Part 3 of the Resource Wars series. See also Part 1: Introduction and Part 2: Bougainville. Click on the photo, right, to learn about Sorious Samura’s graphic, horrific and courageous documentary, Cry Freetown. I can’t find a sample online, but this Youtube clip gives you an idea (warning: brutal and bloody – and I don’t endorse the accuracy of this clip, but the footage is real at least). I will never forget the shocked civilians with bleeding stumps, the children forced to amputate limbs, or the sight of peacekeepers beating kids and summarily executing suspects.
Background
The Sierra Leone civil war was an archetypal resource war, where highly lootable diamonds funded an undisciplined rebel army, the Revolutionary United Front. Yet even in this case, the rebels were motivated by grievance against the government. The end of the Cold War made it possible to overthrow the government: “…in authoritarian client states, the removal of external sources of patronage appears to have exacerbated instability, indirectly precipitating a new generation of civil wars.” Sierra Leone had suffered poor governance, losing legitimacy and alienating much of the population. Contra Collier, grievances are not evenly distributed – the key variable is governance.
Warlords, mercenaries and rebels
The conflict was initiated with the help of Liberian warlord Charles Taylor. Later, Nigerian-led peacekeepers intervened, and one of the brief governments employed Executive Outcomes, through Sandline, with temporary success. Both rebel and government forces sold resources through “continentwide criminal brokerage networks engaged in sanctions evasion and war profiteering.” But even with so much profit at stake, young rebels reportedly had long-term ambitions for education, peace and development – a positive sign, if true, and another counter-example to Collier. One of Collier’s proposed solutions for a rebel group of this nature was to offer incentives to rebels to stop fighting, and a proposed peace deal involved offering the RUF leader Foday Sankoh a post in the government, as minister in charge of mineral resources. Given the brutality and greed previously exhibited by the RUF, leader Sankoh’s decision to turn down such an opportunity for profit and launch a “risky military offensive to capture the capital city” was surprising, but it seems to prove that offering appeasing incentives to determined rebels is a strategy doomed to failure.
Child soldiers
The war in Sierra Leone ended after British armed forces intervened. In a subsequent hostage rescue, British special forces killed dozens of child soldiers at a rebel camp. The horrific brutality of using child soldiers,was an exceptional feature of the war. “This is a wholly new phenomenon which promises to change radically the nature of warfare†wrote Alex de Waal. The innovation had unintended consequences in favour of the rebels. Children made obediently brutal soldiers, willing to hack off hands or execute prisoners, with little knowledge of the consequences of their actions. They were also cheap to recruit, since many were orphans with no way of supporting themselves. Ultimately, child soldiers brought a new level of savagery into the conflict, and severe trauma was inflicted on them and their victims.
Links
- Cry Freetown
- Youtube: Conflict Diamonds
- Wikipedia: Sierra Leone Civil War
- Britain’s Small Wars: Sierra Leone
References
- Charles Cater. “The Political Economy of Conflict and UN Intervention: Rethinking the Critical Cases of Africa,” in The Political Economy of Armed Conflict: Beyond Greed and Grievance, ed., Karen Ballentine and Jake Sherman, Boulder: Lynne Rienner, 2003.
- Paul Collier. “Doing Well out of War: An Economic Perspective,†in Greed and Grievance: Economic Agendas in Civil Wars, ed. Mats Berdal and David M. Malone, Boulder: Lynne Rienner, 2000.
- Alex De Waal. “Contemporary warfare in Africa,†in Restructuring the Global Military Sector Volume One: New Wars, ed., Mary Kaldor and Basker Vashee, London: United Nations University, 1997.
