Vice magazine correspondent tours Liberia, aka Hell on Earth

It's a common adage to refer to a place as hell on earth, but Liberia is pretty close to it.

In a 30-minute online documentary, Shane Smith, a correspondent for VBS TV, Vice magazine's online TV station, goes on a tour of Liberia, a West African country which is trying to recover from years of civil war.

Liberia was founded by freed American slaves. Unfortunately, America's experiment in African democracy turned into a disaster, as the freed slaves promptly enslaved the local Africans, and ran a plantation system based on the American South. In 1980, Samuel Doe, a sergeant in the Liberian Army, led a bloody coup, and became the first descendant of native Africans to rule Liberia.

However Doe's regime was marked by corruption and brutality and soon descended into civil war, with American-educated warlords attempting to seize power. The civil war lasted for most of the 1990s, and law and order broke down, until the country looked like a post apocalyptic-Mad Max style movie. Gangs of armed children roved the streets. The gangs were led by brutal war lords who often drugged their young soldiers before battle.

The armies were very irregular which often created bizaare scenes. Some soldiers went into battle wearing wigs and lipstick, others went into battle naked, believing local black magic would protect them.

Local war lords adopted names such as General Bin Laden, General Rambo and General Butt Naked (he led his troops into battle in the buff). One group called themselves Tupac's Army, because they all wore Tupac t-shirts. (There was an army named after Biggie too.)

The war descended into the worst war crimes you can think of, rape, mass murder, cannibalism, mutilation, you name it. Many of the war lords traded diamonds for drugs and weapons. So now a country that was ripped apart by wars is also flooded with drugs and guns.

Smith follows General Butt Naked, who has now renounced violence and reverted to his given name Joshua Blahyi. Although he has admitted that he was responsible for 20,000 deaths, Blahyi has reinvented himself as an evangelical preacher. Let me warn you about this documentary, it shows some pretty graphic material and you need a strong stomach to sit through it, but it's still worth watching.

In 2005 Harvard-educated Ellen Sirleaf Johnson was elected president. However it has a long way to go in trying to reintegrate thousands of child soldiers back into society. In the words of General Butt Naked, once violence has gotten into a child, it's hard for him to ever go back to normal.
http://www.vbs.tv/watch/the-vice-guide-to-travel/the-vice-guide-to-liberia