ABSTRACT
The civil militia forces that emerged in Sierra Leone in the wake of the civil conflict were not products of rigorous conventional military training and were in the main ordinary people, mostly farmers, of gun-bearing age who had little or no knowledge of the rules governing modern warfare. However, the civil militia organisations that surfaced during the civil conflict, and the methods they employed to confront their enemies, were a novelty in Sierra Leone. The Kamajor militia especially used some unorthodox methods that set them apart from their counterparts. In the context of the Sierra Leone conflict, a Kamajor was a militiaman who had been initiated into the Kamajor society where he was schooled in modern weapons handling and invested with certain powers that made him impervious. A study of Kamajor-civilian relations raises some interesting questions. The advent of the Kamajor force literally revived the state; they provided a modicum of security and civil authority where these were lacking.
