General Butt Naked

Blahyi performed black magic rituals for Samuel Doe (pictured).

Joshua Milton Blahyi was born on September 30, 1971 in Monrovia, Liberia. He was born into a Krahn family, some of whom resided in Sinoe County, located in the south of the country; among the Krahn people, belief in child sacrifice and black magic was common.[1] When he was seven years old, his father granted parental control over him to several Krahn elders, who arranged for Blahyi to be a warrior and initiated him as a high priest in 1982, when he was at the age of eleven.[1][2]

As Blahyi noted in his memoirs, the role of high priest included overseeing human sacrifices. Blahyi, like other Krahn priests, would use visions to determine which individual would be sacrificed. After receiving the vision, Blahyi would "give the victim’s last name to its village elders", who would then lead a procession to the house of sacrifice victim's house, abducting and then sacrificing them atop an altar; after Blahyi stated a invocation, the victim would then be ritually dismembered.[1]

In 1980, Armed Forces of Liberia (AFL) Master Sergeant Samuel Doe staged a coup d'état, overthrowing then-President William Tolbert.[3] Doe, who was also of Krahn descent, employed Blahyi to perform black magic rituals at the Executive Mansion in Monrovia, which in part were to help him in winning a general election held in 1985 to legitimize the new regime.[4] Blahyi later explained his support for Doe as being based on tribal loyalty, as they were both members of the same ethnic group.[2]

In 1989, Charles Taylor, a rebel leader in the National Patriotic Front of Liberia (NPFL), launched a rebellion against the Doe regime, sparking the First Liberian Civil War (1989–1997).[4] After Doe was murdered and his regime collapsed in 1990, the United Liberation Movement of Liberia for Democracy (ULIMO) was founded by Krahn and Mandinka refugees and former AFL soldiers in 1991.[5] Blahyi became a member of ULIMO and fought against the NPFL and rival militias, which came to control most of Liberia amidst the chaos of the civil war.[1]

During the conflict, Blahyi became a warlord, lead a unit of several dozen combatants (consisting primarily of child soldiers) known as the Naked Base Commandos and operated primarily in Monrovia. The unit, including Blahyi himself, frequently wore no clothing except for shoes and magic charms, earning Blahyi the nom de guerre 'General Butt Naked'. Blahyi claimed that this practice made him and his soldiers "immune to bullets." During the conflict, Blahyi's forces perpetrated numerous atrocities, including cannibalism and human sacrifice.[6][7]

After the conflict, Blahyi claimed that he had a vision in which the Devil informed him that he would become "a great warrior and should practice human sacrifice and cannibalism to increase his power." Recalling the atrocities he and his men perpetrated during the conflict, Blayhi stated in an interview that "[sometimes] I would enter under the water where children were playing. I would dive under the water, grab one, carry him under and break his neck. Sometimes I'd cause accidents. Sometimes I'd just slaughter them."[8]

Blahyi also made his soldiers consume psychoactive drugs in order to make them more alert and willing to follow Blahyi's orders. He would later recall that whenever the Naked Base Commandos captured a town, he "had to make a human sacrifice. They bring to me a living child that I slaughter and take the heart out to eat it." The rival militias, including the Naked Base Commandos, frequently fought with each other over control over Liberia's lucrative diamond fields and gold mines, and Blahyi traded gold and diamonds with Mexican drug cartels for weapons and cocaine.[4][8]

On April 6, 1996, the NPFL attempted to arrest ULIMO rebel leader Roosevelt Johnson in Monrovia, leading to Blahyi and other militias affiliated with Johnson to resist the attempt by force of arms. The ensuring confrontation led to an intense firefight breaking out, which ultimately resulted in the forced displacement of half of Monrovia's population. During the firefight, a bystander reported seeing Blayhi standing atop a truck, "holding an assault rifle in one hand and a man’s severed genitals in the other."[4]

In 1996, as the civil war was drawing to a close, Blayhi claimed that as he saw the blood of a child on his hands, he received a vision of Jesus Christ, who "asked [Blayhi] to stop being a slave." After the vision, Blayhi converted to Christianity and became an evangelical preacher, ministering to Liberian refugees in Ghana and former combatants who had served under him during the conflict. From 2006 onwards, Blahyi travelled to Monrovia's slums in an effort to engage with former child soldiers living there.[6]

In 2008, Blayhi became the first Liberian warlord to testify before the Liberian Truth and Reconciliation Commission, which was established by the Legislature of Liberia after the conflicts to investigate the atrocities perpetrated during the First and Second Liberian Civil Wars.[1] During his testimony, which was broadcast live on telelvision, Blahyi stated that he believed the number of murders committed by him and the Naked Base Commandos to be at least 20,000. He was recommended for prosecutorial amnesty by the commission.[8][9]

In Liberia, his testimony elicited mixed responses; among the Liberian general public, Blahyi was both publicly praised and criticized for his actions during the war.[7] The testimony also led to Blayhi becoming "front-page news" among Liberian press outlets, and several international journalists, including reporters from the Daily Mail and Vice Media, conducted interviews with him.[4] In 2007, Blahyi established Journeys Against Violence, a non-governmental organization which helps former combatants and street children reintegrate into society.[10]

Blahyi has publicly called for Liberia to establish a war crimes court in order to prosecute suspected war criminals, arguing that former warlords such as current Liberian senator Prince Johnson should go on trial in order "to account for their individual roles played and the actions of their respective troops which committed atrocities and war crimes during the Liberian civil conflicts." In an appearance on a Liberian talk show, Blahyi stated that he lives "[in regret] almost every time not just because of the people who I made childless, but children who I deprived of their parents."[11]

As part of his career as an evangelical preacher, Blahyi attracted numerous benefactors from outside Liberia, including West Village pastor Bojan Jancic, who would later write the foreword to The Redemption of an African Warlord, a 2013 autobiography written by Blahyi himself[lower-alpha 1] and published by Destiny Image Publishers, a "small Christian press". Jancic wrote in the foreword that "Not since the conversion of Saul of Tarsus on the Road to Damascus have I ever heard a conversion story more radically compelling."[4]

Blahyi's notoriety and public testimony has led to numerous appearances in popular culture. In 2010, Vice News produced a documentary called The Vice Guide to Liberia as part of their road travel series The Vice Guide to Travel. In the documentary, Blahyi conducted an interview with Vice, where he claimed that the planned withdrawal of the United Nations Mission in Liberia (UNMIL) in 2011 would lead to further violence breaking out in Liberia. The filmmakers also filmed Blahyi conducting a sermon in Monrovia in front of numerous former child soldiers.[12]

In 2011, filmmakers Eric Strauss and Daniele Anastasion produced a documentary about Blahyi titled The Redemption of General Butt Naked, which was screened at the 2011 Sundance Film Festival.[13] The documentary primarily focused on Blahyi's career as an ULIMO rebel leader and his life after converting to Christianity, documenting his efforts to both rehabilitate former military personnel under his command and reach out to the survivors his atrocities in order to reconcile with them; interspersed between these was footage of his 2008 war crimes testimony.[14]

The documentary received positive reviews; a review by Kirk Honeycutt for The Hollywood Reporter praised the documentary for foregoing "any personal judgments to let audiences draw their own conclusions", arguing that the filmmakers have "caught lightning in a bottle".[15] Another review in Screen International by David D'Arcy was also positive, noting that the filmmakers had depicted the impact of the Liberian civil wars, describing the documentary as "staggeringly cinematic" and "one of the best titles since John Waters’s Pecker and bravura visual flourishes".[16]

The Book of Mormon, a 2013 satirical musical comedy written by screenwriters Trey Parker, Robert Lopez, and Matt Stone, features a character named "General Butt Fucking Naked"; the character is depicted as a Ugandan warlord, as he was originally modeled after infamous Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) commander Joseph Kony.[17][18][19] Parker noted in an interview with Comingsoon.net that "warlords in Liberia have such colorful names and we were reading about the one named General Butt Naked. We just ripped off his joke, basically."[20][21]