Gary Younge in Makeni
The rebels came for Kulo Korban on Saturday night. They left him with a letter and took away three of his fingers and both ears.
“I was asleep when I heard a knock on the door. Then four men kicked it down and dragged me away. They tied me to a pole and said, ‘Today is your last day.’ Then they just started chopping with machetes and cutlasses all around my head and arms.
“When they had finished they told me, ‘Go to [Sierra Leonian President Ahmed Tejan] Kabbah and see if he will give you a new hand.’ They put the letter in my other hand.”
The note was addressed to the Nigerian-led West African military force Ecomog and demanded its immediate withdrawal from the area.
Korban (20), a mechanic, is sitting in the outpatients’ wing of the Makeni hospital dripping blood into a bowl on the floor while doctors sew up the stumps of his fingers. On the right side of his head fresh lint covers the wound where his ear used to be. On the left there is little more than a lobe and a deep red gash.
They have not seen a gunshot wound at Makeni hospital for weeks. Just the steady flow of amputees, mutilated by soldiers of the former junta, coming from villages as close as 13km away. Some are aged under five, others are older than 60.
There was Mohammed Mustapha (55), a building contractor, who lost his hand, his ears and his 15-year-old daughter Aminata, who was taken away by a rebel soldier.
And Awakale, a mother of six who walked 6km with her left arm hanging off after a man posing as an imam rounded up people from her village and started hacking at them.
Relief workers tell stories of gang rapes, people burned alive and fathers mutilated because they refused to rape their daughters. Survivors say many are still hiding in the bush and others have been killed.
They are the daily tales of brutality at the hands of rebels who know they cannot win the war but hope to scupper any hopes of a lasting peace indefinitely by unleashing violence as random in its choice of victims as it is vicious in its execution.
Makeni, a small town in central Sierra Leone, is where the leaders of the former junta fled when they were ousted from the capital, Freetown, in February.
“When they came they thought it was like a carnival,” said Mahmud Hassan, owner of the Flamingo nightclub who sent his children into the bush soon after the rebels arrived. “They started shooting their AK-47s all over the place. Then they broke into the nightclub and took all the cold drinks from the freezer and started dancing. We called it ‘Operation Help Yourself’.”
A few days later Makeni, which lies a few kilometres from the home town of the rebel leader Johnny Paul Koroma, was recaptured by Ecomog. It is now surrounded by small gangs of troops loyal to Koroma who are launching hit-and-run attacks on small villages.
Dr Baker, who runs Makeni hospital, treated many rebel soldiers when the junta took over the town. Now the same people he nursed back to health are threatening to mutilate him. He is considering leaving town.
“They keep on sending me letters saying they are going to kill me. Once a man even came here and asked for me by name but because he didn’t know what I looked like I told him that Dr Baker had gone,” he said.
“But others know me. Even here,” he gestured to the 100 or so people in the hospital courtyard. “They have their spies who are telling them everything we are doing.”