Conclusion: The RUF as a Rural Underclass Project

Abstract

War and the Crisis of Youth in Sierra Leone The armed conflict in Sierra Leone and the extreme violence of the main rebel faction-the Revolutionary United Front (RUF)-have challenged scholars and members of the international community to come up with explanations. Up to this point, though, conclusions about the nature of the war and the RUF are mainly drawn from accounts of civilian victims or based on interpretations and rationalisations offered by commentators who had access to only one side of the war. The present study addresses this currently incomplete understanding of the conflict by focusing on the direct experiences and interpretations of protagonists, paying special attention to the hitherto neglected, and often underage, cadres of the RUF. The data presented challenge the widely canvassed notion of the Sierra Leone conflict as a war motivated by 'greed, not grievance'. Rather, it points to a rural crisis expressed in terms of unresolved tensions between landowners and marginalised rural youth-an unaddressed crisis of youth that currently manifests itself in many African countries-further reinforced and triggered by a collapsing patrimonial state. Krijn Peters, a rural development sociologist by background, is a lecturer in the Department of Political and Cultural Studies at Swansea University, Wales. He specialises in armed conflict and postwar reconstruction, focusing primarily on the disarmament, demobilisation, and reintegration of child soldiers and youthful combatants. Peters is the co-author of War and Children (2009) and a Visiting Fellow at VU University, Amsterdam. Introduction 1 1 Voices from the Battlefield: Ex-Combatants' Views on Root Causes of the War and Their Reasons for Participation 18 2 The SocioEconomic Crisis of Rural Youth 34