Stefaans BrUmmer
WHEN Nigeria bombarded Freetown this week in an attempt to dislodge Sierra Leone’s new coup leaders, the Organisation of African Unity (OAU) and United Nations secretary general Kofi Annan applauded. But when signs of trouble became apparent some time before, the world was not so quick off the mark.
After then president Ahmed Tejan Kabbah’s civilian government — Sierra Leone’s first in three decades — signed a peace treaty with Revolutionary United Front (RUF) rebels in November, Annan asked the UN Security Council to approve a modest peace-keeping force to ensure both sides stuck to the agreement, which included an integrated army and the demobilisation of some rebels.
But the council failed to act on his request, made in January. Annan was backed by Britain, Sierra Leone’s former colonial master, but the United States reportedly delayed a decision.
In the months before the coup it became clear initial optimism about the treaty was misplaced. The RUF, racked by internal disputes, failed to adhere to treaty conditions, while elements of the notoriously ill-disciplined army were alleged to have launched pseudo-rebel attacks.
Sierra Leone has a history of instability, fuelled by a multiplicity of military groupings. The main players include:
l The government of ousted president Kabbah was elected in March last year amid popular dissatisfaction with military rule — after two earlier coups and widespread civilian casualties in the preceding five years.
After the May 25 coup led by Major Johnny Paul Koroma, Kabbah took refuge in neighbouring Guinea (according to one unconfirmed report, with a 62-carat diamond in his possession pending the resolution of an ownership dispute), while some members of his government were detained by the putschists. Yet others joined Koroma’s Armed Forces Revolutionary Council (AFRC).
l The RUF took up arms in March 1991 under its leader Foday Sankoh, leading to a conflict which killed more than 10 000 people. In mid-1995 the RUF fought to the outskirts of Freetown, but was beaten back largely due to the intervention of South Africa’s Executive Outcomes.
Seriously weakened by the mercenary outfit and plagued by defections to the government side, the RUF signed the peace agreement with Kabbah in November. But not the entire RUF fell in line. After Sankoh was detained in Nigeria in March on charges of munitions smuggling, a breakaway faction of the RUF announced he was no longer leader.
But in April, two members of the Commission for the Consolidation of Peace set up to manage the November peace accord were abducted by the Sankoh faction of the RUF. The apparent reason: they were accused by Sankoh, from his confinement in Nigeria, of having led the attempt to oust him. The Sankoh faction gained the upper hand. Demobilisation of RUF soldiers fell behind schedule and skirmishes with the army continued.
l The AFRC, set up by Koroma after his coup, is composed largely of junior officers. It came to power aided by prisoners (some of them officers awaiting trial after earlier alleged coup attempts, but mostly common criminals) who were sprung from Freetown’s Pademba Road Prison in one of the first acts of Koroma’s men.
Commentators have pointed out the AFRC’s apparent closeness to the former National Provisional Ruling Council, the military council that handed power to Kabbah’s civilian government last year. Members of the council’s top brass, mostly studying overseas, were rumoured to be planning a comeback in the wake of the coup. There was no immediate indication that former head of state Captain Valentine Strasser, at university in Britain, also intended to return.
The AFRC’s pact with the RUF rebels — they amassed in Freetown shortly after the coup, and Koroma named Sankoh his deputy – — may have surprised outsiders, but there has been a history of co-operation between the rebels and the army that it fought during the preceding five years. Sierra Leone gave the English language the word “sobel” in apt description of the blurred distinction between soldiers and rebels. Often, they interchanged their roles, mostly to maximise looting opportunities: soldier by day, rebel by night.
* The South African mercenary firm Executive Outcomes (EO) was contracted by the ruling council in May 1995 to put an end to the RUF war. Replacing the British Gurkhas, which possibly could not match EO’s fierce reputation, the South Africans soon beat the RUF back from the outskirts of Freetown, and from rebel-held diamond areas. While it was not clear exactly how the beleaguered ruling council was able to pay the mercenary firm for its services, it was noticeable how mining interests allied to EO soon controlled prime concessions. EO left Sierra Leone in February after Sankoh had set their departure as one of his conditions for signing the November peace deal with Kabbah.
* Apart from EO, the Kamajor traditional hunters, said to possess magic powers, made up the strongest fighting force against the RUF. The Kamajors were co-opted as a civilian militia on the government side during the early stages of the war, and remained an effective, if brutal, complement to the army until the peace settlement and afterwards.
Koroma justified his ousting of Kabbah on the grounds that the civilian president had nurtured “tribal and sectional conflict” – — apparent reference to Kabbah’s continued reliance on the Kamajors. In one of his first acts, Koroma ordered the Kamajors to disband. By midweek there were reports thousands of Kamajors were preparing to march on Freetown against Koroma’s AFRC.
* The Jombolas (“removers of pubic hair”) emerged early this year as another group opposed to the Kamajors. Also vested with magic powers, they mesmerised victims, who were either raped (by Jombola men) or seduced (by Jombola women). It is not clear how this contributed to the Jombola’s stated aim of ousting the Kamajors and ultimately staging a coup of its own. The Jombolas left entire communities traumatised in their wake.
* Nigeria had troops stationed in Sierra Leone, at the time of the coup, as part of a defence agreement between Kabbah and Ecowas, the Nigerian-dominated grouping of West African states. The Nigerian troops did little to prevent Koroma’s men from taking power, but now count as the most serious threat to his continued rule.
While the OAU has “authorised” Nigeria to oust Koroma, reports from Freetown suggest many locals view the intervention as an invasion. Indiscriminate shelling of Freetown from a Nigerian gunboat, which led to scores of civilian casualties, did not help change that perception.