The West Side Boys: military navigation in the Sierra Leone civil war

Abstract

The West Side Boys were one of several military actors in the Sierra Leonean civil war (1991–2002). A splinter group of the army, the WSB emerged as a key player in 1999–2000. In most Western media accounts, the WSB appeared as nothing more than renegade, anarchistic bandits, devoid of any trace of long-term goals. By contrast, this article aims to explain how the WSB used well-devised military techniques in the field; how their history and military training within the Sierra Leone army shaped their notion of themselves and their view of what they were trying to accomplish; and, finally, how military commanders and politicians employed the WSB as a tactical instrument in a larger map of military and political strategies. It is in the politics of a military economy that this article is grounded.

African conflicts and informal power: big men and networks

“…6 See Utas and Jörgel (2008) for an analysis of the history and military trajectory of the West Side Boys.…”

“…Recounting his admission to the GPP, Ato explains that he feared confusion and infiltration when he observed that GPP militia members were dressed in the same way as the rebels he had seen on TV: wearing no proper boots (rangers) but plastic sandals (lèke), and merely uniform trousers plus T-shirt (bas treillis) (Ato Belly 7/6/2008). 8 As the late GPP 'general' Shango (14/6/2008) explains, dressing up like the rebels was sometimes part of the tactics used mainly on the western front (see Utas and Jörgel 2008 for parallels). In other circumstances, wearing the full uniform was indispensable and an important part of the military etiquette.…”

“…For research purposes, articulation 'points rather to the necessity of teasing out, historically and ethnographically, the various ways in which room for manoeuvre is present but never unconstrained' (Li 2000: 153). Navigation, as used by Vigh (2008) and Utas and Jörgel 2008), partly based on Honwana (2000: 77-8) and De Certeau (De Certeau 1984), is precisely conceived in order to account for this 'room for manoeuvre'. Situations of crisis, according to Vigh (2008: 18), 'force agents to take into account not only how they are able to move within a social environment, but also how the social environment moves them, and other agents within it, as they seek to traverse envisioned trajectories'.…”

“…Are they citizens or subjects (Mamdani 1996), or neither (Fanthorpe 2001)? On the African continent, new groups rage against the machine (Bøås and Dunn 2007), turn abject heroes, antisocial by necessity (Utas 2008a), or just hustle the system Utas and Jörgel 2008). In Sierra Leone and Liberia, but most recently among the Somali diaspora in Nairobi, I have researched how people affected by war arrange themselves in various local, and chiefly informal, organizations around both social and physical security, protecting themselves in part against the state and emissaries of the state.…”

“…Their traditional subordinates are seeking alternative modes of accumulation and thus, as the traditional rulers' ability to control people decreases, they also possess less 'wealth in people' (see Miers and Kopytoff 1977;), enabling others like Ag Bahanga to become Big Men who those searching for alternatives can 'be for'. This is related to the new economic opportunities of the trans-Saharan trade -opportunities that increase at least the potential for violent upward mobility for those willing and able to use force, and thereby also for changes in the power relations of Tuareg society (see Bøås 2007b;Utas and Jörgel 2008).…”