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When your country is endowed with great riches as Sierra
Leone is with its diamond fields, yet ranks as one of the
poorest countries in the world because those riches are siphoned
off by the ruling elite whilst the general population struggles
to survive on a daily basis, you have a society where
revolutionary ideology can rapidly take hold. And that ideology
was spread by one Foday Sankoh. a former army corporal, who formed the RUF (Revolutionary United
Front), which started an armed insurrection to overthrow the
existing political classes in 1991 supported by the armed forces
of Charles Taylor's National Patriotic Front of
Liberia (NPFL). A move that was to plunge Sierra
Leone into a bloody, vicious civil war that was to last over a
decade, leave 50,000 dead, nearly two million people displaced
and families and communities ripped apart. The civil war had one simple
objective, control over the country's diamonds and the riches
and opulent lifestyles they could provide.
In
the first twelve months of the Sierra Leone civil war, the RUF moved fast against an ineffective government and
soon took control of the diamond fields in eastern
and southern Sierra Leone. Frustrated at the
government's lack of effective response, Captain
Valentine Strasser of the Sierra Leone army staged a
military coup deposing then President Momoh and set about
pushing the RUF rebels back towards the border into
Liberia. However Strasser was ousted in a military coup led
by his defence minister, Brigadier Julius Maada Bio
in 1996 and elections were called seeing Ahmad Tejan
Kabbah elected president in February of that
year. Kabbah signed the Abidjan Peace Accord peace deal
with the RUF rebels nine months later however, before
it could be fully implemented, he too was ousted by
by Major Johnny Paul Koroma who
installed a military junta in Sierra Leone banning
all political parties and abolishing the
constitution. The rebel forces enlisted children, some as young
as seven, to fight under pain of death as child soldiers.
One of these child soldiers explains his involvement, "One day we attacked some soldiers from Guinea. I hid behind a tree then I shot him. After I
killed him, I took his AK-47 rifle to my boss and said 'look,
I have killed a soldier.' Because the man I killed was a sergeant they made me a
sergeant in the rebel army. I was only eight or nine years old.
Next they made me the commander of all the small boys in the
rebel army." Such memories are hard for grown men at war but for
emotionally immature children, such scenes scar for life.
Another seven year old who witnessed the murder of his parents
and was taken by the rebels to be trained as another of the
child soldiers in Sierra Leone stated that he would have done
'what he had to do' to survive, but added 'I only want to go to
school.'
So, where did these child soldiers in Sierra Leone come from? Many of the
children who were recruited as child soldiers had fled Liberia
during the civil war there and some 80,000 of them were encamped
on the Liberian - Sierra Leone border, frightened and destitute.
Their numbers were swelled by many more children fleeing the
violence in Sierra Leone and together they provided a fertile
recruiting ground; you either enlisted and did as you were told,
or a bullet through your head would teach others that you should
have joined up. Whilst the exact numbers of child soldiers in
Sierra Leone war remains unknown, at one point the government
forces, let alone the rebels, were comprised by a quarter of
such children under the age of 18 yrs. They were used for
guarding diamond miners, attacking villages, committing
atrocities and sexual exploitation.
As noted above, President Kabbah had fled to Guinea in search of support against
the new junta and found it in Economic Community of
West African States Monitoring Group (ECOMOG) an
agreement between the armies of west Africa to work
together primarily led by Nigerian troops and
financed by the Nigerian economy. ECOMOG was
appalled at the level of violence that erupted after
Koroma had declared the war over and it marched on
the capital city of Freetown in support of the
exiled Kabbah government driving the rebels out,
paving the way for Kabbah's return in March 1998
by which time Sankoh had been imprisoned and his
place taken by Sam Bokari, a man known for his
brutal tactics including rape, murder and forced
amputation. However early in January of the following year, the RUF marched back into Freetown temporarily ousting
the ECOMOG troops in battles that saw 5000 dead
before they were again forced to flee the city.
By now the Sierra Leone civil war had been raging for eight years
so when in May 1999 a ceasefire was called, there
was cautious optimism for the talks convened in Togo
that saw Sankoh of the RUF released from prison and
made vice-president of Sierra Leone with control
over the diamond mines in exchange for acceptance of
UN peacekeeping troops. The Lamo Peace Accord came
under pressure just over a year later when RUF
rebels, led by Sam Bokari, again advanced on Freetown
killing and abducted hundreds of UN peacekeepers.
That year, 2000, saw governments such as that of the
UK intervene to get their nationals out of Sierra
Leone, however the tide was turning and by the
spring of 2001 the UN had begun to secure the area
and disarm the rebels, which saw 45,000 fighters
disarmed by the time the war was formally declared
over in January 2002. Kabbah went on to secure a
victory in subsequent elections whilst Sankoh died
whilst awaiting trial for war crimes. The video (below) explains the Sierra Leone civil war
in more detail.
Sierra Leone Civil War: Volunteer in Sierra Leone
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Sierra Leone Civil War: Blood Diamonds
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Sierra Leone Civil War: Child Sponsor Sierra Leone
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Sierra Leone Civil War: Sierra Leone Country Profile
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