Description
The AFRC was formed by Major Johnny Paul Koroma of the Sierra Leonean military in 1997, who used it to carry out a coup d'etat against the government of President Ahmad Tejan Kabbah. The former Sierra Leone Army ("ex-SLA") is a term used to refer to soldiers loyal to the AFRC. Several rationales have been suggested for the coup, including: anger at the government for not implementing the November 1996 peace agreement with the Revolutionary United Front (RUF), perceived ethnic discrimination in the appointment of the highest ranks of government, perceived financial neglect of the armed forces, and favoritism for the ethnic Mende Kamajors led by Samuel Hinga Norman.
Following the coup, in May 1997 the AFRC demanded that the Nigerian-led West African peacekeeping force then in the country release the arrested RUF leader Foday Sankoh. Sankoh gave his blessing to the AFRC, and RUF forces who had been fighting in the countryside linked up with AFRC forces in the capital Freetown. Sankoh was named Vice-Chairman of the AFRC and several other RUF leaders were named to high positions. The AFRC and RUF thus formed a joint military junta controlling the country.
However, in March 1998 the AFRC/RUF was forced out of Freetown by an invading West African force that put President Kabbah back in power. However, the rebels according to their respective origins, RUF and ex-SLA, under the renewed pressure, with a force of ex-SLA based in the Occra Hills, 50km from the capital. The rebel AFRC regrouped to retake the capital in January 1999, but was again forced out by the Nigerian-led force.
By 1999, the authority of the AFRC and Major Koroma over the ex-SLA had become very uncertain and the AFRC is commonly seen as devolving into bands of loosely associated combatants. The West Side Boys rebel group are sometimes referred to as an AFRC splinter group. The West Side Boys abducted several soldiers of the British army that were training West African peacekeepers in July 2000, and was subsequently destroyed by British forces in a September raid that freed the hostages. While many of the combatants who were under the command of the Armed Forces Revolutionary Council continued to fight, the "AFRC" designation gradually ceased to become useful and the AFRC organization is no longer considered to exist.
After the folding of AFRC, Koroma's supporters have organized the Peace and Liberation Party.
Read more about this topic: Armed Forces Revolutionary Council
Famous quotes containing the word description:
“The Sage of Toronto ... spent several decades marveling at the numerous freedoms created by a “global village” instantly and effortlessly accessible to all. Villages, unlike towns, have always been ruled by conformism, isolation, petty surveillance, boredom and repetitive malicious gossip about the same families. Which is a precise enough description of the global spectacle’s present vulgarity.”
—Guy Debord (b. 1931)
“The next Augustan age will dawn on the other side of the Atlantic. There will, perhaps, be a Thucydides at Boston, a Xenophon at New York, and, in time, a Virgil at Mexico, and a Newton at Peru. At last, some curious traveller from Lima will visit England and give a description of the ruins of St. Paul’s, like the editions of Balbec and Palmyra.”
—Horace Walpole (1717–1797)
“Once a child has demonstrated his capacity for independent functioning in any area, his lapses into dependent behavior, even though temporary, make the mother feel that she is being taken advantage of....What only yesterday was a description of the child’s stage in life has become an indictment, a judgment.”
—Elaine Heffner (20th century)