Though Sankoh and other RUF leaders may have started
with political grievances, and the grievances of the people
suffering under the APC’s extractive institutions may have
encouraged them to join the movement early on, the
situation quickly changed and spun out of control. The
“mission” of the RUF plunged the country into agony, as in
the testimony of a teenager from Geoma, in the south of
Sierra Leone:
They gathered some of us … They chose
some of our friends and killed them, two of
them. These were people whose fathers
were the chiefs, and they had soldiers’ boots
and property in their houses. They were shot,
for no other reason than that they were
accused of harbouring soldiers. The chiefs
were also killed—as part of the government.
They chose someone to be the new chief.
They were still saying they had come to free
us from the APC. After a point, they were not
choosing people to kill, just shooting people.
In the first year of the invasion, any intellectual roots that
the RUF may have had were completely extinguished.
Sankoh executed those who criticized the mounting stream
of atrocities. Soon, few voluntarily joined the RUF. Instead
they turned to forcible recruitment, particularly of children.
Indeed, all sides did this, including the army. If the Sierra
Leonean civil war was a crusade to build a better society,
in the end it was a children’s crusade. The conflict
intensified with massacres and massive human rights
abuses, including mass rapes and the amputation of hands
and ears. When the RUF took over areas, they also
engaged in economic exploitation. It was most obvious in
the diamond mining areas, where they press-ganged
people into diamond mining, but was widespread
elsewhere as well.
The RUF wasn’t alone in committing atrocities,
massacres, and organized forced labor. The government
did so as well. Such was the collapse of law and order that
it became difficult for people to tell who was a soldier and