March 24, 2021
By: James Kamara-Manneh
A boy I was 30yrs ago staying with my mum and her tenants in our family house within the western area of Freetown. It was early in the morning hours on the 23 March 1991 when news of war became a rude awakening. A toddler at that time knew nothing about the importance or danger of war, but I could recall some vivid experiences about the onslaught on Freetown.
History tells us that Bomaru and villages within Kailahun district in the Eastern part of Sierra Leone and the Liberia Border were inlet for the Revolutionary United Front (RUF) led by their commander Corporal Foday Sankoh with support from the then Liberian rebel leader Charles Taylor and his group, the National Patriotic Front of Liberia (NFPL). They were poised to overthrow the government of then Sierra Leonean President Joseph Saidu Momoh.
There were many myth and disbelief at the time as people were in a confused state and left with questions like, “who are these guys, what do they want, where are they coming from?”
However, as time went by, I came to the realization that Sierra Leone’s civil war was one of the bloodiest in Africa resulting in more than fifty thousand death and half a million displaced in a nation of four million people at that time. The conflict was particularly violent and protracted because both the RUF and the Sierra Leone government were often funded by “blood diamonds” mined with slave labor.
During the first year of the war, the RUF took control of the diamond-rich territory in eastern and southern Sierra Leone. On April 29, 1992, President Momoh was ousted in military coup led by Captain Valentine Strasser who created the National Provisional Ruling Council (NPRC). Strasser said the corrupt Momoh government could not resuscitate the economy, provide for the people of Sierra Leone, and repel the rebel invaders.
In March 1993, the Economic Community of West African States Monitoring Group (ECOMOG) sent mostly Nigerian troops to Freetown, the capital, and assisted the Sierra Leone Army in recapturing the diamond districts and pushing the RUF to the diamond districts and pushing the RUF to the Sierra Leone-Liberia border. By the end of 1993, many observers thought the war had ended because the RUF seized most of its military operations. Yet what had begun as a civil war now had international implications as the Sierra Leone government was supported by ECOMOG, Great Britain, Guinea, and the United States while the RUF was backed by Liberia under the control of Charles Taylor, Libya, and Burkina Faso.
In March 1995, the Sierra Leone government hired Executive Outcomes (EO) a South Africa-based mercenary group to defeat finally the RUF. Meanwhile, Sierra Leone installed an elected civilian government in March 1996, and the retreating RUF signed the Abidjan Peace Accord which brought an end to the fighting. In May 1997, however, a group of Sierra Leone Army officers staged a coup and established the Armed Forces Revolutionary Council (AFRC) as the new government of the country. They invited the RUF to join them, and the two factions now ruled Freetown, the nation’s capital, with little resistance.
The new government under Johnny Paul Koroma declared the war over. Yet looting, rape, and murder mostly by RUF forces quickly followed the new government’s announcement and illustrated its weakness. ECOMOG forces returned and retook Freetown on behalf of the Koroma government but could not pacify outlying regions. The RUF continued the civil war.
In January 1999, world leaders intervened to promote negotiations between the RUF and the government. The Lome Peace Accord was signed on July 7, 1999. That agreement 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 to monitor the disarmament process. RUF compliance with the disarmament process was inconsistent and sluggish, and by May 2000, the rebels were again advancing on Freetown. With help from United Nations forces, British troops, and Guinean air support, the Sierra Leone Army finally defeated the RUF before they could take control of Freetown. On January 18, 2002, newly installed President Ahmad Tejan Kabbah declared the Sierra Leone Civil War had finally ended.
The aim of resuscitating the economy, desire to fight against corruption, good governance structure, nationalism, nepotism, regionalism, injustice, poor infrastructural development amongst the lots that necessitated the bloodletting, suffering and mayhem of this country’s civil destructive insurgence. The question now is, has the scars of 30 yrs senseless brutal war vanished?
The Truth and Reconciliation Commission was established by the then President Kabba and other international partners to ascertain the cause of the war, to hold those accountable for such havoc and to solicit ways to make amends with people who tasted the bitter parts of the war. It is of no secret that Sierra Leone is still grappling with those issues that caused the death of millions of brothers and sisters; the senseless amputation of human body parts, waste of a child less than 3yrs old was imputed. The limbs of innocent people who perhaps had nothing to do with government, or those who have never visited Freetown were split. Our women were raped, villages looted clean and young boys and girls were conscripted into the rebel army.
Walking around the busy street of Freetown the scars of our ruthless civil war is permeating all over the place. The in flock of disables from their various districts to the Freetown capital, the migration of provincials, and the huge population rate now in Freetown as compare thirty year down the line, the huge indiscipline, lawlessness, corruption, are visible effects of what we had suffered.
As a young man growing up by then, I was privileged to have survived the war and to have experienced it first-hand. I witnessed a scene were a man who was alleged to have been with the rebel was butchered into pieces and left in Street to rot, and that was my first experience to see the human intestine extracted. A man was shot in the head and his skull opened, a lady was accused of hosting some security personnel in her house she was strip naked, flogged and the rest is history.
My mum then was a bit stronger, so she can move a little faster considering her physical condition, she had ran out of the bathroom because of a stray bullet that fell next to her. Twenty of us including a lactating mother and a pregnant woman sought refuge in the same house where one of the rebels threw a bottle of fuel to set us ablaze. We were saved by one of the rebel commander called ‘KLM’. His family was our closes neighbor, and was around the time we were groaning for our lives. He rushed out and said to his colleagues “hey if you shoot that house I will kill you.” That was the moment I felt tears in my eyes.
‘Pa thinker’ was popular amongst the rebel and his duty was to launch bombs in different areas in the city. He thought of our community and sent us one of the bombs, that night was disastrous for us. The entire area went dazzled with cry and displacement of people. The fragment played its own parts. Much vivid evidence still lingers in my mind as I continue asking myself, will the scars of our civil war ever stop bleeding? Will those amputees ever forget those horror moments in their lives? Have we learnt any lesson over the years or are we still on similar part of the previous causes of war? Too many questions; less answers…