Foday_Sankoh

Laura Mason

** Foday Sankoh ** Foday Sankoh’s widow described her husband as “A great man who cared for his people and country.” His wife may have had a kind word for him, but no one else ever did. Although Sankoh was not the most prolific murdered in Africa, he was certainly the cruelest. There was a mortality rate of 50,000 and 200,000 in the 1991-2001 civil war Sankoh started in Sierra Leone (Brittain). Again, it was not the amount killed that offended people, it was the manner in which they were killed. Many of his foot soldiers began their career being recruited and forced to murder his own parents. Even more, they were conditioned to brutality, making it nearly impossible to be welcomed home. Sankoh kidnapped thousands of children and made them become fighters or concubines in his Revolutionary United Front (RUF). New guerrillas could have the initials “RUF” carved into their chests, as if they were Sankoh's property. Before battle, teenage officers would cut their subordinates' faces and rub them in cocaine to make them fearless (Amnesty International). Deprived of a childhood and raised amid horror, Sankoh's soldiers lost all moral inhibitions. For sport, some placed bets as to the gender of an unborn baby, and then cut open the mother to find out. Sankoh’s earlylife offers few clues as to his monstrous demeanor. He was born in 1937, attended primary school, and was said to be not be able to read that well. He served as a corporal in the Sierra Leonean army, and briefly as part of the failed United Nations peacekeeping operation in the Congo in the early 1960s, which taught him contempt for the country. The Sierra Leone Sankoh was raised in was dominated by a small and corrupt urban elite, whom he unsurprisingly resented. In 1971, he was expelled from the army and jailed for seven years for his role in an attempted coup. Upon release, he found work as an itinerant portrait photographer. During his travels, he instigated revolution among the poor in rural areas (WordIQ). People followed Sankoh because he was a charming speaker (when not in one of his frequent rages, of course). He convinced many simple people that he was semi-divine, immune to bullets, and able to disappear at will. He went to Libya to train with other West African revolutionaries, and it was there that he met Charles Taylor, the twenty-third president of Liberia, who became his chief ally. Pulling from his grudge against the Sierra Leonean government, and keeping an eye on the diamonds in the country, helped Sankoh set up the RUF. Initially, the rebels were extremely popular due to Sankoh’s insincere promises of free health care, free education, and a fair distribution of diamond revenues (Amnesty International). Withered by corruption, schools, clinics, and other public services were drawn in through these hopes. Having captured the diamond fields, he used profits to buy weaponry from Taylor. He bought support, but never paid his soldiers consistently. Instead, he expected them to subsist by looting – one campaign was even named “Operation Pay Yourself” – or by eating and drinking the flesh and blood of newly slain victims. The RUF was also notorious for amputating people's hands and feet. Occasionally, victims were given a choice: they could have a hand cut off at the wrist or at the elbow. The rebels who filled the most bags with severed extremities were given a chance of promotion. The purpose, Sankoh's lieutenants explained, was to stop people from growing rice that might feed government troops. The same reasoning went into the cutting off of hands before elections, to stop others from voting (Johnson).

By the end of the 1990s, Sierra Leone was a wreck – officially the poorest country on earth. America and other outsiders pushed Sankoh and the government into signing a peace agreement in 1999, which gave the rebels several positions in the Cabinet in return for a promise to demilitarize themselves. This agreement was refused, however, and the war raged on. United Nations peacekeepers intervened, but after his experiences in the Congo, Sankoh scorned them. At one point, his men took five hundred hostages. The RUF was only defeated when Britain sent a small, prepared force, ordered to shoot to kill (Johnson). Sierra Leone is relatively calm once more, and somewhat fair-minded elections have been held since.

In 2000, a mob captured Sankoh after his bodyguards opened fire on a crowd. He was handed over to the British and was indicted by an international court in Sierra Leone for crimes against humanity (WordIQ). In captivity, he seemed to lose his mind; he stopped washing, grew long dreadlocks, and ceased to talk coherently. He was even unable to confirm his own name. The court tried to have him flown abroad for a brain scan, but no country would allow it. He had a stroke the next year, and then died of a pulmonary embolism on July 29th (Brittain). Sankoh took many secrets to his grave. The details of his dealings with Liberia remain unknown, though the outline is clear enough for the court to have indicted Taylor, who was besieged and soon lost power.

__Works Cited__ Brittain, Victoria. "Obituary: Foday Sankoh." //The Guardian//. Web. 03 Feb. 2011. "Foday Sankoh - Definition." //WordIQ Dictionary//. Web. 03 Feb. 2011.

Johnson, D. "Foday Sankoh: Sierra Leone's Rebel with a Cause." //Infoplease//. Web. 03 Feb. 2011.

"Koordinationsgruppe Sierra Leone Hamburg." //Amnesty International//. Web. 03 Feb. 2011.