From 1989 to 2003, the small West African country of Liberia was devastated by civil wars in which at least 150,000 people died and entire communities were wiped out. The strife ended in 2003 in large part because of the quiet actions of a committed citizen, Silas Siakor.

What Siakor exposed, at huge personal risk, was a web of illegal activity between the Liberian government of President Charles Taylor, and multinational timber companies.

Taylor gave the companies unrestrained cutting rights in the country’s 12 million acres of forestland, and the companies paid for and imported the weapons with which Taylor fought insurgents in his own country and fomented uprisings in neighboring Sierra Leone. Both Taylor’s soldiers and the companies’ private militias ran rampant over the small, indigenous communities that lived in the forests.

Silas Siakor had founded the Save the Future Foundation to improve conditions in war-torn Liberia. He went into the forests to see firsthand what was happening. “Entire villages were being broken, decimated by the timber companies. Farmers’ cash crops were being destroyed. People were being arrested and detained illegally. There were massacres and rapes.” Siakor and his colleagues quietly began documenting the abuses. “We were in danger every minute. We had to talk our way out of roadblocks. My car would be stopped, and militias would come after us.”

In addition, he posted agents at seaports, customs offices and within the timber companies to uncover how the companies and government were falsifying export records, violating rules on logging practices, and illegally importing weapons.

In 2003, he published the information in a report called “Plunder” and turned it over to the United Nations. President Taylor threatened Siakor with death and he had to flee the country. But his report brought the whole timber-for-arms enterprise crashing down. The UN Security Council issued sanctions on Liberia, including a ban on timber exports.

Without his source of revenue and arms, President Taylor could no longer wage war on his own people, and he went into exile. He is now standing trial for war crimes. Silas Siakor is back in Liberia.

The first official act of Liberia’s new president, Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf, was to cancel all timber concessions in the country. As Siakor says, “No timber company has any claim whatsoever to an inch of Liberian territory.” Who do have a voice, for the first time, are the indigenous people of the forests. Represented by Siakor, they are working with the government to develop sustainable logging policies. And for the first time in years, neither those communities, nor Silas Siakor, are threatened with violence.

Resources:
“Risking His Life for Grass-Roots Environmentalism,” byline: Nora Boustany, The Washington Post, April 29, 2006

“Silas Martyr,” byline: Michelle Nijhuis, Grist Magazine, April 24, 2006

Silas Kpanan’Ayoung Siakor at www.goldmanprize.org/node/442

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