The Sad, Sorry Tale of Sierra Leone and Gradations of Truth

The story as presented in American media has the predictable elements. A horrible "revolutionary leader", a man so vile as to be beyond comprehension, murders tens, no hundreds, even thousands of his countrymen and must be stopped by any means possible. Enter the white knight of Western intervention. When American, the attitude is of the gentle giant once again reluctantly shouldering the great burden of being the "world's only superpower" but knowing of course, that no one else can 'do the job'. When British, it has a bit of "bloody hell, can't very well leave them to their own devices then, can we?" Oh the burden of being white, rich and good!

Spokesman for the UN, Kofi Annan, suggests imposing a ban on the rebels' export of diamonds, estimated to have earned them up to $200 million a year to buy weapons. The diamond industry, based in Brussels, takes up the cry and demands an end to the trade in 'conflict diamonds'. The UN has had to be sent into the conflict to save the lives of innocents. Britain rallies and send in forces to save several hundred nationals trapped in this incomprehensible hell hole where children gun each other down, burned out corpses twitching with the last flicker of life fill the streets, and veteran amputees of six shoot with the other hand. So goes the official soap.

But then the story gets move interesting as you move East to other sources. Stop at Le Monde, who tells us that while yes, RUF controls the diamonds mines of the country and runs those diamonds to Liberia where a $200 million a year trade "linked with markets in arms, drugs and money-laundering in Africa." The other combatants in the conflict are the 'legitimate government', which includes a earlier coup leader and torturer, and has provided its citizens with no services for 15 years. It does however, have the international recognition that lets it sign contracts with Canadian, Belgian, American, British and South African mining companies. The country has been sliced up and mortgaged off in concessions for extracting diamonds, rutile, bauxite and gold to Global Exploration Corporation, Rex Mining Corporation, Diamond Works, and Sierra Rutile- Nord resources.

Those ten year old amputees are used to foreign armies. Before the UN forces, the 13,000 of them that came this year, there were the Gurkha Security Guards hired by private companies in 1994, or the men of Executive Outcomes who were there in 1996. Last March the upper echelon of the UN met with the leaders of a number of private armies, including Executive Outcomes (a mercenary group South African based), Sandline International(British) and Israel's Levdan. The government, which was installed in 1998 by Ecomog, (the Economic Community of West African States) and Sandline, immediately got to work giving out concessions. The peace agreement of last March (1999) provided for the disarming of belligerents, amnesty for war crimes Including those of the "monster" Foday Sankoh, while the mining cake was to be sliced up between RUF and the government. I do remember Clinton being so horrified and "saddened" was it, that he had to deal with such a monster, but hell, he was the dude with the diamonds. As a matter of fact, the peace deal of last July appointed Foday Sankoh to head a commission supervising the regulation of the country's mineral resources.

A report in The Guardian reveals that " We found a terrible situation made worse by the U.N. It was being presented as a war between democracy and barbarian, diamond-hungry rebels who were chopping civilians' hands off; this was not what we found. What we did find shocked us so much it was hard to believe."

"A man shot by the Ecomog/UN troops slowly sputters his last on on the pavbement, a corpse burned beyond recognition twitches with life, amputation victims come bearing their hacked limbs, a man is battered to death by a mob, his head impaled on a stick and then later his penis. Dead children lie rotting in the ruins of their homes, killed by cluster bombs paid for by Britain and dropped from ECOMOG jets. In Africa, it seems the niceties of peacekeeping need not be observed."

Interestingly enough, De Beers announced in late May that it will abandon its 60 year policy of attempting to stabilize supply and demand in the world gemstone trade and concentrate instead on mining and marketing." Why not I wonder, is it because they now have it under control? A report from the South African Mail & Guardian questions the ethical stance of Britain which sent in forces to save a relative handful of white people, (several hundred), half of whom had left and the other half of which seemed to be sunning at the beach. It also ask why 800, and then 700 men had to be sent to save these few hundred people. How many soldiers does it take to save a British national? A detailed chronology from Africa Confidential reveals among, many other things, that private armies can be pricey. The Kabbah government of Sierra Leone was paying $1.8 million a month for the services of less than hundred personnel. Time to consider a career switch?

Other parts of the story come out in bits and pieces. The financial support, promised by the international community to back up the Lome Peace Acords, hasn't materialized. Kofi Annam in May recommends a rapid reaction force to stablize the situation at the same time that food to thousands of the displaced is cut off. And it might not even be all about diamonds, which have evidently been mostly mined. There is also bauxite, rutile, gold and titanium in the country.

Yes, truth is a reluctant mistress, loath to reveal herself. And she doesn't seem to spend much time on the front page.