SIERRA LEONE LEADER DECLARES DISARMAMENT

February 4, 2004 – (AP) President Ahmed Tejah Kabbah and international sponsors declared a successful end to disarmament in Sierra Leone on Wednesday, closing a final chapter in an 11-year war that was one of the modern world's most vicious.

Disarmament took guns out of the hands of 72,490 former fighters in the West African country, including 6,845 children, Kabbah said on state radio.

Other African nations already are studying Sierra Leone's campaign as a model, viewing it as ``the best practical example throughout the world of a successful disarmament, demobilization and reintegration program,'' said Eileen Murray of the World Bank, one of the effort's funders.

Those disarmed included rebels, as well as militia fighters and so-called civil defense forces who fought on behalf of the government.

Rebels led by guerrilla leader Foday Sankoh launched Sierra Leone into violence in 1991, becoming notorious for lopping off the hands, feet, lips and ears of men, women and children -- even newborns.

Rebels targeted civilians, raiding villages and attacking the capital, Freetown, in a terror campaign aimed at winning control of the nation's diamond mines and government.

Peace took hold only in early 2002 after forces of Britain, the United Nations and neighboring Guinea finally quashed the rebels. Sankoh died in U.N. custody last year, of natural causes.

Kabbah presided over the official closure Tuesday of the National Committee for Disarmament, Demobilization and Reintegration. The office was set up in July 1999, under an earlier peace accord that failed.

Kabbah praised the head of the disarmament program, Francis Kai Kai, for a job well done, but said the reintegration of former combatants would remain an ongoing task.

Alan Doss, the U.N. Development Program representative in Sierra Leone, agreed, saying the former fighters had joined ``another larger army of young people who are seeking employment.''

On Wednesday, about two dozen former fighters sat outside disarmament offices, trying to get interviews with a skeleton staff still remaining inside to sort out any last-minute problems.

About 51,000 of those who handed over their weapons were given vocational training or were placed in agricultural jobs or returned to school. Thousands of others relied on their own means to return to civil society, Kai Kai said.

The program spent over $36 million, mainly grant money gathered from a dozen donors and the United Nations and the World Bank.

Susan Siaffra, a 23-year old former rebel fighter, said she was among the first group to be disarmed at Port Loko in northern Sierra Leone in 1999. She said she was then trained to make soap in 2000, but never received a promised start-up tool kit.

``I thank President Tejan Kabbah for what he has done, which has helped us to know our rights, like what we have been promised,'' Siaffra said. ``It is not like before.''

An 18-year-old rebel fighter, Santigie Kanu, was also disarmed in 1999. The national disarmament program paid for three years of school fees, and Kanu said he was still owed four more months worth.

Whatever he manages to get from the disarmament office, he said: ``I am happy that the war has ended. Anything that has a beginning, must have an end.''

In neighboring countries, U.N.-sponsored disarmament has stalled in Liberia, and disarmament promised under a French-brokered peace deal has yet to begin in Ivory Coast.

From: http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Sierra-Leone.html