War and the crisis of youth in Sierra Leone, by Krijn Peters, Cambridge, International African Institute, London and Cambridge University Press, 2011, xv + 274 pp., £55 (hardback), ISBN 9781107004191
The decade long civil war in Sierra Leone was remarkable not just for the brutality of the rebel Revolutionary United Front (RUF) and its ally, the Armed Forces Revolutionary Council (AFRC), the widespread use of child combatants and the way the civilian population was targeted by the RUF, but also by its complexity, thus attracting a variety of causal explanations. One of the most prominent is Paul Collier's mantra of ‘doing well out of war’ with its attendant notion of ‘blood diamonds’: ‘conflicts are far more likely to be caused by economic opportunities than by grievance’ (Collier 2000, 91). This overlooks the fact that it was much later in the conflict that illegal diamond mining in exchange for arms and ammunition became a feature of the war. In this respect, ‘greed’ and ‘blood diamonds’ were not causal factors as Gberie (2005) and others have shown; indeed the trade in ‘blood diamonds’ only prolonged the war. Similar criticism can be levelled against Robert Kaplan's xenophobic shriek of a ‘coming anarchy’ (Kaplan 1994), or ‘Malthus-with-guns’ as Richards (1996) has rightly described Kaplan's explanation of the Sierra Leone conflict. The premise underlying Kaplan's account – demographic pressure – is nothing more than a fictional representation in Kaplan's travelogue, as this part of West Africa has not been associated with demographic pressure on land.
So why did young people in Sierra Leone seek to ensure, in the words of Frantz Fanon, that ‘The first shall be the last and the last first’ (Fanon 1967, 28)? This is where Peters' book becomes instructive; and like Richards and Abdullah (2004) he focused his research on social actors who sought to challenge the governing class of this ‘fragile state’. Thus, unlike the World Bank howlers (‘greed not grievance’) and the recyclers of xenophobic shrieks (New Barbarism), who seek to devalue the agency of young people in that unfortunate country, Peters seeks to valorise their agency and to give them a voice in the voiceless environment of gerontocratic rule and patrimonialism. Quoting the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, Peters observes: ‘it was years of bad governance, endemic corruption and the denial of basic human rights that created the deplorable conditions that made conflict inevitable’ (9). Furthermore, he draws attention to the role of state-driven marginalisation of young people and of important regions of the country, as the sources of the patrimonial mode of accumulation continued to shrink, thus accelerating state collapse, as basic necessities could not be delivered.
Whilst Abdullah (2004) privileges the urban déclassé (Rarray Boys) for raising class consciousness and increasing ‘revolutionary pressure’, for Peters it was the rural underclass, the veritable damnés de la terre, which demonstrated its preparedness for the revolutionary struggle. As he observes, ‘the war was in the main fought by the rural poor’ (32); ‘a semi-vagrant underclass of descendants of former slaves, now found living as “strangers” attached to land- and plantation-owning patrons’ (109). He points to ‘a rural crisis created by unresolved tensions between landholding elites and dislocated peasants or strangers’ (16), which renders them as subjects rather than citizens. He notes that in place of the decaying and disenfranchising gerontocratic/patrimonial rule, which deprived them of their education and jobs, the country's youth sided with the RUF with the intention of building a new society with greater opportunities. The ‘old order’ led by a coalition of traditional chiefs and kleptocratic politicians stifled the aspirations of young people in the country through archaic practices, like forced labour and fines in the traditional courts, which forced many young people to run away from their villages to work in the outer limits of the diamond fields as ‘san san boys’ (tributors). When asked why they took up arms, common responses were: ‘no jobs’, ‘lack of education’, ‘bad government’, ‘political corruption’, ‘maltreatment and injustice by elders’, ‘desire for democratic system’, ‘failure of the elders to look after the young people’.
Regarding the nature of the society that the RUF sought to construct, contrary to the popular belief of a nihilistic and anarchistic rebel force, Peters points out that in territories under its control the RUF organised farming along compulsory ‘socialist’ or ‘communal’ forms, though individual farms were also allowed. He draws attention to the fact that life under the RUF was more meritocratic than life in the wider society which was riddled by partiality and nepotism. However, given the manner in which hostilities ended (including the humiliation of Foday Sankoh, the rebel leader) and the fact that British aid was geared towards rehabilitating the chieftaincy system, an institution that has been instrumental in alienating young people in Sierra Leone, the ‘liberal peace’ brought to an abrupt end a brief period of youth empowerment.
Peters pleads for a new perspective on the RUF:
To portray the RUF as ‘greedy criminals’ or ‘terrorists without an ideology’ is directly linked to the assumption that the movement was somehow uniquely unscrupulous and extremely exploitative in its mining activities. This hides the fact that similar practices preceded the RUF, and continue today. (119)
Peters has presented us with an invaluable insight into the causal factors that impelled young people to join a social movement to challenge for state hegemony. Indeed, it is difficult to fathom the fact that the cadres from this ‘idealistic movement’ were the perpetrators of such widespread violence against the civilian population. Whilst Peters blames this on the contaminating influences of the AFRC, others such as Abdullah have put it down to the ‘lumpen’ nature of the RUF leadership. No doubt, these are important questions for any radical social and political transformation, and an equally important question is what would have been the fate of the RUF and its followers under a more astute leadership, in a country where young people were looking for change.