May's Mostly Warfare Blog : Identifying Fighters in the Battle of Monrovia

In the 1st Liberian Civil War, identifying fighters from faction to faction is an extremely difficult task, even for the fighters themselves. One ULIMO-J fighter when fighting the NPFL mentioned that "We are supposed to be fighting the NPFL, but in battle things go differently". Here are several photos of fighters from the 1996 Battle of Monrovia between the ULIMO-J and the NPFL. As you can see from these photos, identifying fighters from each specific faction is an almost impossible task. I will identify each fighter's faction if their faction if their faction is known. If not I will simply put "Unknown". What occurred in this battle is that ULIMO-J suffered inter-factional fighting due to some leadership dispute with high ranking members tried to remove Roosevelt Johnson as the leader of ULIMO-J. This gave Johnson's enemies in ULIMO-K and NPFL a convenient excuse to theoretically arrest Johnson (most likely in reality an attempt to assassinate him) for murder charges. What is likely is that the ones that sources identify that faction is when the fighters actually identify themselves to the photographers. The ones left unidentified are just taken photographed running around and shooting are left unknown to the photographers. This photos show the complexities of modern non-state conflict when combatants of both sides are virtually identical. If some of my readers wonder why some of those fighters are naked, here is the reason. Nudity among fighters (especially ULIMO-J fighters under "General Butt Naked") is motivated by the fact that many of these fighters are tribal and they believe that fighting naked into battle will magically protect them from bullets (along with cross-dressing, it is not unusual for combatants to literally wear wedding dresses in battle).

ULIMO-J

NPFL

ULIMO-J

NPFL

ULIMO-J

Presumably ULIMO-J. The purple mark is a decapitated corpse of a NPFL fighter. I censored it because it was too graphic. The man with the saw presumably used it to behead the corpse.