ABSTRACT
The conflict between the Revolutionary United Front (RUF) and the Sierra Leonean government represents a highly instructive study for reintegration projects, primarily due to the motives underpinning violence and the identity of the main protagonists. Far from being a conventional political insurgency readily lending itself to peaceful political transformation, the RUF possessed within the ranks of its young and brutalised recruits a fundamental rejection of Sierra Leone’s political structures. As such, Sierra Leone presented a unique challenge for reintegration efforts, requiring not only the immediate reconciliation of ex-combatants with victims and civil society, but also the long-term political incorporation of a group of youths defined by their very disengagement from and distrust of the political system. The conflict began in early 1991 when a small group of combatants crossed the Liberian border into eastern Sierra Leone, seeking to topple the one-party regime of Joseph Momoh.1 Met by a weak and ineffective counterinsurgency effort, a decade of brutal conflict ensued in which two-thirds of Sierra Leone’s population were displaced and up to 50,000 were killed. It was not until 2002, following a series of failed negotiated settlements, that peace was officially declared by a new civilian government. The cessation of hostilities owed much to the intervention of British and Guinean troops in 2000, which precipitated the deployment of 17,500 UN peacekeepers, the largest such force at the time. These developments enabled the full operation of a DDR programme, which had suffered repeated interruption since its initial introduction in 1998. A Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) and Special Court were also established, and in December 2005, the United Nations Mission in Sierra Leone (UNAMSIL) withdrew its peacekeepers. In 2007, Sierra Leone conducted national elections, returning the All Party Congress (APC) to power. The DDR process, which ran in three distinct phases between September 1998 and January 2002, disarmed 72,490 combatants (including 24,352 from the RUF) of which 71,043 were demobilised and 55,000 received reintegration assistance.2 Despite the relative effectiveness of the demobilisation and disarmament programmes, Sierra Leone remains in a state of abject poverty, with high
levels of youth unemployment and limited opportunities, serving to undermine the reintegration of ex-combatants. Former RUF fighters make up a significant portion of those struggling to find work, with many expressing dissatisfaction with the lack of prospects and cynicism with regard to the ruling authorities in Freetown – factors that proved instrumental to the original onset of conflict. Success in politically reintegrating ex-combatants, therefore, should not be judged solely by the absence of renewed violence or the conduct of free and fair elections. Rather, it must also appreciate the extent to which ex-combatants hold faith in the political system, and peace generally, to deliver solutions to problems of social and economic disparity or decline, and the extent to which ex-combatants themselves are shaping this process. In this light, this chapter argues that despite progress in many key areas, former fighters of the RUF have yet to be fully politically reintegrated. The Sierra Leone experience demonstrates that successful political integration does not simply amount to political participation per se, but rather requires specific forms of political participation, which reinforce the primacy of peaceful political interaction over and above other means for affecting change.
