In 1999, rebels rose to oppose the newly elected former warlord CharlesTaylor in Liberia. Motivated by a variety of reasons, the minimal commondenominator of these rebels, who assumed the name Liberians United forReconciliation and Democracy (LURD), was that Charles Taylor must leavethe country. The decentralized nature of LURD though stands out in theirstruggle, as they don’t fit the unitary actor assumed by literature on strategy,nor the alternative conception of decentralized forces fighting for purely localreasons. Understanding such aberrations as LURD is the first step to findingstrategies that can incorporate and manage them.