Tools of War, Tools of State by Robert Tynes

Author:Robert Tynes
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: State University of New York Press
Published: 2018-03-04T16:00:00+00:00

Roots of Child Soldier Use in the Sierra Leone Civil War

Children were included in the ranks of the RUF10 from the very start of the conflict in Sierra Leone, and the idea to use them in battle germinated during events occurring in Libya and Liberia years before the war. The network analysis in chapter 3 revealed that Libya was a central node in the web of rebel groups that were connected by their practice of child soldier use. Numerous insurgencies, such as the Irish Republican Army (IRA), the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), the Basque separatists (ETA), the National Patriotic Front of Liberia (NPFL), and the Revolutionary United Front (RUF) trained in Muammar al-Qaddafi’s guerilla camps. Qaddafi’s assistance extended to Sierra Leoneans as early as the 1970s (Sierra Leone TRC, 2004a; Rashid, 2004). Student groups formed at Fourah Bay College (FBC) of the University of Sierra Leone in order to study the Green Book. The Green Book was Qaddafi’s political philosophy treatise outlining how a people’s state could be formed. Libya also provided “financial assistance to Sierra Leone Muslims in the late 1970s in order to perform the annual hajj pilgrimage to Mecca (p. 58).

The key moment of Libyan support came in the mid-1980s after three lecturers and 41 students were expelled from FBC in response to student protests against the APC government (p. 59). A small group of these protesters, including the FBC student union leader Alie Kabbah, left the country to continue their studies at the University of Ghana, thanks to the Libyan government, which paid for their school fees. Some of these students then went on to Libya to participate in seminars and conferences, receiving ideological training, from 1987 through 1988. The Sierra Leonean trainees were concerned with how to turn their corrupted state into a viable, just nation. However, a split occurred in the group regarding how that process should take place. Alie Kabbah’s faction sought a well-structured revolution based on principles. The opposing faction was less-concerned with ideology and principles and pushed for a purely militaristic overthrow of the Sierra Leonean government. The military group advocated for a joint effort, teaming up with the Liberian insurgents, the NPFL, to stage a violent insurrection. It was the latter group that Libya chose to bolster (Sierra Leone TRC, 2004a; Rashid, 2004).

The NPFL was training in Libya at the same time as the Sierra Leoneans, and their leader, Charles Taylor saw an opportunity. According to interviews with the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, Taylor “was quick to take advantage of the split in the ranks of the Sierra Leoneans by aligning with Foday Sankoh, a former corporal in the Republic of Sierra Leone Military Forces (RSLMF), who emerged as the leader of the more militant faction” (p. 60). Alie Kabbah and members of his group left Libya after the split, but Foday Sankoh stayed and, with several others, went on to engage in military training from 1988 to 1989. According to a witness at the trial of Charles Taylor in

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