Sierra Leone - Ahmed Foday Sankoh and the Revolutionary United Front (RUF)

RUF specializes in atrocities. Mutilation of civilians is their favorite tactic. Most armies in the world are made up of Bravo Company, Charlie Company, 101st Airborne, etc. Not RUF. Their fighting units go by the tags of Burn House Unit, Cut Hands Commando, Blood Shed Squad and Kill Man No Blood Unit, whose specialty is beating people to death without a drop of blood being spilled. The Born Naked Squad strips their victims nude before killing them. Some noted commanders of the Cut Hands Commando include Captain 2 Hands, Commander Cut Hands (a 15-year-old boy), Dr. Blood, Betty Cut Hands (a woman), OC Cut Hands and Adama Cut Hands. RUF soldiers' eating of victims is not uncommon. The most favored entrÄes are the liver and heart. Another nasty trick the guerrillas employ on captives is the slashing of ankle tendons and neck muscles. Nice guys. Makes the Khmer Rouge look like a ladies' field hockey team.

Sankoh, RUF's leader, is a former army corporal and photographer. A member of the Jemme tribe, he joined the Royal West African Forces in 1956 and was trained as a wireless operator by the British. In 1961, Sankoh was put in jail for taking part in an attempted coup against Joseph Momoh. Pardoned in 1980, he traveled to the United States to meet with black Muslim groups. Returning to Sierra Leone, he put together a cadre of like-minded revolutionaries and knocked on Gadaffi's door for some bullets and bucks. While there, he was introduced to Charles Taylor, the chief instigator of Liberia's misery. Taylor used the border areas of Sierra Leone for his bases, and Sankoh received guns and support from Taylor during the late '80s and early '90s. In April 1992, a group of peach-fuzz army officers calling themselves the National Provisional Ruling Council (NPRC) overthrew the new government of Momoh, and 28-year-old Valentine Strasser took over, only to be bounced by another soldier who then set up democratic elections. All of this transpired without Sankoh even being invited to the inauguration or getting to threaten the boss. Strasser did bring in Executive Outcomes, who pushed Sankoh's tattered RUF rebels even further into the bush and obscurity. Sankoh was arrested during an early 1997 trip to Nigeria but emerged as Johnny's No. 1 man after the coup.

But it's been a roller-coaster ride for Sankoh. Under Koroma, he was Deputy AFRC Chairman and second-in-charge in Sierra Leone. But when the Nigerians found out, they hustled him from his five star suite at the Abuja Sheraton to house arrest in a neighborhood said to also be the upscale holding pen for Moshood Abiola the democratically elected but jailed president of Nigeria. Kabbah's regime sentenced Sankoh to death, only to release him in April 1999 to kickstart the peace process. With the July 1999 treaty in the books, Foday's enjoying another 15 minutes in the sun as a ranking member of Kabbah's cabinet. The guy commutes regularly between death row and a red carpet.

Sankoh's 3,000-man RUF, formed in 1991, is predominantly Muslim and consists mainly of ragtag adolescents and villagers forced into fighting. Libya has been a major supplier of arms and money to RUF. The group has an office near the Liberian border and a press office in Abidjan (run by Sankoh's brother, Alimany Sankoh) in Ivory Coast.

Government of Sierra Leone

http://www.sierra-leone.org/govt.html