Can Liberia Be Liberated From Its Past?

By ILENA SILVERMAN

Peter Dejong/AFP/Getty Images Charles Taylor, former president of Liberia, in April.

The recent news that The Hague has handed down a 50-year prison sentence to Charles Taylor, the former president of Liberia, brought to mind a couple of articles the magazine has published about that ravaged country. One was a moving excerpt from Helene Cooper’s memoir, “The House on Sugar Beach,” about growing up there in the 1970s and early ’80s, when the Liberian president, William Tolbert, was viciously murdered by a young rebel named Samuel Doe. Doe had the support of Taylor, who later became president himself.

Issouf Sanogo/AFP/Getty ImagesLiberia’s current president, Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, in 2011.

After Taylor’s brutal leadership, Liberians elected Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, profiled by the magazine in 2010. Sirleaf has done a lot to fight corruption in that war-town country and is respected by many in the West, but her own complicated relationship with Taylor reflects the entanglements, moral and other, so often in play in Africa.