Sierra Leone Civil War

Sierra Leone Civil War
Map of Sierra Leone
Date March 23 1991-January 18 2002 Location Sierra Leone Result Government victory
Belligerents
Sierra Leone Kamajors South African mercenaries Nigerian-led ECOMOG forces United Kingdom	Revolutionary United Front Armed Forces Revolutionary Council West Side Boys Liberia
Commanders and leaders
Ahmad Tejan Kabbah Samuel Hinga Norman Valentine Strasser Solomon Musa David J. Richards Tony Blair	Foday Sankoh Johnny Paul Koroma Sam Bockarie Foday Kallay Charles Taylor
Casualties and losses
Casualties: ~100,000 Sierra Leoneans dead

The Sierra Leone Civil War began in 1991, by the Revolutionary United Front (RUF) under Foday Sankoh. Tens of thousands died and more than 2 million people (well over one-third of the population) were displaced because of the 11-year conflict. Neighbouring countries became host to significant numbers of refugees attempting to escape the civil war. It was officially declared over on 18 January 2002.

Origins and causes

In 1985, Joseph Momoh, a military leader, was installed as president of Sierra Leone. One major opposition group consisted of students including Foday Sankoh, Abu Ahmed Kanu, and Rashid Mansaray. Many students were expelled from the country and this group fled to Ghana and then Libya where they attended Moammar Qaddafi's secret service military training facility. The group recruited unemployed young men and students, but as the group grew, internal squabbles arose, and many left the group, some students to universities in Ghana, others back to Sierra Leone. However, others (including Kanu, Mansaray, and Sankoh) were still interested in revolution. The group then went to Kono District and toured the diamond mines, talking with workers about their situation, and spreading a revolutionary ideology.

Control of Sierra Leone's diamond industry was a primary objective for the war. Although endowed with abundant natural resources, Sierra Leone was ranked as the poorest country in the world by 1998. With the breakdown of all state structures, wide corridors of Sierra Leonean society were opened up to the trafficking of arms and ammunition. Recreational drugs also eroded national and regional security as well as facilitated crime within the country, precipitating illegal trade with both Liberia and Guinea.

Beginning of the civil war

The RUF launched its first campaign into eastern Kailahun (Sierra Leone) from Liberia on March 23, 1991. In the four months following, about 107,000 refugees fled the conflict into Guinea. Foday Sankoh was head of the military wing of the RUF. According to Sierra Leone and writer Abdul Koroma, the rebels were quick to demonstrate their brutality, decapitating community leaders and putting their heads on stakes.

Forced recruitment of children was also an early feature of the rebel strategy. The intellectuals in the RUF opposed the methods being used, but within the first year of the rebellion these individuals had been eliminated as Sankoh took over the movement. Among the victims were two of Sankoh's allies.

Chronology of events

A series of military coups

In contested elections in March 1967, the All Peoples Congress (APC) won a plurality of the parliamentary seats. Accordingly, the Governor-General (representing the British Monarch) declared Siaka Stevens—APC leader and Mayor of Freetown—as the new Prime Minister. Within a few hours, Stevens and Margai were placed under house arrest by Brigadier David Lansana, the Commander of the Republic of Sierra Leone Military Forces (RSLMF), on grounds that the determination of office should await the election of the tribal representatives to the house. Another group of officers soon staged another coup, only to be later ousted in a third coup, the "sergeants’ revolt," and Stevens at last, in April 1968, assumed the office of Prime Minister under the restored constitution. Siaka Stevens remained as head of state until 1985. Under his rule, in 1978, the constitution was amended and all political parties, other than the ruling APC, were banned.

In August 1985, the APC named military commander Major-General Joseph Saidu Momoh, Stevens' own choice, as the party candidate to succeed Stevens. Momoh was elected President in a one-party referendum on 1 October 1985. In October 1991 Momoh had the constitution amended once again, re-establishing a multi-party system. Under Momoh, APC rule was increasingly marked by abuses of power.

The RUF

Main article: Revolutionary United Front

In March 1991, a small band of men who called themselves the Revolutionary United Front (RUF) under the leadership of a former-corporal, Foday Sankoh, began to attack villages in eastern Sierra Leone on the Liberian border. The RUF's signature terror tactic was physical mutilation. An estimated 20,000 civilians suffered amputation, with machetes and axes being used to sever arms, legs, lips, and ears. Fighting continued in the ensuing months, with the RUF gaining control of the diamond mines in the Kono District and pushing the Sierra Leone army back towards Freetown. RUF members would often destroy villages and kill most of the civilians except a few men and boys aging anywhere from 7 to around 40. They would kill anyone that tried to escape. Other civilians were mutilated and sent to neighboring villages as a warning. They would sometimes take a few civilians as hostages to stop the military from attacking them. After the rebels ran out of supplies in a village, they would often burn it and kill whoever remained.

On 29 April 1992, a group of young military officers, led by Capt. Valentine Strasser, launched a military coup, which sent Momoh into exile in Guinea and established the National Provisional Ruling Council (NPRC).

The NPRC proved to be nearly as ineffectual as the Momoh government in repelling the RUF. More and more of the country fell to RUF fighters, so that by 1995 they held much of the countryside and were on the doorstep of Freetown. To rectify the situation, the NPRC hired several hundred mercenaries from the private firm Executive Outcomes. Within a month they had driven RUF fighters back to enclaves along Sierra Leone’s borders.

Return of Civilian Government

As a result of popular demand and mounting international pressure, the NPRC agreed to hand over power to a civilian government via presidential and parliamentary elections, which were held in April 1996. Ahmad Tejan Kabbah, a diplomat who had worked at the UN for more than 20 years, won the presidential election. Because of the prevailing war conditions, parliamentary elections were conducted, for the first time, under the system of proportional representation. Thirteen political parties participated, with the SLPP winning 27 seats, UNPP 17, PDP 12, APC 5 and DCP 3. Two months later, discussions began between the SLPP and the RUF in the town of Yamoussoukro, which led eventually to the signing of the Abidjan Peace Accord in Abidjan, Côte d'Ivoire on 30 November 1996. The agreement quickly broke down as the RUF could not agree on disarmament and the creation of a monitoring force.

The Armed Forces Revolutionary Council (AFRC), led by Major Johnny Paul Koroma, overthrew President Kabbah on 25 May 1997, and invited the RUF to join the government. After 10 months in office, the junta was ousted by the Nigerian-led Economic Community of West African States Monitoring Group ECOMOG forces, and the democratically elected government of President Kabbah was reinstated in March 1998. On 6 January 1999, the RUF launched another attempt to overthrow the government, beginning the Siege of Freetown. Fighting reached parts of Freetown, leaving thousands dead and wounded. ECOMOG forces drove back the RUF attack several weeks later.

With the assistance of the international community, President Kabbah and RUF leader Sankoh negotiated the Lomé Peace Accord, which was signed on 7 July 1999. The accord made Sankoh Vice President and gave other RUF members positions in the government, and called for an international peacekeeping force which would initially be under both ECOMOG and the United Nations. The UN Security Council established the United Nations Mission in Sierra Leone (UNAMSIL) in 1999, with an initial force of 6,000. ECOMOG forces departed in April 2000. Almost immediately, however, the RUF began to violate the agreement, most notably by holding hundreds of UNAMSIL personnel hostage and capturing their arms and ammunition in the first half of 2000. On 8 May 2000, members of the RUF shot and killed as many as 20 people demonstrating against the RUF violations outside Sankoh's house in Freetown. As a result, Sankoh and other senior members of the RUF were arrested and the group was stripped of its positions in government.

In May 2000, the situation in the country deteriorated to such an extent that British troops were deployed in Operation Palliser to evacuate foreign nationals and establish order. They stabilized the situation, and were the catalyst for a ceasefire and ending of the civil war.

End of the Civil War

After the events of May 2000, a new cease-fire was necessary to reinvigorate the peace process. This agreement was signed November of that year in Abuja. However, Disarmament, Demobilization and Reintegration did not resume, and fighting continued. In late 2000, Guinean forces entered Sierra Leone to attack RUF bases from which attacks had been launched against Liberian dissidents in Guinea. A second Abuja Agreement, in May 2001, set the stage for a resumption of DDR on a wide scale and a significant reduction in hostilities. As disarmament progressed, the government began to reassert its authority in formerly rebel-held areas. By early 2002 , some 72,000 ex-combatants had been disarmed and demobilized, although many still awaited re-integration assistance (Cooper 2004, 110, Bell 2005). On 18 January 2002 President Kabbah declared the civil war officially over.

Post Civil War

In May 2002 President Kabbah and his party, the SLPP, won landslide victories in the presidential and legislative elections. Kabbah was re-elected for a five year term. The RUF political wing, the RUFP, failed to win a single seat in parliament. The elections were marked by irregularities and allegations of fraud, but not to a degree to significantly affect the outcome.

On 28 July 2002 the British withdrew a 200-man military contingent that had been in country since the summer of 2000, leaving behind a 140-strong military training team to work to professionalize the Sierra Leone army or Navy.

In November 2002, UNAMSIL began a gradual reduction from a peak level of 17,800 personnel (Bell 2005). Under pressure from the British, the withdrawal slowed, so that by October 2003 the UNAMSIL contingent still stood at 12,000 men. As peaceful conditions continued through 2004, however, UNAMSIL drew down its forces to slightly over 4,100 by December 2004 . The UN Security Council extended UNAMSIL’s mandate until June 2005 and again until December 2005. UNAMSIL completed the withdrawal of all troops 1 January 2006.

The Lome Accord called for the establishment of a Truth and Reconciliation Commission to provide a forum for both victims and perpetrators of human rights violations during the conflict to tell their stories and facilitate genuine reconciliation. Subsequently, the Sierra Leonean government asked the UN to help set up a Special Court for Sierra Leone, which would try those who "bear the greatest responsibility for the commission of crimes against humanity, war crimes and serious violations of international humanitarian law, as well as crimes under relevant Sierra Leonean law within the territory of Sierra Leone since November 31, 1999." Both the Truth and Reconciliation Commission and the Special Court began operating in the summer of 2002.

Results

A school in Koindu destroyed by RUF rebel forces, in total 1,270 primary schools were destroyed in the War.

Nine years of civil war, atrocities, and ineffectual intervention by ECOMOG—which became just another faction in the war—crippled Sierra Leone. While RUF rebels controlled the diamond trade, the people remained among the poorest on Earth. The 1999 Lomé Agreement failed to bring peace as it effectively institutionalized rebel control of the diamond trade by putting rebel chief Foday Sankoh in charge of mineral resources. Civil war resumed as UN forces sought to wrest control of the diamond fields, but found themselves instead being held hostage by the rebels. With a rebel take-over of the capital imminent, British forces unilaterally intervened in May 2000 to evacuate British subjects and safeguard the Freetown airport for UN use. Within days "mission creep" found the British taking effective control of the government and organizing an offensive against the rebels. The rebel leader was captured, the peace process resumed, and the British left a training team to reconstruct the armed forces into an instrument of reliable state security. Within a year of British intervention, UN forces were in full control of the country, and gradually began handing over control to the reconstituted and retrained Sierra Leone armed forces. The British looked to the Americans to similarly solve the Liberian problem in order to provide stability on Sierra Leone's borders and restore normal market forces to the diamond trade. The Liberian war ended in 2003 with ECOWAS and US intervention, followed in 2006 by the trial of its former President Charles Taylor for crimes against humanity in Sierra Leone and Liberia, the first such trial in Africa.

Whereabouts

On 13 January 2003 a small group of armed men tried unsuccessfully to break into an armory in Freetown. Former AFRC-junta leader Koroma, after being linked to the raid, went into hiding. In March the Special Court for Sierra Leone issued its first indictments for war crimes during the civil war. Foday Sankoh, already in custody, was indicted, along with notorious RUF field commander Sam "Mosquito" Bockarie, Koroma, the Minister of Interior and former head of the Civil Defense Force, Samuel Hinga Norman, and several others. Norman was arrested when the indictments were announced, while Bockarie and Koroma remained at large (presumably in Liberia). On 5 May 2003 Bockarie was killed in Liberia, probably on orders from President Charles G. Taylor, who expected to be indicted by the Special Court and feared Bockarie’s testimony. Several weeks later, word filtered out of Liberia that Koroma had been killed as well, although his death remains unconfirmed. In June the Special Court announced Taylor’s indictment. Sankoh died in prison in Freetown 29 July 2003 from a heart attack. He had been ailing for some time.

In August 2003 President Kabbah testified before the Truth and Reconciliation Commission on his role during the civil war.

On 1 December 2003 Major General Brigadier Tom Carew, who had been the Chief of Defence Staff for the Government of Sierra Leone and an important figure in the Sierra Leonean army, was reassigned to civilian duties.the war continued for a year after it was declared over

In June 2007, the Special Court found three of the eleven people indicted – Alex Tamba Brima, Brima Bazzy Kamara and Santigie Borbor Kanu – guilty of war crimes, including acts of terrorism, collective punishments, extermination, murder, rape, outrages upon personal dignity, conscripting or enlisting children under the age of 15 years into armed forces, enslavement and pillage.

Diamond revenues in Sierra Leone have increased more than tenfold since the end of the conflict, from $10 million in 2000 to about $130 million in 2004, although according to the UNAMSIL surveys of mining sites, "more than 50 per cent of diamond mining still remains unlicensed and reportedly considerable illegal smuggling of diamonds continues".

Depictions

The civil war served as the background for the 2006 movie Blood Diamond, starring Leonardo DiCaprio, Djimon Hounsou and Jennifer Connelly.

During the end of the movie Lord of War, Yuri Orlov (played by Nicolas Cage) sells arms to militias during the civil war. The militias are allied with André Baptiste (Eamonn Walker), who is based on Charles Taylor.

The use of children in both the rebel (RUF) military and the government militia is depicted in Ishmael Beah's 2007 book A Long Way Gone.

Sources

• US Dept of State [1]
• AFROL [2]
• Adebajo, Adekeye. Liberia's Civil War: Nigeria, ECOMOG, and regional security in West Africa. Lynne Rienner Publishers, 2002
• Bell, Udy. Sierra Leone: Building on a Hard-Won Peace. 2000, UN Chronicle Online Edition, Issue 4 (Accessed May 31, 2007 here)
• Cooper, Niel and Goodhand, Jonathan. War Economies in a Regional Context: Challenges of Transformation 2004 Lynne Rienner Publishers by Neil. Cooper, Jonathan. Goodhand - 2004
• Hirsch; John L; Sierra Leone: Diamonds and the Struggle for Democracy, Lynne Rienner Pub (December 1, 2000).
• Jalloh, S Balimo; Conflicts, Resources and Social Instability in Subsahara Africa – The Sierra Leone Case; in Internationasles Afrikaforum, 37. Jg (Germany), 2/2001, Pages 166-180.
• Koroma, Abdul Karim. Crisis and Intervention in Sierra Leone 1997-2003. Freetown and London (2004) Andromeda Publications

External links

• No Peace Without Justice Conflict Mapping Report
• Sierra Leone Truth & Reconciliation Commission Report
• Cry Freetown
• The Postcards from Hell
• A Long Way Gone by Ishmael Beah