The war in Sierra Leone has been under way for a decade now, and despite Western intervention in the form of peacekeeping missions and peace accords, the country remains a battle zone in which the civilian population are subjected to some of the worst violations of international humanitarian law imaginable. The conflict has now spread to neighboring Guinea where as many as 250,000 refugees are cut off from aid, hundreds have been killed and entire villages wiped out.
The primary culprits are Foday Sankoh's Revolutionary United Front (RUF), who claim to be fighting for agrarian reform, but as observers on the ground point out, the RUF has little interest in any kind political change. Rather, the rebels are fighting for control of Sierra Leone's diamond mines, and with backing from Liberia's Charles Taylor � who gets a cut of Sierra Leone's diamond profits in exchange for a steady supply of arms � they have waged war for the past decade by hacking off the hands of anyone who gets in their way.
Neither the rebels nor Sierra Leone's government forces have paid any heed to the laws of war during the conflict. In fact, journalists and human rights researchers have reported that troops from ECOMOG, the Nigerian-led UN peacekeeping mission in Sierra Leone, committed widespread atrocities themselves in their drive to push back the RUF. And until last year, Western governments also seemed willing to turn a blind eye to overt violations of international humanitarian law. In 1999, the United States and Western Europe helped broker the Lome Peace Accord which not only gave amnesty to soldiers who committed war crimes and human rights abuses, but also rewarded Sankoh by appointing him Sierra Leone's vice-president and giving him control over the country's diamond mines.
Only in the summer of 2000, when the RUF openly flouted the peace accords by taking UN peacekeepers hostage, did Western countries finally acknowledge overt violations of international humanitarian law. Shortly thereafter, the United Nations moved to create a Special Court to prosecute war crimes in Sierra Leone. Sankoh, who was arrested by government forces last fall in Freetown, will no doubt be one of the first to be tried by the court, but that may bring little relief to the hundreds of thousands of civilians who live in the two-thirds of the country that the RUF still controls. Much of what goes on behind rebel lines remains a mystery because outsiders are prevented form entering their territory, but recent reports indicate that the RUF has not tempered its campaign of terrorizing the civilian population, and that the widespread killing and looting has given way to disease and famine because people are unable to farm their land.
Last spring, just before efforts got under way to create a court, two highly regarded foreign correspondents, Kurt Shork of Reuters, and Miguel Gil Moreno de Mora of the Associated Press, were ambushed and killed by the RUF while reporting the war. Both Shork and Moreno had reputations of going where few other war correspondents dared to venture. Their deaths, which sent a shiver through the foreign press corps, helped ensure that what goes on behind rebel lines remains a black hole if only because two of the profession's most committed and daring journalists are no longer available to cover what goes on in RUF territory.
The civil war has now spilled over into neighboring Guinea where the RUF has unleashed a reign of terror every bit as savage as its campaign in Sierra Leone. Perhaps the only fact more shocking than the carnage left behind in the RUF's wake is that the atrocities have continued for a decade despite the presence of more than 12,000 UN peacekeeping troops in the country, a U.S.-backed peace accord and the creation of a Special Court to prosecute war crimes in Sierra Leone.
In this special report on Sierra Leone, the Crimes of War Project examines the on-going civil war with a case study of the most recent developments, an examination of the Special Court to prosecute war crimes in the country, a look at the behind-the-scenes diplomacy of the Lome Peace Accords, and an analysis of the challenges that face journalists trying to cover violent conflicts like the one in Sierra Leone.
The Crimes of War Project dedicates this package to the memory of journalists Kurt Shork and Miguel Gil Moreno de Mora, the dozens of United Nations personnel and the tens of thousands of citizens killed in Sierra Leone.