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A Pragmatic Pact: Reconciliation and Reintegration in Sierra Leone

  • Chapter
Evaluating Transitional Justice

Part of the book series: Rethinking Peace and Conflict Studies ((RCS))

Abstract

A Sierra Leonean friend described returning to Sierra Leone in 2005 for the first time since peace was declared. Having fed during the war, he had followed violent events closely, fearing for friends and family left behind. He expected to find a society torn apart by grief and anger, with communities demanding retribution against perpetrators of atrocity. He was shocked — indeed almost frustrated — to find a very different situation. Victims of wartime violence talked of forgiving and forgetting, and of ‘moving on’. Ex-combatants lived alongside non-combatants, with little sign of tension.1 His amazement was one which has been frequently expressed by visitors to Sierra Leone since the war. How can it be that people are not angrier or crying out for justice?

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Notes

  1. J. Ginifer (2003) ‘Reintegration of Ex-combatants’, in M. Malan, S. Meek, T. Thusi, J. Ginifer and P. Coker (eds) Monograph 80: Sierra Leone, Building the Road to Recovery (Pretoria, South Africa: Institute for Security Studies), p. 49.

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  2. Interview with UNDP Youth Officer, 10 September 2008. See also J. Boersch-Supan (2009) ‘What the Communities Say — The Crossroads Between Integration and Reconciliation: What Can Be Learned from the Sierra Leonean Experience?’, CRISE Working Paper, No. 63 (Oxford: CRISE), p. 19.

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  3. R. Shaw (2007) ‘Memory Frictions: Localizing the Truth and Reconciliation Commission in Sierra Leone’, The International Journal of Transitional Justice 1(2), 183–207.

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  4. G. Millar (2012) ‘“Our Brothers Who Went to the Bush”: Post-Identity Conflict and the Experience of Reconciliation in Sierra Leone’, Journal of Peace Research 49(5), 717–729. Whilst Millar is right to point out that it is incorrect to describe the war as an ethnic or religious Conflict, my own feldwork during 2008–2012 suggests that otherising dynamics were in fact central to the dynamics of violence.

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  5. See K. Mitton (2015) Rebels in a Rotten State: Understanding Atrocity in the Sierra Leone Civil War (London/New York: Hurst/Oxford University Press). As such, the Conflict is also misunderstood as ‘post-identity’. That the divisions of war appeared to quickly fade with the arrival of peace may partly Reflect the fact that polarisation was largely endogenous to Conflict; wartime identities and divides held less power in peace. Another reason is identifed in this chapter: the role that a ‘pact’ of accommodation played in fostering coexistence among former enemies, united by a common struggle against poverty.

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  6. L. Stovel (2008) ‘“There’s No Bad Bush to Throw Away a Bad Child”: “Tradition”-Inspired Reintegration in Post-War Sierra Leone’, Journal of Modern African Studies 46(2), 315.

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  7. See J. Galtung (1967) Theories of Peace: A Synthetic Approach to Peace Thinking (Oslo: International Peace Research Institute), p. 12, who defines positive peace, by contrast, as including such societal features as equality, justice and freedom from fear and want.

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  8. See, for instance, R. Kerr and J. Lincoln (2008) The Special Court for Sierra Leone: Outreach, Legacy and Impact — Final Report, War Crimes Research Group, Department of War Studies (London: King’s College London).

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  9. See Shaw, ‘Memory Frictions’; T. Kelsall (2005) ‘Truth, Lies, Ritual: Preliminary Reflections on the Truth and Reconciliation Commission in Sierra Leone’, Human Rights Quarterly 27(2), 361–391.

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  10. See, for example, F. Mieth (2013) ‘Bringing Justice and Enforcing Peace? An Ethnographic Perspective on the Impact of the Special Court for Sierra Leone’, International Journal of Conflict and Violence 7(1), 10–22.

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  11. G. Millar (2013) ‘Expectations and Experiences of Peacebuilding in Sierra Leone: Parallel Peacebuilding Processes and Compound Friction’, International Peacekeeping 20(2), 195–196. See also Shaw, ‘Memory Frictions’, p. 198.

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  12. E. Hoffman (2008) ‘Reconciliation in Sierra Leone: Local Processes Yield Global Lessons’, The Fletcher Forum for World Affairs 32(2), 131.

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  13. A. Rehrl (2004) ‘Sierra Leone: We Want Reconciliation. We will Never Forget. But We Try to Forgive’, Refugees Magazine 136, 17.

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  14. For these slogans see Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) (2004) Witness to Truth: Report of the Sierra Leone Truth and Reconciliation Commission, Vol. 1, Ch. 4; Kelsall, ‘Truth, Lies, Ritual’, p. 365; and Shaw, ‘Memory Frictions’, p. 199.

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  15. C. Bolten (2012) ‘“We Have Been Sensitized”: Ex-Combatants, Marginalization, and Youth in Postwar Sierra Leone’, American Anthropologist 114(3), 502.

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  16. Bolten, ‘Sensitized’, p. 504. With the return of children in particular, agencies such as UNICEF assisted with building schools and paying fees. S. Shepler (2005) ‘The Rites of the Child: Global Discourses of Youth and Reintegrating Child Soldiers in Sierra Leone’, Journal of Human Rights 4(2), 203, notes: ‘[T]he reintegration of children is explicitly linked to the nation, to national identity and to economic development.’

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  17. See, for example, K. Peters (2011) War and the Crisis of Youth in Sierra Leone (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press).

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  18. See P. Tom (2014) ‘Youth-Traditional Authorities’ Relations in Post-War Sierra Leone’, Children’s Geographies 12(3), 327–338 for discussion of youth’s embrace of this discourse in resistance to traditional authorities.

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  19. J. Boersch-Supan (2012) ‘The Generational Contract in Flux: Intergenerational Tensions in Post-Conflict Sierra Leone’, Journal of Modern African Studies 50(1), 45. On patrimonialism and youth movements,

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  20. see also R. Fanthorpe and R. Maconachie (2010) ‘Beyond the “Crisis of Youth”? Mining, Farming, and Civil Society in Post-War Sierra Leone’, African Affairs 109(435), 362; and Tom, ‘Youth-Traditional’.

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  21. L. E. Fletcher, H. M. Weinstein and J. Rowen (2009) ‘Context, Timing and the Dynamics of Transitional Justice’, Human Rights Quarterly 31(1), 165.

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Authors
  1. Kieran Mitton
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Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. London School of Economics, UK

    Kirsten Ainley (Assistant Professor) (Assistant Professor)

  2. King’s College London, UK

    Rebekka Friedman (Lecturer in International Peace and Security) (Lecturer in International Peace and Security)

  3. Georgetown University Law Center, USA

    Chris Mahony (Citizen Security and Criminal Justice Specialist at the World Bank, Research Fellow at the Centre for International Law Research and Policy and Visiting Research Fellow) (Citizen Security and Criminal Justice Specialist at the World Bank, Research Fellow at the Centre for International Law Research and Policy and Visiting Research Fellow)

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© 2015 Kieran Mitton

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Mitton, K. (2015). A Pragmatic Pact: Reconciliation and Reintegration in Sierra Leone. In: Ainley, K., Friedman, R., Mahony, C. (eds) Evaluating Transitional Justice. Rethinking Peace and Conflict Studies. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137468222_11

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