Agence France-Presse quotes Africa Center Director J. Peter Pham on the history of the US-Liberia relationship and how it affected US involvement in the fight against Ebola:

Peter Pham, author of “Liberia: Portrait of a Failed State”, and director of the Washington-based Atlantic Council’s Africa Center, offers a similar analysis.

“To be quite frank, some of the benefactors who financed the repatriation of former slaves and other African diaspora to what became Liberia had unabashed racist motives,” he told AFP.

Pham points to the US refusal to recognise Liberian independence until nearly 20 years after Europe as evidence that the prevailing view of a “special relationship” is little more than a “comforting myth”.

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