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After independence in 1961, Sierra Leone
suffered a slow start, then rapidly accelerating decay.
Authoritarian rule, poor economy and ever worse
corruption caused a popular dissatisfaction that
triggered one of Africa's most brutal civil wars. It
took ten years before the war could be stopped by a
major UN effort.
In 1962, the year after independence, parliamentary
elections won by the ruling Sierra Leone
People's Party (SLPP) were held. Five years
later, the SLPP lost power to the opposition party
General People's Congress (APC) led by
Siaka Stevens. He declared the country a republic in
1971 and made himself president. The SLPP boycotted the
parliamentary elections in 1973, and in 1976 Stevens was
re-elected without a counter-candidate. In practice,
Sierra Leone was now a one-party state and a new
constitution in 1978 made APC the only permitted party.
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ABBREVIATIONFINDER:
List of most commonly used acronyms containing Sierra Leone. Also includes historical, economical and political aspects of the country.
During Steven's reign, imports increased rapidly and
the government took large foreign loans to finance the
deficit in the state budget. Widespread corruption
diluted the problems. Strikes, violence and state of
emergency characterized the last years of Steven's
tenure. He resigned in October 1985 after making sure
his hand-picked successor, Commander-in-Chief Joseph
Momoh, was elected president with 99 percent of the
vote.
Momoh promised improvement, but most things continued
as before. The popularity that the new government first
enjoyed fell quickly after new corruption revelations.
Momoh resorted to harsh methods to overcome corruption,
but also introduced press and letter censorship to
silence criticism.
 The increasingly dictatorial policy increased the
demand for a new multi-party system. Momoh gave way and
drafted a new constitution, which was adopted in a
referendum in August 1991. The general elections that
would have been held in May this year had been postponed
for a year because the country was now drawn into the
civil war in Liberia. Sierra Leone contributed 500 men
to the international force Ecomog (Ecowas
Monitoring Group; Ecowas is the Economic Cooperation
Organization of the West African States) sent to Liberia
in 1990. As revenge, Liberian warlord Charles Taylor
sent his militia NPFL across the border and the Sierra
Leonean army was drawn into fighting. A domestic rebel
movement, Revolutionary United Front (Ruf),
was formed in 1991 by former corporal Foday Sankoh with
support from the NPFL.
Military junta governs
A military coup in April 1992 brought a group of
young officers to power. The military junta revoked the
constitution but still announced elections until the end
of 1995. New parties were allowed to re-form, but the
Rufrebeller refused to participate in the political
process or initiate peace talks. Ruf depended on the
illegal mining of diamonds ("blood diamonds") and went
hard towards the civilian population. The war made
almost a million people homeless, half a million of whom
ended up in townships around the capital Freetown.
Before the elections were held, a new military junta
took power in January 1996. The elections were
nevertheless carried out as planned in February of that
year and led to the re-born SLPP regaining government
power. Its candidate Ahmad Tejan Kabbah was elected
president.
But that the country got a civilian government did
not mean that there was peace; on the contrary, a more
devastating chaos soon erupted than ever before. While
President Kabbah and Ruf leader Sankoh signed a peace
agreement in November, before it was implemented, in May
1997, Kabbah was dismissed by a group of officers headed
by Major Johnny Paul Koroma. Kabbah fled to neighboring
Guinea. The military junta, which called itself the
Armed Forces Revolutionary Council (AFRC),
was supported by Ruf and Sankoh was named vice
president.
A Nigerian military force sent to protect Kabbah was
placed under the command of Ecowas and reinforced with
soldiers from other countries in the region. The force
was named Ecomog by model from Liberia. The exile
president Kabbah was also supported by Kamajor, a
traditional hunter militia recruited among the Mende
people in the south.
In February 1998, Ecomog took control of Freetown and
Kabbah could return. The UN sent a small group of
observers. While fighting continued outside the country,
junta members and runners were brought to trial. 24
junta soldiers were executed and even Foday Sankoh was
sentenced to death.
At the end of 1998, the AFRC and Ruf made a sudden
counter-offensive and returned to Freetown in January
1999. They were driven out after a few days, but only
managed to burn and loot large parts of the capital.
Hundreds of thousands of city dwellers were killed,
hundreds of body parts were cut off and women raped.
A new peace agreement was signed in July 1999, giving
Ruf and AFRC government seats. Both Sankoh and Koroma
received high items. The death sentence against Sankoh
was abolished and all rebels were granted amnesty.
Almost immediately, however, the peace agreement
began to fall apart. Crimes against the ceasefire and
attacks on UN observers prompted the World Organization
to establish a peacekeeping force, named Unamsil
(United Nations Mission in Sierra Leone).
The UN enters
In late autumn 1999, 6,000 UN soldiers began
stationing in the country to disarm a total of
approximately 45,000 soldiers. However, they immediately
met resistance. After Ruf attacked Unamsil and took
around 500 UN soldiers hostage, Britain sent 800 elite
soldiers with air and war support to help the government
troops. Foday Sankoh was arrested again. The UN Security
Council banned all diamond trade from Ruf-controlled
areas to stave off the rebels' funding. Following
international mediation, Ruf signed a new peace
agreement in November 2000 but continued to fight
against the disarmament. It was not until January 2002
that the war could be concluded, after about 47,000
members of Ruf and government-friendly irregular forces
left their weapons.
The peace and stabilization of the country was
largely UN merit. Unamsil had been expanded to the
world's largest peacekeeping force with 17,500 men and
the soldiers participated on a broad front in the
community-building work.
In early 2002, the government and the UN signed an
agreement on a war criminal court (see Democracy and
Rights) and the government appointed a Truth and
Reconciliation Commission. In addition to killing at
least 50,000 people, about a quarter of a million women
had been subjected to sexual violence and thousands of
people were mutilated and mutilated. About 10,000
children were abducted and more than half of them forced
to become soldiers. The Commission collected over 9,000
testimonies and held public hearings with around 450
people. In its October 2004 report, it concluded that
the abuses of previous regimes and violations of human
rights were an important trigger for the civil war. The
Commission recommended, among other things, that
political power be spread downwards, from the capital to
the provinces.
The UN-supervised elections in May 2002 became the
quietest in the country's history. The turnout was high
and Kabbah received over 70 percent of the vote. In the
parliamentary elections his party SLPP got a large own
majority. The support for the parties of the former
rebels was almost non-existent.
After a year marked by a strong hope for the future,
the residents' dissatisfaction soon grew that conditions
did not get noticeably better. Few new jobs were
created, poverty persisted and rumors of coup attempts
created concern. Above all, the rulers failed to do
anything about the corruption that created constant
problems in everyday life.
The growing discontent led to SLPP's dominance being
cut to the brim when the first local elections of over
30 years were conducted in 2004. The ruling party lost
local power in both Freetown and several other
municipalities. That result was taken at the same time
as income that democracy had begun to take hold after
all.
The court gets a problem
The Special Court for war crimes had problems right
from the start. Shortly after a series of charges were
filed in early 2003, Ruf leader Foday Sankoh departed,
while rebel commander Sam Bockarie was shot dead in
Liberia. AFRC leader Johnny Paul Koroma was reported to
have been killed in Liberia, but since his body was
never recovered, the case has not been closed. Sam Hinga
Norman, leader of the Kamajormilisen, the
Kamajormilisen (officially Civil Defense
Forces, CDF), died in custody in early 2007, shortly
before his sentence was served.
Two former members of the AFRC were sentenced in 2007
to each 50 years in prison and a third to 45 years. They
were convicted of a variety of war crimes, including
murder, rape and mutilation. They were also the first to
be convicted by an international court for the
recruitment of child soldiers. In the same year, two CDF
leaders were sentenced to six and eight years in prison
for, among other things, murder and cruelty, but the
penalty was sharply increased to 15 and 20 years
respectively.
In 2003, the Special Court also prosecuted 17 points
against Liberian President Charles Taylor, who was
believed to have played a major role in triggering the
war through active support for Ruf and his personal
friend Foday Sankoh. After his departure in 2003, he
lived in exile in Nigeria until 2006, when he was sent
to Sierra Leone. After initial formalities, he was moved
to The Hague in the Netherlands for security reasons,
where the trial took place in 2008–2011.
After steadily declining in strength, the UN squad
Unamsil was decommissioned in December 2005. Instead, a
civilian UN organization, Uniosil,
whose main task was to pilot the country until the
summer elections in 2007, was also included. human
rights and giving residents greater transparency in the
work of the authorities.
During the 2007 electoral movement, there were some
unrest of ethnic nature and quarrels between supporters
of rival parties. There was concern about violence
during the elections, which could, however, be carried
out without major problems in August / September,
although some electoral fraud and harassment by voters
was reported. The parliamentary elections were won by
the General People's Congress (APC), whose candidate
Ernest Bai Koroma also won in the presidential election.
In the decisive second round, he defeated SLPP's Solomon
Berewa. Thus, APC took back the government after 15
years.
Behind the change of power, in particular, there was
a dissatisfaction in the cities that the leading
politicians had not used the inflow of aid money to
improve basic social services. Real political issues
were considered to have played a greater role than in
previous elections.
The Sierra Leoneans therefore had high expectations
for their new government, but during Koroma's first year
in power, little progress was made. Lack of resources
and experience played a major role, but the government
was also criticized for lacking a clear political line.
The APC was criticized for the party being ill-prepared
to take over government power.
Nevertheless, the municipal elections in July 2008
became a success for APC. The elections were generally
considered to have been correct, but more than 150
complaints about irregularities were submitted to the
electoral authorities.
A seizure of about 600 kilos of cocaine at Lungi
Airport off Freetown in 2008 raised fears that Sierra
Leone, like other countries in the region, would end up
in the clutches of Latin American drug cartels. About
sixty people were arrested for involvement in the drug
trade.
Corruption is a big problem
A new law against corruption was adopted in September
2008. According to this, the president and other senior
representatives of the administration must report their
assets to the Anti-Corruption Commission
(ACC) every year. The law also tightened the penalties
for those who are guilty of corruption, and strengthened
the protection of people who report suspicions that
irregularities have occurred.
A number of ministers were also allowed to go after
corruption charges, and several senior executives,
including the police and the immigration authority, were
threatened with dismissal if they did not deal with
misconduct in their own operations. Several charges were
brought against high-level people, for example against
the head of the tax authority, which was, however,
released in court. In 2010, two high-ranking officials
were convicted by the Ministry of Defense for Corruption
and Abuse of Power. It was the first time people in such
prominent positions had been convicted in accordance
with that law.
After 2009, Sierra Leone has largely been able to put
the war behind it. A symbol of the establishment of
peace was that the Special Court could then be wound up
after three leaders of the Ruf militia were convicted of
war crimes and crimes against humanity (civilian
murders, rapes and mutilations). They were sentenced to
52, 40 and 25 years in prison, respectively. The men
were also found guilty of robbing young girls and
forcing them into "marriage" with rebels. It was the
first time an international court sentenced someone to
forced marriage. In 2012, Charles Taylor was also
sentenced to a long prison sentence for helping and
facilitating war crimes in Sierra Leone (see Democracy
and Rights).
The fact that the UN Security Council in September
2010 lifted all sanctions - including an arms embargo -
was also a recognition of Sierra Leone becoming a
peaceful and more normal country.
In September 2008, the UN organization Uniosil was
replaced by Unipsil, whose main mission
was to coordinate the work of the World Organization in
the country.
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