Liberia - Alhaji Kromah, Roosevelt Johnson and the United Liberation Movement of Liberia for Democracy (ULIMO)

Warlord Kromah leads one wing of the ethnically divided United Liberation Movement (ULIMO), and was a member of the six-member collective presidency called the Interim Council of State. His boys are at relative peace with the other two main factions-the Liberian Peace Council and the NPFL-and control the western portion of the country. The ULIMO-J faction, led by Chief of Staff Roosevelt Johnson, likes to war with the ULIMO Mandingoes when things get slow. Johnson usually wins. But Johnson can't see the forest for the trees and is now content to trade lead with ECOMOG and the forces of Charles Taylor over a diamond mining concession dispute. He certainly wasn't happy with his former cabinet post of minister of rural development. To show his countrymen and the world how seriously he took his job, he kept his hacker bush boys fed by hijacking food aid convoys moving through his territory on their way to the thousands of displaced Liberians and refugees from Sierra Leone's smoldering civil war in the north. He was seemingly out of the peace process and the inner circle of Liberian political power until Taylor tried to have him arrested in April 1996. The fighting lasted two weeks between the rival factions, and Johnson negotiated directly with the U.S. government for a cease-fire.