Africa has been a hotbed of conflict for the last century. As the colonial regimes
of the Old World withered, the shadow of the Cold War enveloped the continent.
Vast natural resources were discovered and weapons proliferated, providing the means
for idealists and renegades to take power for themselves. This is Untangling Africa,
and in this episode, we’re taking a look at the civil war in Sierra Leone.
Sierra Leone gained independence from Britain in 1961 and, until his death in 1964, was led
by the democratically elected Prime Minister Sir Milton Margai. Rich in diamonds, fish,
cocoa, and minerals, Sierra Leone had large public coffers and strong institutions.
But all it took was one man to bring it down.
In 1968, Siaka Stevens was elected Prime Minister of Sierra Leone. He'd spent a lot of time since
Sierra Leone's independence fanning the flames of ethnic conflict in the country’s remote
northern and eastern fringes. Riding on a ripple, as opposed to a wave, of populism, Stevens quickly
set about destroying the democracy that elected him. He emptied the treasury to pay for small
projects that benefitted his close allies. He undermined and stripped away parliamentary powers.
And he had political opponents exiled or executed by a corrupt judiciary. Public confidence in state
institutions evaporated, and Steven’s reign came to be known as “the 17-year plague of locusts.”
With the treasury empty, government officials looted and sold public property to pay their
bills. Teachers in the publicly funded education system were forced to find
other jobs, and the students were turned out onto the streets. Gang violence rose, and those
with means left the capital, Freetown, for safety overseas. These people represented the country’s
professional classes: the doctors, lawyers, and engineers whose skills were difficult to replace.
While Sierra Leone crumbled, its neighbour Liberia was involved in a bloody civil war.
Weapons flowed into Liberia from other parts of Africa and the ex-Soviet republics.
On the Sierra Leonean border, 80,000 refugees attempted to escape the violence.
They were mostly children and were in desperate need of food, shelter, and medical care.
In the regional and most disaffected areas, a rebel group called the Revolutionary United Front
rose to challenge the government for control over the country. They initially enjoyed support from
Sierra Leoneans desperate for change, until word of their atrocities spread.
Far from being a grassroots organisation, the RUF formed in Liberia from brutalised soldiers
serving the convicted war criminal Charles Taylor.
In 1991, they recruited child soldiers en masse from border refugee camps, promising the kids
food and medicine in exchange for blood. The unwilling were given a choice: join or die.
The RUF rampaged through outlying Sierra Leone. Loot kept the men loyal, and they used violence
to keep the child soldiers in line. In response, the Sierra Leone Army, or SLA, tried to hunt the
RUF down. But corrupt officers withheld money and food from their men, and the government soldiers
went on countryside looting sprees too. With both sides massacring civilians without cause,
people could no longer tell the difference between the RUF and the SLA, who were supposed
to be protecting them. They called the men “Sobels” — soldiers by day, rebels by night.
A third faction then entered the fray. Named "the Kamajors" after a traditional group of
expert hunters, these men were essentially a patriot militia. They guarded villages
against both the SLA and the RUF, though they were also involved with criminals.
Many Kamajor militiamen came from street gangs, but as far as the civilians were concerned,
they were better than the rebels AND the army.
By 1992, the RUF controlled two-thirds of Sierra Leone. The SLA had been
totally ineffective in destroying the rebels and were now fighting the Kamajors, too.
As if that wasn’t enough, there were problems back in Freetown.
In 1991, the RUF captured transport hubs in the infrastructure-poor south and east of Sierra
Leone. The government-run diamond mines were cut off, and the regime’s main source of wealth went
with it. Money to pay both the SLA and the public service ran out. So, in April 1992, a group of SLA
officers overthrew the government, establishing the National Provisional Ruling Council,
or NPRC. They promised to bring peace to Sierra Leone, but peace had a high price.
With considerable assistance from an ECOMOG [Text: Economic Community of West African States
Monitoring Group, a multilateral armed force based in West Africa.] contingent comprising
Nigerian regulars, the NPRC pushed the RUF back to the border. By 1993, it looked like
the war might be over, but the corrupt NPRC had neglected the SLA soldiers on the ground.
Having gone without pay and food for weeks, large contingents of the SLA went renegade, joining
the RUF. Bolstered by soldiers and supplies, the RUF renewed their offensive on Freetown.
This suited the NPRC just fine, because the longer the war went, the longer they stayed in power.
However, this strategy only works if you’re on the winning side, and by 1995, with the rebels
20km from Freetown, the NPRC was in trouble. What they needed was an executive outcome.
In March 1995, South African PMC Executive Outcomes arrived in Sierra Leone. For a hefty
fee of $1.8 million per month, the contractors promised to retake Sierra Leone’s diamond mines,
destroy the RUF headquarters, and return the country to government control.
And they could do it—because Executive Outcomes was not your average consultancy.
When Apartheid ended in South Africa, one of the compromises made between the incumbent
National Party and the popular ANC was the disbanding of certain Special Forces units.
Three-Two Battalion, comprising battle-hardened black and white soldiers from the South African
Border War, was disbanded and its members were sent to other units.
Following the restructuring of the SADF by the ANC, many experienced soldiers faced bankruptcy.
Offering the men lucrative contracts for the same job they’d always done,
Executive Outcomes purchased a fully formed and battle-hardened fighting force.
They had helicopters, tanks, and armoured vehicles from the former Soviet Union
and experienced soldiers to crew them. They also recruited military doctors, engineers,
and specialists, meaning their force was entirely self-contained. Against a well-trained,
well-equipped, and highly experienced force like this, the RUF in Sierra Leone stood no chance.
In the first ten days of fighting, Executive Outcomes pushed the RUF back 60 miles into the
interior. Seven months later, they had retaken the diamond mines and destroyed the RUF’s main
operational base. They were supported by loyalist SLA units and loyalist Kamajors.
Broken, the RUF signed the Abidjan Peace Accords in Côte d'Ivoire on November 30th
1996. While Executive Outcomes mopped up, Sierra Leone held free and fair elections.
The loyalist Kamajors were reorganised into the Civil Defence Forces or CDFs
and massively expanded. It seemed like the war might be over, but then the UN got involved.
The peace accords demanded Executive Outcomes leave within five weeks of the arrival of a
neutral peacekeeping force. But this wasn’t soon enough for the European bureaucrats.
As the Sierra Leonean economy was still in shambles, the International Monetary
Fund was paying Executive Outcomes’ exorbitant monthly rate. Now the job was done, they wanted
mercenaries off their books as soon as possible. In January 1997, before the peacekeepers arrived,
Executive Outcomes was ordered to leave. Seizing the opportunity,
the RUF renewed its fight against government forces, where they got some unexpected help.
A faction of SLA officers believed the army was at risk of being eclipsed by the popular and
fast-growing CDFs. To remedy this, they freed roughly 600 renegade SLA soldiers from prison
in Freetown and proclaimed a new party, the Armed Forces Revolutionary Council or AFRC,
as Sierra Leone’s government. The ill-equipped and village-based CDFs couldn’t hold Freetown,
and it was overrun by the AFRC and RUF, who had joined forces. The city was sacked,
and the president escaped by helicopter. Mass killings, rape, and looting ensued. The rebels
called this “Operation No Living Thing” and “Operation Pay Yourself.” It was carnage.
The world condemned the violence, but only ECOMOG was willing to step in and actually
do anything about it. In 1998, ECOMOG’s crack troops, the battle-hardened Nigerians, assaulted
Freetown and Liberated it from AFRC control. They did this largely without air and armoured support,
overcoming entrenched positions with not much more than courage and grit.
With ECOMOG security present in the city, the president returned. He struck a peace deal
with the RUF in July 1999. Called the Lome Peace Accords, the agreement gave the head of the RUF,
Foday Sankoh, the vice-presidency and control over the diamond mines. In return,
the RUF was meant to disarm and stop murdering people. They didn’t.
Having finally organised the paperwork, the UN dispatched a force to oversee the disarmament
process and monitor the “peace.” It was named UNAMSIL and effectively replaced the critically
under-resourced ECOMOG force. But unlike ECOMOG, who defeated the rebels and took
Freetown with just 700 men and no support, the lavishly supplied UNAMSIL worked hard to avoid
contact with the enemy. In fact, they were consistently humiliated by enemy forces.
In one instance, 500 UNAMSIL peacekeepers were captured by the RUF,
who then advanced on Freetown with captured UN weapons and armoured vehicles.
This incident shook UNAMSIL’s confidence, and they further avoided the RUF from then on.
However, some of the peacekeeper hostages were from India, and the Indian Army refused
to abandon their men. They launched Operation Khukri to break them out.
Two companies of the 5/8th Gorkha Rifles Infantry Battalion were holed up in Kailahun,
surrounded by roughly 5,000 RUF fighters, many of whom were armed with captured UN weapons.
In July 2003, 2 Para special forces parachuted into Kailahun
via British C-130 Hercules and Chinook helos. The Indian paras destroyed UN supply caches to
deny them to the rebels and organised the Gorkha breakout. Taking the RUF by surprise, the Indians
smashed through their positions and evacuated every single one of their trapped soldiers. Only
one Indian was killed, while the special forces inflicted hundreds of casualties on the RUF.
Operation Khukri significantly boosted UNAMSIL morale and demonstrated that swift,
decisive action could crush the rebels. The Brits jumped on board too, launching Operation Palliser.
Soldiers of the Paratroop Regiment secured the airport, and the RAF began evacuating UNAMSIL
staff. British forces also launched small-scale raids and rescue operations across the country,
knocking out key RUF leaders and recovering UNAMSIL hostages. The British commander,
Brigadier Richards, expanded their mission from rescuing key people to rescuing the whole of
UNAMSIL. With the British and Indian special forces working together, not to mention a few
rough-and-ready Nigerian units, UNAMSIL was resuscitated. Over the border, the government
of Guinea had decided enough was enough and began bombing the crap out of rebel strongholds.
The flow of conflict diamonds to Liberia slowed, and with it went the RUF’s funding.
The RUF was out of money, facing the British and Indian special forces,
getting clobbered by Nigerian units who were very much DONE with the whole thing,
and had bombs falling on their heads daily. With no prospect of escape, the RUF surrendered.
Meanwhile, the opportunistic AFRC changed sides again, going back to the loyalist SLA.
The RUF were disarmed alongside the CDFs, and UNAMSIL monitored the situation. Now no one had
any weapons, and everyone had given up fighting; their job was much easier. On January 18th 2002,
the president announced the war was over. But it cast a long shadow. An entire generation of
children was denied an education and brutalised by the war. Roughly half of the RUF’s strength
and a quarter of the government forces consisted of child soldiers, and the mental scars of the
conflict still run deep. The RUF’s leaders are all now dead or serving life sentences for war crimes.
After 11 years of conflict, the fighting stopped and a fragile peace returned to Sierra Leone.
But what do YOU think? Why do YOU think it took so many years for the UN to intervene?
Would YOU trust the army after it changed sides twice? Why do YOU think UNAMSIL failed where
Executive Outcomes, ECOMOG, and the combined British and Indian contingents succeeded?