The Real History Behind 'Beasts of No Nation' | Sierra Leone Civil War 1991-2002

sierra leone is a small country in west africa and today i'm talking about sierra leone not because it's been in the news although i am going to be talking about some of its history but because i recently watched beasts of no nation which is a film about a child soldier it's one that i've made a film about before on this channel and i wanted to talk about this because a lot of my friends asked which conflict is this film actually based on in this video i'd like to answer that question as well as looking more in depth at the conflict it is largely based on which is to do with the sierra leone civil war now it doesn't actually specify in the film beast of donation in which specific country it is and some major details have been changed although it's clear that it's set somewhere in west africa and again the most parallels are with the civil war in sierra leone now sierra leone had been a british colony until 1964 when it gained its independence however within several years the presidents became increasingly corrupt and the system failed to help the people despite the fact that they had access to a lot of raw resources especially diamonds in the area as these diamonds were actually mined by the famous the bears company and yes that's how it's pronounced because they it was set up by dutch brothers rather than de beer in any case they were extracting the diamonds from mines in sierra leone which was enriching these foreign companies as well as the presidents rather than that trickling back to the actual economy which led to widespread resentment and by 1984 de beers actually pulled out of the country due to the worsening situation and this meant that actually the diamonds were all being illegally traded and smuggled out of the country which led to even more disenfranchisement and discontent with the actual system in place which was fertile ground for rebellion this would come in 1989 already because of a civil war that happened in the neighboring country of liberia and this was the first liberian civil war this brought some 80 000 refugees from liberia largely women and children go across the border into sierra leone and these would be recruited by potential rebel groups in the years to come the rebels would also be inspired by the story of charles taylor who was one of the rebel leaders in liberia who had successfully come back stormed the capital and become its president and some within sierra leone were hoping that they could do the same charles taylor in fact with his new government in liberia also supported several of these dissident groups within sierra leone just before they started to rebel and would continue to do so throughout the civil wars in the sierra leone itself this first rebel group that appeared was called the ruf which stands for the revolutionary united front this was made up largely of disenfranchised unhappy youths who had grown up in a country that wasn't serving them their leader which was fodei sanko had personal ties with charles taylor and this in 1991 started the sierra leone civil war when they rebelled against the country and tried to take part of the country for themselves now once again their rebel group was made up of these unhappy youths as well as then going into these refugee camps and trying to bribe people over to join their side and when this didn't work in fact they ended up kidnapping lots of children and child soldiers would be employed by all sides during the sierra leone civil war which is something of course the beasts of no nation is all about at the end of the day now the sla which is the abbreviation for the sierra leone army was meant to quell this rebellion in fact they probably could have done so quite easily but this didn't end up happening for several reasons mainly because they were actually quite badly funded they had very low morale and later on as well they started to actually get more close to the rebels themselves as they too were unhappy a lot of the time with the political system and so it meant that the ruf at the end of the year had actually taken over about two-thirds of sierra leone itself meanwhile the army strategy became that they moved people into so-called strategic hamlets this was something that the us had done in vietnam as well when you've got an insurgency in the countryside you can't control those rural areas so you move lots of villages together into these fortified little areas that you can control within the countryside and try and flush out the insurgents that way although invariably this seems to go wrong and actually what would end up happening is that the sla would move people out of their villages and then go back to loot the villages themselves as well as often summarily executing villagers without trial who was suspected of having helped the enemy and this ultimately led to the people of sierra leone especially in the rural areas actually drifting closer towards the rebel side rather than the army and actually a lot of the time even the army joined together with the rebels with the ruf to raid the villagers themselves and to enrich themselves when they go control of diamond mining areas there's a specific label in sierra leone for the soldiers that did this and this was sobel which stood for soldier by day rebel by night as they often were supposed to be fighting one another but in fact a lot of the time were helping each other to enrich themselves from these abandoned villages and from those who stayed behind to protect this and this is something that we see in beasts of no nation as well when the men stay behind in the village to protect the stores from the looters which could be the army and the rebels in many cases this also meant that the local populations in rural areas who couldn't rely on their army and who were at the mercy of these bands of rebel youths started to rely far more on a group called the kama jos and these essentially the kama jaws word is a mende word it's a local language especially in the south of the country from the term kamasor and this essentially meant these hunters often with kind of magical ritual powers and they had in the past been employed by various chieftains as a kind of bodyguard and were now employed as a kind of local militia to stop looting from the army and from the various rebel groups these are very interesting because they were very effective at fighting against them because they were hunters so they knew the terrain well and they could far better utilize geria warfare against both the army and the rebels and greatly deterred looting and abuse of the local population at least initially by 1992 several figures within the army were unhappy with how the situation was going because frontline troops were very underpaid and as well all of this coercion that was happening with the various rebels and this led to a coup d'etat which was spearheaded by six army figures young men in the army and the leader of which was called valentin strasse not a relation of the german strasses i might add and he formed the nprc which is the national provisional ruling council which essentially was a military junta that took over the government and then continued the war it's around this time as well that echo mog got involved this rather long acronym is for the even longer economic community of west african states monitoring group which essentially was nigeria sending soldiers in to try and keep the peace between them and to support the government against the rebels although their reputation is somewhat murky within the country itself nevertheless with a new man in charge of the army and with this nigerian forces helping them they were able to push the rebels back very effectively this was for several reasons the rebels as well were having problems with their supply because in neighboring liberia the war was turning against charles taylor as the rebel groups against his presidency were gaining more territory they were increasingly being cut off from those they were supplying weapons to in sierra leone furthermore they lost the important southern mining districts where all these diamonds were being mined so the ruf had also lost a very large portion of its income with the government now back in control of these so hopefully getting on top of paying its army which also led to less coercion with rebel forces and it seemed like in 1993 the war was pretty much won for the government but this didn't turn out to be the case for several reasons basically the army was still very unhappy with how things were going in the country due to again arrears in pay and the fact that actually keeping the war going was more advantageous for the army for several reasons especially because they were in control of all of these diamonds of the new diamond mines that they had won over and also that actually the junta which was this military government that had been installed could remain in power as long as the war was going and justifiably so but as soon as the war was officially over it meant they had to hand over power to a civilian elected government once more so the war was kept going at a low ebb that also led to the army again being out on the front lines for much longer without much to do and actually they started to trade weapons with the ruf in exchange for more money and so there was this lucrative trade of weapons going from the sla to the ruf and money exchanging hands this was the situation until 1995 when indeed an alliance was formed between various dissident groups within the army and the ruf who then went on to take over several of these important mining areas and this then cleared the way again the army was unhappy because now the government had lost its source of diamonds so they weren't able to pay them properly and this opened the way for the ruf to launch an offensive against the capital and they came very close to capturing freetown itself while they were within several tens of kilometers strasser had to act quickly and so he actually got in touch with a south african group called executive outcomes which had been made up of the old members of the sadf a largely white south african officer corps with angolan and black south africans fighting in the ranks that was a mercenary group he paid them around 1.8 million dollars a month which is a huge bill to come in and to save the situation which is something that they did incredibly effectively within just 10 days of executive outcomes coming and fighting against the rebels they'd pushed them back 60 miles from the capital and in the next months they continue to take over the diamond mining areas once again and now holding them as well as killing hundreds possibly thousands of rebels that were rebelling against the government and so this was incredibly successful in 1996 as well the government made an agreement with the kamajaws who had of course been fighting both the government and the rebel groups because of their abuses of the local populations in rural areas and so together they were also a factor in pushing back the ruf and this then led to the abijan peace accord which was signed in neighboring cote d'ivoire and also too for the first time in 1996 since 1992 an election for the people of the country which was then done and they got a new president that year in 1997 he had the very unenviable task of having to pay off the executive outcome for of course their huge bill which they were getting pressure from from the international monetary fund who had been supplying the government so that they could pay these mercenaries to essentially keep the government alive the problem was that within the abijan peace accords they had said that the executive outcomes would be paid until a new neutral peacekeeping force had moved in to take their place and ensure that the rebels would remain defeated however in 1997 he had to pay off executive outcomes and let them go but this was before that this peacekeeping force had been assembled and so the question was who was going to step into the power of act the arrest of sanko in neighboring nigeria remember he was the leader of the ruf as well as this going against the eo and actually bring it all going against the avidjan accords and bringing the eo out before the another peacekeeping force had been brought in meant that the ruf were able to regroup lick their wounds and launch another huge offensive the army at this time would also be instrumental and was once again feeling like it was being undermined by other factors they felt that their role in the defense of the country of course fighting against the iof had greatly diminished largely because of the kama jaws being so much more effective at fighting against them and thought that the abhijan accords had taken much power away from them because of course they had been the junta that was leading the country and then they were forced to take a back seat while the ruf were once again on the rise and this led to in 1997 the pademba road prison breakout where several leaders of the armed forces were able to break out around 600 political prisoners from the army and then to arm them thus creating a new military force that was to take over the government known as the afrc or the armed forces revolutionary council the leader of this group was one of the prisoners called johnny paul koroma and he soon received support from an unlikely source which was sanko under house arrest in nigeria actually saying that the ruf would support this new afrc against the new government under kaba so the new army junta of the afrc was now working together with the supposed old enemy but really the relationship had always been a bit ambivalent of the army and the ruf were now working together and with around 5 000 rebels were marching on the capital virtually unopposed by any loyalist parts of the sla cava actually had to flee the capital very soon because it fell without much resistance to the neighboring country of guinea and it seemed like the war was over and this actually is when beasts of no nation starts because we can hear on the radio there's a scene where his father is listening to the radio and he's teasing his grandfather when on the radio with the coup is announced although a few things are changed uh a little bit it's not exactly the sierra leone civil war and as i said it they've made it this way i think on purpose and quite cleverly because they it could apply to many a civil war in west africa and indeed in other parts of africa as well at the time but many of the things do line up so this afrc this new junta that had overthrown the previous government is referred to as the nrc in the film and these are the national reformation council that appears we also see of course the nigerian peacekeeping soldiers at the start and later at the end as well although a slight change from real life is that in real life they were called echo mog and in the film they are called echo mod not exactly sure why that small change of course we see that the nrc so really this new junta they are responsible for the deaths of his father and older brother when they kill them on trumped-up charges and this of course is something that happened quite a lot with the army working together with the rebels for example and mistreating people in the the countryside often looting and taking their things as well the ruf are instead referred to in the film as the plf we never actually know what this stands for probably people's liberation front or something similar the ndf then are the native defense forces in the film and if it wasn't obvious already these are based on the gamma jaws it's quite easy to see from their kind of regalia the fact that their rhetoric is about taking power back into the hands of the people as well as protecting the people in the towns from the iof the rebels and from the national army as well they're very interestingly portrayed in the film and it's not an exact reference and i think that's why they have decided to change up the names a little bit because while it's based largely on the narrative of the sierra leone civil war and the various factions it does have a little bit of ambiguity in the storyline it is interesting as well this scene was one of my particular favorites it's the initiation scene this kind of ritualism and that you can see the native leaders the tribal leaders these religious leaders that are initiating the new warriors into the group also the belief in the grigris which are these i talked about them in my video on the central african republic and the anti-balaka rebels that are still fighting there today and these more kind of traditional beliefs and traditional ideas of warfare that you also see in the chants that are being done in the film that is all definitely based on the kama jaws although a lot of the time they're kind of terrorizing the civilian population and particularly maiming and killing and terrorizing certain areas and towns as collaborators and traitors that's based a little more on the ruf who used that as a very conscious specific tactic and became feared and hated for the fact that they would go into towns and commit atrocities like this although the camajo leaders in the early 2000s were also indicted for war crimes so i don't want to say that they were entirely blameless or angels themselves they certainly were not they were a militia in africa at the end of the day but a lot of the film is based on a mixture of the kamadors and the ruf especially the commander seems to be based on some of the ruf figures uh with the kind of rhetoric of the push for the capital that we see happening in the film the gaining momentum as well as the fact that sanko actually had several of his commanding officers executed or killed in mysterious ways which is something that also happens in the film but needless to say the kama jaws as the ndf were very successful at pushing back these rebel factions and the sierra leone army as well when they fought against them and to to safeguard the the local population back in real life together with echo mog they were able to push back and to take the capital from this new alliance of the afrc and the ruf and to re-install kaba as the president although outside of the capital in the rural areas they were able to make no headway and so really they secured the capital but the rural areas were still a zone of civil war between the ios afrc and the camachos this unhappy status quo for the new ruling government meant that in 1999 it was very unfavorable terms that they got from the low me peace accord with the ruf basically it meant that sanko became the vice president of the country as well as being allowed to control the diamond mines and so became very rich indeed a deal which caused international outcrying as though his troops were rebels and they had committed many atrocious war crimes against the population of sierra leone however the ruf would have to be disbanded which large parts of it did this led in turn to the ddr process which was disarmament demobilization and reintegration which is something that you see at the end of the film where he's in a center for all of these boys that have been part of militias to try and get them to talk about their experiences but importantly also to learn new social skills so that they could re-enter society with a new job and have something else to do but as you also saw in the film that was very difficult not everyone was particularly happy with that as all many of these often children had known was war in 2001 however the situation was still war-like because many elements of the iuf had actually refused to give up the afrc had also splintered into many gangs like the west side boys which continued really as militias in the jungle to fight an offensive against them but in 2001 45 000 weapons had been handed in through the ddr process and around 70 000 militiamen had handed themselves in and been reintegrated into society which was a big success back in 1999 however the situation was that bad that the un sent in a u.n mission to deal with it yuna missile and this was the united nations mission sierra leone which you'd never have guessed um but they were pretty useless the nigerian soldiers as well were blamed by unamsil for actually helping the rebels and working with them in the diamond areas to smuggle them out and gain a profit the nigerians have also been blamed for summarily executing civilians in the country and so had quite a bad reputation there for the various things that they had done the un peacekeepers on the other hand were not allowed to fire back unless fired upon and so it meant that large numbers of them including at one point 500 in one go were captured and taken hostage by the rebels and so really did not do much to help the situation in the country and actually often exacerbated the violence this led to in 2000 the british getting involved in sending in their army to rescue any british citizens in the area although later they extended their remit and actually started to push back the rebel forces themselves this was also helped by the fact that guinea a neighboring country started to do air strikes against those ruf bases along the border and shut off guinean dissident groups from supplying them furthermore the un imposed sanctions on liberia for further supporting the rebels until they stopped doing this this was again largely through an illicit diamond trade which cut off their supply line and by 2002 the ruf had called it quits and the sierra leone civil war had ended having cost around 50 000 human lives all right everyone that is the story of the sierra leone civil war mixed in with some comparison to the story as it's told in beasts of donation now as i say beasts of the nation doesn't claim to be about the sierra leone civil war and i think cleverly has done so because it could be about many different wars in that part of the world in africa and at the end of the day it's more important that it's about the story of children and how they are abused and indoctrinated into a cycle of violence as a child soldier if you haven't seen it i would highly recommend checking it out it's not an easy film it is not a film that will make you very cheerful it's a very moving film but i think a very worthwhile film indeed and you know can make us feel very grateful about our lives which i think is a really good thing anyway thank you very much for watching i hope this has been interesting do let me know any suggestions for future videos about these kind of topics in the comments below um and yeah thank you so much for watching everyone hope you have a great rest of the week i've been hilbert and this has been the history

Channel: History With Hilbert

Views: 223,247

Keywords: Sierra Leone, Beasts of No Nation, Real history Beasts of No Nation, Beasts of No Nation Bridge Scene, Beasts of No Nation Based On, Sierra Leone Civil War, Liberian Civil War, Kamajors, RUF, Idris Elba Beasts of No Nation, Is Beasts of No Nation True

Id: _A7I9mt2yFg

Length: 22min 11sec (1331 seconds)

Published: Fri Mar 05 2021