In early 2007, three things were ubiquitous in Monrovia, Liberia’s capital: almost every other car had “UN” printed in big black letters on its sides, all-female police units from India served as a part of the peacekeeping force, and faded war graffiti was everywhere. The war ruins existed alongside a construction boom and the rise of upscale-gated compounds that coincided with the arrival of a massive United Nations (UN) Mission in Liberia. At its height, there were over 16,000 foreign personnel in Liberia. The arrival of the UN, multinationals, international aid organizations and foreign personnel created new political economies of law, order and governance. UN personnel, for instance, were not subject to local Liberian laws but governed by diplomatic immunity conferred by international law. This immunity soon created a culture of overarching impunity—from accidents to sexual assault—UN staff could not be held accountable.

First deployed in 2003, the UN presence was omnipresent for over 15 years as the country dragged itself from a brutal civil war and elected Ellen Johnson Sirleaf as the 24th President of Liberia and first elected female head of state in Africa. In 2018, after twelve years in power, President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf left her office with an inconsistent and disappointing record, a number of unkept promises and a nation struggling with poverty, poor health care, education, and public infrastructure. There were charges of corruption, and acts of nepotism where she appointed three of her children and her sister to key government posts. Despite the many disappointments, even seething anger from her people, she left office and made it possible for a peaceful transfer of power to another democratically elected leader, George Weah, a former professional footballer; something that hadn’t happened in Liberia in seven decades.

But the ghosts of Liberia’s troubled past linger.

Questions about citizenship, belonging and what unites a fragmented people remain. These questions keep re-emerging and threatening the loosely held country with its various factions and claims of belonging, ownership, and nationality. How does one take stock of those years?

Born in Monrovia, Liberian scholar and writer, Robtel Neajai Pailey tries to grapple with many of these questions in her memoir essay, “This Is Our Country” published by Warscapes magazine in February 2020. Pailey is an academic with expertise in international development and African decolonization. She has also written two anti-corruption children’s books. Despite being forced to live away from her country of birth for long periods, it seems that Liberia and its history remains at the core of her scholarship and writing.

Pailey first traveled to the United States in 1988 on a “visitor visa to join her parents,” and later “overstayed, and lived in undocumented limbo” until she was 20. Elsewhere, Pailey has explained that, “by flouting US immigration laws, my parents eventually shielded me from 14 years of intermittent armed conflict.” She then returned “home” to Liberia and worked for President Sirleaf during her first term as a Scott Family Fellow.

The Scott Family Fellows were young professionals “recruited to support the government of Liberia as it recovered from 14 years of brutal civil war.” The Scott Fellows worked in key positions in Liberian ministries funded by a US foundation in collaboration with the office of the Liberian president.

In her long and intimate essay, she recounts those years; the encounters with the president, and how the UN presence in Liberia created various “worlds” that Pailey had to navigate. Pailey writes from a place of sadness and anger. In our conversation she told me, “Whenever I think of Liberia, I do feel a sense of deep sadness.”

“This Is Our Country” transports us back to Liberia in the years following the war and a newly elected president. This conversation begins where Pailey’s essay ends and sheds light on the negotiation and negation of everyday sovereignty experienced by Liberians as they lived and navigated a post-war reality, amidst the overwhelming presence of international experts, aid workers, consultants and brokers. Pailey’s own history of migration, exile, and return to Liberia as a Scott Fellow tells a complicated and textured story. Living at this intersection between the “local and the international,” “the national,” and the “ex-pat,” Pailey articulates these complex socio-political worlds.

One of the moments in the essay that really captures this is when Pailey’s car is hit by another UN vehicle, and even as someone who works at the President’s office, there’s nothing she can do. “They set the rules, fender-bender us, play judge and jury, rape our children,” she writes. She discusses what it means to live under such an overwhelming UN presence, how international organizations have remade the political economy in Liberia through a culture of impunity.

For instance, a 2015 report by the UN Office of Internal Oversight Services (OIOS) said “UN peacekeepers in Liberia bought sex with money, jewelry, cell phones, televisions, and other items in countries where they are deployed.” But very little has been done to hold many of these perpetrators accountable. She poignantly states that the “law that was going to administer justice was the law of the international world.”

This conversation happened in early February when I had just returned from India and where a people’s protest had emerged in the aftermath of new citizenship laws. I saw many of the concerns that continue to occupy my thoughts reflected through Pailey’s arguments, most importantly the irreconcilable promise of freedom and the promise of nationalism.

The transcript has been edited for length and clarity.