Liberia's civil war, a diamond-fuelled conflict which killed a quarter of a million people, devastated its once vibrant economy and left its infrastructure in ruins.

Liberia's foundation in 1847 as a state of freed slaves "repatriated" to Africa from the United States and Caribbean sowed the seeds of conflict in years to come; descendants of the Americo-Liberians dominated control of government and natural resources for decades, despite being only 5 percent of the population.

The first to break the Americo-Liberian grip on power was Samuel K. Doe, a member of the Krahn tribe. In 1980 he and his forces killed President William Tolbert and most of his top officials. Five years later, his National Democratic Party of Liberia (NDPL) won an election said to be plagued by fraud and vote-rigging. The economy and living standards declined under Doe and human rights abuses increased.

Doe's control was cut short when his former procurement chief, Charles Taylor invaded the country from neighbouring Ivory Coast on Christmas Eve 1989. Ethnic rivalries fed the subsequent 14-year conflict, with various factions fighting for control of the country's diamond, timber, rubber and iron ore wealth.

The war was marked by acts of extreme brutality and was notorious for its use of drugged-up child soldiers who raped, mutilated and killed their way across the country.

Around 250,000 people died and more than half the population fled their homes. The U.N. Mission for Liberia (UNMIL) estimates 40 percent of Liberia's women were raped during the conflict.

Within a year of Taylor's invasion, forces led by Prince Johnson, a former member of Taylor's National Patriotic Front (NPF), broke away and captured Doe. A video later surfaced showing Johnson's men torturing Doe to death, cutting off his ears and forcing him to eat one of them.

In 1997, Taylor and the NPF won elections by a large majority, but the polls did not stop the violence. Taylor's followers were accused of atrocities such as setting up roadblocks laced with human intestines and slicing open pregnant women's stomachs.

In 2003 the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) spurred peace talks among Liberia's government, civil society and rebel groups, who signed a ceasefire, which was broken repeatedly.

The U.N.-backed Special Court for Sierra Leone meanwhile indicted Taylor over atrocities committed during Sierra Leone's own war in which he is accused of arming rebels in return for diamonds.

ECOWAS peacekeepers arrived in Liberia in August. Taylor resigned and fled into exile in Nigeria. Government, rebels and political parties signed peace agreements creating a new transitional government.

In 2004, UNMIL - which has about 14,500 troops and 1,500 other staff - helped disarm and demobilise more than 100,000 ex-combatants. Twenty-two percent of the disarmed fighters were women, according to a report by the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) and the African Child Policy Forum.

An all-female police unit arrived in Liberia in January 2007, a first in the history of peacekeeping. The 100-plus unit from India is meant to help strengthen the rule of law and maintain peace.

President Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf, who was elected in late 2005, is Africa's first democratically elected female leader. A former World Bank employee, she had been a finance minister under William Tolbert's administration.

Despite cautious optimism, Liberia still faces the problem of how to fit some 100,000 former fighters back into society, including the thousands of children who were forced to fight or act as servants and sex slaves to various militias.

With the country awash in weapons, unemployment at about 85 percent and more than half the population under 18, this is no easy task.

"Simmering ethnic, social and political tensions within Liberia are likely to lead to unrest unless issues of inequity, corruption and social and economic deprivation are urgently addressed," the United Nations said in 2006. "The volatile political situation in the region also has the potential to further destabilise Liberia and unravel the gains made so far."

Liberia's conflict was intimately entwined with its neighbours, and Taylor offended all of them at various times. The rebel group Liberians United for Reconciliation and Democracy (LURD) which fought against Taylor used northern neighbour Guinea as a base and Taylor is accused of trying to assassinate Guinean President Lansana Conte in retaliation.

Meanwhile, Ivory Coast - on Liberia's northeastern border - turned a blind eye to a smaller rebel group, Movement for Democracy in Liberia (MODEL), which operated from its territory. Liberian mercenaries have been reported active in Ivory Coast's simmering insurgency.

Taylor is currently on trial for his role in Sierra Leone's conflict where he is accused of supporting the Revolutionary United Front (RUF) and being the driving force behind a civil war in which tens of thousands were killed, mutilated or raped.

Taylor has pleaded not guilty to 11 charges including acts of terrorism, murder, rape, enslavement, conscripting child soldiers, sexual slavery, pillage and outrages upon personal dignity.

Taylor was captured in March 2006 as he tried to escape his lavish home in Nigeria. He was taken first to Sierra Leone, then moved in June 2006 to the International Criminal Court in The Hague, Netherlands, where proceedings began a year later.

It was adjourned after a day following claims by Taylor that he was not being represented adequately. The trial re-opened in January 2008 and is expected to last until mid-2009. Britain has agreed to jail Taylor if he is convicted.

Some Liberians worry that the trial could destabilise the fragile peace. Others argue that he should be on trial in Africa, not Europe.

A U.N. ban on weapons sales to Liberia was lifted in 2006 so that newly trained police and security forces could be armed. The Security Council imposed a ban on Liberian timber and diamond exports as well as an arms embargo during Taylor's final years in office after accusing him of fuelling conflict in the region through an illicit trade in arms for diamonds and other natural resources.

Sanctions on timber exports were lifted the same year and an embargo on diamond exports ended in 2007.

A Truth and Reconciliation Commission was set up in February 2006, but has complained of inadequate working conditions, lack of security, and not enough funding. Hearings began in October 2006, but the Commission's work is not likely to be easy, given that many former commanders were elected as senators or parliamentary representatives in late 2005 and became part of Johnson-Sirleaf's government.

During Liberia's civil war, tens of thousands of children were lured into the armed forces with promises of food, water, shelter and protection, according to organisations like the U.N. Children's Fund, UNICEF. Some as young as nine were forcibly separated from their families and compelled to fight.

At the end of the civil war, about 21,000 people under the age of 18 were demobilised, out of a total of around 100,000. This number does not account for the thousands who became adults during the conflict.

Liberia - and West Africa in general - has a long history of putting children to work, which probably contributed to the relative ease with which leaders such as Taylor cajoled and terrorised young people into serving, according to Enrique Restoy of the Coalition to Stop the Use of Child Soldiers.

"There was already an understanding of children being used in activities that don't correspond to children," he says. "So for a faction that, for example, controlled diamond mines, children came with the package..." They are easier to recruit because they are not with their families, working in the fields with other children."

After being used to control or terrorise the population, it's difficult for children to reintegrate into society, because of the long-term psychological effects of their experiences as well as wider society's attitude to them. With an economy in tatters, limited schooling and high unemployment rates, former child soldiers have no guarantee of a welcome home - and no guarantee their home still exists.

Girls, who made up around 30 percent of the children forced to join fighters, according to a report by the International Committee of the Red Cross, are having an especially hard time reintegrating, advocates say. For one thing, most were never officially demobilised because they were not seen as combatants. And because most "belonged" to men while in the bush, their families won't be able to ask a dowry for them if they go home and then marry. On top of this, many of them became pregnant or contracted HIV or AIDS during their time with the soldiers.

Advocates for former child soldiers say that while most have been demobilised, not enough has been done to address the poverty and social breakdown which made them vulnerable to exploitation in the first place. Many, already addicted to drugs when they left the forces, have become street children and are trafficked into prostitution. This makes them prime targets for recruitment in the event of renewed war in Liberia or neighbouring countries.

Tens of thousands of Liberians who were forced from their homes by war have returned, although many refugees have had a hard time reclaiming their homes once they've gone back.

The U.N. refugee agency UNHCR said there were still more than 105,000 Liberian refugees in neighbouring countries in March 2007, mostly in Ghana, Guinea, Ivory Coast and Sierra Leone.

There were still 10,000 internally displaced people in camps in March 2007, according to the Liberia Refugee Repatriation and Resettlement Commission (LRRRC), which is responsible for assisting them. Displaced people living in buildings in Monrovia, for example, are considered squatters by authorities, and not eligible for assistance.

Camps in Liberia have been notorious for sexual exploitation, with several reports finding children had exchanged sex for food or even bars of soap from men in positions of power, including teachers, aid workers and peacekeepers. Aid agency Save the Children researched the scandal in detail.

The U.N. mission said there were 30 cases of sexual exploitation and abuse implicating its staff in 2006, and 45 in 2005.

Women's rights activists say rape and sexual exploitation are common, and the weak justice system makes prosecution and conviction rare. A 2005 report by the U.N. World Health Organisation said a survey of six Liberian counties found that three-quarters of women had been raped.

Violence and economic collapse have taken a terrible toll on the health of Liberia's people,and simply getting enough food is a struggle for most. About 235 out of 1,000 children die before their fifth birthday, according to U.N. Children's Fund, UNICEF.

The country has high rates of malnutrition, malaria, diarrhoea, pneumonia and measles, but only about half the country has health facilities, generally when provided by international relief agencies, aid workers say.

There aren't enough trained medical staff to go round, and it's difficult to persuade doctors to work in remote areas.

Travel around Liberia is difficult, with much of the country's infrastructure in tatters, while fuel is scarce and expensive. The lack of roads and even bridges makes it hard for aid workers to reach remote communities.

HIV/AIDS has become a serious problem. There's hardly any concrete information on HIV rates, but the U.N. Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS) says a 2002 survey of women attending 24 antenatal clinics found 4.3 percent HIV-positive. Johnson-Sirleaf said in April 2006 the country's infection rate was 12 percent and increasing rapidly.