Sierra Leone: Healing from the Wounds of Civil War
By Elisha Ratemo
FREETOWN----Sierra Leone’s decade-long bitter experience with civil war in early 90s is a conflict that many nations in Africa can learn from. Raging from a backdrop of more than three decades of state institutional collapse following its independence from the British in 1961, Sierra Leone was yet to experience top notch corruption, plunder and atrocities for eleven years of civil war.
After being disgruntled by ways the then government of army general Joseph Momoh was corrupt and oppressive, the Revolutionary United Front (RUF) rebel forces under Foday Sankoh took over power, sparking a gruesome conflict that left over 50,000 dead and over one million displaced. People were raped, killed, others had their limbs chopped off and properties destroyed during the conflict which was given little media attention.
The besieged Sierra Leone then was a priced curio eyed by rebels fighting in the neighbouring Liberia owing to its rich deposits of alluvial diamond. Charles Taylor and his National Patriotic Front of Liberia (NPFL) sought to set up ‘The Great Liberia” that encompassed hived-off parts of Sierra Leone and rural Liberia. Gaining control over these diamond fields the RUF had means to purchase arms and drugs that advanced their resistance against the government forces.
The worst phase of the civil war would come during the 1999 infamous rebel offensive “Operation no Living Thing” by the newly formed Armed Forces Ruling Council (AFRC) led by Jonny Koroma, with Sankoh as vice, ousting president Ahmed Kabbah who had made a pact with Sankoh in Ivorian capital the previous year. Civilians were massacred on the streets, burned inside their houses, had their limbs hacked off, while children and young men were abducted in hundreds to be enlisted in the forces. Women and girls were systematically sexually abused and abducted too as sexual slaves. The massacre would go on to claim over 20,000 civilian lives and 700 fatalities in the ECOMOG Nigerian-led peacekeeping forces. Later following violations of several peace pacts by Sankoh’s forces and replacement of the ECOMOG with the UN mission to Sierra Leone-UNAMSIL, the country stabilised following the signing of the second Abuja agreement in May 2001, prompting Kabbah to declare the war officially over in January 2002.
With over a decade of fighting over what was left of Africa’s most developed state were left in complete shambles with major blame for the conflict going to Sankoh who suffered a complicated death 18 months later while awaiting trial. Also to blame was the state’s institutions weakened by initial mismanagement of resources. The mercenary element of the RUF organisation cannot be overstated in regards to explaining their excessive violence. It also reveals the organisation’s tendency to recruit child soldiers and the reason for why the conflict kept going for so long. As diamond mining is so lucrative, especially in the governance vacuum created by a war, the individual army units in the conflict had a reason to prolong the conflict.
Eighty-four -year-old Hector Sylvanus Bultman, the only surviving delegate of the 26 who sealed the declaration for independence at Lancaster House in 1960 recalls in an interview with the VOA of the jubilation that was aloft during the eve of independence. He viewed at that time that his country would have any problems with its economy bearing the natural resources it possessed. Somehow there was a feeling that Sierra Leone was not ripe for independence he says, having the fact that Sierra Leone was ahead of most of West African states in terms of academics by then, so why the immaturity when most of these countries had attained independence?
He says 50 years on, he is disappointed that they did not make progress expected of them owing to the mismanagement of the affairs of the state, particularly when it comes to natural resources.
Like most of African states where agriculture is regarded as the engine of the economy, Sierra Leone has prioritised its agricultural sector under a presidential directive whose goal is to transform the sector from small-holder farming to a private sector led commercial farming. With almost 75 per cent of its population being rural based, most farmers see subsistence farming as source of livelihood, with rice being the widely grown commodity. The US government support on the highly prioritised agriculture has since more than doubled productivity, through an integrated approach to agriculture, micro-enterprise and natural resources management that has improved access to food, employment and income to some of the 47 per cent who still live under $2 per day.
With an economy yet to recover from civil war drastic improvements have been displayed in the once ravaged economy. Sierra Leone boasts of an annual growth rate of 6 per cent, ranking it among the most admirable investment locations in Africa. Structural weaknesses, poor infrastructure and restrictive regulatory environment continue to strain the accrued growth which has greatly been attributed to improvements in freedom from corruption and economic freedom. Also is the overdependence on natural minerals. Successive governments and population believe that diamond and gold are sufficient generators of foreign exchange and lure investments.
Even though the civil war greatly disrupted the mining industry, mining still remains paramount export earner. With more than 70 per cent of the country underlain by Archaean terraine, Sierra Leone holds enormous exploration potential. Diamonds and rutile play major roles in its mineral production. Diamond! The bloody gem that greatly fuelled the civil war still remains a target of many illegal gem merchants into the country. Diamond is smuggled out from Sierra Leone and has been used to finance rebel activities in the region, money laundering and arms purchasing among other criminal activities.
A report published in 2005 by Management Systems International-a Freetown based organisation working to protect rights of artisan miners-revealed how little of the diamond proceeds benefits the people as long-term implications of the illegal trade could be hugely detrimental to the country’s recovery.
“The industry as a whole retains substantial barriers to entry, is extremely short-sighted, is remarkably exploitive of labourers, and leaves very little economic benefit in Sierra Leone - a potentially explosive socio-economic mixture in an extremely volatile region,” the report said.
A disproportionate share of the value from the diamond trade goes to a minority of foreigners and that few Sierra Leoneans have any real hope of access to the lucrative roles within the industry. The government is trying to bear with huge influx of small-scale mining which has robbed of the country’s agricultural potentials apart from the upshots of open cast mining. Most of the country’s food supplies happen to be imported since the national gross produce is very minimal to even feed half of its population.
Forget about guns and diamond, Sierra Leone has re-branded as a tourism destination. After the last contingent of UN peacekeepers left in 2006 handing over responsibility of internal security to newly trained police and army. Popularity for its long-stretching beaches and as an expedition centre grew hastily, something that seemed unthinkable that Sierra Leone would ever be able to move on from its troubled past. Gone are the days when men in Freetown earned valuable dollars from working with western journalists who needed “fixers” to get them close to the war fronts. Not same anymore, the fixers earn same dollars but now working as waiters and housekeepers in the luxurious tropical resorts.
The tourism industry in Sierra Leone has a multiplier effect in terms of potential linkage with other productive areas such as the agriculture and handicraft sector of country’s national economy. The government is working on a long-term development policy for tourism that will transform the country into an up-market for investors mainly from the Americas and Europe that will fetch both economic and social benefits.
Blustering of the oldest education systems in West Africa, Sierra Leone has seen what was its pride crumble down over time. Education was the greatly affected sector during the war and even now. About 1300 schools were destroyed as a result of war and the exercise of re-building has been greatly slower than expected. Many are dropping out from school to work in the mines which are deemed to pay off quite well compared to taxing journey through education. Much has been blamed on the education policies and structures but recent reforms are expected to bring back sanity to the vital sector that is being looked up to potentially as the next economy driver.