General Butt Naked Biography

Joshua Milton Blahyi, better known as General Butt Naked, was born on September 30, 1971 in Monrovia, the capital of Liberia. His was a Krahn family, and some of his family members lived in Sinoe County, in the south of Liberia.

The Krahn community believed in child sacrifice and black magic. At 7 years of age, Blahyi was handed over to Krahn elders by his father. The elders initiated Blahyi as a priest in 1982, when he was just 11.

As a high priest, he would often oversee the ritual of human sacrifice. He would also often rely on his visions to decide who would be sacrificed next.

In 1980, Armed Forces of Liberia (AFL) leader Samuel K. Doe staged a coup and overthrew then-President William Tolbert. Blahyi later claimed that Doe had used his black magic rituals to gain hold over the 1985 Liberian general election.

In 1989, Charles Taylor, the National Patriotic Front of Liberia (NPFL) rebel leader, launched a rebellion against Samuel Doe, thus starting a civil war. Taylor, a former Liberian government employee, invaded the country from Ivory Coast with his soldiers.

Blahyi joined the rival rebel group United Liberation Movement of Liberia for Democracy (ULIMO) and mostly operated around Monrovia. After Doe was toppled and then assassinated in 1990, the situation worsened.

Thus, from 1989 to 1997, Blahyi gained notoriety as General Butt Naked, as he fought without clothes, wearing just his sneakers and holding a machete or an AK-47, believing he would have spiritual protection for doing so. During his time as a warlord in the First Liberian Civil War, under Roosevelt Johnson, he massacred entire villages, killed children as part of the sacrifice ritual, and ate their hearts, thus resorting to cannibalism.

His men were known as the Naked Base Commandos, which mostly consisted of child soldiers, many of whom drugged up. He once stated that every time he and his men would seize a town, they would sacrifice a child.

On April 6, 1996, Taylor’s men tried arresting the leader of the group with which Blahyi was associated. Blahyi fought back, leading to one of the goriest battles of the civil war.

Almost half of Monrovia’s people were displaced as a result of the battle. In 1996, a ceasefire was declared.

The following year, Taylor was elected as the 22nd President of Liberia. In 1999, a rebel group invaded Liberia from Guinea, sparking another civil war, which lasted until the ouster of Taylor in 2003. The civil war, thus, finally ended in 2003, and soon the Truth and Reconciliation Commission was formed.

However, by then, Blahyi was a reformed man. It is believed, as he was about to eat another child’s heart in a conflict in 1996, Blahyi had a vision. In which Jesus appeared to him, asking him to repent or die. General Butt Naked decided to put an end to his life as a warlord on that day.

In 2008, Blahyi testified at the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, stating that he and his men had victimized at least 20,000 people. The public testimony evoked strong reactions and brought him international attention.

Following the war, General Butt Naked became a transformed man and embraced Christianity. Turning into an evangelist, he later started visiting relatives of his victims, consoling them and asking them for forgiveness.

He now also ministers his former soldiers, most of whom were children when they joined the war. He also preaches to people in West Africa and is a pastor at a local church in Monrovia.

Since the child soldiers who had taken up arms during the civil war were mostly rejected by their families after the war ended, Blahyi took them under his aegis. In 2006, he began traveling to Monrovian slums to interact with former child soldiers.

In 2012, built a compound about 25 kilometers north of Monrovia. He launched training sessions for the former child soldiers there, in an effort to bring them back to mainstream society. His site also has a small chicken farm, while volunteers often visit to teach the children skills such as plumbing, carpentry, and painting.

Blahyi's public testimony led him to be featured in many documentaries. In 2010, the documentary The Vice Guide to Liberia, which was part of The Vice Guide to Travel, featured him talking about the planned withdrawal of the United Nations Mission in Liberia (UNMIL) in 2011.

In 2011, Eric Strauss and Daniele Anastasion co-produced the documentary The Redemption of General Butt Naked, focusing on his stint as a warlord and his transformation after his conversion to Christianity. It was screened at the 2011 Sundance Film Festival.

The 2013 satirical musical comedy The Book of Mormon featured a character named General Butt Fucking Naked, who is depicted as a Ugandan warlord. However, sources claim it was inspired by Lord's Resistance Army commander Joseph Kony.