Voices from the Field - IRC Blog

Part 1 - Kailahun, Sierra Leone: It’s time to catch you up on the progress of the special GBV project we call A Global Crescendo: Women’s Voices from Conflict Zones. We’ve moved on to country number three: Sierra Leone. As you know, if you’ve been following my blogs, we started the project last fall in Cote d’Ivoire where some brave village women made dramatic changes in their homes and communities. The next stop was Liberia, where we worked both in the capital and in rural villages of northern Lofa County with courageous women determined to make change. Now we’ve slipped across another border to Sierra Leone, the third West African country struggling to recover from war.

Let me quickly remind you of what these countries have been through. The war in Cote d’Ivoire was the shortest, lasting little over a year –2002 to 2003—thanks to prompt intervention by French, African, and UN peacekeepers. The war in Liberia came in three successive waves, lasting altogether 14 years, from 1989 to 2003; and it fueled war in Sierra Leone. Guerillas of the Revolutionary United Front (RUF) of Sierra Leone trained in Liberia and invaded their own country in 1991. The war drew many players and lasted a decade, until January 2002.

Just by looking around me, I can tell you that this war was the worst. I’m in Kailahun District, where the war began and ended, smack up against the borders of Liberia and Guinea. The last time I saw such thorough devastation was in Kabul, not long after the initial American bombing. Another indicator: Sierra Leone has replaced Afghanistan as the poorest country on the planet.

The war in Sierra Leone became notorious for its trademark atrocity: amputation—that is, cutting off arms and legs. Rape, enslavement, and torture of women were less conspicuous atrocities, but more widespread.

From the very beginning, this war targeted civilians. RUF leader Foday Sankoh recruited followers with talk of overthrowing the corrupt government in Freetown for the good of the people. But his invading army was little more than a gang, reportedly numbering fewer than 150 men. He got more troops by abducting them. His tactics were simple: invade a village; terrorize, torture and kill most of the villagers; take away those who might serve as soldiers, porters, laborers, or “wives”—that is sex slaves. (Usually the porters, forced laborers, and “wives” were one and the same.) Many of those killed in every village and almost all of those abducted were women and children.

Men and boys still labor in the mud of the Tongo diamond fields, nearly exhausted to finance the war. Even Nigerian peacekeeping soldiers have quit the army to jin the miners in search of riches. Photo: Ann Jones

This war, like the war in Liberia, was waged by “leaders” hungry for power and wealth—specifically control of the country’s valuable natural resources, especially its “blood” diamonds. Both “leaders”—Foday Sankoh in Sierra Leone and Charles Taylor in Liberia—got their tactical training in Libya from Muammar Gaddafi who, for reasons of his own, wanted to see West Africa destabilized. It was Taylor who backed Sankoh’s RUF guerrillas, saw them trained in Liberia, and launched them against Sierra Leone.

In the end, Foday Sankoh died before his trial for war crimes could be completed. But just last month the Special Court for Sierra Leone in The Hague resumed the proceedings begun last June against Charles Taylor. He faces 11 charges for war crimes—related to matters including terrorizing civilians, murder, rape, sexual slavery, amputations, and enslavement—committed not against his own country but against his neighbors, the people of Sierra Leone.

The whole town of Koindu in Kailahun District was destroyed in the war. These children have lived their whole lives among the ruins. Photo: Ann Jones

The good news about these wars is that they have officially ended. But for women and children—as we’ve learned elsewhere—war is never really over. I’ll tell you more next time about how they’re getting on in Sierra Leone.