Liberia was practically a dictatorship for most of its existence. Elections were not fair and fraud was ridiculous. The US controlled almost every aspect of the army and the government. Then, when the American-Liberian president William Tolbert began to make reforms, pushing away the US and initiating relations with the USSR and China, the US supported a native coup by Samuel Doe, which started massacres and repression supported by the US. Until Charlie Taylor attempted a coup in 1989 that broke the country and started an open civil war