CIVIL WAR OF SIERRA LEONE: 2012

Wednesday, December 12, 2012

Several factors led to the end of the civil war. First, Guinean cross-border bombing raids against villages believed to be bases used by the RUF working in conjunction with Guinean dissidents were very effective in routing the rebels. Another factor encouraging a less combative RUF was a new UN resolution that demanded that the government of Liberia expel all RUF members, end their financial support of the RUF, and halt the illicit diamond trade. Finally, the Kamajors, feeling less threatened now that the RUF was disintegrating in the face of a robust opponent, failed to incite violence like they had done in the past. With their backs against the wall and without any international support, the RUF forces signed a new peace treaty within a matter of weeks.

On 18 January 2002, President Kabbah declared the eleven yearlong Sierra Leone Civil War officially over. By most estimates, over 50,000 people had lost their lives during the war^.Countless more fell victim to the reprehensible and perverse behavior of the combatants. In May 2002 President Kabbah and his party, the Sierra Leone People's Party (SLPP), won landslide victories in the presidential and legislative elections. Kabbah was re-elected for a five-year term. The RUF's political wing, the Revolutionary United Front Party,failed to win a single seat in parliament. The elections were marked by irregularities and allegations of fraud, but not to a degree that significantly affected the outcome.

Sierra Leone http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sierra_Leone_Civil_War

Tuesday, December 11, 2012

Wednesday, December 5, 2012

A CHILD SOLDIERS

A CHILD SOLDIERS

Seventeen-year-old "Abubakar" (not his real name) told Human Rights Watch that he had gone to a camp for demobilized RUF child soldiers in Makeni in March 2000 after fighting as a child soldier in the RUF for four years. He described how the RUF regularly came to the demobilization camp to pressure children to return to the RUF, telling the children that they would be sold when they left the camp, or stating that the RUF had located their families and would help them reunite. On at least one occasion, RUF fighters came to the camp and told the children that the RUF would kill everyone in the camp if they did not rejoin the rebel army. Abubakar estimated that the RUF took at least fifty children out of the camp through the use of threats, false promises, and false rumors.

When fighting broke out in early May, Abubakar was forced to rejoin the RUF when he was abducted while walking near the demobilization camp in Makeni. "It was not my wish to go fight, it was because they captured me and forced me," he told Human Rights Watch, "There was no use in arguing with them, because in the RUF if you argue with any commander they will kill you." Abubakar took part in recent fighting in Lunsar, Rogberi Junction, and Waterloo. He and others were often forced to commit abuses. In Rogberi Junction, their commander ordered them to burn down the entire town after a counterattack on the RUF by government helicopters. RUF commanders also used looted U.N. vehicles to move looted civilian properties back to RUF bases. Abubakar finally managed to sneak away from the RUF and return to the demobilization camp, which was evacuated to Freetown soon after. On their way to Freetown, the large group of demobilized child combatants was harassed by the pro-government Kamajor militia as well as by the Sierra Leone Army (SLA), who beat them. Abubakar said the Kamajors got angry with the children for showing them demobilization documents, saying that the children were provoking them because it was known that Kamajors were not educated and could not read.

A video of child soldiers explaining their plight.

http://www.hrw.org/news/2000/05/31/sierra-leone-rebels-forcefully-recruit-child-soldiers

Charles Taylor and the civil war of Sierra Leone

CNN) -- The first former head of state to be convicted of war crimes since World War II was sentenced to 50 years in prison Wednesday by an international court in The Hague, Netherlands.

The Special Court for Sierra Leone convicted former Liberian president Charles Taylor last month of supplying and encouraging rebels in neighboring Sierra Leone in a campaign of terror, involving murder, rape, sexual slavery and the conscription children younger than 15.

Who is Taylor, exactly?

He was also found guilty of using Sierra Leone's diamond deposits to help fuel its civil war with arms and guns while enriching himself with what have commonly come to be known as "blood diamonds."

For victims in Sierra Leone, Taylor's verdict brings relief

Taylor directed his gaze downward while Presiding Judge Richard Lussick read the sentencing statement, which began with a horror cabinet of carnage committed in Sierra Leone by rebels from the Revolutionary United Front, which the former president backed.

"The accused has been found responsible for aiding and abetting as well as planning some of the most heinous and brutal crimes recorded in human history," said Lussick, who described one RUF military operation as the "indiscriminate killing of anything that moved."

He spoke of amputations with machetes -- some carried out by child soldiers forced to do so -- and read accounts by witnesses who suffered under the violence.

Opinion: Do war crimes trials really help victims?

"Witness TF1064 was forced to carry a bag containing human heads," Lussick said. "On the way, the rebels ordered her to laugh as she carried the bags dripping with blood."

Upon arrival, "the bag was emptied, and she saw the heads of her children."

A former child soldier, conscripted at age 12, in his testimony told of "having the letters RUF carved into his chest," Lussick said. "When ordered on a food-finding mission to rape an old woman they found at a farmhouse, the boy cried and refused, for which he was punished."

The prosecution had asked the Special Court for Sierra Leone to sentence Taylor, who was president of Liberia from 1997 to 2003, to 80 years behind bars, but the judges found the recommendation "excessive," citing the "limited scope" of the conviction in key attacks.

The prosecutors had failed to prove that Taylor assumed direct command over rebels who committed atrocities.

There is no death penalty in international criminal law, and Taylor, 64, will serve out his sentence in a British prison.

The former Liberian president is appealing his conviction and will receive credit for time already served since his apprehension in March 2006.

The atrocities he was convicted of supporting occurred over the course of five years -- almost his entire presidency -- and reached a peak in 1998 and 1999. Sierra Leone's civil war lasted from 1991 to 2002, ultimately leaving 50,000 dead or missing.

Although Taylor was not on the battlefield in Sierra Leone, the court saw his position of power as president of the neighboring country and the use of his own military's capabilities to stoke up RUF rebels as making him directly responsible for the bloodshed he encouraged.

Taylor does not see himself as a war criminal but as a victim -- a leader wronged by corruption and a hypocritical hand of justice with a political agenda.

"I never stood a chance," he said last week during his final courtroom stand. "Only time will tell how many other African heads of state will be destroyed."

Taylor accused the United States government of throwing the trial by paying prosecutors millions of dollars and claimed that witnesses had been bought.

He has expressed no remorse and insisted his intent was far from what had been portrayed by prosecutors. He has described himself as a peacemaker, saying he should be spared a harsh sentence.

His defense attorneys pointed to the former Liberian president's role in the peace process that ended the civil war as a mitigating factor in his sentencing.

But after lengthy consideration, the panel of judges -- which in addition to Lassick included Judge Teresa Doherty and Judge Julia Sebutinde -- did not buy it.

"While Mr. Taylor publicly played a substantial role in this process ... secretly, he was fuelling hostilities," Lassick said, supplying rebels with arms and ammunition.

Last month's landmark ruling by the Special Court for Sierra Leone against Taylor was the first war crimes conviction of a former head of state by an international court since the Nuremberg trials after World War II that convicted Adm. Karl Doenitz, who became president of Germany briefly after Adolf Hitler's suicide.

Former Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic was tried by an international tribunal, but he died before a judgment was issued.

Taylor, 64, was found guilty of all 11 counts of aiding and abetting the deadly rebel campaign in Sierra Leone.

He was a pivotal figure in Liberian politics for decades and was forced out of office under international pressure in 2003. He fled to Nigeria, where border guards arrested him three years later as he was attempting to cross into Chad.

The United Nations and the Sierra Leone government jointly set up the special tribunal to try those who played the biggest role in the atrocities. The court was moved to the Netherlands from Sierra Leone, where emotions about the civil war still run high.

A video of Taylor's conviction

http://www.cnn.com/2012/05/30/world/africa/netherlands-taylor-sentencing/index.html

Tuesday, December 4, 2012

NAOMI CAMPBELL

Naomi Campbell testifies at blood-diamond trial, says she was given rocks

Supermodel Naomi Campbell Thursday complained that testifying at the war crimes trial of Liberian leader Charles Taylor was a “big inconvenience” and denied flirting with him before receiving a gift pouch of "dirty-looking" diamonds.

The model - who told how she was given the stones in the middle of the night - was accused of not being "entirely truthful" at the trial.

She was repeatedly told to stop interrupting lawyers before telling the Hague war crimes court that being there was a "big inconvenience" for her.

"I don't want to be here. I was made to be here... This is a big inconvenience to me," she complained.

Campbell had earlier been threatened with jail unless she appeared at the hearing to give evidence against Taylor.

The former Liberian president is accused of criminal responsibility for atrocities in Sierra Leone including mutilation, rape, sexual slavery and murder.

Prosecutors said Taylor gave Campbell "blood diamonds" after a dinner hosted by Nelson Mandela in South Africa in 1997.Taylor is accused of selling similar diamonds to buy weapons for rebel fighters in Sierra Leone's civil war, during which hundreds of thousands of people died.

http://www.nypost.com/p/news/international/naomi_campbell_testifies_given_blood_FE8GRHFYeuueOMbdqdieoJ

Sunday, December 2, 2012

IMPACT OF THE CIVIL WAR

The internal conflict involved multiple ethnic groups and resulted in an estimated 15,000 deaths from 1991 through 1996. By early 1999 estimates of the number of dead in the rebel war ranged upward from 50,000. At different times estimates of the number of displaced people were as high as 2.5 million – more than half of the entire population. As many as half a million persons fled to neighboring countries to escape the civil conflict, and remain outside the country on their own or in refugee camps, primarily in Guinea and Liberia. Over 250,000 citizens crossed the borders of Guinea and Liberia to escape the conflict; many thousands of others were displaced internally, and fled their homes to hide in wooded areas, or to towns where there are security forces and some degree of protection from rebel forces.

http://sawingbahar.wordpress.com/2011/03/30/sierra-leone-civil-war-in-gender-perspective/

Monday, November 19, 2012

VIDEOS

Libyan, Russian, and United States role

Libyan, Russian, and United States role

Muammar al-Gaddafi both trained and supported Charles Taylor. Gaddafi also helped Foday Sankoh, the founder of the Revolutionary United Front.

According to Douglas Farah:

The amputation of arms and legs of men, women, and children as part of a scorched-earth campaign was designed to take over the region’s rich diamond fields and was backed by Gaddafi, who routinely reviewed their progress and supplied weapons.

Russian businessman Viktor Bout, who enjoys protection of the Russian state, supplied Charles Taylor with arms for use in Sierra Leone and had meetings with him about the operations.

Charles Taylor worked for The United States' CIA, , beginning in 1980s. The exact nature of this relationship is uncertain.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sierra_Leone_Civil_War#The_demographics_of_rebel_recruitment

Wednesday, November 14, 2012

CIVIL WAR AND DIAMONDS

CIVIL WAR AND DIAMONDS

Between 1991 and 2002, the country suffered a brutal, ten-year civil war during which the Revolutionary United Front (RUF) committed horrendous atrocities, terrorizing the population and gaining control of the country's diamond mines.

Eight years of protracted war left tens of thousands of people displaced and unknown numbers dead or mutilated. Half a million of Sierra Leone's people were forced to flee the country. The UN Security Council established the Mission in Sierra Leone (UNAMSIL) in October 1999 to help restore peace. At its height, UNAMSIL had 17,000 troops and was the biggest UN peacekeeping operation in the world. The Abuja Agreement in 2001 finally led to a reduction of hostilities and by early 2002, tens of thousands of ex-combatants had been disarmed and demobilized. By January of 2002, the civil war was over and Sierra Leone became a democratic country.

In 2000, the United Nations Security Council banned both direct and indirect imports of rough diamonds from Sierra Leone to member states in an effort to help stabilize the country and reduce the rebel's access to foreign currency and arms.

Since the end of the civil war in 2002, the diamond industry has provided technical assistance and training to Sierra Leone's Ministry of Mines in setting up the Government Diamond Office - an important step to being part of the Kimberley Process. In 2003 Sierra Leone joined the Kimberley Process, the international agreement developed to prevent conflict diamonds from entering the legitimate diamond supply chain and provides an assurance that diamonds are from conflict free sources.

BACKGROUND

Sierra Leone

BACKGROUND

Sierra Leone is situated in western Africa, bordering the North Atlantic Ocean, between Guinea and Liberia. A former British colony with a current population of 6.1 million, Sierra Leone gained independence in 1961.

The economic and social infrastructure of Sierra Leone is not well developed. Nearly half of the population survive by subsistence agriculture, although alluvial diamond mining (mining that extracts diamonds from deposits of sand, gravel and clay, which have been naturally transported by water erosion and deposited along either the banks of a river, the shoreline or on the bed of the ocean) accounts for nearly half of the country's exports and is the most significant source of hard currency earnings.

English is the official language of Sierra Leone but only 35% of its citizens are literate. The average life expectancy is 40 years and AIDS/HIV affects 7% of the population.

Diamonds were first discovered in Sierra Leone in 1930. In addition to diamonds, the country also has several other natural resources - titanium ore, bauxite, iron ore, gold and chromite. The country covers a total area of 71,740 km2 (27,699 sq. mi)

http://www.diamondfacts.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=129&Itemid=167&lang=en

Sunday, October 28, 2012

WHO IS FODAY SANKOH

WHO IS FODAY SANKOH

Foday Sankoh (October 17, 1937- July 29, 2003) was the leader and founder of the Sierra Leone rebel group Revolutionary United Front (RUF) in the 11 years civil war of Sierra Leone, which started in 1991 and ended in 2002. Foday Sankoh achieved his primary and secondary education in Magburaka,Tonkolili District and took a hand full of jobs before joining the Sierra Leone Army in 1956. He was trained in Nigeria and the United Kingdom. In 1971, then a corporal in the Army, he was cashiered from the army's single corps and imprisoned for seven years at the Pademba Road prison in Freetown for taking part in a mutiny. After his release, he eventually came in contact with young radicals and finding his way to Libya for insurgency training in 1988. This was organised by the late Muammarr Gaddafi who also help to bring Charles Taylor to power. The amputation of arms and legs of men, women and children was designed to take over the region's rich diamond field and was backed by Gaddafi, who supported the RUF with weapons.In 2000 Foday Sankoh was arrested. That event led to massive celebration throughout Sierra Leone. Sankoh was handed to the British and, under jurisdiction of a UN- backed court; he was indicted on 17 counts for various war crimes, including use of child soldiers, and crimes against Humanity, including extermination, enslavement, rape and sexual slavery. He later died of stroke in the year 2003.

CIVIL WAR OF SIERRA LEONE