Sierra Leone

1930, diamonds were discovered in eastern Sierra Leone. Unfortunately, there are no Kimberlite pipes in Sierra Leone. The diamonds are mainly in riverbeds and have been spread around by erosion and water flow. Government group SLST (Sierra Leone Selection Trust) given exclusive mining right. Soon a network of miners and smugglers developed and diamonds were being smuggled into Liberia and Guinea. The country did not start to decline until 1967 when Siaka Stevens becomes prime minister.

Siaka Stevens nationalized the diamond industry and the government claimed 51% of the SLST. Official diamond exports went from $200-300 million a year down to almost nothing. The country quickly started to deteriorate. Funding for social services was gone, education, healthcare, and infrastructure collapsed. University students started to become radical and began forming early stages of rebel groups. Foday Sankof, ex Sierra Leone military, was a leader of one of the rebel groups and together with Charles Taylor formed the RUF (revolutionary united front).

In 1989 Sankof formed a base in Liberia, near the Sierra Leone boarder, where he recruited and trained his RUF soldiers, same time when Taylor began a civil war in Liberia. In March of 1991 the RUF invade Sierra Leone and quickly moved to the diamond rich area of Kono in eastern Sierra Leone. By 1993 more than 370,000 people had been displaced from the area, one of the goals of the RUF was to move civilians away from the diamond fields. By the end of 1994 Sierra Leone was in total chaos.

Unable to combat the RUF on their own the Sierra Leone government hired South African mercenary group “Executive Outcomes”. Executive Outcomes had a very effective air power and in one month most of the rebels had been cleared out of the eastern diamond fields. The temporary peace allowed for elections in 1996 and ex United Nations official Ahmad Tejan Kabbah was elected. Kabbah under pressure from the UN terminated the contract with Executive Outcomes and the RUF quickly re-launched their war and the country fell even deeper into chaos. Amputation, mutilation, and torture began to be widely used by the RUF.

In May 1997 the Sierra Leone military overthrew Kabbah and invited the RUF, as allies, into the capital city of Freetown. The RUF devastated the city with lootings, killings, and torture calling it “Operation Pay Yourself”. The people of Freetown did not stand for this and refused to support the RUF. There were protests in the streets and people refused to go to work. Soon, Nigerian intervention force ECOMOG drove RUF out of Freetown, reinstated Kabbah, and ousted military juntas. By 1998 ECOMOG had forced the RUF to retreat into Eastern Sierra Leone. This proved to be a blessing and a curse because the RUF again seized control of the diamond mines and re-launched their war.


In January 1999 the RUF marched back into Freetown. What followed was one of the most brutal massacres of the war. ECOMOG launched a counter attack and many civilians were killed. The devastation lasted two weeks until the RUF was once again pushed out of the capital, but the damage was done and over 6,000 were dead. The sheer brutal brutality of the RUF could not be overlooked by the international community any longer.

In 1999 the United States and the U.N. sponsored a peace meeting in Lome Togo between the government of Sierra Leone and the RUF. Terms of a peace treaty were agreed upon and it was signed in July 1999. The RUF was given blanket amnesty despite the numerous atrocities they had committed. Members of the RUF were even given money to rejoin society and the killers became the neighbors of the ones they had once terrified.

The main beneficiary of the Lome Peace Accords was Foday Sankof who became Vice President of Sierra Leone. In this role he was given official oversight of all diamond mines. Despite the peace agreement the RUF wanted complete control of the government and in 2000 began uprising. This time the RUF would be stopped. A 6,000 soldier U.N. peace keeping force became a 17,000 men peace keeping force and accompanied with a small yet heavily armed British intervention Force launched an attack against the RUF. The RUF was quickly eliminated from its strong points and Foday Sankof was arrested.

On January 18 2002 President Ahmed Tejan Kabbah officially declared an end to one of the bloodiest civil wars in history:

“Today we are happy that those flames of war have been extinguished”


2003, Foday Sankof was charged with 13 accounts of crime against humanity and he died shortly after in prison. During his trial in 2007 Charles Taylor was also charged with war crimes and crimes against humanity and plead not guilty.

Four months after the war ended the Sierra Leone polls were open and Kabbah was easily elected. Men and women who had been mutilated and tortured as intimidation to not vote boldly cast their ballets.