Throwing light on hearts of darkness
Soldiers of Light By Daniel Bergner Penguin/Allen Lane, ?25 Albert Smith The last decade has been disheartening for those of us who persist with an optimistic view of human nature or who harbour modest hopes for economic development in Africa.
With just over 10% of the world's population, Africa continues to suffer 60% of all civil-war deaths. Several African nations have also become bywords for a rapid descent into barbarism. In the Congo, Liberia and Sierra Leone, combatants have being known to feast on their enemies' hearts and livers, convinced that this will bestow supernatural powers.
Among the darkest civil wars in Africa has been that of Sierra Leone. Since 1991, it has served up child soldiers and cannibalism in a conflict which has left 50,000 dead (out of a population the same size as Ireland's), 500,000 homeless and 10,000 disabled as rebels cowed the civilian population into compliance through a campaign of heartless, systematic mutilation.
Potentially a rich country with great mineral wealth, 70% of its budget now consists of aid handouts.
It is this slide into a national nightmare that American Daniel Bergner describes in chilling detail in Soldiers of Light, an intense, evocative depiction of the appalling conflict which tore Sierra Leone apart, and of its consequences.
Bergner describes tumult and horror through the eyes of a variety of people he grew to know while making a number of visits to Sierra Leone during the 1990s. They include a white missionary family who saw a decade of Herculean effort go up in smoke; a father-of-five who had his two hands amputated with a machete; and a woman who was forced by guerrillas to become a beast of burden and sex slave.
Bergner gets to know a ruthless mercenary helicopter pilot who has killed hundreds of rebels but gives his earnings away. He befriends a teenager who was kidnapped and forced to become a boy soldier and relates the child's rise through rebel ranks - to eat the liver and heart of a Nigerian peacekeeper.
Their tales are told with absorbing verve and pace and offer a glimpse into a heart of darkness that most of the world has chosen to ignore.
A notable exception, Bergner acknowledges, is the British government, and the soldiers it dispatched to successfully tackle the thankless, dangerous and successful mission to reverse the advance of Sierra Leone's most brutal rebels, the RUF. It is to them that the country owes its delicate but welcome peace process. But ultimately Bergner offers no great solutions or convincing explanations for Sierra Leone's descent into bestiality. Ultimately, his book is a deeply discomfiting reminder of the awful price to be paid when anarchy holds sway.
Albert Smith is an Irish Independent journalist
