The Sierra Leone Civil War and Civil Defense

Abstract

At the start of the war in 1991, the Sierra Leone Army (SLA) started to make use of local hunters as scouts during army patrols, drawing advantage from their knowledge of the local terrain. Simultaneously, local communities began to organize defense groups to fill the gap left by the underfunded and poorly equipped army that was providing poor protection from the advancing rebel forces. Like any war, the civil war in Sierra Leone was the result of a series of interconnected internal and external developments, and the specific form it took reflected these. To understand why the Kamajors became key players in the war and why chose to incorporate magic and traditional beliefs in the conduct of their civil defense, we must understand both how the war played out and how civil defense was organized. These developments form an important part of the field and over time came to impact also on a habitus shaped in part by war.