Formerly a British colony, Sierra Leone gained independence in 1961. For thirty years the country enjoyed relative stability. Concerns grew, however, over political corruption among the ruling elite and over the utilization of the country's diamond wealth. Thirty years of corrupt misrule by the government depleted the nation of resources and destroyed much of its infrastructure. Long-standing resentment among the people of the poor rural interior towards the richer ruling class erupted in civil war in 1991. The rebel army, the Revolutionary United Front (RUF) was led by Foday Sankoh, who emerged out of the civil war in neighboring Liberia. Sankoh formed an alliance with the National Patriotic Front for Liberia, led by Charles Taylor who became President of Liberia in 1998.
In 1996, President Ahmad Tejan Kabbah, a member of the Sierra Leone People's Party (SLPP) was elected. Within a year the RUF joined forces with the military junta, the Armed Forces Revolutionary Council (AFRC), in a military designed to force negotiations for a political settlement with the elected government of President Kabbah.
It was at about that time that the RUF escalated their tactics by terrorizing the people of Sierra Leone in a series of brutal attacks. The names of the rebel offensives speak for themselves: Operation Burn House was a series of arson attacks, Operation Pay Yourself was a program of looting, and- most sinister of all- Operation No Living Thing.
Funding for the war primarily came from diamonds mined in the eastern region of Sierra Leone and smuggled out of the country for trade in the international diamond markets. Recent reports in The Washington Post have linked the sale of these diamonds to the Al Qaeda terrorist network. The so-called "blood diamonds" have not only provided arms which fostered the terrible atrocities of the war in Sierra Leone, but also appear to have been a money laundering vehicle for Al Qaeda, allowing it to hide assets in untraceable diamonds.
Sierra Leone officially declared an end to the war in January 2002. Repeated disarmament campaigns throughout the country have resulted in the relinquishment of thousands of arms by rebel forces. Rehabilitation camps have begun to repatriate thousands of soldiers, many of who entered the war as children and who have known little but violence.
The war in Sierra Leone has been reported by numerous international human rights groups to have been among the most brutal known to man. Children, as young as 7 years old, were kidnapped from homes or schools and forced into war. The youngest were often initiated into service as messengers, spies, guards, or porters who carry food and ammunition. Girls were usually forced into domestic and sexual servitude to the commanders. Sometimes children would be sent as advance troops to fire on enemies or to clear land mines. Commanders would force youths to commit atrocities in their native villages to ensure the complete alienation of these children from their home communities.
Those who were not kidnapped were used as civilian examples and given the trademark of the RUF an amputated limb. Teenagers high on drugs stormed into villages and attacked people at random. They chose amputation because they considered it the most effective means of spreading terror and intimidation the victim became a walking billboard for the terrorists.
Drugs cocaine and other narcotics were forcefully administered to children to overcome their resistance and make them unfeeling instruments of war. Human Rights Watch observers in Sierra Leone confirmed reports that rebel leaders used razors to cut the arms of the children and insert cocaine directly into the blood stream. According to Tejan Bockarie who was kidnapped from his schoolyard when he was 11 years old, "It gave me the will to fight. We have hot tempers. We appear in a town, we raid. When someone moves, I just shoot."
In February 1998, the military junta was ousted by the West African Intervention Force, ECOMOG, and President Kabbah returned to power from exile in Guinea. Some AFRC soldiers surrendered, but thousands of others retreated, along with the RUF, into the bush to regroup with assistance from Liberia.
In October 1998, 24 soldiers from the former junta were executed and Foday Sankoh, the rebel leader, was sentenced to death for treason. The rebels responded by announcing they would advance on Freetown to force the release of Mr. Sankoh and in the first weeks of January 1999 war and brutality again erupted in the streets of Freetown.
Following the outbreak in January, the United Nations established a force in Sierra Leone, UNAMISIL. Those troops, now numbering 17,000, absorbed the functions of the ECOMOG troops, which departed in April 2000. These UNAMSIL troops are most important factor bringing stability to the nation.
Since peace has been declared, child soldiers have continued to emerge from the bush maimed with lost limbs or lost eyesight and suffering from posttraumatic stress disorder. Their symptoms include apathy, nightmares, concentration problems, and eating disturbances. According to one news report, "Too many have witnessed acts of human depravity that few adults can fathom. The children often distrust adults and authority. The girls usually fear men and are shunned by societies that consider them 'secondhand goods.' The boys often deal with frustration by lashing out in violence. Families and neighbors may refuse to take them back because of the atrocities they are known to have committed."
Reconstruction and rehabilitation from the war's devastation will require significant resources- including time, expertise and money. Cooperation between the international community and the people and government of Sierra Leone is underway to address the deep wounds which have scarred this nation and its people.
