By Septimus Senessie in Kono
Burnt-out houses are still visible in Koidu, the headquarter town of the diamond-rich Kono District in, east of the country.
Observers, researchers and academics have said that the Sierra Leone civil war was fuelled by diamonds, hence the term ‘Blood Diamond’, which informed the Hollywood blockbuster of the same name. The title refers to blood diamonds, which were diamonds mined in war zones and sold to finance conflicts, and thereby profit warlords and diamond companies across the world.
Diamonds were mined and exported in exchange for weapons for the Revolutionary United Front (RUF) rebels. So Kono, the heart of Sierra Leone’s diamond resource base, became an important target. So important it was that it was attacked twice by the rebels.
The severity of the situation is evident on the number of houses that got burnt down. Some houses were totally destroyed with no trace of their foundations. Some were burnt down and in their places mining pits were created. This was true especially for houses that were located in areas where diamond had been found. Some of the houses, on the other hand, got destroyed, from roof to foundation, by strayed rockets during intense battles between rebels and government forces.
Eighty-year old Kumba Gibrilla had her entire compound of four buildings, with twenty bedrooms at No. 19 Turnneh Street in Koidu, destroyed. The compound was burnt down by the rebels during their second attack in 1996. This, she recalled, was part of the infamous “Operation No Leaving Thing” declared by the rebels. Hundreds of people were killed during the three months period that the rebels were in control of the town.
Parts of the houses that are now occupied by her family and tenants are still covered with UNHCR’s blue logoed plastic sheet. A huge part is unoccupied, fourteen years since the official declaration of the end of the war in 2002.
Mama Gibrilla told Politico that since the end of the war that claimed the life of her husband, she had not been able to rehabilitate her houses which used to serve as their source of income. The only hope she has now to restore her home is for some investors to lease the land which is in the central business part of town.
Many people in Koidu who experienced similar fate, like Kumba Mondeh, have been left to hope for a miracle to help them rebuild their houses.
Kono District, according to Saa Emerson Lamina, the suspended Mayor of Koidu City, and a lecturer of Peace and Development Studies at the College of Theology, Management and Church Training Centre between 2012 and 2013, was the worst affected by the war compared to any other part of the country. He said recovering from that had been a difficult task for both past and current governments because of the effect on the economy.
“Churches, mosques, schools, government and private hospitals, government and local administrative structures and private buildings, everything was burnt down and a thousand of such strictures are yet to be rebuilt after the war up to the present moment because of the impact of the same war on the economy of the district,” he said.
The level of destruction in Kono was captured in a 2002 UNDP report which said 96.6% of the district’s infrastructure was destroyed.
Mr. Lamina was himself a direct victim of the war as he was arrested by the rebels at some point when he’d gone out to interview rebels as part of a school work. He said though some efforts had been made during the past 14 years to rebuild burnt houses, “there are still over thousands of them that are awaiting rehabilitation because of the financial incapacities of the owners.”
Reverend Sahr Christian Fayah, District Coordinator of the Inter-Religious Council of Sierra Leone, explained the level of destructions the rebels caused on religious houses in Kono. Churches, including his own, the Central Assembly of God’s Church, as well as mosques, were burnt down and those that survived the burning had their facilities vandalised and roofs removed, he recalled.
Rev. Fayah, struggling to hold back his tears during this interview with Politico at his resident in Bungalow New Site, said: “Religious houses that used to be places of worship and rescue for the people when they felt unsafe and threatened in their communities were turned into their own graveyards by the rebels...There were reports of killing of innocent souls in churches and mosques in Koidu which I wouldn’t name now for ethical and moral reasons, when the people rushed into them to seek refuge.”
The clergyman recalled that it was the Pakistani Peace Keepers, deployed in Koidu in 2002, who helped in rebuilding some of the religious houses, including his church.
Interestingly, Rev. Fayah squarely put the blame on the religious establishment for the situation that led to the war.
“It was the religious leaders that deviated from their duties of shaping the moral values of the society that led to the breakdown of law and order in the country, leading those uncalled-for destructions that faced us in the country,” he said.
Educational facilities were equally seriously affected. At the Koidu Girls Secondary School (KGSS), Principal Bernadette Turay is struggling to come to terms with the destruction on the school, 14 years since the end of the war.
The school, she told Politico, was badly hit by the war such that two of the three buildings in the school were burnt down. The only surviving structure had its facilities vandalised.
Ms Turay explained that as the only girls’ school in the district at the time, KGSS used to boast of some of the best facilities like teaching and learning materials, improved classroom conditions, and conducive learning environment. But all this has changed since after the war, she said.
Civil society activist, Ibrahim Sahr Ahmed Backarie, who heads the Campaign for Just Mining in Kono District, said the impact of the war on the infrastructures of Koidu would be difficult to recover due to the extensive nature of the damage.
Backarie pointed out that even OCTEA Mining Koidu Limited, which has been accused of mining out half of the town already, came into existence during the war after the junta regime of the National Provisional Ruling Council (NPRC) leased a vast expansion of land to the Executive Outcomes, a South African mercenary outfit, as a reward for helping the them fight off the RUF rebels.
“The recovery of the town from the war, especially the damage that was caused to it, would take a long time to be achieved,” he said.
(C) Politico 24/03/16
