Weekly Selection: The Cost of Rebel Invasion in Sierra Leone

By Lansana Fofana Reprint | | Print |

Lansana Fofana

FREETOWN, Feb 6 1999 (IPS) - Sierra Leone’s capital, Freetown, still looks like a ghost city, one month after it was invaded by a rag- tag rebel army which left behind a trail of chaos and destruction.

The rebels, who numbered about 2,000, descended on Freetown on Jan 6 from surrounding hills, which overlook the eastern suburbs and held most parts of the city hostage.

Barely a week later, the rebels embarked on massive looting and destruction of property, especially in the central and eastern parts of the city which they controlled.

“The rebels have been heartless in their campaign of destruction, sparing not even important government buildings and killing thousands of innocent civilians. This is an acceptable,” said information minister, Julius Spencer.

Backed by local militia fighters, the Nigerian-led West African peace-keeping force ECOMOG, which ousted the Armed Forces Revolutionary Council (AFRC), now part of the rebellion, a year ago, held back the rebel advance and, soon afterwards, captured most parts of the beleaguered city.

By Feb 1, the entire city was virtually under the control of the pro-government forces.

Sierra Leone’s independent ‘Standard Times’ newspaper said Monday about 600 residential homes were burnt down by the rebels, rendering tens of thousands of civilians stranded, at makeshift shelters.

“The heartless rebels burnt down every house on their way, including mosques and churches and have thus impoverished the majority of the city’s residents,” the paper commented.

Sierra Leone’s National Stadium has temporarily been turned into an open-air shelter for some 30,000 displaced civilians, mostly from the eastern parts of the city.

Some mosques, schools and churches which survived the attacks, have also been occupied by homeless people whose property were locked inside their homes and set ablaze. The displaced now depend solely on relief food aid from the UN World Food Programme (WFP).

One of them, Marie Sesay, 40, who was displaced from the eastern suburb of Kissy, said he lost three of his children to the rebels.

“During the day, I queue out with my four surviving children for wheat and cooking oil, which we survive on,” he explained. “I do not intend to leave the stadium until the government provides us with some form of shelter.”

In a nationwide broadcast Monday, President Ahmed Tejan Kabbah said his government was working on ways to urgently address the housing crisis facing Freetown residents. “My government intends to introduce a loan scheme so that people will rebuild their homes which were destroyed by the rebels,” he said.

In Freetown, the major banks and businesses are still closed, as several government departments. Infact, the cleaning up of the capital is yet to be completed. Bloated corpses could still be found at street corners and in some burnt houses are dozens of civilians who were thrown into inferno by the rebels to burn.

The main Connaught Hospital is overcrowded with victims of rebel attrocities. Dozens of patients whose limbs were chopped off by the rebels and hundreds of others with gunshot wounds and multiple lacerations.

The hospital, which normally admits 200 patients, now has about a thousand, with facilities few and far between. Many doctors have fled the beleaguered city, either because their homes were burnt down and property looted, or simply for fear of insecurity.

At the Maternity and Child Care hospital in the east, three pregnant women died with babies in their womb on Monday because there were no doctors to carry out caesarean operations on them.

“It is an appalling situation,” remarks John Conteh, a health worker in Freetown. “The maternity hospital is in bad shape. There are no doctors, only a few nurses, even the potters don’t report for work. It’s a terrible situation.”

The invasion took a huge toll on civilians who became the target of the invaders. Official sources say about 3,000 people were killed, but the figure is thought to be much higher.

Nigeria, which provides the bulk of the about 14,000 ECOMOG troops and spends close to one million US Dollars a day on ECOMOG operations, has warned that it may not carry on the burden, after a civilian government is sworn in later this year.

The strife-torn West African nation is without an army. The Sierra Leone Army (SLA) was disbanded last year, after it teamed up with rebels of the Revolutionary United front (RUF) to overthrown the government of President Kabbah.