The latest crisis in the civil war–torn country began when the imperialist-backed regime and UN military forces there attempted to seize the diamond-rich territory controlled by the Revolutionary United Front (RUF). Some 18 UN troops were seized by the rebel forces May 3. When other contingents of UN military personnel went to search for the captured soldiers they were also taken hostage.

The RUF eventually seized nearly 500 UN troops, 13 armored vehicles, communications equipment, and thousands of rounds of ammunition. The RUF, which briefly headed a brutal regime in the country, currently controls about half of Sierra Leone.

In order to maintain their domination and pillage of the country's resources, the imperialist powers have fostered divisions among the different peoples in Sierra Leone--Temne, Mende, and others. Last year, the U.S. rulers campaigned for military intervention by highlighting the brutality of the rebels and other combatants who mutilated and dismembered civilians during the height of the civil war.

A cease-fire, signed in Lome, Togo, was negotiated by Washington last July, and included imposing a UN military force, which today stands at 9,000.

In response to the latest military offensive against them, RUF forces mobilized and threatened Freetown. British special forces were quickly deployed. They set up patrols on the streets of the capital and the main highway leading out of the city and occupied the Lungi international airport. There are more than 1,100 British special forces currently deployed in Sierra Leone backed by Harrier jets and attack helicopters.

The Washington Post reports that the British military is "coordinating the suddenly aggressive government forces and are pushing for the government to not just move the rebels back to their traditional areas of control but to seize the key diamond-mining regions that rebels control and use as their primary source of funds."

"Our objective is to finish the RUF as a military wing. It has to be crushed," said a Sierra Leone senior military official. "That is what the British want and that is what we want." In one hour-long battle, helicopter gunships pounded rebel positions while Nigerian ground troops used anti-aircraft guns, grenade launchers, and automatic weapons to take territory from the RUF forces.

On May 16 Brig. David Richards, the senior officer of British forces in Sierra Leone, said the UN forces had decided to "move into RUF heartland," and to take an offensive role.

Liberal Democratic party official Menzies Campbell noted that while the British forces are not part of the UN deployment, they have "put a bit of backbone into the UN effort." Conservative Party spokesperson Iain Duncan Smith urged the government to adopt "clearer rules of engagement" so British forces can have "the flexibility to operate as the circumstances require."

UN official Bernard Miyet conceded that under the Lome agreement last year the UN observers were "not supposed to be the peacekeeping force. We were supposed at the beginning to have a few dozen military observers."

The Clinton administration made an appointment of Democratic Party politician Jesse Jackson as Washington's emissary to the region.

"A U.S. military team is now in Nigeria to determine what assistance might be needed from the international community to outfit and transport these forces as quickly as possible," said Clinton in a May 11 statement. "I have instructed our military to provide needed assistance to accelerate the deployment of troops."

In early May, a team of U.S. European Command officers met in Abuja, Nigeria, to prepare an imperialist-led military operation, which would operate under the guise of the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS). The Nigerian government, with 3,000 troops committed to the UN force, is prepared to send an additional 2,000 soldiers. White House officials said Washington would send transport planes, communications equipment, and other logistical support to the ECOWAS operation.  
 
'White man's burden'--again
These moves have been accompanied by a campaign in the big-business media to portray the people of Sierra Leone as lawless, violent, and incapable of governing themselves.

"Call it Democratic Man's Burden," began a feature column by Blaine Harden in the May 14 New York Times. Strikingly similar to the "white man's burden" used to justify colonial subjugation of the "dark races," in the last century, the article states, "Peacekeepers should arrive in sufficient numbers and with sufficient firepower to pulverize a bad actor and his supporting cast if need be." Such a force is needed, Harden says, to subdue the "thugs in Sierra Leone who smuggle diamonds, maim civilians and call themselves revolutionaries....

"In countries like Sierra Leone, where peacekeeping demands a willingness to wage war, Democratic Man has three stark choices if he wants to salve his conscience: Fight, pay someone else to fight, or stay home and wait for an easier peace to keep."

The front cover of the May 13 Economist is black, with a cutout of Africa showing an African man holding a large weapon over his shoulder. "The hopeless continent," reads the main headline.

Sierra Leone, a British colony until 1961, is a country of enormous mineral wealth with an abundance of diamonds, gold, bauxite, rutile (titanium oxide), and iron. In 1930, when diamonds were discovered in the Kono mining district--now the center of the rebel-held territory--the British colonial government tried to seal off the region and made diamond mining illegal except for government-sponsored private monopolies and a few small licensing schemes, with the vast majority of the wealth leaving the country.

The country's major trading partners are Britain and the United States where imperialist investors rake in lucrative contracts. "Rival mining companies, security firms and mercenaries...have poured weapons, trainers, and fighters into Sierra Leone, backing the government or the rebels in a bid to win cheap access to diamond fields," stated an article in the Washington Post last October. "Across Africa, foreign firms are fueling wars for natural resources that in some ways recall the 19th century 'scramble for Africa' by European imperial powers."

As the natural wealth of Sierra Leone continues to get sucked out of the country, the living standards of its 5.3 million people steadily deteriorate. Life expectancy is 37 years; annual income per person is $160. It has one of the highest poverty rates in the world. Some 57 percent of the population live on less than $1 a day. A crushing foreign debt stands at $1.2 billion. The war has exacerbated the social crisis, leaving at least 350,000 people as refugees in neighboring Guinea.

These devastating consequences of imperialist plunder and capitalist exploitation have hit working people in Sierra Leone particularly hard. As elsewhere on the continent, Washington, London, and Paris collaborate and back forces in each country they deem best able to guarantee access to raw materials, continue payments on foreign debt, and keep workers and peasants out of political life.

For example, under the terms of the U.S.-brokered "peace agreement" RUF leader Foday Sankoh, a former army corporal, assumed the post of vice president, and senior commanders in the RUF were given four key cabinet positions. The rebel group also retained control of Sierra Leone's diamond mines in exchange for disarming its 15,000-strong force.

For most of the civil war, which began in 1991, Sankoh's forces were allied with another rebel group, the Armed Forces Revolutionary Council led by Lt. Col. John Paul Koroma, which formed a fighting force of 45,000 soldiers. In May 1997 this alliance overthrew the British-backed regime of Ahmed Tejan Kabbah. Koroma became a leader of the junta that headed this new government.

Kabbah's Sierra Leone People's Party had come to power in March 1996 in an election financed by the British government. Kabbah was reinstalled in March 1998 after a Nigerian-led West African intervention force drove the junta and the alliance of rebel forces from Freetown.  
 
Washington's goals
Koroma has since switched sides and made an alliance with the Kamajors, a rural militia of Mende tribal hunters who support the Sierra Leone regime. Koroma's forces have joined with the British forces in the attack on the RUF. The truce collapsed as the imperialists began distancing themselves from the deal, hinting that RUF leader Foday Sankoh and other rebels should be considered war criminals. "There will be no lasting peace in Sierra Leone until the diamond trade is brought under legitimate control," declared the New York Times editors.

Washington, moving to establish itself as the dominant imperialist power on the African continent, has been cautious about sending U.S. troops to intervene in Sierra Leone, instead relying on the British and Nigerian forces to do its dirty work. U.S. president William Clinton said May 12 that a group of seven to 10 U.S. military personnel were aboard British warships that were moving into position off the coast of Freetown. Pentagon spokesman Kenneth Bacon said the White House had no plans to send "combat troops" to Sierra Leone. Bacon said the U.S. government has deployed the USS Thunderbolt, a special operations vessel, in the area.

As we go to press news wires report RUF head Foday Sankoh was captured. "He has been taken to a secure location," said British officer Tony Cramp. "He is in the custody of the Sierra Leone police. He's been taken to that place in a British helicopter."  
 
 
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