By IPS Correspondents
FREETOWN, Jun 4 2007 (IPS)

It was Charles Taylor’s money that allegedly bought guns for the rebel faction that fired the first shot of Sierra Leone’s devastating civil war in 1991 – a conflict that claimed the life of Mustafa Mansaray’s pregnant daughter.

As the barbarism spread, Mansaray would soon lose his hands to the rebels. But it wasn’t the pain of having his arms chopped off that made him cry – rather, hearing the screams of 50 people burning in a locked house behind him.

Living in a modest home in a camp for the war-wounded on the outskirts of the capital, Freetown, he struggles to care for his six remaining children and seven adopted orphans. Mansaray was once a farmer; but his amputated arms mean that he has to leave the tending of a tiny vegetable garden behind the house to others in his family.

One might think that few would care more than Mansaray to see Taylor face an international tribunal.

The former Liberian president has been charged with war crimes and crimes against humanity – this on the grounds that he bears the greatest responsibility for atrocities that took place in neighbouring Sierra Leone from 1996, through backing Revolutionary United Front (RUF) rebels in exchange for conflict diamonds. His trial was supposed to get underway Monday at The Hague, in Holland; however, Taylor is boycotting the proceedings, reportedly claiming that he has not been given the means to defend himself properly.

Yet, these events matter little to Mansaray. With Taylor far from Sierra Leone, Mansaray is simply concerned with how he will survive in a country where 70 per cent of the population lives on less than two dollars a day, according to the 2006 Human Development Report – produced by the United Nations Development Programme.

Notes Edward Jombla, national coordinator for the West Africa Network for Peacebuilding (WANEP): “Of course the trial of Charles Taylor is important to us. But people are also trying to move on with their lives.”

When the war ended in 2002, the government of Sierra Leone and the United Nations moved ahead with a 2000 U.N. resolution establishing an independent Special Court of Sierra Leone to try those bearing prime responsibility for crimes committed in the course of the conflict. The civil war dragged on for more than a decade marked by sexual slavery, recruitment of child soldiers and the hacking off of civilian limbs.

The court indicted Taylor in 2003, and he was arrested last year in Nigeria where he had been living in exile, prompting cheers in the streets of Freetown as well as anxiety over the instability his presence in the city could provoke. This possibility of upheaval is reportedly what led to proceedings being transferred to The Hague.

Taylor had launched a rebellion in 1989 in his country at the head of the National Patriotic Front of Liberia, becoming president in 1997 – a post he retained until 2003. He is also said to have undermined security in Guinea and Côte d’Ivoire.

Taylor’s trial is precedent setting, says Christopher Staker, deputy prosecutor of the Special Court. “We have a person who was the president of a country at the time of the events in question. And the fact that a person in that position is called upon to answer before a court the things that happened during that person’s time in office make very real that nobody is above the law.”

This warning against impunity is expected to resonate beyond the trial chambers of The Hague, particularly in Africa. “If you’re head of state and for the first time in your region you see a (former) head of state indicted, it sends a message,” says Binta Mansaray, outreach co-ordinator at the Special Court.

But while the international importance of the trial seems clear, its significance in helping Sierra Leone recover from years of war is less so – particularly after a series of disappointments in the Special Court.

The indictment of Sam Hinga Norman, leader of the Civil Defence Forces and a revered war hero in certain quarters, shocked many in Sierra Leone, fostering cynicism about the role of the court in pursuing justice. The Civil Defence Forces backed President Ahmad Tejan Kabbah against the RUF.

Of 13 people indicted by the court to date, five are considered leading figures in the conflict. Three of them are now dead and another is missing, his fate unknown.

“People have lost confidence in the Special Court for the reason that those very big ones (indicted persons) are no longer there,” says Jombla. “Taylor is the hope of restoring the dignity (of) and respect for the court.”

Yet, when Taylor’s trial was transferred to The Hague, much of what interest there was in the matter left with it. And, the move also threatens to undercut one of the very reasons the Special Court was established in Sierra Leone in the first place: to make justice accessible to those most affected by the war.

Journalists and civil society members will travel to the Netherlands, and plans are afoot to screen trial excerpts in Sierra Leone using mobile video units. Still, the geographic gap promises to be hard to overcome.

Whatever the outcome of this and other trials – the first of which got underway in 2004 – they are only part of the overall effort to help Sierra Leone rebuild itself.

“The court is not a solution…it will not address the problems that led to the war,” says Alex Macavorey, who narrowly escaped from the rebels, and now works with refugees.

Many people valued the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, which began hearings in 2003, for shedding light on the root causes of the war – marginalisation of youth and women, corruption, and lack of access to justice – and for making recommendations on how to address these issues.

But there is frustration at the government’s failure to implement the vast majority of proposals put forward by the commission. And, many feel that the potential for instability and conflict will remain as long as factors that underpinned the war go unaddressed.

“We have relative peace,” explains Macavorey. “But we don’t have absolute peace.”

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