News — rebel

The Bussa Rebellion was the largest slave revolt in the history of Barbados. The rebellion took its name from the African-born slave, Bussa, who led the uprising. The Bussa Rebellion was the first of the three major slave uprisings that took place in the British West Indies between the U.S. abolition of the slave trade in 1807 and general emancipation by the British in 1838. The two other rebellions occurred in the Crown colony of Demerara-Essequibo (now part of Guyana) in 1823, and Jamaica in 1831.

Enslaved people began planning the revolt after the Barbadian House of Assembly discussed and rejected the Imperial Registry Bill in November 1815, which called for the registration of colonial slaves. Believing this registration would make their lives more difficult, enslaved people began to secretly meet in February to plan the uprising in April.

The organization and leadership of the rebellion evolved on a number of sugar cane plantations, with each estate choosing its insurrection leader. The Simmons Plantation, one of the largest on the island, had three leaders: John Grigg, Nanny Grigg, and an enslaved person known only as Jackie. The Bailey Plantation uprising was led by four enslaved people: King Wiltshire, Dick Bailey, and enslaved men, Johnny and Bussa. The revolt was named after Bussa. The planning and organization of the rebellion was accompanied by a propaganda campaign orchestrated by three free literate black men: Cain Davis, Roach, and Richard Sarjeant. Davis held meetings with slaves from different coastal plantations where he coordinated the rebellion plans and shared rumors. Sarjeant played a similar role, mobilizing rebels in the central parishes. The final day of planning took place at the River Plantation on Good Friday night April 12, 1816.

The rebellion started on Easter Sunday night April 14, 1816. It broke out with cane fields being burned in St. Philip parish, signaling to other rebels in the central and southern parishes that the rebellion had begun. It quickly spread from St. Philip to neighboring parishes which also experienced cane field burnings, but as yet the local militia had not confronted the rebels.  In the first days of the rebellion, over seventy estates were affected, forcing white owners and overseers to flee to Bridgetown, the colonial capital, in panic. Despite the scope of the rebellion, only two whites were reported killed.

The rebellion was short-lived. Martial law was declared on April 15, 1816. It was suppressed by local militia and British imperial troops which ironically included slave soldiers. The governor of Barbados, Sir James Leith, reported that by September, five months after the rebellion ended, 144 people had been executed. Seventy people were later sentenced to death while 170 were deported to neighboring British colonies in the Caribbean. Alleged rebels were also subject to floggings during the entire eighty days of martial law.

The origin of the second civil war was rooted in the previous conflict waged between 1989 and 1996 which saw former rebel leader Charles Taylor become president of the entire nation, following UN-monitored elections in 1997. The country remained at peace only two years before LURD began its military campaign. Most of LURD were Mandingo and Krahn fighters led by Sekou Conneh. Many of them had been part of the rebel group, United Liberation Movement of Liberia for Democracy (ULIMO), which had fought in the first Liberian civil war against Taylor’s National Patriotic Front of Liberia (NPFL) as well as the government of President Samuel Doe.

In September 2000, to weaken support for the rebels from the government of Guinea and Sierra Leone which was now also supporting LURD, Taylor persuaded anti-government dissidents in both nations to form the Revolutionary United Front (RUF). They along with some of his paramilitary supporters began insurgencies and thus expanded the conflict to three nations. His action drew condemnation and opposition from the UN as well as support for Guinea and Sierra Leone from Great Britain and the United States.

By early 2002, LURD troops had outmaneuvered Taylor’s forces and were only about twenty-seven miles from Monrovia, the capital. Under leaders Conneh and Thomas Nimely, LURD troops mounted successful raids that bypassed government strongholds, and in May, they staged a bold attack on Arthington, less than twelve miles from Monrovia.

By early 2003, a second rebel group called the Movement for Democracy in Liberia (MODEL), backed by the government of Côte d’Ivoire, emerged in the south to challenge the Taylor government as well. By May 2003, Taylor controlled only about one-third of Liberia. With rebels closing in on Monrovia from all sides, President John Kufuor of Ghana, then chair of the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), convened a peace conference in Accra to work out a negotiated agreement that would avoid further bloodshed in a four-year conflict that had already taken nearly three hundred thousand lives. When Taylor appeared initially reluctant to support the peace process, Leymah Gbowee formed an organization called “Women of Liberia Mass Action in Peace” which, after a silent protest outside the presidential palace, extracted a promise from the Liberian head of state to attend the peace conference in Accra.

By July, even as peace talks were taking place in Accra, LURD forces reached the outskirts of Monrovia and began a siege of the capital. In the subsequent shelling of the city, over one thousand civilians were killed and thousands more were made homeless. On July 29, LURD declared a ceasefire which allowed ECOWAS to send to battalions of mostly Nigerian troops to the capital as peacekeepers.  As it became increasingly apparent that his government would not survive the siege, on August 11, 2003, President Charles Taylor resigned and flew to exile in Nigeria. Three days later, two hundred American troops landed to support ECOWAS troops. On August 18, the Accra Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA) announced the forming of the National Transition Government of Liberia with Gyude Bryant as president. The agreement also scheduled Liberia’s first post-civil war national election for 2005. In that election, Ellen Johnson Sirleaf became the twenty-fourth president of Liberia and the first woman to head an African nation. Sirleaf continues to hold the office of president, and over a decade after the Accra Comprehensive Peace Agreement was worked out, Liberia remains at peace.

South Sudan's government and the rebels of the National Salvation Front (NSF) announced in Rome the signing of a ceasefire agreement.

The National Salvation Front, which mostly operates in the country's southern states has clashed frequently with gouvernmental forces.

But thanks to a international mediation, firefights should stop between the two forces.

"What were the results of this meeting? It was the commitment of the parties to the ceasefire and, above all, the decision to organise a meeting between the military from both sides to ensure that the opposition is included in the mechanism for monitoring ceasefire violations" said secretary-general of Sant'Egidio, Paolo Impagliazzo, who leaded the negociations between the government representative Barnaba Marial Benjamin and National Salvation Front (NSF) representative, Thomas Cirillo Swaka.

Despite efforts by other rebel groups, the National Salvation Front, hadn't signed the September 2018 peace deal. Thomas Cirillo, the leader of the rebel group has agreed to a ceasefire earlier this year, but it hadn't been respected.

Over 380 000 have died and 4 million people, a third of the country's population have been displaced, in a seven lyear long civil war, that officials now hope to finally bring to an end.