Revolutionary United Front

The Revolutionary United Front (RUF) was an armed movement that began its invasion of Sierra Leone from Liberia on March 23, 1991. It presented itself as an opponent of the corrupt and tyrannical All People’s Congress government, but its arrival came after years of political repression, economic extraction, and deteriorating state capacity. In the book’s account, the RUF’s emergence is not an isolated cause of Sierra Leone’s crisis so much as a violent episode within a longer breakdown of government and public life.

Origins and Invasion

The RUF’s leader, Foday Sankoh, was a former corporal in the Sierra Leonean army. He had been imprisoned after taking part in an unsuccessful coup against the government of Siaka Stevens in 1971. After his release, Sankoh eventually went to Libya and entered a training camp run by Muammar Qaddafi for African revolutionaries. There he met Charles Taylor, who was organizing an attempt to overthrow the Liberian government.

When Taylor invaded Liberia on Christmas Eve 1989, Sankoh joined him. On March 23, 1991, Sankoh crossed from Liberia into Sierra Leone with a group of Taylor’s men, mostly Liberians and Burkinabes, and attacked Kailahun, a town on Sierra Leone’s southern frontier. The group called itself the Revolutionary United Front and announced its aim of overthrowing the All People’s Congress government. The account establishes the movement’s origin in this cross-border military venture and its stated political rationale, but does not detail the organization’s internal structure or subsequent operations.

Political and Economic Background

The government the RUF said it opposed had been shaped by the longer history of extraction in Sierra Leone. During colonial rule, Britain governed indirectly through paramount chiefs, who collected taxes, administered justice, and maintained order. Farmers were required to sell their produce through a marketing board established in 1949. Although the board was presented as a way to cushion farmers from fluctuating world prices, it paid them less than the market value of their crops and became a means of heavily taxing agricultural producers.

After independence, this system did not disappear. Siaka Stevens and his All People’s Congress intensified extractive colonial institutions, and the marketing board paid farmers a decreasing share of world prices. By the time Stevens left office in 1985, farmers’ returns had fallen to 37 percent of the world price for palm kernels, 19 percent for cocoa, and 27 percent for coffee; during his rule, payments had at times been as low as 10 percent. The government’s extraction of agricultural income was not matched by public services or broader economic development.

Stevens also consolidated political power through violence against opponents, especially members of the Sierra Leone People’s Party. He became president in 1971, and after 1978 the country had only one political party, his All People’s Congress. He was still in power in 1985 not because of a popular reelection, but after building a dictatorship. The dismantling of the railway to Bo, which Stevens regarded as a potential source of strength for his opponents, illustrates how the regime sacrificed economic activity to protect its political position.

Collapse of Government

Stevens’s chosen successor, Joseph Momoh, inherited a collapsing economy. Roads deteriorated, schools fell apart, and national television broadcasts ended in 1987 after the information minister sold the transmitter. In 1989, a radio tower relaying broadcasts beyond Freetown fell, ending transmissions outside the capital. By the end of Momoh’s rule, civil servants, teachers, and even paramount chiefs were no longer being paid; central government had collapsed.

The movement’s incursion from Liberia occurred against this backdrop. A 1995 newspaper analysis quoted in the book described border incursions, armed groups, and soldiers who became rebels as symptoms of the disappearance of government, rather than the original causes of Sierra Leone’s problems. The distinction places the RUF within a larger crisis: the state’s weakening followed political consolidation and economic extraction, while the armed incursions arrived amid the resulting disorder.

Stated Aim and Historical Significance

The RUF announced that it had come to overthrow the All People’s Congress government. That declaration supplies the movement’s stated purpose, but the evidence presented here does not establish how far its subsequent conduct matched that aim. The book instead emphasizes the conditions in which the RUF appeared: a one-party dictatorship, a hollowed-out economy, failing public infrastructure, and a central government no longer able to perform basic functions.

The organization’s invasion therefore marks a turning point in the account of Sierra Leone’s crisis without standing as its sole explanation. Its formation linked Sankoh’s political opposition to Stevens, Taylor’s Liberian campaign, and a cross-border group of fighters. Its entry into Kailahun came after a long succession of institutional choices that prioritized political control over economic development and public services. The Revolutionary United Front is presented both as an armed challenger to the APC and as part of the disorder that followed the collapse of government.