West Side Boys

The West Side Boys aka West Side Niggaz or West Side Junglers, were an armed group in Sierra Leone, sometimes described as a splinter faction of the Armed Forces Revolutionary Council.

It captured and held peacekeepers from the United Nations Mission in Sierra Leone (UNAMSIL) and, in August 2000, captured a patrol of British soldiers from the Royal Irish Regiment and was subsequently destroyed in an operation by the Special Air Service and Parachute Regiment in September 2000 during Operation Barras. The group was influenced to some extent by American rap and gangsta rap music, especially Tupac Shakur, and the "gangsta" culture portrayed therein. Since the title 'West Side Niggaz' would have been an entirely unacceptable phrase to be regularly used on news programmes concerning the group, the title was amended to render it to the innocuous 'West Side Boys'. Prior to their destruction, the group's size had expanded to around 600, but shrunk due to later defections of about 200 members.

Many members of the group were children abducted after their parents had been killed by the "recruiters". Some of these children were forced to participate in torturing their parents to death in order to brutalise and dehumanise them. (See military use of children.) The West Side Boys were heavy users of homemade palm wine, locally grown marijuana, and heroin bought with conflict diamonds. Conflict diamonds were also used to purchase many of their weapons, which ranged from SLR rifles, AK-47 rifles and RPG-7 grenade launchers to 81 mm mortars and ZPU-2 anti-aircraft guns. Most of their vehicles were hijacked from UN food convoys. One of the hostages rescued during Operation Barras has also claimed that the West Side Boys were supplied with ammunition by corrupt Jordanian UN peacekeepers.