His rebel stint began in 1997. An RUF raiding party grabbed him outside a Freetown movie house and told him he could join or die. After a few weeks of training in the bush, they injected him with cocaine and other drugs to boost his stamina and courage, handed him an AK-47 and sent him out to kill. He claims not to know how many civilian lives he took in the next two years. He says only: “The more you killed the more you were promoted.” By the time he surrendered to government forces last month, he was a captain.
The carnage is continuing without him. At least 20,000 people–most of them noncombatants–have died since the RUF began its fight in 1991. AIDS and the war have slashed Sierra Leone’s life expectancy to 37, the world’s lowest. Today the RUF is estimated to have more than 20,000 fighters, as many as half of them abducted children. The rebels appear to have no political ideology beyond seizing power for their imprisoned leader, Foday Sankoh. The Libyan-trained rebel chief, a former local news photographer turned cult figure, claims to be a devout Christian who opposes attacks against unarmed civilians. He was captured in Nigeria two years ago and is now in a Freetown jail under sentence of death for treason.
Freetown got a taste of RUF rule early this year. On Jan. 6 the rebels caught the city’s defenders by surprise and entered the capital, abetted by underfed Army defectors. For the next three weeks the Nigerian-led West African peacekeeping force, ECOMOG, battled to regain control from the RUF. The rebels raped and pillaged in a drug-induced frenzy. They arbitrarily singled out local civilians for torture, lopping off their ears, noses or arms with machetes. Many victims were forced to choose between “short sleeves” and “long sleeves”–whether to suffer amputation above or below the elbow.
More than 4,000 inhabitants had been killed or mutilated by the time ECOMOG drove off the rebels. Six weeks later the capital’s largest medical center, Connaught Hospital, is still filled with children maimed by RUF torturers. The rest of Freetown is a wasteland under a dusk-to-dawn curfew. Most downtown blocks overlooking the Atlantic have been reduced to mounds of rubble only a meter-or-so high. Children wander among the ruins peddling snack food and any other merchandise they can scrounge. Fifteen kilometers outside the capital, the RUF is battling ECOMOG’s forces. The rebels control roughly two thirds of the country, including the rich diamond fields that finance their war effort.
During the retreat from Freetown, RUF forces abducted at least 2,500 local children. Some international relief groups say the true figure may be above 5,000. The survivors can expect to be armed, drugged and sent into battle. Four years ago Moses Margai, now 17, was grabbed by rebels on his way to school. Before battles, he says, RUF leaders emboldened their fighters with heroin and cocaine. He took part in some 20 raids. Other fighters nicknamed him Justice after he tried to save villagers from being killed by insisting they were his relatives. “Sometimes they didn’t kill the people,” he says. Even so, he adds, “I feel bloody.”
Some foreigners are less squeamish about the rebels’ tactics. According to the governments of Sierra Leone, the United States and Britain, the RUF is getting help from Liberia’s president and former warlord Charles Taylor. (Taylor denies it.) And ECOMOG officials say Ukrainian mercenaries are working with the rebels. “We don’t know how many are involved,” says Lt. Col. Chris Olukulade, “but they are training the rebels and getting physically involved in key battles.”
At least a few people still hope the killing can be stopped. Sierra Leone’s democratically elected president, Ahmad Tejan Kabbah, is speaking optimistically of negotiations with the rebels supposed to begin this April in Lome, the Togolese capital. Last week Freetown officials promised that RUF bush commanders would get safe passage to consult personally with Sankoh before the talks. First, however, the government wants the rebel leader to declare a ceasefire–and to show that his troops in the field will follow the order. Francis Okelo, the United Nations special representative for Sierra Leone, says the coming weeks will test everyone’s desire for peace. “Both sides say they are tired of this war,” he told NEWSWEEK. “Now they have to prove it.”
All over Freetown thousands of young men and women–new Army recruits–are drilling and training. The minimum age for enlistment is 18. Mohammed Kamara wanders the city’s debris-strewn streets, barely supporting himself by peddling cold water in tiny plastic bags for 50 leones (about 30 cents) each. He says he dreams of going back to school. But when pressed, he concedes that what he really wants is to join the armed forces. That way he could have a gun. Kamara is furious at a group of new recruits who took his water without paying. “If I had my weapon,” he says, “I would have killed them all.” For Kamara and thousands of kids like him, the war is likely to last a lifetime.
