West Side Boys

The West Side Boys was an armed group in Sierra Leone, sometimes described as a splinter faction of the Armed Forces Revolutionary Council. It captured and held members of a mostly West African peacekeeping force (including members of the Royal Irish Rangers) in 2000, and was subsequently destroyed by units of the British Special Air Service, Special Boat Service and Parachute Regiment during September 2000 in Operation Barras, and follow-up operations by the Sierra Leone Army and Royal Irish Rangers. The group was influenced to some extent by American rap and gangsta rap music, especially Tupac Shakur, and the "gangsta" culture portrayed therein. [Citation | last =Reno | first =William | publication-date =February 2003 | title =Political Networks in a Failing State The Roots and Future of Violent Conflict in Sierra Leone
publisher =Internationale Politik und Gesellschaft, International Politics and Society | url =http://www.usaid.gov/sl/sl_new/news/2004/040531_atunda_ayenda/index.htm | accessdate =2008-04-21] The group was also known as the West Side Niggaz or West Side Junglers. [http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2000/09/03/wsie103.xml "Caught with their guard down"] , "The Telegraph", 19 June 2001] Since the former would have been an unacceptable phrase to be regularly used on news programmes, the title was amended to render it innocuous. Prior to their destruction, the group had expanded to around 400 soldiers.

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.

Who they were

Led by Foday Kallay.

At the time that the West Side Boys were active, large areas of Sierra Leone were controlled by militias. However, there existed no proveable connections to the main rebel group in Sierra Leone, the Revolutionary United Front.

Frequently the subject of British media, due in part to their kidnapping of British soldiers and their flamboyant character, romanticised by the BBC's reporting language: "They were known for wearing bizarre clothing - women's wigs and flip-flops were favourites - and being almost perpetually drunk." [ [http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/africa/901209.stm BBC NEWS | World | Africa | Who are the West Side Boys? ] ]

Notes

References

* "Operation Certain Death", Damien Lewis, Arrow Books, 2005.