Category: Violence

Ethnography and journalism in times of war

This text is a slightly adapted keynote/film introductory note I gave at a conference when the Department of Media and Social Sciences at the University of Stavanger celebrated its 50th anniversary, April 28, 2022. After the speech, our film Jew Man Business was screened.

In many ways, ethnography is akin to journalism. The researcher or journalist visits a somewhat unfamiliar place and tries to understand what is happening. In my research, I have focused on understanding civil wars: why people fight, how they survive, and how they rebuild their lives in the fragile aftermath of conflict. Foreign correspondents, stringers, documentary photographers, and documentary filmmakers often go to the same places, speak with some of the same people, and ask similar questions. In this talk, I will share some of my experiences from the ethnographic fieldwork I have conducted over the past 25 years. I will also present a shorter film we made to contrast with the many journalistic works and documentaries on civil wars in Liberia and Sierra Leone. Although I believe some journalists are careless and sometimes question their ethics, rather than a critique, this talk aims to find common ground between modern anthropology and journalism.

I have studied civil wars since I first got stuck in one in 1996. It was in Liberia. At the time, I was conducting three months of fieldwork in neighbouring Côte d’Ivoire, focusing on refugees from the ongoing civil war in Liberia. As I had subsequently intended to study refugees returning to Liberia, I seized the opportunity to travel overland to Monrovia, the Liberian capital, with an NGO vehicle. There had been no fighting for some time. However, on the way down, we encountered innumerable checkpoints manned by young, sometimes very young, rebel soldiers from various military factions. Approaching Saniquellie in Nimba County, we were stopped at a checkpoint by a group of young soldiers.

Saniquellie 1996

They were all smiles. I couldn’t resist stepping out of the white car and asking for a photo. They happily posed. At the time, I didn’t realise it, but the yellow T-shirt with the print “patience my ass” became significant for my research on child and youth fighters, as it turned out that many joined war factions in a more voluntarily fashion than media and other written accounts suggest. They were frustrated by the system, experiencing social blockages or a sense of social death. They were running low on patience. For many, fighting was a “patience my ass” move, a way of forcing themselves out of the margins and into the centre of society. In hindsight, it was a move that, for a clear majority of rank-and-file soldiers, did not succeed.

My primary focus during a one-year field study in 1997-98 in Monrovia and Ganta, Nimba County, was on what motivated young people to join rebel groups and the tactics they used to reintegrate into civil life.

However, the year before that, I became stranded in Monrovia and had to be airlifted out of the country. Two days after the encounter at the Saniquellie checkpoint, the war reignited. Had I known what I know now, I would have recognised the apparent signs of troop build-up and the movement of personnel, though travelling as civilians and unarmed, along the road we took. I would have understood the increased tension at the checkpoints. The following year, when I returned to Liberia, a young man, whom I knew from a refugee school on the Ivorian side of the border, told me he had seen me, and even attempted to catch a ride with our vehicle when he was moving along the road towards Monrovia to once again fight in the war. I did not see him, nor was I aware of the troop movements. I was a naive newcomer to war.

The day after I entered Monrovia, rebel forces clashed in what became the worst fighting in the capital during the entire civil war. It was gruesome, and from the balcony of a downtown flat I was stuck in, I could see mainly youths shooting at each other. I would say that most soldiers were between 16 and 21 years old.

After two days of intense fighting, a pause occurred, and I managed to make my way up the street to the US embassy. Inside, however, it was not much safer. Rebels jumped the poorly guarded walls and fought each other on the premises. When I went for a shower, I looked out the window and, to my surprise, a rebel soldier was hiding, pressed up against my window. When he saw me, he raised his finger to his mouth, “Shhh.” I closed the curtains and let the warm water rinse my body, as if the war was not there. A few nights later, we boarded a helicopter. I had a Liberian child on my lap, and he peed in his pants as we left Monrovia. Rebels were shooting at us, and a machine gun at the rear of our helicopter returned fire—bullets directed towards a pitch-black capital. We were mainly expats, but there were a few Liberians with American citizenship.

This highlights my privileged position. When conditions become difficult, people like me can usually find a way out. No one at the U.S. embassy was aware of my identity or the reason for my visit. Neither did they appear particularly interested, but they still allowed me in. The colour of my skin acted as my passport. Most Liberians, however, remained on the ground, fighting for their survival; tens of thousands lost their lives in the weeks that followed.

When I returned to Monrovia eight months later, elections had taken place. Charles Taylor, the warlord of the most significant rebel movement, had won convincingly and was installed as president. A reminder that democratic elections do not always guarantee democracy.

I began to spend time with former youth soldiers in downtown Monrovia. They were pretty excited to discover that I had been in Monrovia during the previous year’s war. If only in a cursory way, I had experienced their war, and it turned out to be a vital door-opener. I asked them about their whereabouts the previous year. As they were among the groups controlling the downtown area, they shared stories of how, whenever there was a lull in the fighting, they were approached by Western journalists. Some of them had been guides for these journalists. From the start, the journalists only dared to walk a few blocks. They stayed on a line, guarded by the rebel soldiers. They took photographs of the same few objects, the same ruins, and sometimes the same human remains. And they were fed the same few stories. Given the limited access, I have always wondered what it truly means to report unbiased and balanced news from a place like this. Is it even remotely possible?

Many of the soldiers who guided the journalists came to regret this. Indeed, they had been given tokens for their work, but journalists often promised them that upon their return, they would help them get on with their lives, pay for an education, or merely buy a mattress they could sleep on. The group I came to work with lived in a concrete shell of an old factory. During the rainy season, it got cold, and a foam mattress between them and the cold ground would make all the difference. However, few journalists ever returned, and not a single one kept their promises. Broken contracts between them and journalists made my work difficult. Why would they trust me? And from my point of view, what stories would they feed me with?

Rebel guides took the photojournalists on a safari-like walk through the urban wasteland when there was no fighting. To visualise war, the ex-combatants I worked with recalled that they were at times asked to perform active war. Many photographers and filmmakers were not on the front lines; instead, they stayed at a hotel near the U.S. Embassy, which was considered a safe haven. It was simply too dangerous out there. Instead, they worked post-fact by recreating scenes. Rebel soldiers assist them in staging the war for the cameras.

I cannot say how frequently such acts happened, but when I mentioned this fact a few years ago while giving a lecture to a group of UN peacekeepers, one participant in particular nodded in agreement. Later, he sent me a PowerPoint presentation that had circulated among his colleagues, which included 15 slides with “rigged” photos from fighting in Monrovia. Here are some:

Many poses or fighting styles mimic those seen in action films and are, quite frankly, not very effective in real war. In the background of the first picture, you can see other photographers taking photos. One is directed towards the same rebel soldier, whilst the other is taking a photo of a guy pointing his gun directly into the ground.

Another interesting point is that soldiers often appear very young—sometimes too young to handle a Kalashnikov, given its weight and strength. A boy around 13 or 14 might be able to hold a lighter Italian or Israeli machine gun, but not these types. This is what experts have told me. A more plausible explanation for the photos is that many of the younger individuals in the frames were Children Associated with Armed Forces (so-called CAFs), but not actual fighters. They performed various support roles for older soldiers. They cleaned and carried guns when there was no fighting. Therefore, during lulls in the battle, they posed with guns in front of international photojournalists, reinforcing stereotypes of child soldiers being exploited in African civil wars.

On the streets of Monrovia, I heard numerous stories of children trying to survive by telling violent tales to journalists. One was a young boy, whom I also saw in several news reports. As a reflection of the world’s absurdity, I saw him on a printed card from an international aid agency working against the war. It showed him on the ground; he looks stressed and agitated, as he displays his “warface.” In his hands, he holds a Kalashnikov. At the time, everyone in downtown Monrovia was familiar with the boy. He was poor and homeless, living day to day. Yet, everyone agreed that he never fought. Nonetheless, he mastered the art of telling his war story through words and body language.

Several of the guys whom journalists had approached told me that it was the journalist, or more probably the local fixer of the journalist, who arranged weapons for the photo shoots. They hired it from an ill-paid soldier or the like, thereby becoming an intricate part of a post-war economy.

So, if we go back to the pictures, we can’t simply conclude that they are genuine. The third picture in this batch is definitely not. It has been used to illustrate child soldiers in the media, predominantly on social media. Still, it is taken from a fiction film called Johnny Mad Dog, directed by Jean-Stéphane Sauvaire. He has made several fiction movies that are very close to being documentaries, and in this film, he trained local youth to become actors.

A few years ago, I collaborated with Clair MacDougall, a journalist who had lived in Monrovia for many years, on a project about some of the actors in this film and how they navigated Monrovia in the aftermath of the Johnny Mad Dog movie, rather than the war itself. One of the main characters, who never fought in the war, often portrayed himself as a former child soldier—another unusual legacy of a fictional film. In the end, we never managed to write up the research, but this case is another clear example of how young people invent rebel personas to cope in the post-war period.

Images travel! In another weird twist, an image from the film (on the right-hand side) became the cover of a book from Brazil.

I wrote to the author to ask him about the background of the image, and he had found it in a local gallery. While requesting permission to use it on his book cover, he never considered asking the artist where it originated. He took it for granted that it was from a favela in Rio de Janeiro.

I will return to Liberia soon, but first, I want to discuss the fieldwork I did next. After finishing my PhD, I moved there and started spending time on this street corner in downtown Freetown, the capital of neighbouring Sierra Leone.

Pentagon Corner 2005
Israel Corner 2005

One corner of the intersection was called Pentagon, another was named Israel (second picture), and the Pentagon residents carried out their more legal activities in Pentagon—mainly washing cars—while they engaged in illegal activities, such as selling and taking drugs, in Israel. A third corner was dubbed Baghdad. Overall, a rather striking reminder of world politics.

I spent two years hanging out on that street corner—any hour of the week, any time of the day. Ten to fifteen people, mostly former combatants, became my main interlocutors. Since then, we have stayed in touch. I have followed them through their post-war traumas, understood their war dilemmas, and seen how they have struggled to survive and reconnect with society. They once said they felt stuck and believed they would never progress, but now I meet a group of middle-aged men, many of whom have children and stable jobs. On the other hand, many of them are no longer with us. The post-war period proved to be almost as perilous and uncertain as the war itself.

I risk losing you here, but I want to discuss ethnography, anthropological work, and the danger of appearing anecdotal. I mentioned I worked with 10-15 people. That’s not many. Can you truly generalise from such a small group? Can it be compared to a survey of 2-3000 former combatants? Reflecting on the two years of street ethnography, I would say that my sample included far more than just 2-3000. Roaming the streets with Pentagon guys visiting all parts of the town, and taking my old, battered jeep to remote interior areas, where we visited their families and old combatant friends, I suggest that the material I have gathered carries more weight than just 2-3000 one-off interviews. It has both breadth and depth that surpass what most quantitative research can ever envisage. And now, it spans twenty years as well, as the cherry on top. On the contrary, I question some of the findings produced by quantitative researchers regarding the civil wars in both Liberia and Sierra Leone. Quite often, their findings do not add up.

When I began my ethnographic fieldwork with the Pentagon guys, I recorded life story interviews with them. After two years, I followed up, but most of their responses had changed. Once they got to know me and realised that I could be trusted and would not misuse their stories, they became more open and adjusted their narratives to something closer to “truth”. Besides the usual scientific rigour, ethnographic fieldwork relies on three main pillars: time, trust, and a good contextual understanding – the latter partly gained by reading historical and sociological books; however, these are scarce when it comes to small African countries. Gaining a profound knowledge of history and contemporary society requires being there. Understanding the sociology of war takes time; there are no shortcuts to this complex subject.

When researching sensitive areas such as participation in rebel armies, acts of killing, maiming, raping, pillaging, and destruction, it should be pretty clear that those you speak to may not readily admit to having committed such acts. Instead, they are more likely to share their victim stories. My “claim to academic fame” is the concept of victimcy. I define it as a tactic or agency of presenting oneself as a victim. When I began my research on child soldiers in Liberia, I met many young people who were surprisingly willing to discuss their wartime experiences with me. Some of them, like Benjamin Bonecrusher in Ganta, told me long stories about how brutal he was during the war, but as time went by, and I even became friends with his dad, he agreed that he had never fought. Benjamin and his peers were on a mission to gain an education, and they often pretended to be combatants, while in reality, they were not, to evoke sympathy and help them move forward in life. Others, of course, did fight.

When I first spoke to former combatants, their accounts of how they joined were very similar. They had either been forcibly taken by rebel soldiers at gunpoint or faced a choice: shoot a relative or an elder in their village, or join the ranks. More often than not, they were then loaded onto the back of a truck and taken away from their villages. They received brief training before being sent to the battlefield. It all seemed rather straightforward. Indeed, it fit so well with what I already knew—what we in the Global North believe to be true. Every single person I talked to had been forcefully recruited.

Over the next few months of my fieldwork, however, the stories began to shift, and in time. Stories changed gradually, and they rarely acknowledged that what they first told me was false. But there was no need to. It is easy to understand that you will not, in front of a total stranger, blurt out that “I killed and maimed and I volunteered to do so.”

In the end, not a single person I worked with maintained their stories of being forcefully recruited. Yet I still do not suggest that all people readily joined the carnage of war. Because they did not, but if they were forced into battle, it was instead due to structural forces. This is what I have been busy uncovering in my research. Part of the reason stems from a deep societal roar of dissatisfaction leading to a “patience my ass” move, and I am paraphrasing the yellow T-shirt, where you try to topple a dysfunctional system. Or you fight your way out of the margins. But many joined to protect what is theirs— their family’s, their kin’s, or their community’s.

I searched my photo archive for a series of pictures but couldn’t find them. The photos are again from the Pentagon street corner in Freetown, on a muddy stretch of road. A young man poses in a smart white suit. He looks pretty out of place. In the second photo, I photograph him from behind, and then it becomes clear that the back of the suit is entirely missing; it’s held together with a single string. Research is like that; it is often not as it first appears, and sometimes, what you don’t see at first is the most important.

To me, this highlights the value of ethnography. We often say that anthropologists understand what people do, not just what they say they do. First and foremost, people do not always want to disclose everything to a stranger or researcher immediately. Why would they? However, there is another aspect: research participants themselves often overlook aspects that we are interested in knowing. It often takes time to put words to experiences, and sometimes it takes a considerable amount of time. I believe you have all experienced this. When participating in a survey, there are questions you can’t fully relate to or even understand, but you still tend to tick a box. Do you prefer not to tick the “I don’t know” box? I tend to avoid that. I often wonder about these results, and I think this applies to much of a survey’s interview material.

A few years ago, a survey agency phoned me and asked if I could spare 20 minutes to answer some questions. It was one of those surveys about media behaviour, advertising, and consumption, etc., etc. I replied, “Yes, but is it okay if I lie?” The person on the other end of the line got very upset. I guess she would have been more than happy if I had just answered the questions and lied quietly here and there. Ignorance is bliss.

What you see is not always what you get. Remember the guy in the suit.

Kroo Bay 2006

What does this image tell you?

I have worked extensively with photography over the years. I have also taught visual anthropology and sensorial ethnography, although I do not consider myself a visual anthropologist. The film Jew Man Business, which I will show in a few minutes, bears the subtitle “a documentary,” a designation we added to indicate that the film does not conform to the norms of visual anthropology. However, the film is intended to tell a different kind of war story – or perhaps more precisely, a post-war story. It is a response to the numerous documentaries made about the civil wars in Liberia and Sierra Leone, specifically, but also across the world.

Film language is inherently based on simplifications, narration, and images that can be related to; otherwise, it would not communicate effectively with the audience. Our “Northern-produced” documentaries on Liberia and Sierra Leone depict their wars, but with images adapted to fit our imagination. In many ways, such documentaries are extensions of colonial and missionary accounts. It is the strange and the violent—the oftentimes “uncivilized” and the ungodly. The plastic mask in this image—the last image—is most likely first sold in a European shop, carrying a set of meanings that transform in an African setting. It doesn’t matter that it is used in a carnival in Sierra Leone. We imagine the image elsewhere: as part of a brutal war, fought by people with logics and means radically different from ours.

The simplicity of the African ‘other’ also appears in ideas about dancing. Africans dance in rain or shine, or play, for that matter. One of the most experienced Swedish Africa correspondents noted in a report on the war in Liberia that “When there are no ongoing battles, they play war.” On the screen, there were images of young Liberians shooting at each other. These images, like those I showed earlier, were acted out, I argue, but they didn’t “play” because a sudden playfulness overcame them; they performed in front of a Northern media audience, hoping to gain some financial benefit from it. 

The exotic often featured in documentary and journalistic media, as well as in many academic writings, blocks our understanding of what truly happens on the ground. In our film, we aimed to focus on the familiar rather than the exotic. We sought to portray our experiences of former combatants and street dwellers as deeply human, or perhaps even superhuman. Therefore, by employing tropes such as love and hope instead of aggression and despair, we introduce new perspectives to the audience, I hope.

Yet, having said that, it still largely depends on the audience. When I have shown the film to African audiences, there have been many laughs. However, when it has been screened for Northern emergency and development workers, there is instead a lot of “å det är så synd om dom” – feeling pity for them. Considering your backgrounds as journalists and media scholars, it will be interesting to see how you react.

The making of a market: politicising gangs in Sierra Leone, by Kars de Bruijne

The back of a clique member

By January 2019, politicians were recruiting gang members once again, nearly a year after the Sierra Leone elections. They were asked to join in protest against the decision of a commission of inquiry to go after prominent political figures. Rival politicians, however, tried to shift gang allegiance and used an informal intelligence network to single-out, beat-up and warn potential troublemakers. By the end of the month, I spoke to one senior politician about how his party seemed to lose control over the cliques (the local name for gangs). The talk alternated between refusing to talk about cliques and him showing pictures of Commanders (COs) and so-called 5Os whom he had supported in college, bragging about how they accompanied him during rallies and boastings about how he still could command them still given his leading role in the secret society. Politics and gangs in Sierra Leone are closely intertwined.

In this post I explore the relationship between politicians and cliques: why, when and how do politicians interact with the gangs? I consider three elements in the relationship between politicians and gangs: attempts to engage in “peace-making”, the role of cliques in elections and finally the role of Sierra Leone gangs outside of elections. Based on the evidence, I suggest that the growth in cliques is in part politically sponsored and I use the metaphor of a market to describe the present situation. Prior to the emergence of cliques, political violence in Sierra Leone was best described as a post-war “oligopoly”; a few big-men had extensive connections to former warring factions and their leaders. Today, the supply of cheap violence has increased but so has the political demand. Consequently, a “free-market” for violence has emerged.

Politicising peace

Violence is a common feature of Sierra Leone politics. Yet, many politicians are uncomfortable with the role of political violence in general and the role of cliques in particular. We only have to take a look at politics in the Western Area (Freetown, both urban and rural). In Freetown, attacks on political opponents, journalists and political allies Name: Mats Utas Title: Professor in Cultural Anthropology and Head of department Department: Cultural Anthropology and Ethnology How does your research contribute to a better world? (med cirka 100-150 ord): “Anthropology should have saved the world” says one of today’s leading anthropologists, but he goes on saying that this far we have failed to do so. Anthropologists understand what people do, not what they say they do. In my research I have studied child and youth soldiers. Some of my findings are radically different from what the western world wants to believe. In one case I hung out with ex-combatants for two years. I learned to know what they did and why they did what they did, which was not at all what they initially said they did. From the beginning they made up stories because they did not trust me. My research results were often at odds with general knowledge and it took a lot of time to convince aid-organizations working with reintegration of young ex-combatants to proceed differently with their work. I was certainly not alone. A whole group of researchers armed with similar results did it together. Maybe we didn’t change the world, but in our own small way we help to make the world a better place. are common resulting in a constant threat of (small-scale) political violence. Hence, senior party members in the area are expected to control cliques and other violent groups (often through a government sponsored role in the secret societies). Yet, I spoke to various persons who were ambivalent about having to resort to (cliques) violence for political survival. This fits in with my experience of Freetown; the vast majority of politicians do make small cash payments to cliques to maintain some influence and hire them during elections. Yet, from the side of the politicians these links are accepted as a necessary evil and are generally transactional and shallow.

Over the last ten years, however, a small group of politicians (around 20) have developed extensive relations with cliques. These relations were primarily developed as a result of politically sponsored peace-deals between the three gangs (represented by a colour; blue, black or red). The earliest traces stem from 2009/2010, when one minister sponsored peace between the then Black and Blue Movement and the Members of Blood (Red) after a killing in a nightclub. An organization was created with representatives of every colour and used for political purposes. A second attempt came a few years later when another politician set his eyes on becoming a minister and brought the three gangs back together. Being able to unite them was the prime reason for granting him a ministerial position and the ties were extensively used both in and outside of (party) elections (2017-2019). A third attempt to foster peace were various initiatives in 2017 and 2018 when another politician encouraged cliques to “come together”. Also, this third peace attempt became a political instrument as it ensured loyalty to the politician during the election and thwarted the opposition.

I started to realize how “threat to Peace” and “inter-gang violence” are also used by cliques to “demand” political patronage when I called “Dog-Chain” – one clique-leader. In the months preceding this call, I had developed extensive public ties with someone central in the above-mentioned peace efforts. But when I spoke to Chain he boasted that he was the one I should deal with; “I’m the overall clique-leader, I can command cliques throughout the country” and “I am the only one who can bring all colours together”.(1) Later as we sat down he confined that: “with N.N. (a prominent) politicians you can mess around”. Tell god tenki, that Sierra Leone is not El Salvador but I couldn’t help but think about how well-developed gangs like MS-13 and Barrio-18 discovered their political strength: “We dump bodies on the street until they say yes. And they always say yes” (Farah, 2018).

Electoral Politics: Playing the Game and Politics

It is helpful to make a distinction between “Politics” and “the Game” (see Utas, 2014) to better understand the relationship between cliques and politicians. For cliques, “Politics” represents the wider socio-political system while the “Game” is their hustling for livelihood, hanging-out and intergang beefing. The relation between the two is ambivalent. For example, one gang leader had the name of a minister tattooed on his shoulder but while showing the tat, told me how he despised politicians. Despite the ambivalence, “Politics” generally takes supremacy. This is perhaps best illustrated by the explicit and negotiated agreement that governed clique involvement in the past election campaign; early 2017 heads of the Blue, Black and Red came together in a meeting sponsored by politicians and jointly agreed that “the Game was off”.

This agreement (effectively freeing gang violence for political use) had two effects. First and foremost, it meant that all inter-gang beefing was forbidden – something that was violently enforced by gang elders who sponsored the deal. Yet it also meant, that every hood and some members were free to link up with the politicians of rival political parties. As a result, political units would consist of different gangs – e.g. Blood and Black, foes in “the Game” but now brothers in “Politics”. It also meant that members of the same gang (e.g. the Black) had allegiances to different political parties. Hence, they were friends with one another in the “Game” but enemies in “Politics”. Probing into this dilemma, I was told that gang hierarchies takes precedence; those higher in the gang hierarchy (e.g. a CO) would be allowed to campaign while those “lower” in the gang-hierarchy (e.g. a 5O) had to leave the area.

The agreement and previously developed ties, meant that the role of cliques in the past election campaign has been unprecedented (it is very similar to the 2006 deals that managed the political “integration” of ex-combatants, Christensen & Utas, 2008). Many politicians employed cliques for general protection, ability to hold rallies without disruption by opponents, have large crowds (cliques can and do call on many followers) and to influence voter turn-out. My more extensive work in six hoods as well as various one-time visits to other cliques tells me that politicians at all levels and from all major political parties have employed cliques; councillors, parliamentarians and presidential flagbearers (see table 1). The only difference between them seems to be the size employed. Councillors and parliamentarian use groups of around 15 to 20 while flagbearers go up to 50.

Cliques are for hire and expect to have direct pay (see a previous post highlighting how “direct pay” is the modus operandi of gangs). Except for some gangsters at the very top, payment is not negotiated. Prices vary but are generally low – at around 100 dollars for a month’s work or 2 dollars a day for a group (the lowest was 70 dollars for about 7 months to a group of 50 cliques by one politician aspiring to be the flagbearer of a major political party). In addition, candidates are expected to provide daily moral boosters (Pega and Maggi – cheap alcohol and Ganja). Promises of jobs or large sums of money after elections – or at least continuing favours – occur but do not replace immediate pay. There is massive disillusionment among cliques as to broken promises and internally many advocate a more instrumentalist approach in the future; more and daily pay. There are clear differences between cliques and other providers in the market for violence; ex-combatants do negotiate for their services, do not always seek direct pay but instead cultivate patrimonial debt-relations.

Political competition and the use of gangs

By March 2018, when the elections were over, most politicians left the gangs and “the Game” was back on. However, during my time “Politics” regularly took precedence over the “Game”. One time I hung out with a MoB hood when two busses with Blacks arrived to see the parliamentarian they had campaigned for. Their car-wash had been demolished. As rival gangs cannot enter one another’s territory, I expected a move by MoB but to my surprise they casually dismissed this intrusion into “blood” territory as “politics” (and they recounted stories of individual Black-members who had been “very strong” during the past campaign). This is one out of various examples where “Politics” overtakes or at least influences “the Game”. For example, gangsters that “make a name” for themselves in the centre are generally considered more successful than those that operate in the East and West of Freetown. The explanation for this is that the centre is the most political and being able to succeed in that environment shows that C.O.s (Commanders) are able to play against “the system”. Another is that becoming a CO – particularly a CO of a large hood – is generally only possible when having “political connections”. The connection ensures that the CO and those who are important for the gang are protected. The connection can pay or stand for bail, influence the court, amend the charges or provide income.

Hanging out with cliques and probing into the usage by politicians, I however discovered a more troublesome reality of the extensive employment of gangs outside of elections. For reasons of space, I limit myself here to horizontal politics (competition between politicians from the same party).

One way in which cliques are used is for ministerial positions and to stave off contenders in the party. I have specifically looked into the selection of one politician whose aim was to be promoted to a minister. Both clique-leaders and the politician told me how they first organized a public appearance with clique-leaders and the minister-to-be and later a private meeting to back his candidature. Soon thereafter the politician was appointed as minister by the President as it was understood he could control (and use) the gangs. In the years that followed, this access was used to stave off contenders through an ingenious clique-payment scheme. The rental accommodation of various prominent CO’s with family (of Blue, Black and Red) was paid for and on a monthly basis large sums of money were distributed among to individual COs (80 million Leones – around 8000 dollars). These COs in turn set up a rotating system for lower COs and 5Os (some would be paid every month and others on a ‘one month on one month off’ basis) reaching perhaps close to 300 prominent cliques members. The ministers control of the cliques has been used at various times to put pressure on contenders.

Another example of politicians using cliques for horizontal competition are the October 2017 elections for the APC leadership. Nearly all big-guns had vied to become the flagbearer of the APC and many had spent a fortune on their campaigns. However, a pliable candidate was imposed by the leadership and the former president was elected as Chairman-for-Life and the Party Leader “until death do us part”. There are various reasons for the ability of the APC executive to succeed in imposing people, but control over cliques played a role. I have confirmed, that in the days before the APC-convention large cash payments were disbursed to cliques to ensure their loyalty. At the convention, gangs engaged in threats and occasional violence against other contenders. Various flagbearer contenders confirmed that they felt under physical threat. Some contenders had equally hired cliques’ services. Yet, mechanisms like the aforementioned payment scheme meant that nearly all cliques were ultimately loyal to the executive and their middle-men. Hence, cliques were used for competition over the highest offices in the party.

These examples are just the tip of the iceberg of the usage of cliques; I have seen cliques being used to attack opposing internal factions as well as to ensure protection against too centralized executive (party) power. And cliques play(ed) a substantial role in inter-party tensions in the country. Cliques are therefore “capital” worth protecting. For example, in 2016 the then Deputy Minister of Defence started a “war” on cliques, carrying out massive arrests and declaring himself “the only 5O in the country”. Yet, a handful prominent politicians hid the most prominent COs and 5Os in Guinea and Liberia to weather the storm until the elections.

Political violence: Gangs and African politics

The example of hiding clique-leaders illustrates that the prominent role of gangs has not “just” suddenly emerged. Political demand for their services has sponsored their growth. There are a couple of reasons for this increased political demand. First and foremost, the geographic imprint of the war has had the effect of unevenly distributing ex-combatants over Sierra Leone’s two political parties with the majority of ex-combatants hailing from the South and East. In power the northern-based party could draw from a much smaller reservoir of ex-combatants from the disbanded army in 1998, some parts of the RUF, some Northerners and South-Easterners who had shifted-sides. Yet, compared to the south and east, the reservoir is smaller and ex-combatants are becoming older. Hence, it was strategically understandable that younger providers of violence – i.e. cliques – were recruited.

Increasing demand for the usage of cliques is not only a matter of replacing one group with another. A second reason is that Sierra Leone’s political order is increasingly generating demands for violence. Politics in Sierra Leone is simultaneously highly centralized and hyper local with the effect of reproducing Sierra Leones bifurcated party-order everywhere at the local level. Post-war decentralization – both reinstating the chieftaincy and decentralizing central state function – has led to a continuous contest over local power and corresponding pressures. As violence was often a tool in local contests (Rosen, 2005; Tangri, 1967; Christensen & Utas 2008; Utas & Christensen, 2016), more contests has simply meant more violence.(2)

Paradoxically a third reason for the higher demand for violence is the possibility of a democratic transition. Sierra Leone has a hybrid political order; informal subnational institutions perform state functions but are in turn co-opted by the centre. Democratic transition, however, means that not only the central state but also the hybrid political order has to change; heads of unions, markets, bikes, golf-clubs and student-bodies have been replaced. Studying the power-transitions of over twenty hybrid institutions has taught me that change-by-force or management-through-force is very common. Hence transitioning and sustaining this hybrid-order given the attempts of a strong opposition to return to power, generates a continuous demand for (clique) violence.

The increased demand for violence has had a major effect on the market for violence. From 2002 to around 2012, violence was almost exclusively regulated through oligopolistic principles; a limited number of ex-commanders controlling sizeable groups of ex-combatants and long-standing patrimonial relationships with some politicians. But the increased supply of clique-violence and the increased demand for violence has given rise to a free-market. In this free-market there is an abundance of available labour, many different groups offer the same product and are therefore unable to negotiate prices, there are lower prices (cliques are being paid less than task-forces), there is less brand-loyalty (cliques can work for different sides, sometimes at the same time) and there is also a larger number of buyers. In short, a free-market for violence has been emerging where buyers are king.

One should not be fooled. The emergence of this free-market is not just a by-product of failed social policies and the “unexpected” emergence of gangs (just as the reintegration of ex-combatants did not “just” happen). Rather, it is a market that is deliberate and politically sponsored. Sierra Leone is no longer a weak state in terms of its security – it has a strong and relatively well-disciplined military and a sizeable police force. Both have deliberately not been used to combat gangs but instead have been used to sponsor the cliques for example in conniving with crime or by providing gang leaders with a ‘get out of jail’ free card. Politicians have contributed to the growth of gangs through mechanisms like the payment scheme which has allowed gang-leaders to strengthen their position within the gang and ensures some form of income. As far as I am concerned, the political sponsoring is the most worrying part of cliques in Sierra Leone. Rather than addressing real youth needs, political elites have expressly kept the youth in a position of dependence and modelled a market for violence that fits their political needs; disposable and cheap violence for hire.

Kars de Bruijne is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the University of Sussex researching Sierra Leone politics, hybridity and incentives for violence. His PhD-research (University of Groningen)looked at the role of mutual optimism for political and military decision-making in the Sierra Leone conflict based on fieldwork between 2012 and 2015. He is also a research fellow at the Clingendael Institute.

Endnotes

  1. Despite tiring everyone in explaining that I was a researcher with no means to engage in projects, clique-leaders competed over contact with me, expecting future pay-back.
  2. NEC officials told me (confirmed through local data) that that the majority of (bye-) elections has been violent.

Fragile Security or Fatale Liaisons? Reflections on 2 March 2018 Attacks in Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso, by Sten Hagberg

On Friday 2 March 2018 around 10 o’clock, two coordinated of terrorist attacks took place in Ouagadougou, the capital of Burkina Faso. The first attack involved gunmen seeking to enter the Embassy of France, exchanging fire with soldiers from Burkinabe and French special forces. Four gunmen were killed in the attack against the Embassy, and no casualties among the special forces. The second attack took place a few minutes later. A vehicle stuffed with explosives detonated at the Chief of Defence staff’s headquarters (État-major des Armées), followed by shootings between attackers and Burkinabe defence forces. Eight Burkinabe militaries were killed together with another four attackers. Moreover, there were many wounded in the headquarters. The car bomb seems to have targeted a high-level meeting of senior military staff of the G5 Sahel Joint Force. The blast destroyed the room where the meeting would have taken place had it not been relocated shortly before the attacks.

In total, the attacks led to 16 deaths, including eight assaulters. The number of wounded people amounted to some 80 persons. Yet in the afternoon the same day, French media outlets held that as many as 30 people had been killed. While this information was rejected by Burkinabe public authorities, and soon turned out to be false, it did fuel rumor and speculation, fear and anxiety. Continue reading

The protest march in Guinea and the tragedy of the stray bullet, by Joschka Philipps (Conakry, August 18, 2016)

Thierno Hamidou Diallo, may he rest in peace, was fatally shot on August 16th, 2016. He is the tragic victim of the anti-government demonstration in the Guinean capital Conakry, which he had nothing to do with. The 21-year old man was hanging out the laundry to dry on a balcony when the bullet hit him.

Until then, it had been the most peaceful anti-government demonstration that one could imagine, and probably the first after which the Guinean opposition and the Guinean government congratulated one another for “the discipline and professionalism of the security forces“ (opposition leader Cellou Diallo) and for having successfully taken “another step in our democratic advancement” (government spokesperson Albert Damantang).

About half a million people had attended the political rally at the central stadium, the atmosphere was hopeful, and when the rally was over, the great majority went back to their homes in peace. Continue reading

Prevention and militarization in Africa’s security governance by Linnéa Gelot

At the 27th African Union Summit held in Kigali, Rwanda, member states adopted a new funding model. The proposal by Dr Donald Kaberuka to institute an import levy of 0,2% on ‘eligible’ imports’ is widely hailed as a historic step forward for the organization and its ambitions to become independent and self-reliant. If implemented as expected, the Kaberuka model will fund the AU general budget and its programmes and is expected to raise approximately USD 1,2 billion beginning in 2017. Starting in 2017, each of the continent’s regions have committed to paying USD 65 m into the AU Peace Fund, which will enable Africa to fund 25% of the costs of AU peace operations. While this decision is imperative, I would like in this article to reflect on some of the broader challenges and trends in Africa’s security governance.

Continue reading

One year after the elections: a deceptive calm in Burundi? by Mimmi Söderberg Kovacs

Burundian army

Burundian soldiers patrolling the streets of Bujumbura. Photo by the author

The car stops and the driver turns off the ignition and leans back in the seat. Before us winds a long queue of cars and minivans in the afternoon sun. People have gone out of their cars and sit in the shade along the roadside. Talking, eating, listening to the radio. The atmosphere is calm and quiet, but also restrained, subdued. Everyone is careful, observant. The scenario has become common in the capital Bujumbura in recent times. Streets and intersections blocked off to all traffic, often for several hours, waiting for the President’s convoy to pass. Usually it occurs when Nkurunziza is on his way in or out of the capital to the countryside where he prefers to stay most the time. When the convoy eventually passes, nobody is allowed nearby, no cars and no people. All street corners are emptied. Even the security personnel guarding the streets must physically turn their heads away, direct their weapons in a different direction, and may not look at the passing cars.

 

Continue reading

Burundi, I, and the year of 2015, by Gudrun Sif Fridriksdottir

“I miss dancing” a friend of mine says sometime in late June. “What?” I reply, thinking I must have misheard him. “I miss dancing”, he hesitates a bit “…and information [independent media]”. I can’t help laughing “Well one is very important for democracy, the other … not so much” I claim. But then again he has a point. At this stage Bujumbura has been in turmoil for almost two months, he lives in a turbulent neighbourhood, I don’t, but we are all already very tired. People just want their regular lives back, and being able to enjoy life, not just live it. Unfortunately this is not to happen in 2015. Continue reading

Bujumbura Burning, Part II: Misrepresentations of the Burundian Crisis and their Consequences, by Jesper Bjarnesen

Since April, Burundi’s capital of Bujumbura has been the scene of violent confrontations between security forces and civilian protesters who deplore president Pierre Nkurunziza’s candidacy in July‘s presidential elections. Both his candidacy and his overwhelming electoral victory have been denounced by the African Union, the European Union, the UN and a range of governments around the world but Nkurunziza has so far succeeded in calling the bluff of the international community and continuing his authoritarian leadership. For the past several months, assassinations have been reported on a regular basis, alongside reports of attacks against the security forces by, as of yet, unidentified armed actors opposing the regime. Continue reading

Popular resistance stopped the coup, by Sten Hagberg

Last week, Burkina Faso was breaking international news. In the midst of a government meeting, soldiers of the president’s security forces – the notorious Régiment de Sécurité Présidentielle (RSP) – took President Michel Kafando, Prime Minister Isaac Yacouba Zida and other members of the government in hostage and seized power under the command of General Gilbert Diendéré. The Burkinabe public reacted with anger and resistance. The One-Year Transition in power since the Burkinabe revolution ousted the President Blaise Compaoré from power when he tried to change the constitution and pave the way for a new term now witnessed the return of the phantoms of the past. Continue reading

“Afrophobia”? “Xenophobia”? “Black on black racism”? on phobic violence in South Africa, by Achille Mbembe

“Afrophobia”? “Xenophobia”? “Black on black racism”? A “darker” as you can get hacking a “foreigner” under the pretext of his being too dark — self hate par excellence? Of course all of that at once! Yesterday I asked a taxi driver: “why do they need to kill these “foreigners” in this manner?”. His response: “because under Apartheid, fire was the only weapon we Blacks had. We did not have ammunitions, guns and the likes. With fire we could make petrol bombs and throw them at the enemy from a safe distance”. Today there is no need for distance any longer. To kill “these foreigners”, we need to be as close as possible to their body which we then set in flames or dissect, each blow opening a huge wound that can never be healed. Or if it is healed at all, it must leave on “these foreigners” the kinds of scars that can never be erased. Continue reading