However, to satisfy my curiosity, I asked him why he believes the “charges were fabricated?” He responded that “Julu and Dorbor were arrested and charged because they are country people." He continued. "Since this lady became president, her administration, acting as agent for the Americo-Liberians, has not missed any opportunity to arrest and jail country people because of what happened to them in 1980. They are determined to take over Liberia again and return it to their old good days. They do not like to see country people do well.  They did not rest until they got Doe out.  But we will take over that country, all we need is to support every country person in the government no matter what,” he concluded.  

Since the conversation, I have been left wondering two questions:  Can Americo-Liberians successfully regain control of Liberia as they did before 1980?  Should indigenous Liberians support indigenous politicians blindly?  

     
Mr. Simpson’s assessment and conclusion, undoubtedly, were prompted by the recognition that the fortresses constructed by the Americo-Liberians to protect them against any challenge to their rule do not exist any longer and can never be constructed again.  The army, used by the ruling class to suppress and control political dissent, can never be counted on to play the same role again after the 1980 coup.  There is now parity in education between the Americo-Liberians and their indigenous Liberian counterparts, the lack of which was expediently paraded in the past as legitimate reason to exclude the latter from participation in government and business.  There is the dissolution of the Americo-Liberians’ social networks of family linkage and elite solidarity that were indispensable for their preservation and concentration of political power among themselves.  Marriage of an Americo-Liberian to an indigenous Liberian, once a sacrilegious act, is now an act of commonplace today.  The result of all of this is reflected today in the different backgrounds of people who constitute every branch of the Liberian government, especially in parliament.       

But who are these indigenous people who must be supported with blind loyalty?  Do they genuinely care for the improvement of lives in the villages where they were born once they become government officials in Monrovia?  Who do they choose as friends and why, once they become government officials?  Do they care for the fortunes of other indigenous people side by side with their own?  The answers to these questions lie in the stories of three prominent indigenous Liberians.   

Mr. Doe, by his actions, demonstrated that indigenous political solidarity was irrelevant because it was not as significant as a friendship determined by shared elite, political, and personal financial interests.  Driven by this conviction, Doe’s first instinct was to summarily execute Gen. Thomas Weh-Syen and four other fellow indigenous military colleagues who gambled their lives in the successful planning and execution of the coup that put him in the position from where he ordered their execution. Then he proceeded to purge the national army and pack it with his own fellow tribesmen, the Krahn, to the extent that they became known as “Doe‘s Krahn soldiers.”  Emulating  characteristics of the Americo-Liberians, Doe set up his own ethnic hierarchy dominated by his Tuzon clan, and appointed its members to significant government positions for which many were not qualified.  Later on, he ruthlessly jettisoned the other remaining indigenous but non-Krahn members of the ruling military council. 

 The promulgation of this policy, according to sources, was contrived to benefit Doe and Shaw financially through the activities of Shaw‘s company, the Liberia National Petroleum Company (LNPC).  In 1990, as the civil war left Liberia without a government, and people were dying helplessly in the streets from hunger and bullets, Shaw, unscrupulous and without a modicum of rectitude, sued the Liberian government for $27m he asserted the country owed him for oil importing services that LNPC provided.  The calculation of this unscrupulous genius was that since there was no central government to represent Liberia in court, the court was legally bound to rule in his favor by default.  As a result of Shaw‘s lawsuit, the Liberian presidential aircraft was ordered grounded by the courts in London, where it had taken Nancy Doe, Doe’s wife into exile.  Mr. Givens was appointed ambassador to England but functioned primarily as Doe‘s real estate and financial agent in London. 
  
Mr. Doe’s arrogant disregard for the feelings and concerns of other indigenous groups did not stop with the mindless execution of his People Redemption Council (PRC) military colleagues.  Mr. Doe’s wrath, as demonstrated by his actions, was undoubtedly reserved for prominent indigenous politicians.  In 1985, after the general elections, Doe arrested Tuan Wreh and some members of the opposition Liberia Action Party (LAP) for questioning the fairness of the presidential election in which Doe was declared the winner.  Tuan Wreh was taken to the Executive Mansion and shown on national television with conspicuous physical evidence of torture.  As the country watched on national television, Tuan Wreh was made to knee before Doe and excoriated.  In a manner of a father, Doe, an irascible fellow, verbally insulted and lampooned Tuan Wreh repeatedly, reducing him to a pathetic figure that he begged Doe to forgive him because he (Tuan Wreh) was just “a poor country boy.” 

 This humiliation left Tuan Wreh, a proud Kru man, physically and psychologically broken until his death shortly afterward.  The painful irony about Doe’s humiliating treatment of Tuan Wreh was that another Liberian president, William Tubman, an Americo-Liberian, subjected Tuan Wreh to the same humiliation in the 1950s.  Tuan Wreh’s crime, then, was that in his writings as a young journalist, he delved into and criticized how the Americo-Liberian ruling elite treated their indigenous counterparts in the country‘s national life.

The same scene was repeated in 1985.  After his incompetent efforts to unseat Doe failed, Thomas Quiwonkpa was “killed” by a group of Khran soldiers led by “Field Marshal” George Boley.  As Boley, excited and waving a submachine gun in hand, boasted to television cameras of his military genius in capturing and killing Quiwonkpa and how it saved Liberia from the abyss, his soldiers triumphantly kicked and spat on the lifeless body of Quiwonkpa while dragging it around.  How the treatment of the remains of Jeboh and Quiwonkpa, in such barbaric manners, would have offended the pride of their people and created tribal animosity did not matter.  

 In 1980, few weeks before the coup, he led a group of traditional chiefs to the Executive Mansion and pledged his loyalty to President Tolbert following the arrest of the leadership of the United People’s Party of Gabriel Mathews.  Dr. Kesselly assured the president that “you are not alone, if there is anyone you can count on as a loyal friend and supporter, it is me.”  However, after the coup, Kesselly was arrested and put on trial before the military tribunal trying officials of the deposed Tolbert administration.  Faced with the reality that he had lost the protection and benefits of the political elite club, he told members of the tribunal that “they only had me in the government because I was a country man.  They made all the decisions.” Admittedly, Kesselly was aware that his appointment in government was a political game of tokenism by the Americo-Liberian ruling elite.  But the elite protection and benefits he enjoyed from his government positions were too good to abandon via protest resignation from government.      

The murder of these men by their own kinsmen underscores the fact that indigenous people are their own worst enemies deadly potent to certain extent, perhaps, than the Americo-Liberians are to them.  For the record, Jackson Doe, as a young man, was a ward of Louis Arthur Grimes, a former chief justice of Liberia and father of J. Rudolph Grimes, a former secretary of state and Antoinette Brown-Sherman, a former president of the University of Liberia, whose husband, George Flama Sherman, was replaced by Doe as minister of education.            
 
Yes, the history of how the tribal people were treated is an emotional issue as reflected in my friend’s position.  Therefore, we have been unable to assess and recognize that it has not inspired the need for unity among the indigenous people as they deeply remain suspicious of each other as illustrated by the scramble for power and control in the PRC, influenced  by tribal interests from outside.  Also, it has made it difficult, if not impossible, for us to see that it is being used by some members of the indigenous intelligentsia as a convenient avenue to government positions to benefit them and their immediate families and friends.  

These people have shown that shared political and business interests, as well as absolute personal elite interests, not ethnic backgrounds and interests, that determine what they care for.  It is only after they are threatened with ostracism or ostracized from the political and business elite club and denied access to the continued enjoyment of its benefits, provided by their privileged positions in government, that they invoke ethnic identity as demonstrated by Edward Kesselly and Jackson Doe.

 It is only after he lost the protection of the presidency, abandoned by sycophantic friends, and came face to face with his own death, which was about to occur via castration at the hands of Gio and Mano armed insurgents, that Doe begged them to recognize that “we are all one people.”  How late, very, very late was it for him to have come to this realization.  Indigenous political support for indigenous politicians should not be automatic because of the person's last name.  Rather, it should be conditional on what they have done for their people before getting into trouble.