Who is this man?

His followers worship him like a god and engage in occult practices. They eat human flesh, including the hearts of people they have murdered. They take over church services and give their own sermons in praise of their leader. At one point he is arrested for the evil he has done and placed on death row. But then he is suddenly released and within days, is sitting among world leaders. They welcome and honor him. The President of the United States talks with him on the phone. The United States secretary of state meets with him personally.

Shortly afterwards, he and his small band of followers go on to confound the United Nations’ Security Council, making them impotent in their actions toward him. The nations of the world now want him stopped, but appear powerless to do so. He commands the attention of the world’s media, night after night making headline news. His pronouncements are quoted and analyzed. He and his followers are having a significant impact on policies of the nations of the world.

Finally, in a bizarre twist, he is wounded and captured by a lone government soldier as he tries to recover goods from his abandoned house. Yet even captured, he remains a focus of power in this bitter conflict. Few think his era has ended yet.

This man is vicious rebel leader, Foday Sankoh, of Sierra Leone, West Africa.

Most Christians in the United States were only recently introduced to the Sierra Leone situation because of recent media coverage. God’s people in Sierra Leone, on the other hand, describe their experience of the last few years as coming face to face with Satan himself and living something of the biblical apocalypse.

In the late 1970s and early 1980s, my wife and I served as missionaries in Sierra Leone. She is a native of Sierra Leone, a land rich in stunning beaches, mountains, and countryside. Up until the rebel war of the 1990s, most people found it to be a peaceful place, with gentle people and a vibrant African culture. The Christian church was alive in its worship and growing very rapidly. During our time there we lived in Freetown, the capital, and traveled around the country as part of our assignment. Although there was corruption in government and restrictions on political freedoms, the churches were able to do ministry.

A rebel war, started in 1991 in the countryside, completely ruined Sierra Leone’s relative tranquility. This rebel group, calling themselves the Revolutionary United Front or RUF, was initiated by neighboring Liberians who were then engaged in their own violent civil war [see Cornerstone, issue 100 -eds]. The RUF initially attracted a few Sierra Leoneans disenchanted with the gross economic inequalities and corruption among their leaders. But soon after, they found they could advance their movement by the use of terror tactics against innocent civilians.

They grew their army with children, many not even teenagers. They would launch attacks on defenseless villages. The young boys of the villages were forced at gunpoint to kill their parents, relatives, and childhood friends. Now traumatized, orphaned, and threatened with death if they attempted to escape, these children were then adopted into the rebel family. Girls as young as eight years were taken as servants and sex slaves. Later these girls were offered “promotions” as guerrilla fighters. To induce them into battle, the children were injected with drugs.

In 1996 there were signs of hope as the people of Sierra Leone peacefully removed military rulers in Freetown and brought in a democratic government. But the rebels fighting in the bush were after total power and so did not participate in the elections. Instead, they began cutting off people’s hands so they wouldn’t be able to vote. The cutting off of arms and legs soon became one of their trademarks. They targeted local pastors and foreign missionaries, taking them as hostages or sometimes having them murdered.

In May of 1997, an army major violently overthrew the democratic government in Freetown. The mutinous soldiers then invited the rebels in the bush to join their government. There was some brief media attention of this as the United States Marines conducted an evacuation of Americans and foreign nationals. But following that evacuation, news of Sierra Leone disappeared from the TV screens and newspapers. Yet, the Sierra Leoneans left behind were to experience unspeakable horror.

It was after this 1997 coup that my wife and I felt a call by God to again serve as missionaries for Sierra Leone, though we lived outside of the country. The coup had created a complete state of anarchy and terror throughout Sierra Leone. Rebels and mutinous soldiers went from house to house terrorizing and looting at will. Our friend, the bishop of the United Methodist Church, was held captive with automatic weapons pointing to his head, his churches’ national headquarters looted and ransacked. Members of my wife’s extended family were traumatized as soldiers broke into their houses, pointed automatic weapons at their heads, and took away everything they wanted. The people of Freetown lived in nightly fear as homes were randomly picked out to terrorize. Rebels combed the streets and kidnapped teenage girls, taking them back to their barracks for forced group sex. Murder was carried out for sport. Anyone in Sierra Leone who spoke up in opposition—including church leaders—were either murdered, imprisoned, sent into hiding, or forced into exile. Although churches were allowed to operate, they were also compelled to serve as instruments of propaganda and ordered to hold “thanksgiving services” in honor of the rebels and mutinous soldiers.

Ancestral home to millions of Americans, Sierra Leone has many historical connections with the United States. The Gullah people of the Sea Islands off the coast of South Carolina and Georgia have cultural traditions and roots that go directly to Sierra Leone. American slaves who fought with the British during the Revolutionary War were repatriated to Freetown. Steven Spielberg’s Amistad also underscored the many links.

There are also many church links with Sierra Leone. When independent African-American churches were springing up among free blacks in the North in the early 1800s, they sent missionaries to Sierra Leone. Other American and British mission organizations established themselves in Sierra Leone and then trained African pastors to go out to other parts of Africa. Yet even with all these links, little attention was paid to the horrors that were taking place in Sierra Leone. Sierra Leonean immigrants in the United States suffered alone as they received news of relatives and friends back home. The suffering was that much harder, knowing that the world was paying so little attention. Many American Christians, like most others, believed that if our leaders and the media weren’t talking about it, then it must not be much of a problem.

The rebels and the mutinous soldiers were driven from Freetown by a West African peacekeeping force in February of 1998. But worse was still in store for Sierra Leone. The rebels regrouped in the tropical bush and, in “Operation No Living Thing,” intensified their campaign of terror throughout the countryside. They began to inflict unbelievable suffering on every ethnic and religious group throughout the countryside. Adults were lined up for mass executions. Pregnant women had fetuses cut from their wombs. Churches and buildings were set ablaze with villagers still in them.

On January 6, 1999, the rebels slipped past the West African peacekeeping force and took hold of a large part of Freetown. Over the next few weeks they carried out acts of terror freely on the civilian population. Hundreds of thousands were trapped in a living nightmare, huddled in their homes for many days without food, water, electricity, or phone service. Rebels entered the houses of those who showed the slightest opposition and murdered whole families. People who had taken refuge in churches and mosques were pulled out and shot at point-blank range. Wives and daughters were group-raped as family members watched helplessly. Entire neighborhoods were torched, in many cases with families burned alive in their homes. As the peacekeepers battled to regain control, rebels forced residents into the streets to serve as human shields.

Over 5,000 were killed in the Freetown attack. Another 150,000 were made homeless. Over 2,000 children were snatched from their families and taken back into the bush with the rebels. The rebels also took many hostages, including church leaders, as they were driven from Freetown. A nun from India serving with Mother Teresa’s Missionaries of Charity was murdered as rebels claimed they had too many hostages. The rebels left behind thousands of amputees in Freetown, including babies with severed arms.

As a result of the viciousness of the RUF, one half of Sierra Leone’s entire population of over 5 million was uprooted, creating the worst refugee crisis in Africa. It destroyed the country’s economy and infrastructure, turning it into the poorest nation on the planet. Yet, very few people in the United States even knew about the horrific attack on Freetown in January of 1999. That was because Clinton’s impeachment trial in the Senate had just started, consuming virtually all of the media’s attention. After the impeachment trial, the media focus then turned to Kosovo.

In July of 1999, a peace agreement was put in place for Sierra Leone. The United States, Great Britain, and other countries did not want to help fight the rebels. Instead, they pressured Sierra Leone’s democratic government to grant the entire RUF a blanket amnesty for their acts and also positions of authority in the government. The war-weary people of Sierra Leone accepted it as the bitter price they had to pay in order to end the hostilities. World leaders sought to make the peace deal work by putting their trust in the RUF and their leader, Foday Sankoh. The United Nations sent in thousand of peacekeepers, many unarmed, and many of them deployed in rebel-held territory. The world had enabled one person and his followers to come into positions of trust and authority, gained simply through wickedness and terror.

Now on account of more terror and evil acts by the RUF, the entire world’s media has had to focus on Sierra Leone. Reporters who are sent say that it is almost impossible to describe the horror and devastation people have experienced over the past few years. Time magazine [see the September 13, 1999 issue, Vol.154, No.11-eds] reported the story of Issatu, a thirteen-year-old girl who was living in Freetown during the January 1999 attack. She says, “It was a Wednesday—a very nice day with the sun shining. Two rebels came to the house, one a child soldier carrying an ax. There was about fifteen of us inside. The man picked out six and took us to the rebels’ base. I was frightened. At the base, rebels ambushed people who walked past. Pointing their guns, they made them lay down in a big fire. I thought they were going to throw me into the fire. The rebels were laughing and making jokes, except for the man who had picked us out. He cut us with the ax one by one. The adults were begging, and the children were crying. They put my hands on the ground and cut them off quickly. Everything went dark, and I fell over on the ground. After a while I got up and walked a little ways, but then I blacked out again and fell over. I don’t know what happened to the other people. I had no idea why they did that to me.”

One BBC correspondent said that he could find no words to describe the butchery. He visited one camp for victims of the January 1999 attack and heard story after story:

There’s Adama, who pleaded for the life of her grandchild, but lost her left hand in a trade for him. And there’s Brima, whose left forearm was carried away by a rebel filling a rice bag stuffed with hands. There’s Nathaniel, a seventy-two-year-old man whose right leg was purposely blown off at point-blank range. When he begged to be killed, the rebels instead slit his tongue to keep him quiet. While he was recovering in a Freetown hospital, his wife was burned alive in their home.

From what was unleashed in Sierra Leone, Christians should clearly see the demonic. The Bible tells us that Satan lies, steals, and destroys. This is what the RUF rebels do: kill, rape, loot, kidnap, burn down, and leave people without limbs.

These past few years have been very difficult for the few of us who were trying to bring more attention to the evils taking place in Sierra Leone. At times, we felt that people thought we were making it up, or greatly exaggerating. We could almost hear them saying, “If it is really that bad, then why isn’t our government doing something like they did in Kosovo?” We actually received strength from Christian believers we know in Sierra Leone. We heard amazing stories of God’s grace in the middle of all that evil.

One of my wife’s elderly aunts told of an escape from the rebels through the appearance of an angel. In another testimony, a pastor I had worked with in Sierra Leone told me of a time when he, his family, and a group of people they were sheltering were trapped in a rebel attack. A few of the rebels came into their house. One pushed an AK-47 gun into his stomach and said he was going to kill him. They didn’t. Then the rebels demanded to take the young women the pastor was sheltering. Although in the end the rebels didn’t take anyone, they lit fires around the house before they left. Miraculously, the people in the house extinguished the fires and remained unharmed. The pastor’s faith was greatly strengthened, as he knew that only God had saved them.

One Christian was able to say this after living through a rebel attack, “I am so grateful that God allowed me to go through this experience because I know that there is nothing to fear from death. As the rebel cocked his gun and pushed the barrel into my chest, I was overwhelmed by a deep sense of peace and assurance that soon I would be with Jesus!” A British missionary friend of ours has said that his remaining in Freetown, rather than fleeing during the rebel attack, meant more to the people he served than all the sermons he had preached there for over twenty years. My wife and I have heard reports of almost every church in Freetown doubling its membership since the January 1999 rebel attack.

During the time I was in Sierra Leone, I served on the board of directors executive committee for Youth for Christ, International. It is hard to imagine the task now facing youth workers in Sierra Leone. A recent newsletter from the director of Youth for Christ in Sierra Leone relays the story of a child they are working with. His name is Sorie. Sorie gives them his story:

When I was ten years old, the rebels captured me as I was going home after school. They forced me to be involved in killing, hacking off limbs, cutting throats, drinking human blood, and doing drugs. Because of my viciousness in combat, I was named “Corporal rough neck.” I remember that day when a pastor in the bush was telling us that what we were doing was evil and that God was surely going to reward us accordingly. We just killed him.

I was taught to kill. If I didn’t, the person I was ordered to kill would be handed the gun to kill me. I cannot even tell you how many human beings I have killed—maybe over two hundred. Now I thank God that I have decided to come out of the bush because some of the rebels are beginning to kill themselves and go out of their minds. Please pray for me. You are now my friends [he tells the Christian youth workers].

Sierra Leone presents both an opportunity and a lesson for Christians. Those of us who are citizens of wealthy nations have a call to serve those who are poor. While governments may neglect Sierra Leone because they find helping that country not to be in their national interest, it is the interest of citizens of God’s Kingdom. In Matthew 25:40, Jesus tells us, “Whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers of mine, you did for me.” How significant is it that Sierra Leone is now ranked as “the poorest of the poor” among the countries of the earth?

People can become missionaries to places like Sierra Leone, without ever setting foot in the country. We can learn about the needs and dedicate ourselves to pray for the people and churches in Sierra Leone. We can show love and support to Sierra Leoneans and those from other nations experiencing trouble. We can give to Christian ministries in Sierra Leone. People can sponsor a child. Connections can be made even through the Internet.

The lesson is that many of the biggest spiritual battles may be taking place far out of sight of the world’s media. These include the battles in our hearts, which can motivate us to action. Demonic forces can quickly grow out of control if Christians turn their hearts away from the poor and the suffering.

Ron Mitchell is a former United Methodist missionary in Sierra Leone. He and his wife, Velma, began the Sierra Leone Emergency Network three years ago. Ron’s book, Organic Faith, is published by Cornerstone Press.

First published in Cornerstone (ISSN 0275-2743), Vol. 29, Issue 119 (2000), p. 25
© 2000 Cornerstone Communications, Inc.
Electronic version may contain minor changes and corrections from printed version.