Why Kosovo and not Sierra Leone?

Although Kosovo has consumed the public’s attention, the suffering caused by violent conflict is even greater in many parts of Africa. Sierra Leone’s rebel war—in which thousands of crude amputations are just one of many terror tactics routinely employed by a rebel army trying to remove the country’s democratically elected government—is the most glaring display of inconsistency by both the U.S. government and the media. One calamity takes place in Europe, the other in Africa. When the United States failed to act to prevent the Rwandan genocide, Jimmy Carter voiced the thinking of our nation’s leaders: They’re poor. They’re black. And they have no oil.

Ancestral home to millions of Americans, Sierra Leone has many historical connections with the United States. The Gullah people of the Sea Islands off the coast of South Carolina have cultural traditions and genealogical roots that go directly to Sierra Leone’s Mende people. American slaves who fought with the British during the Revolutionary War were repatriated to Freetown, now the country’s capital. Steven Spielberg’s Amistad also underscored the many links. With all of these connections, Sierra Leonean immigrants are bewildered by the lack of attention paid to the wholesale destruction of their homeland.