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History pre-1990 |
1990-1999 |
Current Situation |
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HISTORY• Sierra Leone was a British colony to which freed slaves returned in the late 1700's. They formed a social class which hardly integrated with the indigenous people.
• After Independence in 1961 successive governments were dominated by a small political elite who exclusively profited from the lucrative trade in diamonds. Little of this national income trickled down to benefit the rest of the population.
RECENT PAST
• Reacting to this system of exclusive patronage, a political outsider, Foday Sankoh, formed the RUF (Revolutionary United Front), and started an armed insurrection. Rebel leader and later president of neighbouring Liberia, Charles Taylor, backed Sankoh and the RUF.
• Dissatisfied with the government, the military took power in 1991. By 1996, foreign and domestic pressure forced the provisional governing council to hold general elections despite the bush war. A civilian, Ahmed Tejan Kabbah, became the first freely elected President for 34 years.
• Within a year a group of renegade officers forced his government to flee the country. President Kabbah regained power in March 1998 with the assistance of foreign mercenaries and ECOMOG, an armed intervention force sponsored by ECOWAS (Economic Organization of West African States).
• The military junta retreated to the bush and became a second rebel faction. In uneasy co-operation with the RUF, the rebel armies financed their participation in the war by mining and selling diamonds through Liberia.
• A surprise rebel attack in January 1999 temporarily wrestled half of Freetown from ECOMOG. The insurgents destroyed much of the town before being beaten back.
• In July 1999 all parties agreed to a regionally brokered cease-fire signed in Lome. It included an amnesty for all the crimes and human rights abuses committed during the war and a framework for the disarmament, demobilisation and reintegration of all participants in the conflict.
• The United Nations Security Council passed a resolution in October 1999 to provide an armed peace keeping force. It will replace the largely Nigerian based ECOMOG forces, seen by the rebels as being party to the conflict.
PRESENT
• Less than a quarter of the 45000 combatants have surrendered their weapons at the designated assembly points in compliance with the disarmament program.
• Human rights agencies in Sierra Leone report continued abuses and say that widespread banditry is increasing throughout the areas still controlled by the rebel factions.
• The rebel armies have surrendered very few of the estimated 10 000 children abducted during the war.
• All diamond mining and trading licenses have been revoked and all diamond trading activities outlawed. However, much of the diamond region is in the hands of recalcitrant RUF rebels who are unlikely to halt their mining operations.
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