3 Are "Forest" Wars in Africa Resource Conflicts? The Case of Sierra tenne Paul Richards Until Rhodesia became Zimbabwe, African wars were wars of in­ dependence. During the 1980s the continent's conflicts mainly were deter­ mined by the Cold War or apartheid in South Africa. The 1990S saw a rise in African conflicts escaping earlier categorizations (Chabal and Daloz 1999; Goulding 1999). Seeking to account for these recent conflicts, au­ thors have opted for either the idea of reversion to a long-suppressed African barbarity (Kaplan 1994, 1996) or the notion of a "criminalization of the African state" (Bayart, Ellis, and Hibou 1997). Duffield (1998) shrewdly notes, however, that current or recent African wars fall, more or less, into two regional groupings: wars from the Horn of Africa to Mozambique that are in effect "old" proxy conflicts, perhaps pro­ longed by humanitarian interventions, and conflicts in the western half of the continent (from Zaire to Liberia) sustained by abundant local natural resources (oil, gemstones, gold, and timber). Stretching a point, we might label these two groupings "desert" and "forest" wars, respectively. Some recent literature treats African "forest" wars as predominantly eco­ nomic phenomena, directed by "war-lord" business elites (Berdal and Keen 1997; Chabal and Daloz 1999; Duffield 1998); the opportunist Charles Taylor in Liberia is seen as the paradigmatic protagonist (Reno 1997; Ellis 1999). All conflicts need resources, but we should be careful to distinguish the plausible idea that war has economic dimensions from the more contentious notion that resource endowments, and in particular re­ source shortages, "cause" violence (Homer-Dixon 1991, 1994; Kaplan 1994, 1996). Violence is a social project-it has to be organized or opposed, accepted or rejected, by groups of human agents. Whether or not war achieves spe­ cific ends is influenced by environmental factors (including resource en­ dowments). Environments select among social projects, like they select for c" 66 Paul Richards The Case of Sierra Leone 67 genes, but they no more cause social life than they cause genes. A resource The army was increased from 3,000 to about 15,000, but training was endowment is a circumstance, and not a social project. perfunctory and discipline poor. Young irregulars recruited in the border Although agreeing that wars-all wars-necessarily involve resource mo­ region proved effective in defending their own communities arid put the bilization, this chapter argues against the notion of "resource wars," a spe­ RUF on the defensive, but the urban underclass element in the govern­ cial category of conflict in which a certain configuration of resources, or ment army resorted to criminal activities. Looting was rife, and NPRC offi­ lack of resources, determines a turn toward violence. "Forest" wars in west­ cers used recruits for private diamond-mining ventures. ern Africa or elsewhere, it is suggested, will be understandable only With the RUF sequestered in isolated forest reserves on the Liberian through closer examination of the social projects involved. border, public confidence in the army plummeted. The popular view Ifwars in western Africa have a common distinctive feature, it is that the among civilians was that the RUF had ceased to exist and that the war was resources in question (e.g., diamonds, uranium, oil) are ofstrategic signifi­ an excuse by the NPRC regime to dig diamonds. In places that were vul­ cance in industrial countries but ofless immediate local utility. In these cir­ nerable to raiding by the RUF, rural civilians turned increasingly to civil cumstances, the element of external intrigue, and hence external obfusca­ defense. A number of militia bands were formed, drawing on initiates to tion, tends to be rather high. Reporting rarely penetrates beyond the oil or local hunting guilds (Muana 1997). diamonds. The world has limited time for the intricacies ofAfrican politics But the RUF survived and, by selling diamonds to rogue soldiers in re­ and little capacity to assess grass-roots social change in remote mining turn for arms and uniforms, revived. It used these resources to carry out landscapes. Anthropologists are not much attracted to such fields, except numerous pinprick raids, undermining civilian morale and seizing perhaps by accident (my situation, cf. Richards 1996, 1998). Mining inter­ hostages right across the country. By 1995, these raids were coming suffi­ ests, protecting their assets through private security, add to the confusion. ciently close to Freetown to threaten panic in the capital. As we shall see, advisers to governments, sympathetic to (or implicated in) The NPRC was then forced to seek help from a South African-based se­ private security options, are wont to misrepresent the social projects feed­ curity firm, Executive Outcomes (EO). EO also contracted to provide secu­ ing "forest" war as criminal banditry. Insurgents are "rebels without cause" rity for a mining company (Branch Energy, a subsidiary of DiamondWorks) (d. Bradbury 1995). The sociology of "forest" conflict is buried by default. planning to exploit kimberlite diamond pipes in Kono, a district heavily Here I try to exhume it. destabilized by RUF raids. EO trained and ran military support operations for units of the NPRC forces (Peters and Richards 1998; Shearer 1997). De­ tails of the EO contract were never made public, but it is presumed that dia­ "Forest" War mond-mining opportunities were among the modes of "payment." Internal and international pressure forced the NPRC to concede elec­ The "forest" war in Sierra Leone was begun on March 23, 1991, by a group tions in early 1996. The outgoing regime had launched a peace process of one hundred or so guerrillas calling itself the Revolutionary United with the RUF, arid this was continued by the new democratic government Front of Sierra Leone (RUF) , led by a cashiered army corporal Foday Say­ ofAhmad Tejan Kabba and the Sierra Leone People's Party (SLPP). Kabba bana Sankoh. The RUF launched itself from Liberia, with the support of also reconfirmed the security contract with EO. faction leader Charles Taylor, to overthrow the All Peoples Congress Under scrutiny from the Mandela government in South Africa, EO (APC), the one-party state regime of (retired) General Joseph Saidu Mo­ phased out in Sierra Leone in 1997 (and disbanded in 1998) to be re­ moho The rebels rounded up young diamond diggers and schoolchildren placed by a British-based security company, Sandline International. This in the heavily forested border zone and inducted them into a "people's group also took over the task of providing security for the mining company army" but failed to win wider civilian support (Abdullah and Muana 1998; Branch Energy. Sandline provided training inputs and specialized support Richards 1996, 1998). for irregular forces loyal to the Kabba government (the expanded civil de­ The failure of a northern-dominated government army to defend the fence militia, now known as the Civil Defence Force [CDF]). Branch En­ south and the east of the country against the RUF led to a coup that ush­ ergy was granted a kimberlite mining concession reportedly worth $1 bil­ ered in a populist military regime, the National Provisional Ruling Council lion by the Kabba regime. (NPRC), in April 1992. The NPRC realized that the RUF was aiming to Enclaved in camps in forest reserves in the east of the country, the RUF provide a focus for the country's unemployed and footloose youth. The had become an increasingly intransigent and introverted movement. Op­ NPRC set out to control the same constituency, drafting large numbers of posing the elections in 1996, it carried out bizarre attacks, including the unemployed youth to fight the RUF. random amputation of limbs of women and children, in outlying village 68 Paul Richards The Case of Sierra Leone 69 communities, revenging itself-so it claimed-on those who supported the RUF, while the country was left to cope with the widespread devasta­ civil defense (Richards 1998). Despite a peace agreement signed in Abid­ tion and population displacement caused by the fighting (450,000 Sierra jan in November 1996, the irregular forces loyal to the Kabba government Leoneans are refugees, and perhaps up to one million people have been never suspended their military operations against the RUF, sacking several internally displaced). of the most important rebel forest bases shortly before the signing of the Throughout the war, all factions-RUF, NPRC, CDF, international mer­ peace accords. cenaries, and ECOMOG-have alternated combat with periods of alluvial Then in May 1997, fearing the democratic government was planning to diamond mining. At first sight, warfare in Sierra Leone is not.hing other disband the army and shift its entire military effort against the RUF to civil than alluvial diamond mining by other means. True/enough, outsiders defense, a group of army officers and other ranks mounted a coup against have little interest in Sierra Leone beyond its diamonds. But for Sierra the Kabba regime, driving the president into exile in neighboring Guinea Leoneans, diamond mining is a means through which social and political and attempting to bring peace to Sierra Leone by inviting the RUF to join projects are articulated. It will be argued that the war cannot be under­ a power-sharing regime. The resulting unstable junta was ostracized inter­ stood unless we pay attention to these projects. nationally. With its kimberlite concessions resting on the restoration of the Kabba regime, the mineral-cum-security nexus engaged in the war in Sierra Leone was active in arguing that private security for Kabba was tan­ tamount to support for democracy and good governance (Spicer 1998). Alluvial Diamonds A scandal then enveloped the Blair government in Great Britain about whether Sandline International was assisting the military restoration of the Diamonds were first proved in Sierra Leone in the 193os.