Dec. 11-17, 1999
Port Loko - Five months after the signing of a peace agreement, Sierra Leone is still under the shadow of one of Africa's nastiest rebel movements. In East Africa hopes may be rising.
On the face of it, it might have been a holiday camp for hyperactive teenagers. Hundreds of rebels from Sierra Leone's Revolutionary United Front (RUF) had come out of the bush, given up their weapons and assembled at a camp just outside the tiny town of Port Loko. The unarmed United Nations observers were edgy-these people, or their comrades, have butchered civilians, burnt villages and chopped off their victims' hands-but the atmosphere was not violent.
"I was fighting for my rights," said Alusine Kargbo, who looked about 13 but claimed to be 21, "for free education, free medicine, free accommodation and a job." But now "Pappy", as the rebels' leader, Foday Sankoh, is known, had told him and his colleagues to disarm. Meanwhile, they wanted their money. They had been promised $150 (in local currency) on arrival at the camp and $150 a couple of months later, to help them re-enter civilian life. But they wanted it all now.
No holiday camp
Port Loko is Sierra Leone in microcosm. Next to the rebels' camp is a camp for their victims. Nearby is another for militiamen who tried to defend them against rebel attacks. And at the Roman Catholic church in town is a centre for the rebels' child fighters. Nearly 100 are there already. Thousands more remain in the bush. There is no sign of the government officials who are supposed to be running these camps. They are guarded by Nigerian troops and supervised by UN monitors.
On the roads outside the town, gangs of dubious loyalty or none rob and kill travellers. Earlier this month, Nigerian troops brought in the bloody survivors from among a busload of people who had tried to make a dash to the capital, Freetown. Three lay moaning, clutching bullet wounds. Raiders had shot up their bus and stolen their meagre belongings. Similar attacks happen daily.
Francis Okelo, the UN's departing special representative for Sierra Leone, says the peace process is on track. It is hard to be so optimistic. The agreement signed last July gives a blanket amnesty even for crimes against civilians. President Ahmed Tejan Kabbah was at his weakest when he put his name to it. He saw it as a compromise. Mr Sankoh saw it as the articles of surrender.
If the government had the political will and an army to enforce it, then the political vacuum at the heart of Sierra Leone might be filled and order restored; but the government is weak, and it has no army. British servicemen are trying to train a new one, but it will take time. Successive attempts to rebuild it in the past have failed.
On December 8th, 350 Kenyan peacekeepers arrived, joining the 130 already there to form the nucleus of a UN force of 6,000 which is due by year's end. But the UN soldiers are not coming to enforce the peace treaty. That job is supposed to be done by a Nigerian-led force of West Africans. The Nigerians, who have been in Sierra Leone for eight years, are tired of this war. More than 1,000 of their men have been killed, most of them in battles to clear the rebels and their allies out of Freetown. They feel let down by the rest of the world, and are unlikely to sacrifice their soldiers' lives again.
So peace depends on the political leaders. Here again the omens are grim. President Kabbah is honest and sincere but, as a former UN bureaucrat, he is used to structures and rules. Neither exist in Sierra Leone today. The government's writ extends no farther than the outskirts of Freetown and it lacks the means, even if it had the will, to extend it. Mr Kabbah is out of his depth.
Apart from Britain, few countries are helping to reconstruct or develop Sierra Leone, though some are giving humanitarian aid. The IMF says it cannot help because the country owes $11m in debt repayments. Time is short if Sierra Leoneans are to be persuaded that peace can bring prosperity.
Meanwhile, Mr Sankoh's political power swells by the day, puffed up by everyone's efforts to keep him sweet. Mr Kabbah leads the way. When Mr Sankoh kept Madeleine Albright, the American secretary of state, waiting for hours during a recent visit, it was Mr Kabbah who made apologies. In cabinet, he urges ministers to make allowances for the rebel chief.
Mr Sankoh, who was an army corporal not long ago, relies alternately on charm and bullying to get his way. Mistrustful of anyone with education, he tends to say whatever suits him at the time. In an interview with The Economist last week, he asserted, alternately, that the peace agreement would be implemented in full, and then that it was just "a scrap of paper". He said that his fighters would have to be persuaded to leave the bush, and then that they did everything he ordered them to.
Mr Sankoh has now formed a political party. Yet his chief lieutenant, Sam Bockarie, known as "Mosquito", remains armed, out in the bush. Is he defying Mr Sankoh's order to demobilise, or is he Mr Sankoh's insurance policy if he chooses to go back to war? Mr Sankoh's mentor, Charles Taylor, won the presidency in next-door Liberia by threatening to take up arms again if people did not vote for him. No doubt Mr Sankoh will make the same threat in the election due in 2001.
Will Sierra Leoneans give in to him for fear of the consequences if they reject him? Perhaps. At a camp for amputees on the outskirts of Freetown, it is easy to understand why they might. Many of the occupants there say the RUF hacked off their hands for voting for Mr Kabbah in the 1996 election.
