|
With the final verdicts on the appeals of the RUF indictees, the longest and most expensive criminal trials in Sierra Leone's history have now come to an end. But do we, as a people, feel any sense of closure to a decade of chaos and mayhem called our 'rebel war'.
None of us who witnessed the horrors of the war will ever forget those years. All of us lost something or someone during that conflict.
The perpetrators with supposed 'greatest responsibility' have been tried and sentenced. Yet we see no rejoicing on the streets or even great public interest. Why is this?
Firstly because we never had ownership of the Special Court or felt we did. Initially, the composition of the court largely excluded Sierra Leonean nationals. In latter years a conscious effort was made to employ our nationals at the highest level of Court operations.
But the Court never reflected our preoccupations or our main concerns.
The only time we can recall widespread rejoicing was when Charles Taylor was flown via helicopter to Freetown. Then even skeptics amongst us accepted that the war was truly over and some measure of atonement would be realized.
On the other hand most Sierra Leoneans still find it incomprehensible why late Chief Sam Hinga Norman was put on trial.
It is probably unique in the history of post conflict jurisprudence for the Resistance to stand trial, in the same dock, with the Occupiers/Murderers. But this was the so-called 'International Community' pretending to be even handed. 'Even handed' in a way they never were after their own bloody wars! Was a single member of the French Resistance ever tried for murder/sabotage/assassinations after the German occupation of France?
Definitely not! The winners were feted as heroes and heroines - the losers sat in the dock at Nuremberg.
We cannot, for reasons of space, carry out a full review of all the reasons why the 'International Community' invested tens of millions of dollars on transitional justice in Sierra Leone. Much of it was a U.S. driven process to counter the influence and reach of the International Criminal Court (whose jurisdiction they’ve never accepted).
Let's accept however that our own authorities - pushed to the wall through their own short sightedness - were responsible for bringing the Special Court to Sierra Leone.
They were prepared to do anything for 'Peace' - including making a psychopath equivalent to 'vice president' of the Republic of Sierra Leone and allowing the RUF to serve with them in a so-called 'Coalition Government'.
Much 'sympathy' has gone out to Issa Sesay, acting RUF Commander during much of the disarmament process. In our opinion such sympathy is wasted.
The RUF only committed itself to the DDR process after they'd got a bloody nose in the attempt to destabilize Guinea. I was in Makeni in early 2000 and Augustine Gbao (who got the lightest sentence) was by no means committed to the peace process. He dismissed the $300 DDR package as 'something I give my boys for the weekend'.
All of the RUF commanders were thugs, criminals and thieves. If we had tried them ourselves they have long been swinging on the end of a Rope. Even invited into a Coalition Government, they still believed (with some justification) that they could snatch power and impose the Rule Of The Jungle in this blessed country. Their fatal mistake was to take several hundred U.N peacekeepers hostage.
This is the main reason why Sesay, Kallon and Gbao will spend the rest of their lives in detention? These are all men with Blood of our People on their hands…
And what's wrong with Rwanda as their place of detention. It is not only one of the more stable countries in Africa; it has one of the fastest growing economies. The fear that the Special Court detainees will be murdered in Tutsi-Hutsi pogroms is misplaced. Somebody, somewhere, wants to play partisan politics with this issue.
And this is one reason why we still fail to achieve CLOSURE despite the conclusion of the Special Court's work here.
We once had a clear consensus on what the war was about and what victory meant (the Protection/Consolidation of Democracy).
Unfortunately a lot of post de factor rationalizations and reinterpretations have been going on - dividing a People who were once firmly united. Recently a senior SLPP official claimed the 'AFRC is the APC'. This, he reasoned, was because several former AFRC personnel are now in the ranks of the present government.
As far as we can recall, it was the SLPP that signed the shameful Lome Peace Accord (which we opposed) and not only brought the RUF into government but made their crazy leader 'equivalent to vice president'.
Only the united will of the Sierra Leonean peace expressed in the march on Sankoh's house (March, 2000) prevented the RUF from snatching power. Because you lost an election seven years later, does not mean the struggle against the AFRC is still going on…
In general, let's make this perfectly clear, it is precisely the backward looking politicians who keep us agitated over a war which has been long fought and won. If it's not the APC blaming the SLPP for 'supporting' the NPRC today, it's the SLPP claiming 'The AFRC is APC' tomorrow.. They do this for short term partisan gain…
Let them know that most Sierra Leoneans consider the war as a natural disaster which has ended and, hopefully, will never be repeated.
Both the SLPP and APC were, in diverse ways, responsible for the mayhem of the war. Trying to play partisan politics with such a disastrous episode in our national life not only cheapens the reality of that conflict but diverts us from reaching a NATIONAL CONSENSUS on the way forward.
Let's return to Rwanda where after a conflict far more vicious and bloody than ours, a nation which has learned some lessons from the conflict and is moving forward. The AFRC-RUF (and add the NPRC for good measure) never represented any political party. They had no progressive plans for this Nation. The period 1992-2002 was a lost decade in the history of our nation. Let's all accept this and move on…To be continued next edition. |
Editorials 
