Origins of the Civil War in Sierra Leone

F. G. H. Seidl – 3

Introduction: "urban origins" and "social terrain"

Most of the post-colonial so-called 'rebel movements' in Africa, which occurred in a number of African countries, long after the independence, are marked by an excessive use of violence, mostly against the innocent rural civil population, which is killed and tortured by the 'rebels' in the pursuit of their 'revolution'. In trying to find a general explanation for this phenomenon, Mkandawire has basically argued that "the social terrain of rural Africa is highly unsuitable for classical guerrilla warfare and that, combined with the urban origins of rebel movements, this generates self-defeating behavior on the part of armed groups, and terrible suffering for rural populations." 1 According this interpretation, the violent actions of African rebels have to be seen in the context of (1.) the urban origins and agendas of the rebel movements and (2.) the rural terrain of Africa that is generally hostile towards them.

It is argued that post-colonial rebel movements in Africa commonly are driven by and rooted in urban concerns. A first source for the "urban crisis" often are "intra-elite conflicts", when the nationalist political pacts of the independence struggles start to deteriorate. Another reason is the ongoing decline of African national economies that is especially felt by the urban populations, due to "structural adjustment measures" imposed by the major donor-agencies, which result in tremendously rising living costs – contrasted by increases in luxury consumption of the elite. However, although the roots of the conflict are usually urban ones, the fighting takes place in rural areas, "until such a time as it is deemed appropriate to make the final assault on the urban areas". 2 For that reason it is necessary, to include also the responses and actions of the rural population into the analysis, not only the direct roots of the 'revolutions'. In Africa, Mkandawire observes, "peasants still have direct access to the main means of production – labour and land ", they more or less own their land and are not directly exploited by capitalist landlords. As already "Che" Guevara has observed: "In all wars of liberation of this type, a basic element is the hunger for land, involving the great poverty …" – the new 'revolutionaries' therefore have not much to offer to the peasants. What is more, the ability of the state to rip off the peasants deteriorated in the 1980s and 1990s, due to the adoption

1 Mkandawire, 'The terrible toll', p 182.

2 Mkandawire, 'The terrible toll', p 192-193.

F. G. H. Seidl – 4

of structural adjustment programs and "by the general curtailing of the state's reach in most African countries". 3 Thus, it is not the peasantry that calls for the urban youth to help them in their struggle, but the young urban rebels that try to persuade the peasantry to start a revolution. Convinced of the righteousness and necessity of the revolution, the originally urban rebels then "will tend to consider reluctant peasants as enemies or traitors, with death the usual penalty". 4 In this way, the peasants' unwillingness to fight and their dissociation from the revolutionaries is seen as the root-cause for their terrible suffering in African civil wars. In the purpose of this essay is to confront this explanation with the reality of the civil war in Sierra Leone – perhaps one of the most extreme examples for atrocities agains t the peasantry among African civil wars, with the RUF's "hideous reputation for human rights abuses", including "summary execution, rape, and mutilation … preceded by psychological tortures of breathtaking malevolence". 5 It is therefore necessary first to explain the origins and the course of this 'revolution', especially with respect to the use of violence, before it can be shown how the case of Sierra Leone fits into the suggested model.

Origins and character of the civil war in Sierra Leone

The Revolutionary United Front / Sierra Leone (RUF/SL) – which in 1991 started a civil war that has not yet ended and in the fist six years of fighting before the RUF marched into the national capital, Freetown, resulted in the killing of more the 30.000 people and the displacement of more than half of the country's population 6 – has its origins, according to most scholars, in the oppositional youth sub-culture of the lumpenproletariat in Freetown. This lumpen-culture – which was from the beginning marked by antisocial behavior, consumption of drugs, theft and violence – started in the 1940s, and since then the inhabitants of the so-called pote – a "peri-urban area of relaxation for unemployed youths" – had been used by politicians to do their dirty work as foot-soldiers and "political thugs". But the character of the pote-culture changed in the 1970s into an area of "political socialization and counter cultural activities" when the lumpen-youth was joined by middle-

3 Mkandawire,'The terrible toll', p 193-196.

4 Mkandawire, 'The terrible toll', p 204.

5 Fanthorpe, 'Neither citizen nor subject?', p 364.

6 Abdulla and Muana, 'The Revolutionary United Front', p 172.

F. G. H. Seidl – 5

class youth, high school and university students. 7 Lacking an oppositional possibility to the increasingly authoritarian APC-regime – marked by the "systematic effort to destroy all forms of civic opposition", the centralization of all power in its hands and a "selective, but deliberate und undisciplined use of state violence" 8 – and influenced by reggae music as well as by some African and Marxist political philosophy, the pote became an area for discussions about "the system" and the articulation of the need for social change and later the open talk about revolution. The student-organized, partly violent, demonstrations in the late 1970s and early 1980s, which were largely supported by the pote-youth, as well as the students' publicity campaign against the APC led to the deterioration of the studentadministration relation and finally to the expulsion and suspension of 41 students and two faculty members, who then went to Ghana to finish their studies. 9 Because of the connections of some of those exile-students to Libya, which was then engaged in promoting revolutions all over north Africa, the Ghana group – together with "other groups, mostly unemployed youths, … recruited in Sierra Leone" – could go to Benghazi, Libya, for military and ideological training in 1987-88. 10 The recruitment for this training "became a random exercise – i.e. anybody who expressed interest to go to Libya could do so irrespective of the ideological status or competence of the individual" and after the Libya-group split and all of the students dropped out of the military project, the remaining part, which then set up the RUF, therefore "was drawn from a stratum of Sierra Leonan society that is hooked on drugs, alcohol and street gambling. They have very limited education and are prone to gangster types of activities." 11 One of those individuals was an older man, the ex-Corporal Foday Sankoh, who later became the leader of the RUF. He has been imprisoned for his participation in a planned coup against the APC government in the 1970s. He is reported as having been "not interested in reading", an "action oriented individual" and a militarist. Also after he became a member of a 'revolutionary' study group in the hinterland of Freetown, "his ideas remained that of an angry man who had an axe to grind because of his imprisonment" and his idea of revolution "was to seize power by any conceivable means". 12 The 'revolutionary movement' that was subsequently set up by Sankoh after their return to Sierra Leone in 1988 together with two other members of the Libya-group – both of whom were executed

7 Abdullah, 'Bush path to destruction', p 51-52.

8 Bangura, 'Political and cultural dynamics', p 135.

9 Abdullah, 'Bush path to destruction', p 52-56.

10 Abdullah and Muana, 'The Revolutionary United Front', p. 176-177.

11 Bangura, 'Political and cultural dynamics', p 125-126.

12 Abdullah, 'Bushpath to destruction', p 64.