the Adventure Lifestyle magazine

1960, Sierra Leone's diamond ourput was two million carats. A year later, boasting a positive bank balance, the country gained independence from But 20 years later, legal diamond exports had dropped to 595,000 carats, and in 1988 a mere 48,000 carats. In 1984 the government-run diamond company was sold to a private company 12,509. Despite the prohibition of slavery, slavers still traded humans from the interior and from places like Sherbro Island, now part of Sierra Leone. Sierra Leone's history sheds light on the country's current problems. It was created for the sole purpose of commerce and was populated by well-meaning bur ultimately destructive Europeans, a teeming mass of divisive tribes, invaders, struggling settlers, and avaricious opportunists. All lived with the full expectation that everything they had worked for would be plundered by warfare or otherwise destroyed. Sierra Leone never became a land of hope, rather, a feral dumping ground for the world's unwanted. Sierra Leone existed more or less as a quiet backwater country until 1930, when the first diamond was discovered. By 1935, De Beers had signed a 99 year contract for exclusive mining rights, and the country quickly became a major producer of high-grade diamonds. Two years later it was exporting one million carats. In 1955 the government abandoned the national agreement with De Beers, left their monopoly in an area of only 450 square miles, and created the Alluvial Diamond Scheme to allow locals to mine and buy diamonds. Because the diamonds were in shallow alluvial deposits, 75,000 illegal diamond miners descended on the Kono district in the space of a year. Most of the mining and buying licenses were held by Shia Lebanese, who had immigrated at the turn of the century. The illicit diamond trading market was run by Lebanese and Mandingo traders who used Liberia as a base of operations. De Beers actually set up a buying office in Montovia, the Liberian capital, to purchase diamonds smuggled from Sierra Leone, along with the small amount mined in Liberia. Siaka Stevens became president of Sierra Leone in 1957 and nationalized the De Beers contract into the National Diamond Mining Company, which was under his direct control and the control and his Lebanese adviser, Jamil Said Mohammed. By run by Jamil Said Mohammed. Just one year later, 80-year-old Stevens stepped down to retire. The new leader, Joseph Momoh, retained Jamil to run the diamond business. In an odd coincidence, the leader of the Amal militia and now Speaker of the House in Lebanon, Nabih Berri, was born in Sierra Leone and was a boyhood friend of Jamil Said Mohammed. Diamonds were disappearing. As the country's resources were pillaged, the economy declined, and an ominous underground had developed by the mid-1980s. Libya's Muammar Qaddafi sponsored students who wished to study in Libya, and there they absorbed a revolutionary Muslim fervor. These groups were banned in 1985, but it merely fo rced them underground. Between 1987 and 1988 up to 50 Sierra Leoneans were trained in Libya in guerrilla and terrorist skills. Among them was Foday Sankoh, a former army corporal and wandering photographer who had been jailed in 1971 for plotting a coup against Stevens. Another man who went to Libya was Charles Taylor. On Christmas Eve 1989 Libyan-trained and Burkinabe-supported Taylor attacked President Samual Doe, who had survived thirty-six coup attempts in his short rule. Operating Out of the Ivory Coast, Taylor quickly aligned ethnic groups within Liberia for or against the government. In 1990 the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) created a military force made up of troops primarily from Nigeria but also from Sierra Leone, Guinea, Ghana, and Gambia to fight against Taylor using Freetown, Sierra Leone's capital, as a base of operations. In return, Taylor repeatedly threatened to attack Sierra Leone. When Foday Sankoh and his small band of men attacked Sierra Leone from Liberia in March 1991, the circumstances were oddly similar to the events that had turned Liberia into an anarchistic hell 13 months earlier. A new constitution brought in a multiparty system in 1991 and installed Ahmad Tejan Kabbah, a 64-year-old Muslim lawyer and former UN employee as president. Within two weeks a military junta once again took power. The Revolutionary United Front began in late March 1991 when a group of about 100 Liberian mercenaries and Burkinabe soldiers crossed the Mano River into Sierra Leone and began raping and pillaging. Their first military actions were more criminal than strategic. President Kabbah's slogan was "Give a Hand for Peace." The rebels sent a message to the government in faraway Freetown that things were going to change by cutting off hands-something that had never been done in this land. They also magnified their effect by frightening villagers, pressganging fighters, and demanding diamonds to be sold to Charles Taylor in exchange for weapons and supplies. In the minds of RUF rebels no longer would a small, privileged group make millions from the diamond fields. The group's initial goal was to overthrow the rule of a small, corrupt group of privileged people. What had begun as an intellectually driven revolt to restore equity spun off into anarchy as the intellectual founders were purged and killed. The rebels used a number of tactics to sow terror amongst the population. Villagers were rounded up and sorted into two categories; the quick and the dead. Those who could be pressganged as fighters or camp followers were dragged away. Those who were considered disposable were cruelly mutilated. Their hands were cut off to Stop them from marking ballots, their neck muscles were slashed to make them bow down, and cruel and unspeakable deaths were meted out as others looked on so that the word would spread. Using tertor in a manner that would make Mao and Stalin proud, the rebels announced their attacks beforehand to frighten villagers away. The rebels quickly controlled the south and east of Sierra Leone with little resistance. When elections were called for February 1996 the RUF began a campaign of terror to preven t villagers from voting. In Moyamba district the RUF decapitated 22

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