Sankoh, Koroma brief their followers on DDR

Former rebel leaders travelled on Wednesday to the northern town of Port Loko to brief their followers on Sierra Leone’s disarmament, demobilisation and reintegration programme, Presidential Adviser Septimus Kaikai told IRIN on Thursday.

Revolutionary United Front (RUF) leader Foday Sankoh and Johnny Paul Koroma, head of the former Armed Forces Revolutionary Council (AFRC) were accompanied by staff of the UN Observer Mission in Sierra Leone and troops from ECOMOG, the West African peacekeeping force that fought the RUF/AFRC during the rebel war.

Sankoh and Koroma conducted a similar exercise last week, when they spoke to ex-combatants at the demobilisation centre at Lungi, Kaikai added.

Humanitarian personnel working in Port Loko district, some 80 km from Freetown, reported that groups of AFRC were harassing civilians last week along the road connecting Port Loko town to Lungi, site of Sierra Leone’s international airport.

Efforts are underway to enable Sankoh and Koroma to inform their followers in other parts of the country on the DDR process, sources said. “They will be travelling to the Eastern Province tomorrow by helicopter,” Kaikai told IRIN.

An interagency humanitarian assessment mission to the eastern district of Kailahun from 29 September to 1 October said in its final report that “the combatants are also quite prepared for DDR and are anxiously waiting for it to commence.” Much of Kailahun was controlled by the RUF during Sierra Leone’s eight-year war.

The report added that RUF leaders needed to work harder to explain to their men what package they would receive and that the rest of the population needed to understand its role in the “general reintegration process”.