Kamajors returning to their home areas

Sierra Leone's Kamajor militiamen have started returning to their farms and villages following the peace agreement signed on 7 July by the government and the Revolutionary United Front (RUF), according to various sources.

Keith Martin, a Freetown-based adviser on demobilisation issues for the British Department for International Development, told IRIN he was "aware that the Civil Defence Force (CDF) were returning spontaneously to their villages".

The CDF comprises militia groups such as the Kamajors, which supported the government of President Ahmad Tejan Kabbah against the RUF.

Martin said that during a visit last week to the traditional Kamajor strongholds of Bo in the south of Sierra Leone and Kenema in the east, local politicians and members of the Economic Community of West African States Monitoring Group (ECOMOG) told him that large numbers of Kamajors were going back home.

Chief Hinga Norman, Deputy Minister of Defence and chief coordinator of the CDF, was quoted by Reuters as saying over state radio that they "should be ready to go back to their respective towns and villages in the provinces, to their farms and work towards development."

The Kamajors are traditional hunters who have always helped to defend local communities against external threats. Their involvement in the war increased following multi-party elections in 1996, which Kabbah won. Clashes between the rebels and the Kamajors intensified further as a peace deal struck late that year in Abidjan unravelled.

The Kamajors later fought alongside ECOMOG, which restored Kabbah to power in March 1998, nine months after he was ousted by a military junta.