Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-jn8rn Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-24T06:55:13.199Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

The West Side Boys: military navigation in the Sierra Leone civil war*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 August 2008

Mats Utas  and
Magnus Jörgel
Mats Utas*
Affiliation:
Nordic Africa Institute, PO Box 1703, SE-741 47 Uppsala, Sweden
Magnus Jörgel*
Affiliation:
Nordic Africa Institute, PO Box 1703, SE-741 47 Uppsala, Sweden
*
Email: [email protected]
Email: [email protected]
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

The West Side Boys were one of several military actors in the Sierra Leonean civil war (1991–2002). A splinter group of the army, the WSB emerged as a key player in 1999–2000. In most Western media accounts, the WSB appeared as nothing more than renegade, anarchistic bandits, devoid of any trace of long-term goals. By contrast, this article aims to explain how the WSB used well-devised military techniques in the field; how their history and military training within the Sierra Leone army shaped their notion of themselves and their view of what they were trying to accomplish; and, finally, how military commanders and politicians employed the WSB as a tactical instrument in a larger map of military and political strategies. It is in the politics of a military economy that this article is grounded.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Journal of Modern African Studies , Volume 46 , Issue 3 , September 2008 , pp. 487 - 511
Copyright
Copyright © 2008 Cambridge University Press

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Footnotes

*

Our sources are largely interviews with the West Side Boys (WSB) commanders and rank and file soldiers, conducted in Freetown during 2005–6. As far as we know, this is one of the very rare occasions when junior and mid-level WSB commanders and some leaders had the chance to tell part of their story in an environment of safety and relative trust. The article has benefited from discussions at the Ethnologisches Seminar, University of Basel, Centre for Development and Security Analysis (CEDSA) in Freetown, Swedish National Defence College, and Department of Cultural Anthropology and Ethnology, Uppsala University. We thank Danny Hoffman, Morten Böås, Gavin Simpson and two anonymous reviewers for their valuable comments. Mats Utas has benefited from generous funding provided by Sida and the Royal Swedish Academy of Letters, History and Antiquities.

References

references

Abraham, A. 2001. ‘Dancing with the chameleon: Sierra Leone and the elusive quest for peace’, Journal of Contemporary African Studies 19, 2: 205–28.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Arendt, H. 1970. On Violence. New York: Harcourt.Google Scholar
Bangura, Y. 2000. ‘Strategic policy failure and governance in Sierra Leone’, Journal of Modern African Studies 38, 4: 551–77.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Beah, I. 2007a. A Long Way Gone: memoirs of a boy soldier. New York: Farrar Straus & Giroux.Google Scholar
Beah, I. 2007b. ‘The making, and unmaking, of a child soldier’, New York Times 14.1.2007.Google Scholar
Beckett, I. F. W. 2001. Modern Insurgencies and Counter-Insurgencies: guerrillas and their opponents since 1750. London: Routledge.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Biró, D. 2007. ‘The (un)bearable lightness of violence: warlordism as an alternative form of governance in the “Westphalian periphery”?’, in Debiel, T. & Lambach, D. eds. INEF Report 89. Duisburg/Essen: INEF, 7–49.Google Scholar
Bledsoe, C. 1990. ‘“No success without struggle”: social mobility and hardship for foster children in Sierra Leone’, Man n. s. 25: 70–88.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bøås, M. & Dunn, K. C.. 2007. African Guerrillas: raging against the machine. Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Carsten, J. 2000. Cultures of Relatedness: new approaches to the study of kinship. Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Certeau, M. de. 1984. The Practice of Everyday Life. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Cox, T. S. 1976. Civil-Military Relations in Sierra Leone: a case study of African soldiers in politics. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Denzer, L. R. 1971. ‘Sierra Leone – Bai Bureh’, in Crowder, M. ed. West African Resistance: the military response to colonial occupation. London: Hutchinson, 233–67.Google Scholar
Fanthorpe, R. 2001. ‘Neither citizen nor subject? “Lumpen” agency and the legacy of native administration in Sierra Leone’, African Affairs 100, 400: 363–86.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fithen, C. & Richards, P.. 2005. ‘Making war, crafting peace: militia solidarities & demobilisation in Sierra Leone’, in Richards, P. ed. No Peace, No War: an anthropology of contemporary conflicts. Oxford: James Currey, 117–36.Google Scholar
Fowler, W. 2005. Operation Barras: the SAS rescue mission, Sierra Leone 2000. London: Cassell Military.Google Scholar
Francis, D. J. 2005. Civil Militia: Africa's intractable security menace? Aldershot: Ashgate.Google Scholar
Gberie, L. 1997. ‘The May 25 coup d’état in Sierra Leone: a militariat revolt?', Africa Development 22, 3/4: 149–70.Google Scholar
Gberie, L. 2005. A Dirty War in West Africa: the RUF and the destruction of Sierra Leone. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press.Google Scholar
Gray, C. S. 1999. Modern Strategy. Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Hansen, T. B. & Stepputat, F.. 2005. ‘On empire and sovereignty’, in Hansen, T. B. & Stepputat, F. eds. Sovereign Bodies: citizens, migrants and states in the postcolonial world. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1–36.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hirsch, J. L. 2001. Sierra Leone: diamonds and the struggle for democracy. Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hoffman, D. 2005. ‘Violent events as narrative blocs: the disarmament at Bo, Sierra Leone’, Anthropological Quarterly 78, 2: 353.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hoffman, D. 2006. ‘Disagreement: dissent politics and the war in Sierra Leone’, Africa Today 52, 3: 3–24.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hoffman, D. 2007. ‘The city as barracks: Freetown, Monrovia, and the organization of violence in postcolonial African cities’, Cultural Anthropology 22, 3: 400–28.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Howard, A. M. & Skinner, D. E.. 1984. ‘Network building and political power in north-western Sierra Leone, 1800–65’, Africa 54, 2: 2–28.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Jackson, M. 2002. ‘The exterminating angel: reflections on violence and intersubjective reason’, Focaal – European Journal of Anthropology 39: 1–12.Google Scholar
Kaldor, M. 1999. New and Old Wars: organized violence in a global era. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.Google Scholar
Kalyvas, S. N. 2001. ‘“New” and “old” civil wars a valid distinction?’, World Politics 54, 1: 99–118.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Keen, D. 2005. Conflict & Collusion in Sierra Leone. Oxford: James Currey.Google Scholar
Koroma, A. n.d. ‘The journey of atrocities: an account of Sierra Leone's conflict of violence’, handwritten document, Freetown.Google Scholar
Kristeva, J. 1982. Powers of Horror: an essay on abjection. New York: Columbia University Press.Google Scholar
Lewis, D. 2004. Operation Certain Death. London: Random House.Google Scholar
Mehler, A. 2004. ‘Oligopolies of violence in Africa South of the Sahara’, Nord-Süd Aktuell 18, 3: 539–48.Google Scholar
Nietzsche, F. 1994. On the Genealogy of Morality. Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Opala, J. 1994. ‘“Ecstatic renovation!” Street art celebrating Sierra Leone's 1992 revolution’, African Affairs 93, 371: 195–218.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Reno, W. 1995. Corruption and State Politics in Sierra Leone. Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Richards, P. 1996. Fighting for the Rain Forest: war, youth and resources in Sierra Leone. Oxford: James Currey.Google Scholar
Richards, P. 2001. ‘War and peace in Sierra Leone’, The Fletcher Forum of World Affairs 25, 2: 41–50.Google Scholar
Richards, P. 2005a. ‘New War: an ethnographic approach’, in Richards, P. ed. No Peace, No War: ethnographic essays on contemporary conflicts. Oxford: James Currey, 1–21.Google Scholar
Richards, P. 2005b. ‘War as smoke and mirrors: Sierra Leone 1991–2, 1994–5, 1995–6’, Anthropological Quarterly 78, 2: 377–402.Google Scholar
Ring, S. 2005. ‘Militärstrategins olika våldsdimensioner’, in Brehmer, B. ed. Krigsvetenskaplig årsbok. Stockholm: Försvarshögskola, 87–109.Google Scholar
Schelling, T. C. 1966. Arms and Influence. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.Google Scholar
Truth & Reconciliation Commission (TRC). 2004. Witness to Truth: report of the Sierra Leone Truth and Reconciliation Commission, 3 vols. Freetown: TRC.Google Scholar
Utas, M. 2003. Sweet Battlefields: youth and the Liberian Civil War. Uppsala: Dissertations in Cultural Anthropology (DiCA); Department of Cultural Anthropology and Ethnology, Uppsala University.Google Scholar
Utas, M. 2007. ‘Fighting (in) the badlands of modernity: youth combatants in the Liberian Civil War’, Journal of Social Sciences and Management 1, 1: 37–43.Google Scholar
Utas, M. forthcoming. ‘Abject heroes: marginalised youth, modernity and violent pathways of the Liberian Civil War’, in Hart, J. ed. Years of Conflict: adolescence, political violence and displacement. Oxford: Berghahn.Google Scholar
Vigh, H. 2006. ‘Social death and violent life chances’, in Christiansen, C., Utas, M. & Vigh, H. eds. Navigating Youth – Generating Adulthood: social becoming in an African context. Uppsala: Nordic Africa Institute, 31–60.Google Scholar
Wehrfritz, G. 1999. ‘Rebels of the Pacific’, Newsweek 16.8.1999.Google Scholar
Zakythenos, D. A. 1976. The Making of Modern Greece: from Byzantium to independence. Oxford: Blackwell.Google Scholar