Sierra Leone: coming to terms with the horror of civil war

Hannah Strange, the Times Online news reporter, is spending a week in Sierra Leone, a country still racked by the aftermath of a brutal civil war in which tens of thousands were killed and a third of its total population displaced. Here is the second of her daily diary entries:

Zainab, 19, who was gang-raped repeatedly at the age of 12 during the civil war, eventually falling pregnant (Nick Ray/The Times)

The wheels of justice grind slowly in Sierra Leone. 

Six years after the country's brutal civil war came to an end, only three men have been convicted by the Special Court, an international tribunal based in Freetown. Its first judgment, handed down in June 2007, found three leaders of the Armed Forces Revolutionary Council (AFRC) – a group within the Sierra Leonean military which mounted a successful coup in 1997 - guilty of rape and outrages of personal dignity, including sexual slavery.

Yet no one in the Revolutionary United Front (RUF), which perpetrated arguably the most sadistic excesses of the civil war, has ever been brought to justice. Some, Liberians who joined the war under the direction of Charles Taylor, are believed to have fled back across the border and enlisted in other militia groups elsewhere in the region, while many hardcore RUF are thought to have followed them. But those still in Sierra Leone wander freely through mainstream society, with anecdotal tales of the mutilated encountering their torturers across the local market stall easy to come by.

Despite the suffering inflicted on the civilian population by the RUF and other militia, Sierra Leoneans were at first reluctant to embrace the tribunal. An outreach worker for the Special Court tells me that the wounds were simply too raw - the majority of the populace preferring to forget, rather than excavate, the brutalities of the decade-long war.

Then, there is the question of who to blame. As in all such conflicts, where does the responsibility end? How can the thousands of militia who raped, tortured, murdered and looted all be held accountable for their actions? Many of the crimes were committed by boys as young as 14, high on a cocktail of cocaine, jamba (marijuana) and alcohol, and convinced that the AK-47 thrust in their hands was their only family.

A young woman who was raped and abused in the Sierra Leone civil war learns to sew in a rehabiliation centre (Nick Ray/The Times)

Truth and reconciliation appears to be the answer, at least the closest it is possible to come to one. Sierra Leoneans are being urged to talk – in community buildings, on the radio, in the schools, to their neighbours – about the suffering they endured or inflicted, however harrowing and shameful it may be. It is difficult to travel more than a few metres in any populated area without encountering a banner urging a discussion of human rights, of child protection or attitudes to females. The ferry from Lunghi airport to Freetown bears numerous posters declaring that this organisation or that “says no to child trafficking”. At a centre run by the charity Help a Needy Child International in Makeni, one of the main battlegrounds of the civil war, girls who were forced into sexual slavery or combat by the rebels are encouraged to discuss their experiences, both with their communities and on the airwaves.

But, there is still much shame attached to such confessions.  In a country where rape complaints were traditionally resolved by forcing the rapist to marry his victim, there remains a great deal of stigma attached to sex out of wedlock – particularly at a young age or with a rebel.  Many girls at the centre tell of being rejected by their families, and ostracised by their communities, on returning from war carrying the unborn children of their rebel captors. Others speak of once friendly neighbours running away in fear, convinced that the girls entered the rebel life willingly.

Gradually, NGOs are managing to change the climate, sending outreach workers into communities to explain why such girls were not to blame for their plight. While many of the victims still find it difficult to talk about their ordeals, many too are now standing up in defiance of such shame. Zainab, a 19-year-old who was gang-raped repeatedly at the age of 12, eventually falling pregnant, tells me she wants to tell her story. “People must know about our cases,” she insists, when I ask whether she is comfortable to speak of her ordeal on camera. “There are many other girls who have not received the help we have, who are still outcasts in their villages, who sleep on the streets. They need help too.”