West Side Boys

West Side Boys
Leader	Foday Kallay
Dates of operation	1998—2000
Active regions	Occra Hills, Sierra Leone
Status	Defunct
Size	400
Allies	Armed Forces Revolutionary Council
Opponents	Sierra Leone Armed Forces, Sierra Leone Police, ECOMOG, British Armed Forces

The West Side Boys aka West Side Niggaz or West Side Junglers, were an armed group in Sierra Leone, sometimes described as a splinter faction of the Armed Forces Revolutionary Council. It captured and held members of a mostly West African peacekeeping force (including members of the Royal Irish Rangers) in 2000, and was subsequently destroyed by units of the British Special Air Service, Special Boat Service and Parachute Regiment during September 2000 in Operation Barras, and follow-up operations by the Sierra Leone Army and Royal Irish Rangers. The group was influenced to some extent by American rap and gangsta rap music, especially Tupac Shakur, and the "gangsta" culture portrayed therein. Since the title 'West Side Niggaz' would have been an entirely unacceptable phrase to be regularly used on news programmes concerning the group, the title was amended to render it to the innocuous 'West Side Boys'. Prior to their destruction, the group had expanded to around 400 members.

Many members of the group were children abducted after their parents had been killed by the "recruiters". Some of these children were forced to participate in torturing their parents to death in order to brutalise and dehumanise them. (See military use of children.) The West Side Boys were heavy users of homemade palm wine, locally grown marijuana, and heroin bought with conflict diamonds. Conflict diamonds were also used to purchase many of their weapons, which ranged from SLR rifles, AK-47 rifles and RPG-7 grenade launchers to 81 mm mortars and ZPU-2 anti-aircraft guns. Most of their vehicles were hijacked from UN food convoys. One of the hostages rescued during Operation Barras has also claimed that the West Side Boys were supplied with ammunition by corrupt Jordanian UN peacekeepers.

Who they were

At the time that the West Side Niggaz were active, large areas of Sierra Leone were controlled by militias. However, there existed no proveable connections to the main rebel group in Sierra Leone, the Revolutionary United Front.

Frequently the subject of British media, due in part to their kidnapping of British soldiers and their flamboyant character, romanticised by the BBC's reporting language: "They were known for wearing bizarre clothing - women's wigs and flip-flops were favourites - and being almost perpetually drunk."

References

• Operation Certain Death, Damien Lewis, Arrow Books, 2005.