Pro-government militiamen leave Freetown

Pro-government Kamajor militiamen have started to leave Freetown as government agents enforce a weapons ban in the capital, Information Minister Julius Spencer told IRIN on Tuesday. Only regular army, police and UN peacekeeping forces are allowed to carry weapons in the city. The ban, announced by state radio some two weeks ago, is aimed at improving security in the capital. Spencer said the Civil Defence Forces (CDF), the pro-government militia that includes the Kamajors, were now leaving Freetown for areas where there is fighting. There have also been reports that CDF in western Freetown have been intimidating drivers and pedestrians, a charge which, according to AFP, they have always denied. However, the deputy spokesman for the United Nations Secretary-General, Manoel de Almeida, said in New York that on Monday, Nigerian UN troops in Freetown stopped four CDF members from robbing a civilian. “The four CDF members were later arrested and handed over to civil police,” he said. The CDF are now in an uneasy coalition with Johnny Paul Koroma’s Armed Forces Revolutionary Council (AFRC) and the new Sierra Leone Army. The three groups have been helping to defend President Ahmad Tejan Kabbah’s government against attacks by the Revolutionary United Front (RUF) rebels since early May. However, there is underlying tension between the new allies. It stems from events surrounding Koroma’s coup in May 1997, when the majority of the army deserted Kabbah and joined the AFRC because they were badly paid, AFP reported. Nigerian-led ECOMOG forces, aided by the CDF, drove the AFRC/RUF out of Freetown in February 1998, restoring Kabbah’s government.