vertical partnerships, in addition to over 600 partnerships with communities. This is a replicable model for governments in West Africa that face a similar inability to deploy security forces in hard-to-reach places. The second type is a “lateral” partnership that facilitates inter-agency and group-to-group collaboration as described previously. To date, MLDL has established more than 200 such lateral partnerships that have led to resolution of security threats on a local level. MLDL has benefitted from working partnerships with ECOWAS, UNMIL, and the Carter Center. Great potential exists for MLDL to facilitate Liberian partnerships with counterparts in Sierra Leone, Guinea, and Côte d'Ivoire to better combat regional transnational crime.

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