Sierra Leone Research

I knew A Long Way Gone was a book about a child soldier, but before reading I didn't know that this had happened in Sierra Leone. I remember hearing about child soldiers in Uganda in high school, and what I learned was heartbreaking. I knew this would be the same. In my research I found out that the movie "Blood Diamond" was set in Sierra Leone during this time period. I have seen the movie but it's been so long that I forgot where it took place. So obviously I was pretty uninformed going into this reading.

I briefly brushed up on some of the history. The civil war talked about in the book lasted eleven years, from 1991 to 2002. Over 50,000 people died during that time period. The Revolutionary United Front (RUF) tried overthrowing the government. The Sierra Leone Army (SLA) fought back, and after a peace contract failed to be implemented in 1996, they kept fighting. May 1997 saw the SLA stage a coup and form a new government by taking over Freetown, but the Economic Community of West African States Monitoring Group came in and overtook the city on behalf of the government. In the end, after the UN's mission to help out was failing, the United Kingdom stepped in to help out and was able to help defeat the RUF and take control of Freetown.

This is obviously a very condensed version of a very complicated and long issue. I found out that the country is rich in alluvial diamonds, and this economic factor definitely played a role in the fighting. Economic factors were not the only reason why the war started, for the country had experienced many years of unjust government and oppression and were looking for a way out.

The RUF would recruit child soldiers from the displaced population fleeing the war. Over 80,000 refugees from nearby Liberia, who had their own civil war, were fleeing into Sierra Leone and many of them were children. As Sierra Leone's civil war went on, many children from that country became displaced as well. As kids were starving and homeless, it was easy for the RUF to take advantage of their situations by offering them food and shelter in return for their support, and if that failed, the RUF would force them to join anyway.

What I really took away from the research was that this war has many different sides and organizations all trying to gain power, as well as a lot of history and culture that plays into it as well. There's not really a "good side" or "bad side" in this civil war, for both had committed horrible atrocities.