ULIMO-Kromah Information and Gallery

The United Movement of Liberia for Democracy (ULIMO) was originally remnants of Krahn and Mandingo ex-AFL fighters from the late Samuel Doe. ULIMO was created when an anti-NPFL faction Liberian United Defense Force (LUDF) fused with other anti-NPFL factions. ULIMO aided the Sierra Leone government against the RUF, a NPFL ally. However, ULIMO was more interested in fighting the NPFL in Liberia. Tribal tensions and leadership disputes within ULIMO caused it to split into ULIMO-Kromah (subject matter of this post) and ULIMO-Johnson factions after the leaders Alhaji Kromah and Roosevelt Johnson. The ULIMO-Kromah faction was the more effective of the two factions because it was the most well organized of the two. ULIMO-Johnson suffered from inter-factional fighting, with ULIMO-J leaders Arma Yolo and William Karyee attempted to overthrew Johnson from the leadership. This chain of events lead to the fateful 1996 Battle of Monrovia (which we will talk about later). ULIMO-J and ULIMO-K were bitter rivals, with the two constantly fighting teeth to teeth. However, both factions continued to combat the NPFL. ULIMO-K and the NPFL battled each-over directly and indirectly. ULIMO-K and the NPFL sponsored much smaller factions against each-over. The ULIMO-K supported the Bong Defense Forces against the NPFL, while the NPFL created the Lofa Defense Forces against the ULIMO-K. The discrete use of using proxy factions was because of the peace talks of an alliance between the two factions against ULIMO-J. In 1996, using an inter-factional clash among ULIMO-J as an excuse for "murder charges" against Johnson, both factions attacked Johnson's faction of ULIMO-J. The ULIMO-K/NPFL coalition was later joined by Yolo's and Karyee's faction of ULIMO-J. Johnson's ULIMO-J was joined by the Liberia Peace Council (LPC) and remnants of the AFL. The resulting battle ended in an indecisive and no-hold quarter battle that killed up to 2,000 people (I covered this battle in a previous post).

Here is a gallery of ULIMO-K fighters. Due to the reclusive nature of ULIMO-K's operations, photos of their fighters are extremely rare. My source of these photos is from my personal screenshots of James Fasukoi's work "Rape, Loot, and Murder".

ULIMO-K fighters seem to have military uniforms, unlike their counterparts in ULIMO-J. This shows that ULIMO-K fighters are much more organized then ULIMO-J

This very young fighter shows the heavy presence of Child Soldiers in all warring factions in the Liberian Civil Wars.