Sierra-Leone and the Gambia

Sierra-Leone and The Gambia, as the pioneer members of the force, provided close to five battalions, one naval landing ship tank (LST), four fast missile attack craft (FAC), one oil tanker, one tug boat, one squadron of ground attack fighter aircraft (Alpha Jets), as well as placing nine Hercules C-130 transport s on call. Remarkably, these were military forces which though had some form of joint training relationship (Nigeria, Ghana, Sierra-Leone and The Gambia), yet had never carried out any joint exercises on land, air or sea. Guinea, the only Francophone country involved in the mission from its inception, was also able to integrate with others (Anglophones) in spite of normal and initial operational difficulties."

The first Force Commander was Ghanaian General Arnold Quainoo, but he was succeeded by an unbroken line of Nigerian officers. Major General Joshua Dogonyaro took over from Quainoo after Quainoo had left Monrovia for consultations with senior ECOWAS officials soon after the death of Samuel Doe at the hands of Prince Johnson's Independent National Patriotic Front of Liberia on 9 September 1990.[2]

After some prompting from Taylor that the anglophone Nigerians and Ghanaians were opposed to him, Senegalese troops were brought in with some financial support from the United States.[3] Their service was, however, short-lived, after a major confrontation with Taylor forces in Vahun, Lofa County on 28 May 1992, when six were killed when a crowd of NPFL supporters surrounded their vehicle and demanded they surrender their jeep and weapons.[4] All of Senegal's 1,500 troops were withdrawn by mid January 1993.

Throughout the mission, corruption and organized looting by ECOMOG troops led some Liberians to re-coin the acronym ECOMOG as "Every Car or Movable Object Gone." Stephen Ellis reports one of the most egregious examples as being the total removal of the Buchanan iron ore processing machinery for onward sale while the Buchanan compound was under ECOMOG control.[5]

Following Charles Taylor's election as President of Liberia on 19 July 1997, the final Field Commander, General Timothy Shelpidi, withdrew the force fully by the end of 1998.

ECOWAS deployed ECOMOG forces later on to control conflict in other cases: