Sierra Leone Civil War 1991-2002: The RUF and Blood Diamonds

The Sierra Leone Civil War was an eleven-year conflict, from 1991 to 2002, between the government of Sierra Leone and the rebel Revolutionary United Front (RUF), joined at times by mutinous soldiers. It became notorious for deliberate attacks on civilians, including mass amputations, the use of child soldiers and a trade in “blood diamonds” that financed the fighting. An estimated 50,000 people or more were killed.

Background

Sierra Leone, a former British colony founded around Freetown, a settlement for freed slaves dating back to the Province of Freedom of 1787, became independent in 1961. From 1968 Siaka Stevens and his All People’s Congress (APC) ruled, establishing a one-party state in 1978. Under Stevens and his successor Joseph Momoh, state institutions decayed, revenues from the country’s rich diamond fields were siphoned off, and schools and services collapsed.

Large numbers of young men without work or education became alienated from the state. Many drifted into informal diamond digging. Across the border, Charles Taylor’s National Patriotic Front of Liberia had launched a war in Liberia in 1989 and was looking for allies and access to Sierra Leone’s diamonds.

Course of the war

On 23 March 1991 RUF fighters led by Foday Sankoh, a former army corporal, entered eastern Sierra Leone from Liberia with Taylor’s support. The poorly paid army struggled to contain them. In April 1992 young officers led by Captain Valentine Strasser, then aged 25, overthrew Momoh and formed the National Provisional Ruling Council.

By 1995 the RUF was close to Freetown. The government hired Executive Outcomes, a South African private military company made up largely of former apartheid-era soldiers, which pushed the rebels back from the capital and the diamond areas within months. Its effectiveness, and the payment it reportedly received partly through mining concessions, made it a controversial early example of private military contracting in Africa. Strasser was ousted by his deputy Julius Maada Bio in January 1996, and elections in early 1996 brought Ahmad Tejan Kabbah of the Sierra Leone People’s Party to power. The Abidjan Peace Accord was signed in November 1996, but it soon broke down.

On 25 May 1997 army officers led by Major Johnny Paul Koroma seized power, formed the Armed Forces Revolutionary Council (AFRC) and invited the RUF to join them. A Nigerian-led West African force, ECOMOG, drove the junta out of Freetown in February 1998 and Kabbah returned. On 6 January 1999 RUF and AFRC fighters stormed Freetown itself; several thousand civilians were killed and much of the eastern city was burned before ECOMOG retook it.

The Lomé Peace Agreement of 7 July 1999 granted the rebels an amnesty and made Sankoh vice-president and head of a commission overseeing mineral resources. The UN Mission in Sierra Leone (UNAMSIL) was created in October 1999.

Atrocities and child soldiers

The RUF waged war largely against civilians. Its fighters cut off the hands, arms, lips or ears of thousands of people, often to terrorise communities or deter voting, and committed widespread rape and abduction. Government soldiers, the AFRC and pro-government Civil Defence Forces, including the Kamajor hunters’ militias, also committed abuses.

Thousands of children were abducted and forced to fight, carry loads or serve as “bush wives”. Many were given drugs and made to commit atrocities, which made their later return to their communities difficult. Demobilisation programmes after the war worked to reintegrate former child combatants, several thousand of whom passed through interim care centres run by UNICEF and aid agencies. Amputees, many of whom gathered in camps in Freetown, became the most visible victims of the war, and programmes to provide them with prosthetic limbs, housing and compensation were slow and limited. The Truth and Reconciliation Commission later recommended reparations for amputees, victims of sexual violence and war-wounded people.

Blood diamonds

Sierra Leone’s alluvial diamonds lie close to the surface and are easy to mine with simple tools. The RUF seized diamond areas, especially in Kono District, and exported stones mainly through Liberia to pay for weapons. Campaigning groups such as Global Witness and Partnership Africa Canada drew public attention to “conflict diamonds”.

In July 2000 the UN Security Council banned rough diamond exports from Sierra Leone that lacked a government certificate, and it later sanctioned Liberia’s diamond trade. These efforts fed into the Kimberley Process Certification Scheme, an international system for certifying the origin of rough diamonds that came into force in 2003.

British intervention and the end of the war

In May 2000 the peace deal collapsed when the RUF took around 500 UN peacekeepers hostage and advanced on Freetown. Britain launched Operation Palliser, sending troops to evacuate foreign nationals and secure Lungi airport; their presence helped stabilise the capital. Sankoh was captured in Freetown on 17 May 2000. In August 2000 a militia known as the West Side Boys seized a patrol of eleven British soldiers of the Royal Irish Regiment and their Sierra Leonean liaison officer. Some were released after negotiations, but on 10 September British special forces and paratroopers stormed the militia’s base in Operation Barras and freed the remaining captives; one British soldier and a large number of militia fighters were killed.

UNAMSIL was steadily reinforced and by 2001 had grown to about 17,500 troops, at that time the largest UN peacekeeping force in the world. A strengthened UN force, British training of a new army and pressure on Taylor’s Liberia weakened the RUF. A ceasefire signed in Abuja in November 2000 led to disarmament of more than 70,000 combatants during 2001. President Kabbah formally declared the war over on 18 January 2002, symbolically burning thousands of surrendered weapons, and won re-election in May 2002. The last UN peacekeepers left at the end of 2005, and Sierra Leone has since held a series of peaceful elections, including transfers of power between rival parties.

Key people

• Foday Sankoh – RUF founder and leader; indicted by the Special Court, he died in custody in 2003 before trial.
• Charles Taylor – Liberian rebel leader and president (1997-2003), the RUF’s main foreign backer.
• Ahmad Tejan Kabbah – President of Sierra Leone from 1996 (with an interruption in 1997-1998) to 2007.
• Johnny Paul Koroma – Leader of the 1997 AFRC military junta.
• Valentine Strasser – Leader of the 1992 military coup and head of state until 1996.

Justice and legacy

The Special Court for Sierra Leone, created in 2002 by agreement between the UN and the government, tried those bearing the greatest responsibility. It convicted leaders of the RUF, the AFRC and the Civil Defence Forces, and was the first international tribunal to convict defendants of recruiting child soldiers and of forced marriage as a crime against humanity. On 26 April 2012 it convicted Charles Taylor of aiding and abetting crimes in Sierra Leone, the first conviction of a former head of state by an international court since the Nuremberg trials. A Truth and Reconciliation Commission reported in 2004.

Timeline

• 1991, 23 March: RUF fighters invade eastern Sierra Leone from Liberia.
• 1992, 29 April: Valentine Strasser’s officers overthrow President Momoh.
• 1996, March: Ahmad Tejan Kabbah is elected president.
• 1997, 25 May: AFRC coup; the junta invites the RUF into government.
• 1998, February: ECOMOG expels the junta from Freetown.
• 1999, 6 January: Rebels attack Freetown, killing thousands.
• 1999, 7 July: Lomé Peace Agreement signed.
• 2000, May: Peacekeepers taken hostage; British troops deploy.
• 2002, 18 January: President Kabbah declares the war over.
• 2012, 26 April: Charles Taylor is convicted by the Special Court.

Why it matters

Sierra Leone’s war showed how natural resources can fuel conflict and how civilians become the main target in modern civil wars. Its end produced lasting innovations: diamond certification, and international justice that held even a former head of state to account, alongside other tribunals such as those created after the Rwandan genocide.