Introduction

This chapter aims to answer three questions.

1. The first is: How far can we assume the RUF was a product of a pre-determined culture of violence – an intrinsic African barbarism, or violence inherent in the street culture of an urban underclass? The question was first posed by the American journalist Robert Kaplan, but further espoused (in the street culture variant) by a group of Sierra Leonean (diaspora) intellectuals.

2. A second question is: Was the RUF (secretly?) mainly motivated by greed, not grievance – that is, by attempts to control the rich diamond fields of eastern and southern Sierra Leone? But RUF cadres cited in this book – and some fighters opposed to the RUF – deny diamonds were a major motivation for rebellion. If this is indeed so, we have to answer a derivative question: why did the RUF focus so much attention (latterly) on attempts to control these lucrative diamond areas?

3. The third and final question is about the RUF as a social organisation: Why did a movement like the RUF increase in numbers so quickly, and how, despite its violent recruitment methods, was it able to retain the attention of a significant proportion of the rural youth it recruited? We will try to assess the merits of the argument that the rapid growth of the RUF was somehow connected to the collapse of a system of patrimonial rule previously ensuring inter-generational social reproduction.