By Regine Mehl*

Very much concerned with the war (and still no peace) in Kosovo and following the discussions running on all our international email lists I (more or less suddenly) recognised that we usually have a very selective perception of wars in general and of atrocities towards civil societies in particular – at least on the discussion lists.

While we were so much concerned in the war in Kosovo, 26 other wars were running and still do, and amongst them a war of almost undescribable atrocities in West African Sierra Leone. Only very, very few NGO’s and international partners take care of it at all.

What they and Mary Robinson, former President of Ireland and now UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, report about the situation there “is even worse than everything we saw in Kosovo,” as Mary Robinson expressed it.

The generel public, and I suppose most of us as well, haven’t noticed up to now

• that Sierra Leone is suffering from a still on-going eight years war now, a war without fronts, frontiers and aims;

• that it has nothing to do with ideology or ethnicity but with the richness with diamonds: groups of bandits, the military involved, fight each other for diamonds;

• that its people is desperately poor;

• that the kids (girls and boys) between the age of 8 to 11 are trained as soldiers in order to let them hack off noses, hands and feet of their own people;

• that rebels preferably rape little girls, kill them afterwards, cut off their heads and then make a show of heads along the roads;

• that 200,000 humans lost their lives up to now;

• that hundreds of thousands of refugeees are fleeing permanently within the country not knowing where to stay from day to day;

• that so-called rebels assault trecks of refugees from time to time and slaughter the humans in undescribable ways;

• that there is even systematic killing and mutilation committed by the United Revolutionary Front documented and noticed by Human Rights Watch.

Jesse Jackson, Special Commissioner of the US government for the development of democracy in Africa commented these facts as follows (apologies for the bad translation from a German version):

“Sierra Leone shares the horror of the Kosovo but not its hope. There is no public outcry against the violence, no responsibility for the reconstructing or recovery of the country. In Kosovo we promised a multi-billion dollar plan for the recovery of the country; in Sierra Leone $15 Million for human aid – and this is not right.”

In my view this is a very blatant disproportion and it might have to do with “our” (the world of NATO and other dominant organizations which act in the name of dominant states and governments) perception of reality. And this reality is formed by some well known political interests. Or do you think that Sierra Leone is of any interest to the so-called industrialized world?

Who has more information about Sierra Leone where Togo now tries to mediate into the conflict? How could we raise more public concern about this country and other regions of war? What is the tragic and responsible role of the dominant news agencies?

Only a few questions from my side after I read some horror news and background informations about this knocked-out country and its suffering population.

Dr. Regine Mehl is acting director of the Peace Research Information Unit Bonn (PRIUB), Arbeitsstelle Friedensforschung Bonn (AFB). She can be reached at:
Beethovenallee 4, D-53173 Bonn, F. R. Germany. Tel.: +49 – 228 – 356032
Fax: +49 – 228 – 35 6050, e-mail: afb@bonn.iz-soz.d and http://www.bonn.iz- soz.de/afb/