Why Shark's Ice Cream Wants To Put Nice Cream Out Of Business (National Public Radio)

Robtel Neajai Pailey, a Liberian academic based at the University of Oxford, acknowledges that the Lebanese community has contributed to Liberia's economy, but she sympathizes with Harding.

"The bottom line is we don't have the luxury of neglecting Liberian small- to medium-sized enterprises. I think if we were a middle-income country that hadn't had a war for 14 years we could say, 'Yes, let's open up and let the market take its course,' " she says. "But even countries that preach laissez-faire economics protect certain industries and give subsidies to their farmers."