Sierra Leonean Civil War: Resource Curse
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The Sierra Leonean Civil War (1991–2002) was a civil war in Sierra Leone that began on 23 March 1991 when the Revolutionary United Front (RUF), with support from the special forces of Liberian dictator Charles Taylor, the National Patriotic Front of Liberia (NPFL),[14] intervened in Sierra Leone in an attempt to overthrow the Joseph Momoh government. The resulting civil war lasted almost 11 years, and had over 50,000,[12] up to 70,000, casualties in total; an estimated 2.5 million people were displaced during the conflict, and widespread atrocities occurred.[13][15]
During the first year of the war, the RUF took control of large swathes of territory in eastern and southern Sierra Leone, which were rich in alluvial diamonds. The government's ineffective response to the RUF and the disruption in government diamond production precipitated a military coup d'état in April 1992, organized by the National Provisional Ruling Council (NPRC).[16] By the end of 1993, the Sierra Leone Army (SLA) had succeeded in pushing the RUF rebels back to the Liberian border, but the RUF recovered and fighting continued. In March 1995, Executive Outcomes (EO), a South Africa-based private military company, was hired to repel the RUF. Sierra Leone installed an elected civilian government in March 1996, and the retreating RUF signed the Abidjan Peace Accord. Under UN pressure, the government terminated its contract with EO before the accord could be implemented, and hostilities recommenced.[17]
In May 1997, a group of disgruntled SLA officers staged a coup and established the Armed Forces Revolutionary Council (AFRC) as the new government of Sierra Leone.[18] The RUF joined with the AFRC to capture the capital city, Freetown, with little resistance. The new government, led by Johnny Paul Koroma, declared the war over. A wave of looting, rape, and murder followed the announcement.[1] Reflecting international dismay at the overturning of the civilian government, Economic Community of West African States Monitoring Group (ECOMOG) forces intervened and retook Freetown on behalf of the government, but they found the outlying regions more difficult to pacify.
In January 1999, world leaders intervened diplomatically to promote negotiations between the RUF and the government.[19] The Lome Peace Accord, signed on 27 March 1999, was the result. Lome gave Foday Sankoh, the commander of the RUF, the vice presidency and control of Sierra Leone's diamond mines in return for a cessation of the fighting and the deployment of a UN peacekeeping force (United Nations Mission in Sierra Leone, UNAMSIL) to monitor the disarmament process. RUF compliance with the disarmament process was inconsistent and sluggish, and by May 2000, the rebels were advancing again upon Freetown.[20]
As the UN mission began to fail, the United Kingdom declared its intention to intervene in the former colony and Commonwealth member in an attempt to support the severely weak government of President Ahmad Tejan Kabbah. With help from a renewed UN mandate and Guinean air support, the British Operation Palliser finally defeated the RUF, retaking control of Freetown. On 18 January 2002, President Kabbah declared the Sierra Leone Civil War over.
Political history
Main article: Sierra Leone
See also: Ndogboyosoi War
In 1961, Sierra Leone gained its independence from the United Kingdom.[21] In the years following the death of Sierra Leone's first prime minister Sir Milton Margai in 1964, politics in the country were increasingly characterized by corruption, mismanagement, and electoral violence that led to a weak civil society, the collapse of the education system, and, by 1991, an entire generation of dissatisfied youth were attracted to the rebellious message of the Revolutionary United Front (RUF) and joined the organization.[22] Albert Margai, unlike his half-brother Milton, did not see the state as a steward of the public, but instead as a tool for personal gain and self-aggrandizement and even used the military to suppress multi-party elections that threatened to end his rule.[23]
When Siaka Stevens entered politics in 1968, Sierra Leone was a constitutional democracy. When he stepped down, seventeen years later, Sierra Leone was a one-party state.[24] Stevens' rule, sometimes called "the 17 year plague of locusts",[25] saw the destruction and perversion of every state institution. Parliament was undermined, judges were bribed, and the treasury was bankrupted to finance pet projects that supported insiders.[26] When Stevens failed to co-opt his opponents, he often resorted to state sanctioned executions or exile.[27]
In 1985, Stevens stepped down, and handed the nation's preeminent position to Major General Joseph Momoh, who inherited a destroyed economy but was regarded as mostly successful in rooting out corruption and graft within his government. With the state unable to pay its civil servants, those desperate enough ransacked and looted government offices and property. Even in Freetown, important commodities like gasoline were scarce. But the government hit rock bottom when it could no longer pay schoolteachers and the education system collapsed. Since only wealthy families could afford to pay private tutors, the bulk of Sierra Leone's youth during the late 1980s roamed the streets aimlessly.[28] As infrastructure and public ethics deteriorated in tandem, much of Sierra Leone's professional class fled the country. By 1991, Sierra Leone was ranked as one of the poorest countries in the world, even though it benefited from ample natural resources including diamonds, gold, bauxite, rutile, iron ore, fish, coffee, and cocoa.[29][30]
Diamonds and the "resource curse"
The Eastern and Southern districts in Sierra Leone, most notably the Kono and Kenema districts, are rich in alluvial diamonds, and more importantly, are easily accessible by anyone with a shovel, sieve, and transport.[31] Since their discovery in the early 1930s, diamonds have been critical in financing the continuing pattern of corruption and personal aggrandizement at the expense of needed public services, institutions, and infrastructure.[32] The phenomenon whereby countries with an abundance of natural resources tend to nonetheless be characterized by lower levels of economic development is known as the "resource curse".[33]
The presence of diamonds in Sierra Leone invited and led to the civil war in several ways. First, the highly unequal benefits resulting from diamond mining made ordinary Sierra Leoneans frustrated. Under the Stevens government, revenues from the National Diamond Mining Corporation (known as DIMINCO) – a joint government/DeBeers venture – were used for the personal enrichment of Stevens and of members of the government and business elite who were close to him. when DeBeers pulled out of the venture in 1984, the government lost direct control of the diamond mining areas. By the late 1980s, almost all of Sierra Leone's diamonds were being smuggled[34] and traded illicitly, with revenues going directly into the hands of private investors.[35] In this period the diamond trade was dominated by Lebanese traders and later (after a shift in favor on the part of the Momoh government) by Israelis with connections to the international diamond markets in Antwerp.[36] Momoh made some efforts to reduce smuggling and corruption in the diamond mining sector, but he lacked the political clout to enforce the law.[37] Even after the National Provisional Ruling Council (NPRC) took power in 1992, ostensibly with the goal of reducing corruption and returning revenues to the state, high-ranking members of the government sold diamonds for their personal gain and lived extravagantly off the proceeds.[38]
Diamonds also helped to arm the RUF rebels who used funds harvested from the alluvial diamond mines to purchase weapons and ammunition from neighbouring Guinea, Liberia, and even SLA soldiers.[39] But the most significant connection between diamonds and war is that the presence of easily extractable diamonds provided an incentive for violence.[40] To maintain control of important mining districts like Kono, thousands of civilians were expelled and kept away from these important economic centers.[41]
Although diamonds were a significant motivating and sustaining factor, there were other means of profiting from the Sierra Leone Civil War.[42] For instance, gold mining was prominent in some regions. Even more common was cash crop farming through the use of forced labor. Looting during the Sierra Leone Civil War did not just center on diamonds, but also included that of currency, household items, food, livestock, cars, and international aid shipments.[43] For Sierra Leoneans who did not have access to arable land, joining the rebel cause was an opportunity to seize property through the use of deadly force.[44] But the most important reason why the civil war should not be entirely attributed to conflict over the economic benefits incurred from the alluvial diamond mines is that the pre-war frustrations and grievances did not just concern that of the diamond sector. More than twenty years of poor governance, poverty, corruption and oppression created the circumstances for the rise of the RUF, as ordinary people yearned for change.[45]
Demographics of rebel recruitment
Main article: Revolutionary United Front
As a result of the First Liberian Civil War, 80,000 refugees fled neighboring Liberia for the Sierra Leone – Liberian border. This displaced population, composed almost entirely of children, would prove to be an invaluable asset to the invading rebel armies because the refugee and detention centers, populated first by displaced Liberians and later by Sierra Leoneans, helped provide the manpower for the RUF's insurgency.[46] The RUF took advantage of the refugees, who were abandoned, starving, and in dire need of medical attention, by promising food, shelter, medical care, and looting and mining profits in return for their support.[47] When this method of recruitment failed, as it often did for the RUF, youths were often coerced at gunpoint to join the ranks of the RUF. After being forced to join, many child soldiers learned that the complete lack of law – as a result of the civil war – provided a unique opportunity for self-empowerment through violence and thus continued to support the rebel cause.[48]
Libyan and arms dealing role
Muammar al-Gaddafi both trained and supported Charles Taylor.[49] Gaddafi also helped Foday Sankoh, the founder of Revolutionary United Front.[50]
Russian businessman Viktor Bout supplied Charles Taylor with arms for use in Sierra Leone and had meetings with him about the operations.[51]
SLA response and "Sobels"
The initial rebellion could have easily been quelled in the first half of 1991. But the RUF – despite being both numerically inferior and extremely brutal against civilians – controlled a significant portion of the country by the year's end. The SLA's equally poor behavior made this outcome possible.[31] Often afraid to directly confront or unable to locate the elusive RUF, government soldiers were brutal and indiscriminate in their search for rebels or sympathizers among the civilian population. After retaking captured towns, the SLA would perform a 'mopping up' operation in which the towns people were transported to concentration camp styled 'strategic hamlets' far from their homes in Eastern and Southern Sierra Leone under the pretense of separating the population from the insurgents. However, in many cases, this was followed by much looting and theft after the villagers were evacuated.[52]
Sobels
The SLA's sordid behavior inevitably led to the alienation of many civilians and pushed some Sierra Leoneans to join the rebel cause. With morale low and rations even lower, many SLA soldiers discovered that they could do better by joining with the rebels in looting civilians in the countryside instead of fighting against them.[1] The local civilians referred to these soldiers as 'sobels' or 'soldiers by day, rebels by night' because of their close ties to the RUF. By mid-1993, the two opposing sides became virtually indistinguishable. For these reasons, civilians increasingly relied on an irregular force called the Kamajors for their protection.[53]
Rise of the Kamajors
Main article: Kamajors
A grassroots militia force, the Kamajors operated invisibly in familiar territory and was a significant impediment to marauding government and RUF troops.[54][55] For displaced and unprotected Sierra Leoneans, joining the Kamajors was a means of taking up arms to defend family and home due to the SLA's perceived incompetence and active collusion with the rebel enemy. The Kamajors clashed with both government and RUF forces and was instrumental in countering government soldiers and rebels who were looting villages.[56] The success of the Kamajors raised calls for its expansion, and members of street gangs and deserters were also co-opted into the organization. However, the Kamajors became corrupt and deeply involved in extortion, murder, and kidnappings by the end of the conflict.[57]
National Provisional Ruling Council
Within one year of fighting, the RUF offensive had stalled, but it still remained in control of large territories in Eastern and Southern Sierra Leone leaving many villages unprotected while also disrupting food and government diamond production. Soon the government was unable to pay both its civil servants and the SLA. As a result, the Momoh regime lost all remaining credibility and a group of disgruntled junior officers led by Captain Valentine Strasser overthrew Momoh on 29 April 1992.[58] Strasser justified the coup and the establishment of the National Provisional Ruling Council (NPRC) by referencing the corrupt Momoh regime and its inability to resuscitate the economy, provide for the people of Sierra Leone, and repel the rebel invaders. The NPRC's coup was largely popular because it promised to bring peace to Sierra Leone.[59] But the NPRC's promise would prove to be short lived.[60]
In March 1993, with much help from ECOMOG troops provided by Nigeria, the SLA recaptured the Koidu and Kono diamond districts and pushed the RUF to the Sierra Leone – Liberia border.[61] The RUF was facing supply problems as the United Liberation Movement of Liberia for Democracy (ULIMO) gains inside Liberia were restricting the ability of Charles Taylor's NPFL to trade with the RUF. By the end of 1993, many observers thought that the war was over because for the first time in the conflict the Sierra Leone Army was able to establish itself in the Eastern and the Southern mining districts.[62]
However, with senior government officials neglectful of the conditions faced by SLA soldiers, front line soldiers became resentful of their poor conditions and began helping themselves to Sierra Leone's rich natural resources.[63] This included alluvial diamonds as well as looting and 'sell game', a tactic in which government forces would withdraw from a town but not before leaving arms and ammunition for the roving rebels in return for cash.[31] Renegade SLA soldiers even clashed with Kamajor units on a number of occasions when the Kamajors intervened to halt the looting and mining. The NPRC government also had a motivation for allowing the war to continue, since as long as the country was at war the military government would not be called upon to hand over rule to a democratically elected civilian government.[62] The war dragged on as a low intensity conflict until January 1995 when RUF forces and dissident SLA elements seized the SIEROMCO (bauxite) and Sierra Rutile (titanium dioxide) mines in the Moyamba and Bonthe districts in the country's south west, furthering the government's economic struggles and enabling a renewed RUF advance on the capital at Freetown.[64]
Executive Outcomes
Main article: Executive Outcomes
In March 1995, with the RUF within twenty miles of Freetown, Executive Outcomes, a private military company from South Africa, arrived in Sierra Leone. The government paid EO $1.8 million per month (financed primarily by the International Monetary Fund),[65] to accomplish three goals: return the diamond and mineral mines to the government, locate and destroy the RUF's headquarters, and operate a successful propaganda program that would encourage local Sierra Leoneans to support the government of Sierra Leone.[66] EO's military force consisted of 500 military advisers and 3,000 highly trained and well-equipped combat-ready soldiers, backed by tactical air support and transport. Executive Outcomes employed black Angolans and Namibians from apartheid-era South Africa's former 32 Battalion, with an officer corps of white South Africans.[67] Harper's Magazine described this controversial unit as a collection of former spies, assassins, and crack bush guerrillas, most of whom had served for fifteen to twenty years in South Africa's most notorious counter insurgency units.[68]
As a military force, EO was remarkably effective and conducted a highly successful counter insurgency against the RUF. In just ten days of fighting, EO was able to drive the RUF forces back sixty miles into the interior of the country.[67] EO outmatched the RUF forces in all operations. In just seven months, EO, with support from loyal SLA and the Kamajors battalions, recaptured the diamond mining districts and the Kangari Hills, a major RUF stronghold.[69] A second offensive captured the provincial capital and the largest city in Sierra Leone and destroyed the RUF's main base of operations near Bo, finally forcing the RUF to admit defeat and sign the Abidjan Peace Accord in Abidjan, Côte d'Ivoire on 30 November 1996.[70] This period of relative peace also allowed the country to hold parliamentary and presidential elections in February and March 1996.[71] Ahmad Tejan Kabbah (of the Sierra Leone People's Party [SLPP]), a diplomat who had worked at the UN for more than 20 years, won the presidential election.[72]
Abidjan Peace Accord
Main article: Abidjan Peace Accord
The Abidjan Peace Accord mandated that Executive Outcomes was to pull out within five weeks after the arrival of a neutral peacekeeping force. The main stumbling block that prevented Sankoh from signing the agreement sooner was the number and type of peacekeepers that were to monitor the ceasefire.[73] Additionally, continued Kamajor attacks and the fear of punitive tribunals following demobilization kept many rebels in the bush despite their dire situation. However, in January 1997, the Kabbah government – beset by demands to reduce expenditures by the International Monetary Fund – ordered EO to leave the country, even though a neutral monitoring force had yet to arrive.[74] The departure of EO opened up an opportunity for the RUF to regroup for renewed military attacks.[75] The March 1997 arrest of RUF leader Foday Sankoh in Nigeria also angered RUF members, who reacted with escalated violence. By the end of March 1997, the peace accord had collapsed.[76]
The Abidjan Peace Accord was a treaty signed in Abidjan, Côte d'Ivoire on 30 November 1996 to try to bring an end to the Sierra Leone Civil War (1991–2002).[1] The two main signatories were President Ahmad Tejan Kabbah of Sierra Leone and Foday Sankoh, leader of the Revolutionary United Front (RUF) rebel group.[1] However, Sankoh refused to honour the terms of the agreement, and Kabbah was forced into exile by a May 1997 military coup (though he regained power the following year), so the Accord failed to bring about peace.[2]
Impact
The civil war began on 23 March 1991, when the RUF attempted to overthrow the government of President Joseph Saidu Momoh. A 1992 military coup saw Captain Valentine Strasser, barely 25 years old, seize power, but the fighting continued. Strasser himself would be ousted by Julius Maada Bio in 1996. Peace negotiations were pursued intermittently through the regime changes.[3]
On 25 February 1996, delegations from both sides, along with United Nations Special Envoy Berhanu Dinka and representatives of the Organisation of African Unity and the Commonwealth, met in Abidjan for four days.[3][4] On 25–26 March, Bio and Sankoh met face-to-face for talks in Yamoussoukro, Ivory Coast, under the auspices of that country's president, Henri Konan Bédié.[3][4] Days later, Ahmad Tejan Kabbah was elected President of Sierra Leone. Kabba and Sankoh met on 22–23 April in Yamoussoukro and agreed to a ceasefire.[3][4] Talks continued, though both sides accused the other of breaching the ceasefire.[3] In October or November, Kabba again met with Sankoh, this time in Abidjan.[3] Finally, on 22 November, the Abidjan Peace Accord was signed, the government having made concessions and the RUF having suffered severe military defeats.[2][4]