Sierra Leone (catch all)

[William F. Owen]

Sankoh and the RUF soon discovered the importance and value of diamonds. As Sankoh and his soldiers took over mining areas in southern Sierra Leone, he found himself with a product he could barter. Sankoh approached Taylor about an exchange and Taylor was interested. Taylor needed a way to finance his operations in Liberia and diamonds were a commodity not easily traced. He established a net- work of illegal buyers and sellers from various countries and was able to smuggle weapons and ammunition to barter with Sankoh and to support his war.

I believe this is not correct. Taylor sent Sankoh to secure the diamond fields as a a source of funding and there are ground to believe that he was directed to do this by outside agents from a middle-eastern nation.

There is also good grounds to believe that the RUF and NPRC may have tactically colluded in keeping the conflict going to secure sources of diamonds for them both.

In April 1995 the NPRC leader contracted with EO to conduct military operations in Sierra Leone against the RUF forces. In addition to paying EO $1.8 million per month for their military services, Strasser also entered into an agreement with Branch Energy and its subsidiary Diamond Works. EO and Diamond Works were financially linked, though the details were murky. The plan called for EO to recapture the diamond mines from the RUF, after which Diamond Works would extract the diamonds using local labor. In exchange for the effort, Diamond Works would pay the govern- ment 37.5 percent of the net profits.8 Strasser believed that if he could return the diamond mines to government control heEO and have enough cash to run the government.

Just as someone asked Taylor to go and secure the diamond fields, someone else asked and funded EO and some other organisations to go and take them back. I have it on extremely good authority that Strasser was "told" to hire them.

The simple choice for those interested in the diamonds was whether to use and insurgency to get them or a bunch of Mercenaries. They may even have done both. The same Middle Eastern elements were in play for most of the war and millions of dollars were accrued, possibly to fund illegal activities in the Middle East.

Hope this helps.