Arthur Tubman Military Academy

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Arthur Tubman Military Academy
Sponsorship state
place Igenta , Liberia

The Arthur Tubman Military Academy was a training school for officers of the Armed Forces of Liberia . It also formed a branch of the University of Liberia located in Monrovia and trained officer candidates of the Liberian armed forces and civilian students who should receive academic and military training.

Surname

The training center is named after Reverend Arthur Tubman , who was the father of President William S. Tubman and also a general in the Liberian Army.

location

The training facility is located about 45 kilometers (as the crow flies) north of the capital Monrovia near the town of Igenta and about one kilometer from the Saint Paul River . Mount Coffee Dam is also nearby .

history

The Armed Forces of Liberia at this time Frontier Force for Liberia (German: Liberian border troops) were during the Second World War allies of the United States , the conditions necessary for a modern military training and equipment were in 1940 at a meeting of the US Admiral LeBreton with the Liberian Secretary of State Simpson on board the cruiser USS Omaha off the coast of Monrovias. The basic military training of the soldiers was from then on completed in the so-called Barclay Training Center in Monrovia's Congo Town district . At first it was just a spartan tent camp on the outskirts of the capital. With a few exceptions, the Liberian military were spared active participation in combat operations in Europe. The establishment of a Liberian army of its own was tackled by President William S. Tubman in the early 1960s, when the European colonial empires in Africa collapsed and colonial wars and civil war-like conditions were feared in the neighboring countries. The Armed Forces of Liberia (AFL) were formed from the border troops in 1962, and the Arthur Tubman Military Academy was founded as a branch of the university in the late 1960s to train the officers required . In addition to the USA, Israel also sent military instructors to Liberia in the 1960s .

The building complex built in a wooded area was attacked during the civil war and partially destroyed.

Rebuilding the army

US instructors with the first recruits of the Liberian Army under reconstruction (Camp "Sandee S. Ware", Careysburg District, 2009)

On July 17, 2007, Liberia's former Defense Minister, Maj. General Charles Julu, was arrested and imprisoned in the Ivory Coast Republic for preparing a coup d'état against the Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf government . The army, which was broken and demoralized in the Liberian civil war, with 13,770 soldiers at the end of the war, was completely demobilized.
In January 2006, the government decided to rebuild the army based on the model and training standard of the US Army . The Liberian military and four battalions form the 23rd Infantry Brigade of the ECOMOC troops in West Africa. A Nigerian general will temporarily be in command of the army. All army and civilian employees must take an exam before they join to prevent the admission of former war criminals . Three military camps and training centers were set up:

  • Barclay Training Camp (Monrovia)
  • Edward B. Kessely Military Barracks (formerly Camp Schieffelin)
  • Sandee S. Ware Military Barracks (Careysburg).

Since January 2010 about 60 US military instructors from the security company DynCorp have been in Liberia to enable the reconstruction of the Liberian Army. Due to the lack of infrastructure, part of the officer training and other special courses are completed in the USA. The People's Republic of China also offered its support to the Liberian government, offering the prospect of building a military barracks for 700 soldiers near Tubmanburg.

literature

  • Yukutiel Gershoni: The Search for a national symbol in a military regime: the case of Liberia . In: Constantine P. Danopoulos, Dhirendra Vajpeyi, Amir Bar'or (eds.): Civil-military relations, nation building, and national identity . ABC-CLIO, Santa Barbara, CA 2004, ISBN 978-0-275-97923-2 , pp. 199-214 .

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Susan Curtis: Colored memories: a biographer's quest for the elusive Lester A. Walton . University of Missouri Press, Columbia (MS) 2008, ISBN 978-0-8262-1786-8 , pp. 188-230 .
  2. ^ David McBride: Missions for science: US technology and medicine in America's African world . Ed .: The State University of New Jersey. Rutgers University Press, Chapel Hill NC 2002, ISBN 0-8135-3067-9 , pp. 167-174 .
  3. ↑ Liberia: uneven progress in security sector reform . In: International Crisis Group (Ed.): Africa Report . tape 148 , 2009, p. 40 . ( Full text ( Memento from March 4, 2016 in the Internet Archive ))
  4. ↑ Pray with Nasser . In: Der Spiegel . No. 43 , 1960, pp. 53-54 ( online ).
  5. ^ Marc Malan: Security sector reform in Liberia: Mixed results from humbled beginnings. (PDF; 391 kB) Strategic Studies Institute (US Army), March 2008, p. 100 (English).

Coordinates: 6 ° 39 ′ 35.9 "  N , 10 ° 35 ′ 48.5"  W.