Hell on Earth: The Revolutionary United Front (RUF)
In 1991, with the vital support of Gaddafi and his good friend, the Liberian president Charles Taylor, Sankoh’s Revolutionary United Front (RUF) launched its “revolution.” If Gaddafi had been instrumental in the RUF’s formation and its initial strikes within Sierra Leone, Taylor would play a much more decisive role going forward. In short, without Taylor, there would not have been an RUF. Unlike Gaddafi, Libya’s eccentric, self-proclaimed “King of Kings,” Taylor was seemingly much humbler, or at least more rational. The Liberian president had an Americo-Liberian father and had graduated from Bentley College in Massachusetts in 1977 with a bachelor’s degree in economics. However, that’s about where his apparent innocuousness ends. In 1989, Taylor launched a Gaddafi-backed revolt in Liberia and after years of civil war, was elected president in 1997 in an atmosphere of raw intimidation, (in)famously campaigning on the slogan: “He killed my ma, he killed my pa, but I will vote for him.”
Even before assuming the presidency, Taylor had facilitated Sankoh’s success by lending him young Sierra Leonean fighters, whom he had been using to help advance his own cause in Liberia, and later, a contingent of his most brutal troops to wage war in the neighboring state. Subsequently, the RUF would “recruit” its own fighters within Sierra Leone, kidnapping children and often forcing them to murder their family members before being force-fed drugs, including a mixture of gunpowder and cocaine (or heroin) known as “brown-brown,” which was rubbed into cuts on their foreheads.[107]In this grisly manner, Sankoh assembled a deranged fighting outfit composed of young boys who served as child soldiers, and girls who were used as porters and sex slaves. Many observers wondered if Sankoh was the devil incarnate.
By 1995, the RUF had driven out the population adjacent to the diamond mines via a campaign of terror, sparing only those residents it required to work the deposits. The rebels were now firmly in control of the Kono diamond fields, which bankrolled their violent endeavors. Armed squads of RUF soldiers and captives transported most of the harvested diamonds, that is, the rough stones not sold on the spot to Lebanese or nomadic ethnic Mandingo buyers, to Monrovia, the Liberian capital. In return, Taylor arranged for arms that the RUF purchased to be flown—including on a plane once owned by the NBA’s Seattle Supersonics—from Eastern Europe (primarily Bulgaria and Ukraine) to his country and then transported overland into Sierra Leone. In order to arrange this system, Taylor called on old friends, such as Gaddafi and Charles Taylor, as well as international arms dealers, including Viktor “Sanctions Buster” Bout. If you’ve seen the 2005 film Lord of War, starring Nicolas Cage, which is based on Bout’s history of illicit activities, you’re familiar with how this weapons dealer achieved international notoriety. As a result of this intercontinental collaboration, between 1991 and 1998 over 31 million carats of “Liberian” diamonds were exported to Belgium, with sales between 1994 and 1999 valued at approximately $2.2 billion. Over that same period, more than 75,000 Sierra Leoneans were killed, at least 20,000 mutilated and some 200,000 injured, while roughly 500,000 became refugees, fleeing to neighboring Guinea or Liberia. In total, nearly half of Sierra Leone’s population of 4.5 million was forced to leave home in an attempt to escape the terror.
By the mid-1990s, the country had descended into utter chaos. Neglected by the rest of the world, Sierra Leone was hanging on by a thread, if at all. Moreover, two presidential coups during this period had precluded any potential governmental solutions to the violence. Instead, in response to President Ahmad Tejan Kabbah’s plea for his countrymen to “join hands for the future of Sierra Leone,” the RUF began amputating these potentially unifying hands from their victims, but also, to a lesser extent, limbs, ears, breasts, tongues, and lips. Underscoring this brutality, RUF commanders assumed names such as “General Babykiller” and “Queen Chop Hands” and led gruesome missions such as “Operation Pay Yourself” and “Operation No Living Thing.” The RUF had initially entered the country claiming to be fighting on behalf of “the average Sierra Leonean” against the governmental and ruling class corruption that was centered in the country’s capital of Freetown. By now, it was abundantly clear that the organization had long since abandoned any social and political objectives, if they had ever existed.
External Assistance? The Internationalization of the Violence in Sierra Leone
Desperate to contain the RUF, in 1995 Sierra Leone’s beleaguered president, Valentine Strasser, hired Executive Outcomes (EO), a now-defunct South Africa security, that is, mercenary, company. For those readers who have seen Blood Diamond, the private army led by “Colonel Coetzee” is the fictional version of EO. Founded in 1989 by a former South African special forces officer, EO was a formidable outfit, featuring tanks, attack aircraft, fighter planes, advanced communications technology, and hundreds of well-trained fighters. In other words, the exact opposite of the RUF. In exchange for its services, EO was to receive diamond-mining and exploration concessions—basically all the bankrupt government had left to offer. In a matter of weeks, EO’s forces drove the RUF back from Freetown, toward which the rebels had been steadily advancing, and recaptured the diamond fields, including the most valuable ones at Kono. Yet despite the positive influence EO was having in Sierra Leone, the international community was outspokenly opposed to this type of intervention and pressured Strasser to end the relationship. The IMF joined this chorus, withholding much-needed financial assistance in protest over EO’s involvement.
Following Strasser’s eventual capitulation and his cancellation of the contract with EO, chaos predictably returned. The RUF recaptured the diamond areas, a coup removed Strasser from power, and bags of severed hands reportedly began to appear on the steps of the presidential palace following Kabbah’s aforementioned imploration to “join hands.” A subsequent coup quickly ushered Kabbah from power, as well. Johnny Paul Koroma, the leader of a newly formed rebel group, the Armed Forces Revolutionary Council (AFRC), which was composed of a band of former army soldiers aligned with the RUF, now held the reins of power firmly in his hands. On May 25, 1997, less than a year and a half after the departure of Executive Outcomes, the capital of Freetown fell to a combined AFRC/RUF force, and all hell was unleashed.
Within days, hundreds of bodies were rotting in Freetown’s streets, the city completely terrorized. Yet outside of hastily evacuating their expatriates, countries like the United States did little else. The United States was still smarting from the “Black Hawk Down” debacle in Somalia in 1993, and therefore Washington was reluctant to commit, not wanting to bog itself down in another African “tribal conflict.” But plenty of other players in the international community were more than happy to get involved. Kabbah, while in exile, had been able to secure weapons with the help of Sandline International, a British private military company that had close ties with Executive Outcomes. Those remnants of the Sierra Leonean army who remained loyal to Kabbah received a portion of these weapons. The arms were also distributed to the Kamajors, a group of ethnic Mende hunters who sought both the eradication of the RUF and a return to stability in Sierra Leone, but who had also developed a strong taste for diamonds. In fact, by this time, just about everyone involved in the conflict shared this “mineral appetite.” The Economic Community of West African States Monitoring Group, or ECOMOG, a regional multilateral force mainly controlled by Nigeria, also offered substantial support and firepower. While ECOMOG forces worked to liberate Freetown, the Kamajors, now armed as never before, focused on rural areas, running roughshod over the RUF defenses.[108]In practice, these Kamajor fighters operated more like vigilantes than military forces and ultimately proved to be beyond anyone’s control.
By 1999, prospects for the nation had somewhat improved. Foday Sankoh had been captured in Nigeria and sent back to Sierra Leone, where he was sentenced to die for his role in supporting the AFRC. The RUF had been contained, even if it still occupied and continued to exploit the country’s most important mines. And, the U
N Security Council had passed Resolution 1176, sanctioning diamond sales from Sierra Leone. However, this promising period proved merely to be the calm before yet another storm. Bolstered by ongoing diamond revenues and the unflinching assistance of Charles Taylor, who had recently taken power in neighboring Liberia, the RUF quickly regrouped and launched “Operation No Living Thing.” They stormed Freetown again and left disaster in their wake. A death toll of over 4,000 during a three-week rampage of the capital evinced the madness.
What happened next, though, was almost as unthinkable as the acts of violence themselves. The 1999 Lomé Peace Accords granted RUF fighters amnesty and its leaders top-level government posts, all in exchange for their vow to end hostilities. Under the agreement, the murderous Sankoh was removed from death row and installed as the country’s vice president under Kabbah, the man he had helped to oust just two years previously. Furthermore, Sankoh was appointed chairman of the country’s Commission for the Management of Strategic Resources, National Reconstruction and Development. In other words, he and the RUF officially retained control of Sierra Leone’s lucrative diamond mines. That same year, stones worth an estimated $75 million flowed from the RUF’s mines onto the global market, further enriching Sankoh and his supporters. Following the RUF’s partial disarmament to the United Nations’ peacekeeping force (United Nations Mission in Sierra Leone, or UNAMSIL), it also received legal status as a political party. Remarkably, the agreement had granted the RUF virtually everything for which it had ever fought.
But, why, and how? In short, because the Western leaders who helped broker the accord—including the US “Special Envoy,” civil rights activist Jesse Jackson—believed it offered the best chance to end the seemingly interminable violence in the country. Susan Rice, the US Assistant Secretary of State at the time, defended the agreement, proclaiming: “There will never be peace and security and an opportunity for development and recovery in Sierra Leone unless there is a solution to the source of the conflict. And that entails, by necessity—whether we like it or not—a peace agreement with the rebels.”[109]Pragmatism aside, it’s hard to imagine the United States entering into an agreement with an entity such as the RUF, shaking hands with the devil amid a barrage of flashing cameras.
Given the RUF’s insatiable greed and unwillingness to fully disarm, Sierra Leone predictably returned to violence shortly after the Lomé Peace Accords had been signed. In response, in May 2000, the United Kingdom launched Operation Palisar, a unilateral military intervention that facilitated the evacuation of foreign citizens and eventually saw British troops successfully turn back RUF advances. Shortly thereafter, UNAMSIL forces arrested Sankoh in retaliation for the deaths of seven peacekeepers at the hands of RUF troops, thus averting a coup that the RUF leader had been plotting. Leaderless, and facing a UN-imposed ban on all “Liberian” diamonds that promised to choke off the RUF’s main conduit for arms, the group agreed to a peace treaty in May 2001. By November of that year, roughly two-thirds of its fighters had turned in their weapons to UNAMSIL, even if others continued to mine and sell diamonds throughout the demobilization period. In January 2002, UNAMSIL announced that the war in Sierra Leone was officially over and that the RUF now existed solely as a political entity. The hell had finally ended.
One Last Gasp: From Regional Havoc to International Terror
Just prior to its dissolution, the RUF had been busy selling diamonds. Included in their buyers were some rather unconventional types. Ahmed Khalfan Ghailani, from Tanzania, and Fazul Abdullah Mohammed of Kenya, two men in their twenties, had been purchasing RUF-mined stones since 1998. Yet, they were not aspiring jewelers or ambitious smugglers. Rather, they were members of the international terrorist organization, al-Qaeda. In fact, Ghailani had played a central role in the destruction of the US embassy in Dar es Salaam in 1998; he would eventually be captured and sentenced in New York to life in prison. In July 2001, as the RUF was in the process of surrendering control of its mines, these two operatives were seeking to convert a significant portion of al-Qaeda’s funds into liquid assets, fully aware that the impending 9/11 terrorist strikes would make it harder to move cash. Due to turn over the mines to the government in November of 2001 and promised inflated prices for the rough stones, the RUF had ample reasons to oblige these buyers. In agreeing to this “big payout,” the RUF was helping one of the world’s most notorious organizations launder millions of dollars worth of assets. In the months and years that followed the fateful events of September 11, 2001, the value and importance of these “bloody” African diamonds to the under-fire terrorist organization became abundantly, tragically clear.
A New Beginning: The Promising Aftermath of the Violence in Sierra Leone
In May 2002, Sierra Leoneans lined up in large numbers to vote, a truly extraordinary development considering that the mayhem in the country had only very recently concluded. Perhaps even more remarkable was the presence of hundreds of amputee victims in the queues. These individuals had lost their limbs to RUF rebels who once bragged that “people without hands couldn’t vote for those opposed to the RUF.” These victims of RUF terror, however, did turn up to vote, waiting in lines for hours before emotionally marking their ballots, often with their toes. After returning Kabbah to power, electors looked on as the Special Court for Sierra Leone, set up jointly by the United Nations and the government of Sierra Leone, determined the fates of the most violent and culpable leaders from the now-concluded conflict, including RUF, AFRC, and Kamajor commanders and, of course, Foday Sankoh. The former RUF leader was indicted on seventeen counts, including murder, rape, pillage, sexual slavery, abductions, forced labor, use of child soldiers, “extermination,” and “outrages upon personal dignity.” Those who wished to see justice served, however, would be disappointed. While on trial in 2003, Sankoh died from a stroke.
Unfortunately, the positive developments in Sierra Leone failed to spill over into neighboring Liberia. Less than two weeks after the historic elections, thirty tons of rifles and ammunition arrived in Monrovia, largely paid for with, what else? Smuggled Sierra Leonean diamonds, of course. Charles Taylor had been able to rely on old friends to continue to smuggle stones into Liberia, which were now vital to his efforts to maintain power in the face of advancing rebels in his own nation. By 2003, however, Taylor had been forced into exile, fleeing to Nigeria before ultimately being turned over to the United Nations, and, eventually, the Special Court for Sierra Leone, located in The Hague. Following the conclusion of his trial in May 2012, the disgraced former leader was sentenced to fifty years in prison for his central role in Sierra Leone’s diamond-fueled pandemonium. While reading the sentencing statement, the Presiding Judge declared: “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.”[110]One can only imagine the condemnation Sankoh would have received had he lived long enough to hear his sentence announced.
For all of the wealth that West Africa’s diamonds have generated over time, they have only minimally benefited the region’s inhabitants. These deposits have not always been at the center of the type of violence that devastated Sierra Leone and, indirectly, Liberia, in the 1990s and early 2000s. Yet since the initial discoveries in the colonial era, diamond revenues have rarely been used for constructive purposes in the region. Instead, the stones have been linked to pervasive corruption—either within regional governments or beyond their capacity to control, or both. However, diamonds are now finally playing an important role in helping Sierra Leone recover, while also augmenting development efforts, if only modestly, in Ghana, the Ivory Coast, Guinea, and Liberia. For example, while Sierra Leone officially exported only $1.5 million worth of diamonds in 1999, by 2005 this figure ballooned to $142 million. If these deposits continue to be properly managed and the wealth strategically reinvested locally, West African residents might finally consider diamond fields “assets,” as opposed to deadly endowments.
Angola: Sierra
Leone’s Analogue to the South
Although the violence in Sierra Leone escaped international attention for some time, the roughly contemporaneous hostilities in Angola definitely did not. The conflict in this Southern African nation was a constant topic of discussion in Washington, Moscow, and Pretoria, as well as other continental and international capitals. When the Portuguese left Angola in 1975, the newly independent country immediately plunged into chaos, with three politico-nationalist movements competing for power: the MPLA, FNLA, and UNITA. After the FNLA was defeated militarily, the left-leaning MPLA government, supported by the Soviets and, even more significantly, by Cuba, was pitted against UNITA rebels, who received funding and military assistance from apartheid South Africa and the United States. From 1975 until the end of the Cold War, Angola in effect hosted a “proxy war,” with the world’s communist and capitalist powers squaring off, though crucially only indirectly. Although the South African regime was staunchly anticommunist, it was primarily engaged in Angola to check the advance of black nationalism that was sweeping south, right up to its own borders and also those of South West Africa (Namibia), its buffer “mandate” (map 4). Amid all of the geopolitical importance of this clash, diamonds also figured prominently—somewhat importantly from 1975 until the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991, and then centrally from the end of the Cold War until the conclusion of hostilities in Angola in 2002. Although the depravity of the Sierra Leone situation was largely absent from this Southern African arena, the term “blood diamonds” owes as much to Angola as it does to its West African counterpart.
Map 4. Angola. Map by Brian Edward Balsley, GISP
The Lengthy Conflict in Angola
Just as the British had left Sierra Leone’s diamond fields and industry in disorder on their departure, so too did the Portuguese in Angola. Prior to the country’s formal independence in November 1975, hundreds of thousands of white settlers had hastily fled, fearful of potential retribution by Angolans who had endured a long period of repressive colonial rule. Included in this exodus was virtually all of the engineering and managerial staff of the monopolistic Diamond Company of Angola (Diamang). The company’s operational area, which was situated in the northeastern province of Lunda, did not witness any violence during the war for independence (1961–75). However, as Diamang wound down operations, artisanal miners began to flood into the western area of its concession, along the Cuango River. As this area featured easily accessible alluvial stones, rampant digging quickly drove up illicit output. At the same time, formal production dropped from well over 2,000,000 carats prior to independence to only about 350,000 in 1975–76.
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