African Affairs Advance Access originally published online on September 8, 2005
African Affairs 2005 104(417):571-590; doi:10.1093/afraf/adi068
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To fight or to farm? Agrarian dimensions of the Mano River conflicts (Liberia and Sierra Leone)
Paul Richards is based at Wageningen University, the Netherlands.
The wars in Liberia and Sierra Leone have been linked to the condition of urbanized youth. Recent research in southeastern Sierra Leone and northwestern Liberia suggests the rural context is of greater significance. The fighting was mainly in rural areas, involved mainly rural youth, and adapted itself to their local concerns. A model of war as the work of urban criminal gangs, reflecting local student politics in the 1970s and embraced internationally, is ripe for replacement by a model of war as agrarian revolt. This would open up the possibility of a more coherent regional analysis of recent West African conflicts. The key to conflict resolution in the region, it is suggested, is an emphasis on agrarian justice, including reform of customary land and marriage law.
This article is a revised and extended version of an article first published in French in Afrique Contemporaine.
1. On the debate over and rejection of revolutionary violence modelled on Ugandan developments by West African radicals in the 1980s, see Zaya Yeebo, Ghana: The struggle for popular power (New Beacon Books, London & Port of Spain, 1991).
2. Some differences between the wars in Liberia and Sierra Leone can be explained in terms of leadership. The NPFL had a visible and relatively experienced political leadership (true also of other factions fighting the war in Liberia), but the RUF was run by a handful of unknown, inexperienced and (with few exceptions) youthful dissidents, accounting for some of the movement’s unpredictability and evident difficulty in handling peace negotiation processes.
3. See Ibrahim Abdullah, ‘Bush path to destruction: the origin and character of the Revolutionary United Front (RUF/SL)’, Africa Development 22, 3–4 (1997), pp. 45–76, and also other contributions to this special issue entitled Lumpen Culture and Political Violence: The Sierra Leone civil war, inc. Yusuf Bangura, ‘Understanding the political and cultural dynamics of the Sierra Leone war: a critique of Paul Richards’s Fighting for the Rain Forest’, pp. 117–148. Further, see Jimmy Kandeh, ‘Subaltern terror in Sierra Leone’, in Alfred Tunde Zack-Williams, Diane Frost and Alex Thomson (eds), Africa in Crisis: New challenges and possibilities (Pluto Press, London, 2001), pp. 179–95.
4. See Mats Berdal and David Malone (eds), Greed and Grievance: Economic agendas in civil wars (Lynne Rienner, Boulder co, 2001); Paul Collier, Economic Causes of Civil Conflict and Their Implications for Policy (The World Bank, Washington, DC, 2000) Mary Kaldo., New and Old Wars: Organized violence in a global era (Polity Press, Cambridge, 1999).
5. On criminal networks see Jean-François Bayart, Stephen Ellis and Béatrice Hibou (eds), The Criminalization of the State in Africa (James Currey, Oxford, 1999), on the urban criminality thesis applied to African wars in general see Thandika Mkandawire, ‘The terrible toll of post-colonial rebel movements in Africa: towards an explanation of violence against the peasantry.’ Journal of Modern African Studies 40, 2 (2002), pp. 181–215, and on the futility of negotiation with warlords see Marianne Ducasse-Rogier, Resolving Intractable Conflicts in Africa: A case study of Sierra Leone (Netherlands Institute of International Relations [Clingendael], Conflict Research Unit, Working Paper 31, September 2004).
6. William Reno, Warlord Politics and African States (Lynne Rienner, Boulder, CO, 1998); Ian Smillie, Lansana Gberie and Ralph Hazleton, The Heart of the Matter: Sierra Leone, diamonds and human security (Partnership Africa, Ottawa, 2000).
7. For Sierra Leone see Paul Richards, Fighting for the Rain Forest: War, youth and resources in Sierra Leone (James Currey, Oxford, 1996, reprinted with additional material 1998); Paul Richards, Steven Archibald, Khadija Bah and James Vincent, ‘Where have all the young people gone? Transitioning ex-combatants towards community reconstruction after the war in Sierra Leone’ (Unpublished report submitted to the National Commission for Disarmament, Demobilization and Reintegration, Government of Sierra Leone, Freetown, 2003); Krijn Peters, ‘The storm is not yet over? Interviews with ex-combatants from the war in Sierra Leone’ (Unpublished typescript, Technology & Agrarian Development Group, Wageningen University & Research Centre, The Netherlands, 2002); and Krijn Peters, ‘Footpaths to reintegration’ (PhD thesis, Wageningen University, in preparation). For Liberia, see Paul Richards, Steven Archibald, Beverlee Bruce, Watta Modad, Edward Mulbah, Tornorlah Varpilah and James Vincent, ‘Community cohesion in Liberia: a postwar rapid rural assessment’, in Social Development Papers: Conflict prevention and reconstruction (Paper No. 21, The World Bank, Washington DC, January 2005).
8. Macartan Humphreys and Jeremy Weinstein, What the Fighters Say: A survey of ex-combatants in Sierra Leone, June-August 2003 (Center on Globilisation and Sustainable Development Working Paper No. 20, Columbia University, New York, 2004).
9. Collier, Economic Causes of Civil Conflict.
10. I allude to the Scottish philosopher David Hume, author of a famous account of the problem of induction, to which an answer (the so-called Durkheim-Fleck programme, cf. Mary Douglas, How Institutions Think, (Routledge, London 1986)) is that causes and beliefs are socially sustained and therefore inaccessible to the positivistic empiricism Collier proposes.
11. Humphreys and Weinstein, ‘What the fighters say’.
12. The CDF was formed in mid-1996 as a volunteer militia to support the newly elected democratic government (February 1996), which was doubtful about a national army for the most part loyal to previous regimes. The CDF fought mainly with farm cutlasses and shotguns, but carried semi-automatic weapons legally from December 1998. Trained as a counter-insurgency force, it assisted, or was assisted by, two private military companies operating in Sierra Leone during the mid-1990s, Executive Outcomes and Sandline International.
13. Cf. Richards, Fighting for the Rain Forest; Bangura, ‘Understanding the political and cultural dynamics of the Sierra Leone war’.
14. Humphreys and Weinstein, ‘What the fighters say’, p. 19.
15. Peters, ‘Footpaths to reintegration’; Richards et al., ‘Where have all the young people gone?’
16. RUF/SL, Footpaths to Democracy: Toward a new Sierra Leone (The Revolutionary United Front of Sierra Leone, no stated place of publication, 1995); Richards et al., ‘Where have all the young people gone?’
17. Humphreys and Weinstein, ‘What the fighters say’, p. 19.
18. Ibid., p. 26. The fact that rural youth displaced from villages by poverty or injustice sometimes found employment in alluvial diamond mining or illegal logging was responsible for the widespread external impression that the lure of diamonds (or forest resources) ‘caused’ the war; other commentators point out that alluvial diamond mining is, in fact, unattractive, backbreaking, degrading and poorly rewarded (cf. USAID, Office of Transition Initiatives, ‘Diamonds and armed conflict in Sierra Leone: proposal for implementation of a new diamond policy and operations’, http://www.usaid.gov/hum-respose/oti/country/sleone/diamonds.html.(Accessed June 2003).
19. Richards et al., ‘Where have all the young people gone?’
20. Humphreys and Weinstein, ‘What the fighters say’, p. 14.
21. Paul Richards, Ibrahim Abdullah, Joseph Amara, Patrick Muana, Edward Stanley and James Vincent, ‘Reintegration of war-affected youth and ex-combatants: a study of the social and economic opportunity structure in Sierra Leone’ (Unpublished report submitted to the Ministry of Relief, Rehabilitation & Reintegration, Freetown, 1997).
22. Humphreys and Weinstein, ‘What the fighters say’, p. 27.
23. Paul Richards, Khadija Bah and James Vincent, ‘Social capital and survival: prospects for community-driven development in post-conflict Sierra Leone’, in Social Development Papers: Community driven development/conflict prevention and reconstruction (Paper No. 12, The World Bank, Washington, DC, April 2004).
24. Caspar Fithen and Paul Richards, ‘Making war, crafting peace: militia solidarities in Sierra Leone’, in Paul Richards (ed.), No Peace, No War: An anthropology of contemporary armed conflicts (James Currey, Oxford, 2005), pp.117–36; Krijn Peters and Paul Richards, ‘Why we fight: voices of youth ex-combatants in Sierra Leone,’ Africa 68, 1 (1997), pp. 183–210; Richards, Fighting for the Rain Forest; Richards et al., ‘Where have all the young people gone?’ Richards et al, ‘Social capital and survival’ and, for fuller discussion of methods, see Peters, ‘Footpaths to reintegration’, and Steven Archibald and Paul Richards, ‘Conversion to human rights? Popular debate about war and justice in central Sierra Leone’, Africa 72, 3 (2002), pp. 339–67.
25. Richards et al., ‘Community cohesion in Liberia’.
26. A concern shared by others: see International Crisis Group, Liberia and Sierra Leone: Rebuilding failed states. Crisis Group Report No. 87 (International Crisis Group, Dakar and Brussels, 2004).
27. Collier, Economic Causes of Civil Conflict.
28. Adam Jones, From Slaves to Palm Kernels: A history of the Galinhas country (West Africa) 1730–1890 (Steiner Verlag, Wiesbaden, 1983).
29. Claude Meillassoux, The Anthropology of Slavery: The womb of iron and gold (Athlone Press & University of Chicago Press, London and Chicago, 1991), chapter 2.
30. Jones, From Slaves to Palm Kernels, p. 189.
31. Svend Holsoe, ‘Slavery and economic response among the Vai (Liberia and Sierra Leone)’, in Miers and Kopytoff (eds), Slavery in Africa, p. 290.
32. Jones, From Slaves to Palm Kernels, p. 189.
33. Caroline Bledsoe, Women and Marriage in Kpelle Society (Stanford University Press, Stanford, 1980).
34. Jones, From Slaves to Palm Kernels, p. 189.
36. This led to a form of indentured labour the Vai termed musu jonja, literally ‘woman servitude’: see Holsoe, ‘Slavery and economic response’, p. 289.
37. James Fenton, Outline of Native Law in Sierra Leone (Government Printer, Freetown, 1948), p. 3.
38. James Gibbs, ‘The Kpelle of Liberia’, in James Gibbs Jr. (ed.), Peoples of Africa (Holt, Rinehart & Winston, New York, 1965), p. 215.
39. John Grace mentions 82 of 352 cases in Pujehun District in 1919 and 1920. See his chapter ‘Slavery and emancipation among the Mende in Sierra Leone’, in Miers and Kopytoff, Slavery in Africa, p. 427.
42. Warren d’Azevedo, ‘A tribal reaction to nationalism’, parts 1–4, Liberian Studies Journal 1, 2 (1969), pp. 1–21; 2, 1 (1970), pp. 43–63; 2, 2 (1970), pp. 99–115; 3, 1 (1971), pp. 1–19.
43. Fenton, Outline of Native Law, p. 4.
44. Robert Leopold, ‘Prescriptive alliance and ritual collaboration in Loma society’ (Unpublished PhD thesis, Indiana University, 1991).
45. Bruce DiCristina, ‘Durkheim’s theory of homicide and the confusion of the empirical literature,’ Theoretical Criminology 8, 1 (2004), pp. 57–91; Emile Durkheim (trans. G. Simpson), The Division of Labor in Society (Free Press, New York, 1964 [1893]).
46. Emile Durkheim (trans. J. A. Spaulding and G. Simpson), Suicide (Routledge & Kegan Paul, London, 1952 [1897]); Durkheim, Division, p. 239.
47. Paul Richards and Koen Vlassenroot, ‘Les guerres africaines du type fleuve Mano: pour une analyse sociale’, Politique Africaine 88 (2002), pp. 13–26.
48. Postwar interviews with RUF cadres have revealed a somewhat stronger ideological motivation in the movement than many commentators have previously conceded. The agrarian group continues to draw upon instruction provided by the Bunumbu intellectuals. An extended discussion of the evidence will be presented in the forthcoming PhD thesis of Krijn Peters, ‘Footpaths to reintegration’, but also see Peters, ‘The storm is not yet over’, and Richards et al. ‘Where have all the young people gone?’
49. Francis Musa, personal communication, 2003.
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