A peace deal to end almost a decade of civil war in Sierra Leone has been signed. But, writes Mark Doyle, many feel that the rebels are being rewarded for atrocities
In a muddy refugee camp in Sierra Leone’s capital, Freetown, a two-year-old with her right arm amputated smiles a lot and seems unaware that she is different from other children.
This is not surprising, because Maimouna Mansarray is surrounded by people with missing limbs, most of them farmers who have had their hands chopped off by rebels of the Revolutionary United Front (RUF).
On the day I visited the camp, Maimouna was sitting with a man who had had his right hand amputated, while another man nearby, a double amputee, was somehow hanging out his laundry. The crude message of this butchery was to warn others not to support the democratically elected government.
Maimouna is the youngest known victim of the RUF. Her story differs from those of most amputees, who had their hands chopped off with blunt agricultural machetes.
Maimouna was strapped to her grandmother’s back when the rebels shot at them for trying to run away. Her grandmother was killed, and the baby girl got a bullet in her arm, which had to be amputated.
No one knows exactly how many people have been deliberately mutilated by the RUF, but medical workers believe the figure exceeds 10 000. When the UN Commissioner for Human Rights, the former Irish president Mary Robinson, paid a visit to Freetown last month, she was clearly stunned by the level of human rights abuses.
Robinson said there had been “more loss of life” in Sierra Leone than in Kosovo – “more mutilations and more violations of human rights”. The commissioner became famous in Sierra Leone. The head of the country’s journalists’ union, Frank Kpsowa, told Robinson she would never be forgotten because, finally, an important Western figure had recognised the scale of the country’s suffering.
The 10-year civil war has generated about 500 000 refugees – more than any other African country. The number of internally displaced people, who do not qualify as refugees but are almost destitute in one of the poorest countries in the world, could be as high as two million.
In January the RUF invaded Freetown, and an estimated 5 000 people were killed – many of them murdered because they were seen as “collaborators” of the elected government.
The rebels set fire to the city, creating a huge plume of smoke visible more than 32km away. The fires were partly aimed at covering a rebel retreat from the advancing Nigerian- led intervention force, Ecomog, which backs the elected government. But they were also aimed at destroying the homes of people who did not give the rebels unconditional support.
Ecomog soldiers too have committed serious human rights abuses. A report by the New York organisation Human Rights Watch says that 180 suspected rebels have been extra- judicially executed by Ecomog. Most were shot, then thrown off a bridge, during the rebel invasion of the capital, many by a Nigerian officer known as “Captain Evil Spirit”.
But Ecomog violations of human rights come nowhere near the scale of rebel abuses, and most people in Freetown see the Nigerians as their protectors.
The RUF and its allies have been fighting the central government for almost 10 years. The conflict had its roots in poverty, mismanagement and government corruption.
Successive administrations have ignored the needs of the rural people, creating a pool of disenfranchised youth, from which the RUF recruited a rebel force capable of sowing terror.
The war did not have a clear ethnic aspect, and the RUF said its aim was to end corruption. But while most Sierra Leoneans would support this, few that I spoke to during two years of reporting believe that the RUF is sincere.
The war intensified under the country’s first democratically elected government. President Ahmed Tejan Kabbah, who came to power in 1996, was forced to enter power- sharing negotiations with the RUF, mainly because elements of the army mutinied and joined the rebels.
On Wednesday, after marathon mediation efforts brokered by Togo and a host of international mediators, Kabbah and the rebel leader, Foday Sankoh, struck a deal to end the conflict.
Under the peace accord, Sankoh’s men will be given a sharing role in Kabbah’s government, including four Cabinet posts and four deputies. It also provides for immunity from prosecution for rebels who committed war crimes.
But the deal is deeply controversial in Freetown. Many people fear that the rebel leadership is being rewarded for atrocities. They say the deal could perpetuate a cycle of injustice and impunity. If those responsible for ordering atrocities are in political power, what is to stop other rebel movements doing the same, they ask.