War and State Collapse: the case of Sierra Leone
by Lansana Gberie

Wilfrid Laurier University, Waterloo, Ontario, Canada 1998. 164 pages

Reviewer: Kofi Akosah-Sarpong in Montreal, Canada.

This book is an examination of how failure and corruption of the Sierra Leonean leadership, and the way tribalism, otherwise called racism in Canada, rot into national disaster and never stopping anarchy of this tiny, 4-million nation-state which was a former British colony and a leading centre of Western education in the entire West African sub-region - Fouray Bay College is a monument to her history. But today this beautiful country has become the centre of irrationality, bloodletting, limbs cutting, massive rape, villages burning, killing fields, and general stupidity unknown in Africa's history of civil wars.

The author of this work is a Sierra Leonean military historian and journalist's diagnosis of the Sierra Leonean crisis, combining his personal travels throughout the country as a reporter with current literature on the crisis. Sometimes a report, sometimes analysis, Lans, as the author is known in Sierra Leonean media circles, traces the implosion of the Sierra Leonean nation-state on the political leadership of the regime of President Siaka Stevens in 1968, up to the imposition on of the one-party-state in 1978.

And like most one-party regimes in early post-colonial Africa , and as much as everyone knows, the one-party regime subverted Sierra Leone's institutional instructure and "undermined respect for institutions of the state". From thereon the state started a free-fall, at a speed which make it seem as if nobody cares, resulting in a "senseless civil war".

And as much as Lans thesis is interesting reading, it is also painful, seeing a decent people of Sierra Leoneans nature somehow entrapped by leaders as if they are a foreign occupying force-insensitive, senseless, helpless, arrogant, and stupid.

And in the ensuing failure of the political leadership in the face of a people bewildered and outraged one of the most senselessly brutal civil wars shot up, creating the impression as if the country is free-for-all, an anarchiac situation where the country's rich diamond minerals were mined freely by both state agents and the rebels, peoples limbs cut, villages burnt down - a visitation of the Hobbesian state of anarchy.

The work is divided into eight chapters. The preface and the introductory chapter reveals how Lans' interest in his native Sierra Leonean war began when he worked as a journalist with the Freetown-based VISION and Concord Times newspapers and later as deputy editor of Expo Times newspaper and correspondent for the international news agency INTER PRESS SERVICE, IPS.

This is shortly after obtaining a degree in history from University of Sierra Leone's Fouray Bay College in 1994. And in the ensuing travel and attempts to grapple with questions like "What force was driving these inhuman actions.

Why was the state so miserably incapable of effectively challenging and halting the brigandage? Who were the men behind these faceless forces of destruction?" the author met the chief architect of the Sierra Leonean civil war, Foday Saybanoh Sankoh, in April, 1996 in Cote d"Ivoire. He further reflected on the war when he got admission to study for his MA in history in October, 1996 at Canada's Wilfrid Laurier University ;communication with other scholars who have studied the Sierra Leonean war; and using heavily articles from the Sierra Leonean internet LEONENET, especially in reading the mind of the rebel movement Revolutionary United Front. In the introduction Lans, in a brilliant analysis, parallels the Sierra Leonean situation with other parts of the African continent, citing other works not only written by non-African but Africans of recent times, which generally see the continent as sick and which almost always fail to look at the other bright spots and the continuing contribution of Africa to the rest of the world. Still, the wars in places like Sierra Leone in the African continent reveals a "newer type of social and military conflict", defying military historian Clauswitz's postulation of war as a "continuation of politics by other means. "

The Sierra Leonean war reflects a new type of war by "new types" of organizations, here the new types of organizations are "ragtag bands of ruffians out for their own advantage, hardly distinguishable from ecorcheurs ("Skinners") who devasted the French countryside during the Hundred Years War". Now and then, he wrote, "they have turned whole societies into bloody chaos". Furthermore, added to this new military angle is environmental prognosis and clash of cultures.

And it is from this wielding of three scenarios that Lans agrees with American journalist-futurist Robert Kaplan in his much discussed article in the ATLANTIC MONTHLY (February, 1994) that "Sierra Leone is the microcosm of what is happening in West Africa and much of the underdeveloped world:the withering away of central governments, the rise of tribal or regional domains, the unchecked spread of disease, and the growing pervasiveness of war".

And is the crisis in Sierra Leone a civil war? No, says the author but factors of social breakdown cooked by population pressure and environmental collapse, the conflict more criminally driven than politically motivated, with the ruthless extraction of minerals by leaders of the so-called rebel movements to enhance their power- despite tendencies by the Revolutionary United Front, RUF, goal of capturing and running the Sierra Leonean state.

On the other hand, Lans cites Paul Richards, a British anthropologist, to refute some of Kaplan's observations of Sierra Leone. For Richards, who is married to a Sierra Leonean, the war is "crisis of modernity" caused by failure of All Peoples Congresss, APC, 's "patrimonial system" to provide employment for the educated youth, and so like Peru's Shining Path, the RUF aims to replace Sierra Leone's patrimonial system with a "revolutionary egalitarian system".

This the author sees as more from an African perspective than Kaplan's Eurocentric, Afro-pessimistic perspective. But the big problem here is that Lans faults Richards for not looking at RUF's "often misguided acts of terror against the country's citizenry, created serious problems of interpretation". Still, as recent events have shown by other Sierra Leoneans the RUF has increasing come to be known as anchored on "socially uprooted and crminally disposed youths who are unrepresentative of Sierra Leone's young generation, as Kaplan claims they are".

And with burning villages and cutting the limbs of innocent people and killing here and there and mining the country's minerals , the RUF, as Sierra Leonean scholar Ibrahim Abdullah would say, is a "lumpen social movement", which ensures its lack of any progressive or transformative agenda. In chapter two the author examines the cultural and ideological foundations of the Sierra Leonean state and its evolution running from the colonial period to independence to the Siaka Stevens era-the contours here breathtaking , revealing the leadership of the APC unconcerned about the flashing red light of the imminent collapse of the state from all sides despite newspaper reports about the coming anarchy. In this case prior to the Siaka Steven's regime, which actually sown the seed for today's anarchy, Lans says Sierra Leone was developing gradually an enviable Westminster-style democracy with heathy opposition almost unknown in the rest Africa.

And it is the coming of the one-party state in Stevens regime (1968-1986) that the anarchy started brewing-this is despite the fact that Sierra Leoneans have said repeatedly that they don't like the one-party system. It was in all measure imposed on them, as in other African one-party states for a social engineering without the culture to midwife it. And in all measure there were attempts to resist the one party state .

Havving set the state on anarchiac path tribalism roared, the army was ethnicised, the economy disarrayed, the restless youth marginalised-and grand bitterness beclouded Sierra Leone. Clearly, people were becoming increasingly aware of state's decay. The author shows this in chapter two where Siaka Steven's handpicked successor Joseph Saidu Momoh(1986-1992) , an army general who has privately been contemplating of retiring to be become a priest, tried as he did to correct the wrongs could not handle the problem.

Momoh was aware the system need more emphasis than personalities-but in a country where people respect personalities more than productivity as in most African nation-states the collapse of the country wasn't farfetched.

The system had become so rotten, despite infusion infrequently of new breed politicians, most of them despite their young age were disorientated and morally bankrupt that when the rebel incursion broke out the country was caught unawares, its institutions too weak and have over the years aped the rotten elders that it became practically impossible to contain this ragtag movement called the Revolutionary United Front.

In the last two chapters Lans looks at the origin of the rebel incursion into Sierra Leone from Liberia, which too was reeling under bloody civil due to its similar history like Sierra Leone, which later evolved into a full blown war of attrition and how various governements after Momoh-here the Strasser and Bio military juntas themselves products of the rude, immoral and restless youths- failed to contain the civil war. And in all examination the crisis in Sierra Leone is more of anarchy than war

We read this in chapter four where Lans quotes the respected editor of the Freetown-based newspaper NEW CITIZEN I. B. Kargbo, currently in jail and charged with treason for collaborating with his tribesmen-the Limba- in the rebel movement, as saying that Sierra Leone is being torn apart by "the machinations of heartless armed bandits from a foreign country".

But the reality is that despite some Liberians caught in the conflict, the armed bandits are wholly disorientated and frustrated Sierra Leonean youths, some with university degrees, most hungry, unemployed, disorientated youth, angry at what they say are the fat cats in Freetown, the capital, looting the country while the country sinks into an abyse.

Lans's work is well argued and the writing good, despite one or two typographical errors, and the fact that he didn't look at the ethnic aspect fully, projecting his Mende tribe as victims of the bloody crisis, which if looked deeply is the root cause of the Sierra Leonean crisis. But how does the journalist turned a scholar offer solutions to his country's sickness, more especially even if you look at him as a journalist, there is the current fashion of solution-journalism.

In the conclusion, Lans brilliantly brings out the contradictory nature of some of the interpretations of the Sierra Leonean crisis but what comes out is that all the interpreatations flash state disintegration and civil rebellion, and what all agreed on is the alienated youth of Sierra Leone as the epicentre of the country's crisis.

The idea here is that for long even top commentators including heavyweights like Marx and Engels have not looked acutely at the political agency of youth; most times underestimating them but recent events in Sierra Leone show that the so-called "the dangerous class", "the social scum" need to be addressed seriously.

And as in Sierra Leone so in other African states as Lans himself asks "Does this kind of extensive youth-led violence pressage a mass dissidence in other African states which exhibit similar patterns of disintegration and which have large outlays of unemployed and frustrated youth?" Yes! As events in other civil war-ridden African states indicate.

For Lans, the Sierra Leonean implosion has implications for both policy-makers, donor countries like Canada, and lessons for the rest of Africa. Here one long shot is the restoration of institutional capacity and the creation of avenues to direct youth energy in a productive way, with external assistance because of the weak economies of most African states. Other suggestions are education expansion with corresponding employment opportunities, and tribal harmonisation (ever since independence most African nation-states have addressed the issue of tribalism adequately, as if it doesn't exist.

However, the author did not tell us how to fashion all these employment and containing youth anger in order to avert any coming anarchy of the Sierra Leonean type in the rest of Africa. I like the second of the two appendixes entitled "African Rebel With Room Service" where the rebel leader Foday Sankoh, a former corporal in the now disbanded Sierra Leonean military , semi-literate, less exposed former military photographer, who is currently in jail in Freetown charged with treason, emerges from the bush for the first time in five years to engage in peace talks, revealing his insensitivity to the havoc he has caused his beautiful country and not being in a hurry to reach peace with the government.