Cross Border Crime and Escalation of the Liberia and Sierra Leone Conflicts

Abstract

The paper assesses the role of cross border crime in escalating the Liberia and Sierra Leone conflicts. The article shows how the warlords exploited the weak state structures on the borderlands to entrench a terrorizing war economy fueled by cross border crime. The study argues that the Liberia and Sierra Leone conflict aided transnational destabilizing activities on the borderlands and vice-versa, the illicit border trade that was catalysed by the conflicts was key in dragging and broadening the conflicts across the Mano River region. The paper adopts a qualitative historical method to validate findings from library research and eyewitness accounts that show how the warlords capitalize on the small arms trade, Diamond/Drug trafficking and Mercenaryism to nourish and escalate the conflicts and contagiously debilitate the West African region.