IDRC Doctoral Research Award No

IDRC Doctoral Research Award No. 103342-9990675-067 Technical Report Submitted By: M. Zubairu Wai Date: 12 July 2008 Project: Understanding Contemporary Conflicts in Africa: The Sierra Leone Civil War and its Challenge to the Dominant Representations of African Conflicts Introduction: The aim of this research was two fold: first, it sought to go beyond the immediate impact of policy, and develop an epistemological critique of knowledge on contemporary African conflicts and assess the impact of such knowledge on the formulation of policy; and second to develop alternative ways of looking at such conflicts in order to allow for the reformulation of extant policies as well as the articulation of alternative ones. It started from the basic assumption (as suggested by evidence) that the policies derived from the dominant studies on African conflicts were not producing their desired results where they are being implemented, a proposition that was leading to a questioning of the knowledge and the analytical frameworks on which they are based. The research therefore sought to address this problem by (a) developing a critique of the existing body of knowledge on African conflicts; and (b) suggesting alternative interpretations that would help us better understand these conflicts. Using the Sierra Leone civil war as its empirical case, it sought to investigate: (a) what the modalities of the dominant perspectives on contemporary African conflicts were; (b) Who produces them, how and why?; (c) what were included and left out in the knowledge produced (d) what effects were these knowledge having on the articulation of policy towards Africa; what these policies were and what they sought to achieve; and finally, (f) how an alternative reading of the Sierra Leone civil war might lead to the formulation of better understanding and policies. Fieldwork and data collection started in Freetown in the first week of October 2007 and proceeded in two phases as a result of the modification of the initial research plan. Phase one took place between October 2007 and February 2008. It took me to different parts of the country, and concluded with a research seminar (attended by 15 participants) and a public lecture (attracting over 250 people, mainly students and faculty) during which the preliminary findings of the research were presented to the Fourah Bay College (university of Sierra Leone) community. The lecture was well received and led to conversations about, especially the causes and interpretations of the war. Phase two took place between April and June 2008 and focused mainly on archival research, collection and review of news papers, government policy position papers, media content, though a number of interviews with key informants were conducted. Fieldwork mainly involved a variety of semi-structured interviews with key participants in the conflict (government officials, former combatants of the various factions, senior RUF officials, military officers, the Kamajor militia); observers and victims of the 1 conflict (amputees, victims of sexual violence, residents of Sierra Leone during the war, academics, researchers, policy analysts, journalists, members of the NGO community etc.) and the collection and review of various documents including original (primary) documents, studies commissioned by government and its institutions (like the TRC and Special Court) and NGO reports, transcripts of media reports, documentaries etc. Background to the Sierra Leone Civil War In March 1991, a small band of insurgents calling itself the Revolutionary United Front (RUF) attacked Sierra Leone from Liberia. The group under the leadership of Foday Sankoh, an ex-corporal of the Sierra Leone Military Forces, had been convicted in the 1970s for his role in an attempted coup against Siaka Stevens, with the apparent support of Charles Taylor and his National Patriotic Front of Liberia (NPFL) forces, also at the time fighting an insurgency for control of Liberia, quickly overran and occupied Bomaru and soon opened another front at Zimmi, a south-eastern border town with Liberia across from the Mano River bride. The RUF framed the reasons for the start of the war in terms of the need for removing from power the All People‟s Congress (APC) government (which had ruled Sierra Leone since 1968 and under the leadership of which the crises of the state had deepened), and the quest for social transformation that would enable the creation of a just, democratic and egalitarian society. Framed in such terms, the war attracted initial support in especially Kailahun and Pujehun districts, which had historically been sites of opposition to APC rule. However, whatever initial support that the RUF enjoyed soon evaporated when the war degenerated into a protracted struggle of gratuitous violence and brutality, death and destruction, targeted at the very people its initiators had claimed they wanted to liberate. The war sharply accentuated the very serious economic and political problems that the state of Sierra Leone had been grappling with since independence. The post-independence state had become a site of woes and misery as political and economic failures under the twenty-three year rule of the APC accentuated the pathologies originally introduced by the colonial state. The concentration of power in the hands of the APC with Stevens firmly at the helm in the 1970s had led to the homogenisation of the formal political space and the alienation and exclusion of large sections of the population from the dominant networks of political and economic power. Within this homogenised reordering of the political and socio-economic spaces had grown complex processes and informal networks through which relations of power and influence, and access to wealth and resources were mediated. With the rural–urban migration characteristic of the colonial and post-colonial political economy of Sierra Leone, there was a presence in cities of large numbers of uneducated and semi-literate and unemployed youths. Stevens and his followers in the APC found this group a particularly useful resource in their quest to consolidate power. They were initially used as thugs to intimidate the opposition through gratuitous acts of violence and other intimidating tactics. It was these groups that later become the hub of the RUF war machine. Similarly, they later made up the majority of the rank and file of the army after the war broke out 1991 and the need to recruit more people into the army arose. Elections in Sierra Leone became a violent affair and broke the opposition so badly, that by the time the one party state was established in 1978, the opposition was a spent force. 2 With the official opposition silenced, radical youths (mostly unemployed and marginalised) and university students emerged as the unofficial, and in fact only formidable opposition, to Stevens and the APC. The APC almost fell from power as a result of the student demonstrations in 1977. Stevens‟ response was a clenched fisted reprisals and the further tightening of the political space. The one party state came in the following year, in 1978. The impact of negative external forces on the economy like the 1973 oil shocks and falling commodity prices, coupled with certain bad policy choices pursued by the government, like the lavished hosting of the OAU conference in 1980, and devaluing the national currency, constrained and frustrated development efforts and led to an increasing constriction of the economy. These conditions, coupled with the exclusion of certain sections of the population from the dominant networks of power and wealth through marginalisation in the economic and political spheres, created conditions susceptible to external meddling and internal strife. Radical student tapped into these frustrations and anger, and championed the cause of the neglected and marginalised sections of society. On university campuses and in the „potes‟ of Freetown and other cities and towns in the country, reflections on the dire political and economic situation in the country led to the development of a revolutionary consciousness, as these groups raved against what unflatteringly came to be known as “di system”. It was this rising revolutionary consciousness that led to the quest for revolution and eventually the formation of the RUF. When Stevens retired in 1985, after having first hand-picked his successor in the person of General Joseph Momoh, the head of the Sierra Leone Military Forces, the country was taken closer to implosion. Momoh lacked half the charisma of Stevens, and inherited a centralised authoritarian state without having the character of a despot. He ended up being manipulated by some powerful forces within his own inner circle, further accentuating the conditions for an insurrection. The economic decline in the 1970s had reached full blown crisis proportions in the mid 1980s. With such economic decline, the IMF and World Bank intervened and subjected the state to structural adjustment policies which further exacerbated an already bad economic situation. It increased economic hardships for the citizenry while at the same time the internal control mechanisms of an oppressive state were coming under considerable strain. SAPs undermined and weakened the capacity of the state to provide the basic social services and its capacity to respond to the unfolding crisis. Under both internal and external pressures, Momoh started reforming the state. However, those reforms and changes did not stop the war from happening. On April 29 1992, one year into the war, young officers of the Sierra Leone Army, (SLA) fighting against the rebels, drove from the war fronts into Freetown and overthrew Momoh‟s government in a military coup, and set up the National Provisional Ruling Council (NPRC) military junta, under the leadership of Captain Valentine Strasser. The unpopularity of the APC, both domestically and abroad, initially translated into widespread popular support for the NPRC. There were high expectations that the NPRC would live up to its promises and clean up the mess of the APC, end the war, revive the economy which had virtually collapsed in the mid-1980s and act as credible referees in 3 the democratisation process.

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