The story of How Sierra Leone Collapsed after Independence
By SARETA ASHRAPH
This series looks at how Sierra Leone, once known as the ‘Athens of West Africa’ and blessed with mineral resources, fell into a brutal civil war a mere 30 years after independence in 1961. The series looks at what happened in the war as well as the roots of the conflict and,
finally, asks the question: are there lessons that Trinidad and Tobago can learn from Sierra Leone?
On the shelves of the library of the School of African and Oriental Studies in London rests a picture book of Sierra Leone, published in 1986. In one of the book’s photographs, children run along Tokeh beach, a 45-minute drive from the capital, Freetown, along the pitted coastal road. Green foliage stretches into the background. The newly opened Club Med resort, the Africana, is just out of shot.
The Africana, like many villages in Sierra Leone, had been burnt during the country’s 11-year civil war. In late 2003, I visited Tokeh and walked through its ruins. Reduced to a collection of roofless structures, the Africana’s remaining walls were blackened; its concrete walkways cracked with weeds. Brightly coloured lizards contemplated me as I wandered. In the sea, a large flat rock appeared and disappeared with the roll of the waves: it was once the hotel’s helipad.
Sierra Leone, a former British colony, became independent on 27th April 1961, 15 months before Trinidad and Tobago. It is a country of approximately six million people, bordered by Guinea and Liberia. It has over ten tribes, each with their own language and history, but the most significant groups, numerically and politically, are the Mende from the south and the Temne and Limba who inhabit the northern provinces. The Krios – descendants of returned slaves – are based in the Western Area, which was the original British colony and which is far more industralised than other areas of the country. Though many outside of the Western Area do not speak it, the lingua franca is Krio, which, like the Trinidad dialect, is an English-based creole language though with less input from English.
Like many other West African countries, Sierra Leone is blessed with natural resources and minerals. Sierra Leone has gold, iron, bauxite and diamonds. Oil has just been discovered off its coast. It was – prior to the war – most famous for being a nation to which freed slaves were returned; thus the name of its capital, Freetown.
Today, the international image of Sierra Leone is that of a country with drugged child soldiers, amputees and blood diamonds: the conflict that consumed the country now defines it. The war started in March 1991 when the Revolutionary United Front (RUF) – made up at the time of approximately 400 Sierra Leoneans and 1600 fighters from the National Patriotic Front of Liberia (NPFL) – crossed from Liberia into the south eastern districts of Kailahun and Pujehun in Sierra Leone. The RUF’s charismatic leader was a short, stout man called Foday Sankoh, a former army officer who had been imprisoned for treason in the early 1970s. Particularly in the early years of the war, however, many felt that Charles Taylor, the then head of the NPFL and the man who would become Liberia’s 22nd President, exerted strong influence on the RUF. The relationship between Charles Taylor and the RUF is currently being litigated in the Hague, where the former President stands charged with war crimes and crimes against humanity.
Trained in Libya, Sankoh espoused a socialist ideology popular in West Africa at the time. Though his genuine commitment to the ideology remains a matter of debate, Sankoh spoke convincingly of the need for free education, free healthcare and campaigned for the benefit of the country’s mineral resources to be returned to Sierra Leoneans, not to foreign companies. These ideas were popular with the residents of Kailahun and Pujehun who lived in dire poverty—without electricity and running water- in a place where the life expectancy hovered around 36 years and one in three children died before their fifth birthday, from largely preventable diseases.
Democratic change was impossible: by 1991 Sierra Leone had been a one-party state for 13 years and opposition to the government was violently suppressed. For those who felt abandoned by their government and their chiefs, armed revolution was a clear option.
In the decade which followed the RUF’s crossing over from Liberia, Sierra Leone saw 2 military coups, the retention of South African mercenaries by the government, the rise of the civilian militias (which eventually consolidated as the Civil Defence Forces (CDF)) and the basing of Nigerian-led West African forces (ECOMOG) who interceded on behalf of the government.
Foday Sankoh would be twice hailed as a peace-maker and twice arrested and imprisoned. He would eventually die in custody. Thousands of civilians would be killed by members of all the combatant groups; more would be raped, some taken as ‘wives’ of the combatants. Over 10,000 people would have their hands, arms, feet or tongues amputated before being sent to populated areas as a warning against supporting the government. Only a quarter of those would survive the blood loss and infection. In the war crimes trials that followed the end of the war, the RUF, CDF and AFRC were all found to have used fighters under the age of 15 years. Members of ECOMOG or the Sierra Leone Army fighting on behalf of the government have never been tried by any court.
War did not descend without warning on Sierra Leone. Indeed, the nation had been moving towards war by increments for many years: a repressive one-party state, endemic corruption and gross financial mismanagement meant by the late 1980s that armed conflict in Sierra Leone was all but inevitable. When the RUF crossed the border in 1991, it was marching into a failed state and, in the days and months before the atrocities started to occur, many hoped that the revolution would change Sierra Leone and their lives for the better.
Over the next few months, this series will explore not only what happened during the war but how Sierra Leone – a country of such material riches and such promise - fell into such disrepair and ultimately into one of the world’s most brutal civil wars. If Sierra Leone can find the key to a different future, then perhaps the photographs in that library book might no longer seem so cruel when judged against reality.
