By the summer of 2003, Liberia had been at war, on and off, for fourteen years. President Charles Taylor, who had launched the First Liberian Civil War in 1989, now clung to power while the country splintered around him. The rebel group Liberians United for Reconciliation and Democracy, known as LURD, controlled the northern third of the country. A newer group, the Movement for Democracy in Liberia, held the south. Taylor's government held the rest, which by mid-2003 meant roughly a third. Monrovia sat at the center of this shrinking domain, a capital crowded with displaced people and encircled by forces that wanted its president gone. When LURD began its advance on the city in July, the question was not whether the siege would come but how bad it would get.

The assault began on July 19, 2003. LURD forces shelled Monrovia from the north and then the east, their artillery landing on neighborhoods packed with civilians who had nowhere left to flee. By July 21, rebels had seized the seaport while government troops held the airport, splitting the city's lifelines between opposing forces. Some shells struck the American embassy compound, killing more than thirty refugees who had gathered there and injuring embassy staff. Around a thousand civilians died during the siege. Thousands more were displaced from their homes into a city already overwhelmed with people who had been displaced before. Monrovia, a capital of roughly one million, became a place where shelling and starvation competed for the highest body count.

Before the siege, Gbowee had begun organizing. She started with the women of her own Lutheran church, then reached out to Asatu Bah Kenneth, a Muslim policewoman, and together they built something Monrovia had not seen: a coalition that crossed the line between Christian and Muslim communities. Thousands of women dressed in white gathered in open spaces, staging silent protests. They sat in the fish market near the road Taylor used to reach his executive mansion, impossible to ignore. Their demand was simple: attend the peace talks in Ghana. Taylor eventually agreed, and when the negotiations in Accra stalled, the women reportedly blockaded the conference hall, refusing to let the delegates leave until they reached an agreement. It was political pressure stripped to its most elemental form: we will not move until you do.

On August 14, 2003, rebel forces lifted their siege and two hundred United States Marines landed to support a West African peacekeeping force. Taylor went into exile in Nigeria. The peace that followed was fragile but real. In 2005, Liberia held its first post-war election, and Ellen Johnson Sirleaf won, becoming the first woman elected head of state in Africa. The Women of Liberia Mass Action for Peace had played a direct role in making that election possible. In 2008, the documentary Pray the Devil Back to Hell told their story to an international audience. In 2011, Leymah Gbowee and Ellen Johnson Sirleaf shared the Nobel Peace Prize with Yemeni activist Tawakkol Karman, honored for their nonviolent struggle for the safety of women and for women's rights to full participation in peacebuilding. The siege had lasted twenty-seven days. The movement it catalyzed reshaped a country.