The tricky process of reintegration

We never burn houses. We never kill anybody.... They kill, they burn houses in this country, the rebels. The government made provisions for them; they even give them money.... They are now self-reliant. What about us?

Those words, uttered by a spokesman for a disability group consisting of both war amputees and polio sufferers, cut to the core of one of post-war Sierra Leone's pervasive conundrums.

In order to maintain peace, Sierra Leone must reintegrate and rehabilitate, often using public funds, the legions of rebels that cannot rightly be held to account for the horrific drug-addled crimes they, generally as children, performed under extreme duress. Yet to then leave any other group behind suddenly feels like so much more of a slap in the face, as though they're being deemed less human than those who committed unthinkable atrocities.

Welcome to Sierra Leone, a land where people share the streets of their cities and villages with the very culprits who raped and mutilated them, or at least those just like them. It boggles the mind.


I'll never understand how flesh being torn apart feels, or how after all the suffering a heart heals, on the rich green fields, where they killed old and young, cold and numb, under the light of a golden sun. It still stuns. Tell me what possesses man to in anger raise his hand. I'll never understand.


The war in Sierra Leone officially ended in 2002, yet seven years later the small country is haunted by it in every facet of its daily functioning.

Infrastructure is non-existent, largely because the entire countryside was raped, pillaged and burned to the ground by the maniacal rebel gangs.

Youth unemployment runs as high as 80% and the country's struggling to attain a 40% literacy rate. In a country where a staggering majority of the population is under the age of 35, the fact that so few in this demographic boast education or marketable skills looms large. But then, keeping at the books is difficult when your school is on fire and your teacher's just been beheaded.

The streets of Freetown are lined with beggars, some of the 'run of the mill' variety seen in every large city, but a disproportionate number of them showing the obvious signs of war trauma, bandaged stumps where arms and legs ought to be.

The double-arm "short sleeve" amputees (meaning both arms were severed above the elbow) are probably the most tragic; they have difficulty even begging, nodding to a breast pocket in lieu of any other means of accepting the petty cash of those more fortunate.

And just for good measure, all those people whose lot is so pitiable undoubtedly knew and loved someone that received even less humane treatment at rebel hands.


I'll never understand how it felt when my mom lost her dad, her sister and the only brother that she ever had, and I'll never know what's more sad - the fact they could have been spared, or the fact that to this day nobody cares for the innocent victims of a full-fledged holocaust, 'cause folks only holler if the cost of dollars lost is high, so regardless of the number of lives, when poor blacks die, they always turn a blind eye, and I'll never understand why.


Even when I'm battling my way into a poda-poda where elbows are thrown viciously just to get a seat, or my taxi driver wants me to pay 10 times the regular fee because the pigment of my skin says I can, I can't help but wonder how Sierra Leoneans remain, by and large, so friendly and accommodating to a Westerner.

How are they not teeming with rage and rendered paralyzed by bitterness? How do they not harbour greater resentment towards an international community that let this war go on for nearly 11 years? And how does life here continue, but for necessity?


I'll never understand how people can go on and live, the miracle of finding the strength to forgive. To resurrect peace, to close up wounds so deep that they pierce souls beneath heartbeats. To be a willful slave to a loving God's command's the key to a freedom that I'll never understand.


The thing about wars where large segments of the population take up illegal arms and perpetuate heinous crimes is that you can't possibly hold everyone to account. To attempt to apply a Western system of retributive justice where all accused of wrongdoing stand trial would take generations to even process, and morph the prison system into the largest, if not the only, industry in the country.

Instead, in cases like Sierra Leone, a more restorative justice process tends to be favoured, by which it is hoped the country can move beyond a period of intensely tragic history in order to salvage a people and a society. Only those deemed most culpable, the leaders of the conflict, face the international tribunals for war crimes.

To date, the Special Court for Sierra Leone (SCSL) has convicted leaders of the Armed Forces Revolutionary Council (AFRC) and the Civil Defence Forces (CDF), two of the three militias at the heart of the country's confusing civil war.

Foday Sankoh, leader of the third, the Revolutionary United Front, died in custody in 2003. Sam Bockarie, the RUF's battlefield commander, was killed in neighbouring Liberia, also in 2003. Johnny Paul Koroma, leader of the AFRC, fled to Liberia and is widely thought to be dead, though it's never been confirmed and the SCSL has never dropped their indictment against him.

The trial of former Liberian President Charles Taylor, who was initially indicted on 654 counts of war crimes for his role in backing the Sierra Leone war, is currently on trial in The Hague.

And tomorrow, the Special Court will deliver its verdict in the trial of three RUF leaders, the last trial still being carried out in Sierra Leone. Once the inevitable appeal process ends, the Court will close down and the already small expat community will shrink a good deal more.

It's a long list and there have certainly been many historic rulings in international law as a result of this country's civil war. But you'll have to excuse most Sierra Leoneans if they haven't rejoiced over every conviction; after all, they were kind of busy trying to eke out a dignified existence, still waiting on those reparations they were promised in the wake of the war.

The National Commission for Social Action has finally begun to process reparations, years after so many rebels were given the means to support themselves. My roommate Bryna freelanced a tremendous piece about the multi-faceted issue to IRIN News, a reputable UN-backed news service that functions throughout Africa, Asia and the Middle East, which you can read here.

As with so many other things in Sierra Leone, the delay comes down to cash money, of which there is tragically little to go around, meaning tough decisions must be made. Do you help those most adversely affected by the war and risk the trained killers going on another rampage, or put immediate stability ahead of what's necessarily most 'fair'?

While we're on the topic of tough questions, do you prioritize electricity to court investors, agriculture to feed the masses, health care to keep people alive, or roads to make tourism a viable industry? Of course, the answer has to be 'all of the above', but how do you find a way to do it all at once?

Some days, it really feels as though there's so much working against politicians in Sierra Leone that they're pretty much bound to fail. There are no easy answers in post-war Sierra Leone, turns out.


Editor's note: The italicized portions of the above posting are lyrics from a chillingly good song called "I'll Never Understand" by Shad, one of my all-time favourite artists and a Laurier grad. It can be found on his debut album, entitled When This Is Over.

Though the song was written about the Rwandan genocide, which saw between 800,000 and 1 million people killed in a span of about 100 days in 1994, the lyrics are applicable to the decade-long civil war in Sierra Leone as well. Shad's parents are from Rwanda, and recently returned there, where his father is a minister and his mother opened a Montessori school. Evidently, the whole Kabanga family's pretty awesome.