INTRODUCTION
At the heart of international support to strengthen the legitimacy and effectiveness of the Sierra Leone state in the late 1990s was the ‘intention to introduce effective visible policing’ and ‘for the police to resume primacy in maintaining law and order’ (CPDTF 1999). Sierra Leone was emerging from a war that only ended officially in 2002. In this context, the introduction of ‘effective visible policing’ initially meant building police stations, writing codes of conduct and training and equipping police officers. This was a political endeavour that entailed recomposing the justice and security field as a set of structured relations among actors who enforce order and redistribute the resources that they draw upon and generate during the course of that process (see Vandenberghe Reference Vandenberghe1999: 42). At the centre of this project was the Sierra Leone Police (SLP), which was to (re)monopolise the enforcement of order (Baker Reference Baker2005, Reference Baker2008; Denney Reference Denney2011, 2014; Krogstad Reference Krogstad2012).
This paper argues that rather than establishing a consolidated state system, police reform reproduced a hybrid political order that Sierra Leone's primary local leaders – paramount and lesser chiefs – embody and govern. The hybrid authority of the chiefs emanates from multiple sources simultaneously, and challenges analytical approaches that are built up around binaries between, for instance, state (police) and non-state (chiefs). Chiefs invoke sacred and other customary powers at the local level that revolve around kinship, autochthon status and secret society membership (Hardin Reference Hardin1993; Fanthorpe Reference Fanthorpe1998, Reference Fanthorpe2001, Reference Fanthorpe2005). At the same time, Sierra Leone's 149 chiefdoms are linked to the national level through an operative centre of government, bureaucracy and legislation, including their recognition in the 1991 Constitution. Unlike the SLP, whose power base and source of legitimacy depend more substantially on the central government, chiefs are in a unique position to combine locally and nationally generated sources of authority.
In order to substantiate this argument, the paper explores one dimension of police reform in Sierra Leone: how and with what implications community policing has been introduced at the local level. The focus is on the primary institutional expression of community policing, Local Policing Partnership Boards (LPPBs), which were established to ensure stakeholder participation in policing. Insight is provided on how community policing is practiced and how LPPBs have been operationalised, specifically in Peyima, a small diamond-mining town in Kamara Chiefdom, Kono District.Footnote 1
The paper first outlines the meaning of hybrid authority as the basis for understanding the chiefs’ central role in shaping the SLP's community policing model, and how it has bolstered rather than fundamentally altered local order-making.Footnote 2 The paper then discusses the recent history of community policing in Sierra Leone, and analyses two cases that demonstrate how the LPPBs have been co-opted by the chiefs and how they have reproduced rather than challenged the hybrid basis of their authority. The first case explores a boy's sudden death, and how it was dealt with simultaneously as a cosmological-ancestral matter and a potential criminal case that required police involvement. The second case explores a case of theft and its resolution through the involvement of Peyima's town chief and LPPB member, without engaging the police.
THE HYBRID AUTHORITY OF CHIEFS
By conceptualising the authority of Sierra Leone's chiefs as hybrid, the paper suggests that their authority emanates from and is enacted on the basis of a multitude of sources simultaneously. This is a dynamic perspective of chiefs, which sees them as continually transforming and adapting, while also enduring political change (van Dijk & van Nieuwaal van Rouveroy Reference van Dijk, Van Nieuwaal van Rouveroy, van Rouveroy van Nieuwaal and van Dijk1999: 5; Clements et al. Reference Clements, Boege, Brown, Foley and Nolan2007; Kyed Reference Kyed2007: 318; Kraushaar & Lambach Reference Kraushaar and Lambach2009; Boege Reference Boege2011: 437). As such, chiefs may be regarded as ‘syncretic leaders’, i.e. as a ‘socio-political phenomenon, which forges a synthesis between antagonistic forces stemming from different models, bureaucracies and world views’ (van Nieuwaal van Rouveroy Reference van Nieuwaal van Rouveroy1996: 49; see also Ray & van Nieuwaal van Rouveroy Reference Ray and van Nieuwaal van Rouveroy1996: 24). The chiefs are in a position to incorporate seemingly contradictory and complementary discourse and practice into their register of authority, including legislation passed in parliament, party political agendas, locally bound initiation into secret societies and locally and nationally oriented autochthony. It is the paramount and lesser chiefs’ ability to do so that is the foundation of their hybrid authority, a concept that captures the multiplicity of discourse and practice that is at play simultaneously (Albrecht & Moe Reference Albrecht and Moe2015).
This perspective draws analytically on recent applications of hybridity in peace and conflict studies, notably by Mac Ginty (Reference Mac Ginty2010, Reference Mac Ginty2011) and Richmond (Reference Richmond2011), but with a different emphasis. In their critique of the liberal peace thesis and the fragile/failed state discourse, Mac Ginty and Richmond have opened up an important analytical space in which post-conflict peacebuilding is articulated as an interface between local agency and international interveners, a case of interaction that entails contestation, politics and mutual transformation (see Millar Reference Millar2014a: 502, 2014b: 25; Albrecht & Moe Reference Albrecht and Moe2015; Lemay-Hébert & Kühn Reference Lemay-Hébert and Kühn2015). However, in this paper, hybridity is seen as a foundational condition of chiefly authority that is constituted by multiple sources of authority.Footnote 3 In short, this means that community policing, which has been a central part of peacebuilding efforts in Sierra Leone, was introduced into an already and continuously evolving hybrid order (see Ray & van Nieuwaal van Rouveroy Reference Ray and van Nieuwaal van Rouveroy1996: 24; van Dijk & van Nieuwaal van Rouveroy Reference van Dijk, Van Nieuwaal van Rouveroy, van Rouveroy van Nieuwaal and van Dijk1999; Spear Reference Spear2003).
Traditional leaders in Sierra Leone and elsewhere cannot be seen simplistically as a pure form of African authority legitimised by traditional beliefs and practices, or as a form of power corrupted by colonial politics (Kyed & Buur Reference Kyed and Buur2006). Similarly, caution is advised when applying the dualist perspectives of scholars such as Ekeh's (Reference Ekeh1975) ‘two publics’ and Mamdani's (Reference Mamdani1996: 18) notion of the Janus-faced state, where urban/civil power speaks the language of civil society and rights while rural/customary power emphasises community and culture (see Fanthorpe Reference Fanthorpe2001: 368).Footnote 4 It is precisely the ability of chiefs to incorporate, if not always smoothly reconcile, a wide variety of sources of authority that gives them the flexibility to claim a stake in national level politics and power while at the same time in an act of extreme localisation make the argument that they are ‘sons of the soil’.
Chiefs as a State Institution
The history of Sierra Leone's chiefs is closely intertwined with the UK's colonial policies and practices of indirect rule (Fanthorpe Reference Fanthorpe1998; Conteh-Morgan & Dixon-Fyle Reference Conteh-Morgan and Dixon-Fyle1999; Denney Reference Denney2013, 2014). As such, the chiefs have been integral to state-formation processes in Sierra Leone both before and after independence in 1961. Siaka Stevens, who became President in 1967, concentrated resources and power in Freetown, but he did not formally ban traditional leaders, as was the case across much of Sub-Saharan Africa (Englebert Reference Englebert2002; Oomen Reference Oomen2005; Skalník Reference Skalník2005). As a result, Sierra Leone's paramount and lesser chiefs were not part of the formal resurgence of traditional authority that other parts of the continent experienced from the early 1990s (Ntsebeza Reference Ntsebeza1999; Buur & Kyed Reference Buur and Kyed2007). An administrative disconnect was upheld between the Western Area, where the capital of Freetown is located, and the rest of the country where paramount and lesser chiefs govern. However, rather than undermining the authority of chiefs, this administrative disconnect consolidated their legal role within the country's rural administrative structures (Fyfe Reference Fyfe1962; Abraham Reference Abraham1978; Tangri Reference Tangri1978; Denney Reference Denney2013).
Sierra Leone's 149 chiefdoms, each subdivided into a number of sections, are established in a series of legal documents. Some date from before or just after Sierra Leone's independence in 1961, including the Tribal Authorities Ordinance (1938), the Chiefdom Treasuries Act (1938) and the Tribal Authorities (Amendment) Act (1964). Other more recent pieces of legislation include the Local Government Act (GOSL 2004) and the Chieftaincy Act (GOSL 2009).
The 1991 Constitution of Sierra Leone ratifies the position of paramount chiefs: ‘the institution of the Chieftaincy, as established by customary law and usage’ and ‘its non-abolition by law’ are to be ‘guaranteed and preserved’ (Government of Sierra Leone (GOSL) 1991: 72(1)). Thus, the government has an obligation to protect the ‘traditional role’ of paramount chiefs, including their administrative and customary-judicial responsibilities. With reference to the colonial era and a consolidated governance system of indirect rule, this is done on the basis of Ruling Houses that existed in each Chiefdom at independence in 1961. (There are commonly one to three Ruling Houses in each chiefdom; paramount chiefs can only be elected from among these families.)Footnote 5
The chiefdom constitutes the basic unit of local government (Denney Reference Denney2014: 45), and paramount chiefs sit on District and Town Councils across the country. The 2004 Local Government Act stipulates that the paramount chiefs have a ‘traditional function’ of preventing offences in their area, prohibiting illegal gambling and making and enforcing bylaws (GOSL 2004: 28).Footnote 6 However, at the core of the Chiefs’ state-sanctioned power lies their legal mandate to hold land in trust for the people of the chiefdom (GOSL 2004: 28; see Millar Reference Millar2014b: 85). Thus, in many rural areas chiefs hold almost exclusive powers over the distribution of the most important sources of income generation in the countryside, i.e. land for farming and mining.
In principle, the Minister of Internal Affairs has the legal authority to recommend the suspension of chiefs. However, as one ministry official explained, the Minister does not have ‘much by way of a structural thing that will link him to the chiefs. Except if he decides to visit some place; but there is nothing there really [by way of representing him]. There is no requirement for the chief to communicate with him; now, there is no real requirement for the chief to communicate with anybody’ (Ministry official 2008 Int.).
It is worth emphasising that key government officials support this role of chiefs at the local level, not least because they are deeply embedded in Sierra Leone's political landscape (see Ferme Reference Ferme2001; Richards Reference Richards and Kaarsholm2006). As noted by one of the key actors in post-war Sierra Leone's security sector, Kellie Conteh, who was National Security Coordinator from 1999–2012:
‘They [the general population] simply respect the chief. I think we should not undermine the authority of the chiefs by trying to introduce several layers of governance within the chiefdoms. At the end of the day it would only hurt government, because we would not have the capacity to do it properly. Let's not make ourselves look stupid on this matter. Let's go back to basics. This is how our people live. They live in these villages and in the village there's a town chief, they have a youth leader, a women's leader – these are structures that are there, and they all respect the chief’ (Conteh 2008 Int.).
As the paper turns to community policing and how LPPBs have been operationalised, it becomes evident that they have come to function precisely because they have been built up around specific locally defined and historic notions of security and order (Albrecht et al. Reference Albrecht, Garber, Gibson and Thomas2014).
‘Extreme Localisation’ and the Authority of Belonging
The basic disconnect between state legislation and state practices described above has to do in part with the local origin of chiefly authority that is sourced outside, yet intertwined with, the jurisdiction of a central government – hence, the foundational hybrid basis of their authority. Fanthorpe (Reference Fanthorpe2001: 372) uses the concept of ‘extreme localisation’ to denote criteria of identity and belonging in rural Sierra Leone (see Allen Reference Allen1968: 306). This concept helps to articulate how authority is distributed in communities across rural Sierra Leone, where it emanates from their function as local leaders. Their role has at times been explained by ‘lack of state’, i.e. chiefs are seen to simply fill a governance void that would otherwise be filled by a centrally governed bureaucracy (see Sesay Reference Sesay1995; Chaves & Robinson Reference Chaves and Robinson2011). However, doing so obscures the sources of authority that these hybrid organisational formations draw upon, including, for instance, ancestral ties to those who made a particular locality habitable, and membership in secret societies (such as the Poro).Footnote 7
Scholars who do not interpret ‘localisation’ as ‘lack of state’ per se include, among others, Hardin (Reference Hardin1993), Fanthorpe (Reference Fanthorpe2001, Reference Fanthorpe2005) and Denney (Reference Denney2014: 122). In her study of Kainkordu, a small town in Kono, Hardin's (Reference Hardin1993: 93) important articulation of ‘localisation’ demonstrates that identity relies on ritual actions that ‘locate individuals in particular spaces by giving them rights, as well as obligations, to others who share those spaces’. Thus, localisation and the authority that emanates from it is to be understood in literal terms: it ties the individual to concrete physical space.
The relationship between an individual and a particular locality reflects an important distinction between ‘natives’ and ‘strangers’ in Sierra Leone. The distinction allows a local community to make boundaries, draw on local sources of authority and undergo and undertake the same rites of passage in the same locale. The distinction also allows the community to defend whatever is at stake in the locality, not least from individuals who were not born there (rights to land). The application of these localisation principles underpins the very existence of a locality as a habitable space against challenges from external impositions, be they from ‘the state’ (system), other tribes or the business community.
Those who can render it probable that they are ‘sons of the soil’ (autochthons) and that they descend directly from individuals who established the town as a habitable space are considered to have a proportionally greater interest in the locality's endurance. As such, these individuals are generally believed to support the community, for example, by channelling earnings from diamond finds towards its preservation. In short, they ‘own’ the authority, and have the right to the position of chief, which is a particularly fluid claim in a town like Peyima. Unlike the appointment of paramount and section chiefs, the decision to appoint town chiefs – formally referred to as Headmen – is a local matter rather than one decided by the central government through the system of Ruling Houses.
A successful claim to ‘own the authority’ in Peyima was therefore not fixed, but had to be reproduced continuously through the oral reproduction of the town's history. However, being a ‘son of the soil’, and articulating a forceful reference to this claim is always open to manipulation. It is a status that is constantly challenged and invoked in symbolic and physical struggles and is deeply political with respect to who occupies what positions vis-à-vis other contenders at any given time (see Minikin Reference Minikin1973; Tangri Reference Tangri1976). What is at stake is an ‘extremely localised’ struggle over power and resources.
These brief deliberations about the basis of the chief's hybrid authority help enhance our understanding of how and under what conditions social and political transformation occur in rural areas of Sierra Leone. It sets the context in which the SLP has been able to promote its community policing model. It also suggests that successful implementation depends upon the SLP's ability to work with and through actors who draw their authority from both state-sanctioned and ‘extremely localised’ sources of authority.
The paper now turns to a discussion of how community policing and LPPBs emerged in Sierra Leone, and how chiefs came to play an integral role in this process.
CHIEFS AND LOCAL POLICING PARTNERSHIP BOARDS
Police reform in Sierra Leone was initiated in the late 1990s during open conflict, and LPPBs were central to how the process developed locally (see Albrecht Reference Albrecht2010). They were established to ensure stakeholder participation in the process of policing, which signified a perceived need within the police force – and a drive by international partners – to rebuild community relations. As such, LPPB members, who are drawn from a cross-section of society, were expected to support the investigation and resolution of conflict between members of the community, and increase levels of interaction and trust between the police and the local population (Albrecht et al. Reference Albrecht, Garber, Gibson and Thomas2014: 7).
Brima Acha Kamara, who became Sierra Leone's Inspector-General of Police in 2003, described the police scope to enforce order in the late 1990s as ‘policing by consensus’. This was not meant solely in terms of policing that is community-sensitive, accountable and transparent, as international community policing discourse prescribes (Groenewald & Peake Reference Groenewald and Peake2004; Brogdon & Njihar Reference Brogdon and Nijhar2005: 1). Kamara explained:
There were other forces, warring factions, RUF [Revolutionary United Front] combatants, CDF [Civil Defence Force], competition about who should really be in charge of internal security. We were not able to flex our muscle, and we were ultimately doing policing by consensus (Acha Kamara 2009 Int.).
Acha Kamara's approach provided the rationale of policing in the years to come, including the basis on which LPPBs would be established in peacetime. Indeed, the LPPB model emerged from these initial attempts to engage combatants in police efforts to re-establish a presence in rural areas of the country (Lahai 2013 Int.).
The reorganisation of the justice and security field that was part of ending the conflict entailed the marginalisation or elimination of the ‘other forces’ and ‘warring factions’ noted by Acha Kamara. However, the necessity of ‘policing by consensus’ was not simply the consequence of war and the breakdown of a central government and its reach. It was the result of a deep-seated hybrid order that transcends the years of conflict, and incorporates paramount and lesser chiefs at the very centre of rural governance in Sierra Leone. The re-establishment of the ‘state system’ was therefore unlikely to make the principle of policing by consensus obsolete.
LPPBs became a concrete vehicle for appropriating and translating into practice the SLP's ethos of Local Needs Policing formulated by British police advisers in the late 1990s.Footnote 8 Unlike the SLP's regime-preserving approach prior to and during the conflict, the SLP was to be oriented towards ‘the community’ as the space in which the interface and amalgamation of different approaches to order-making would take place. However, while the SLP used a language of benevolence and inclusion to explain the rationale of setting up the LPPBs, their emergence was also a pragmatic response to an understanding that the ‘numerical strength of the SLP in terms of coverage is smaller compared to the fast growing population for the entire nation’. This statement is from The Sierra Leone Police Local Policing Partnership Board Constitution (SLP 2011), which was the only formal guidance available to LPPB members until 2013–2014, when a handbook was developed and published to accompany the Constitution (SLP 2014).Footnote 9 The 2011 Constitution expresses the common perception that LPPBs should compensate for the lack of resources within the SLP: people were to police themselves.
The Constitution explains that LPPBs are a ‘much-needed structure to enhance a crime free community’ and a ‘non-partisan, inter-religious, social integration development group’ established ‘to create a peaceful, healthy Police/Community rapport at all levels’ (SLP 2011). Thus, LPPBs are presented as a neutral and de-politicised institution of equals, where the hierarchy of authority emphasising paramount and lesser chiefs as figures of central authority is muted. The chiefs’ instrumental role of appointing and managing the individuals who become involved in the work of the LPPBs and the support of the LPPBs in reproducing structures of hybrid authority at the local level are not mentioned in the Constitution.
The neutral LPPB/community concept was similarly expressed by Mustapha Kambeh, who was involved in developing the concept when he was posted at police headquarters in Freetown in the mid-2000s. In the late 2000s, when he was police chief in Motema division in western Kono, he commented on the role of LPPBs:
[They are] critical in assisting the police to curb and mediate in conflict within the area [of the police division]. They [police] know that [the LPPBs have that role] because they're part and parcel of the community and they [the police] listen to them [the LPPBs]. What the partnership board is doing is helping us [do] early warning, [they are an] early response mechanism to conflict, because of the resources given [to the police], and the economic trend in the country, and the whole world. The resources are inadequate if you allow conflict to erupt and grow within your area of responsibility. The sooner we observe that conflict is about to erupt, the quicker we are able to move to curb it in a timely way; it assists us in our resource use. (Kambeh 2009 Int.)
In the early days of police reform, external advisers, who played a crucial role in re-establishing the SLP from the late 1990s onward, were uncomfortable engaging with the ‘local community’, and with chiefs in particular. While these advisors supported the idea that the needs of the community were to be heard by the SLP, the intention behind their support of Local Needs Policing was not to reproduce a system of order-making that was organised by actors other than the SLP. Instead, LNP was to establish the imagery of vertical encompassment, to paraphrase Ferguson & Gupta (Reference Ferguson and Gupta2002: 982–3) – a police force separate from yet encompassing and integrated with ‘the community’. Led by Keith Biddle, a British national who served as Sierra Leone's Inspector-General of Police between 1999–2003, external advisers assumed that the role of traditional leaders would diminish in importance and disappear as post-conflict state building gathered momentum, and would be marginalised or toppled by other authorities (Biddle 2009/2014 Int.).
Not surprisingly, simply ignoring or down-playing the importance of chiefs in order-making did not automatically lead to their marginalisation. Making their importance proportional with weak state institutions also proved to be analytically inaccurate as the SLP built up a presence outside Freetown and the Western Area. On the contrary, the position of chiefs and the hybrid foundation of authority they embody were consolidated through the collaborative approach that defines the LPPBs. Indeed, it has been one of the strengths of the LPPBs that they did not introduce institutional formations that were alien to how authority is generally structured in Sierra Leone (Albrecht et al. Reference Albrecht, Garber, Gibson and Thomas2014).
In Motema division, Kambeh clearly understood that the authority to police depended on entertaining close relations with the chiefs:
Well, for me to work effectively, you must be in cordial relationship with your traditional leaders in the area you find yourself, because if there is an amicable relationship, I mean, between the police and the paramount chiefs and their section chiefs, town chief, etc., it will go a long way to ease policing problems in that area. Then there will be a common understanding among the chiefs and the police. They will understand the problems of the police and find ways and means of harmonising their relationship and make sure that things work effectively to make their areas secure. We have to preserve the peace and public tranquillity and make sure that the fear of crimes is reduced to a minimum. To achieve this, you must have good relations with the paramount chief. (Kambeh 2009 int.)
The SLP's room to manoeuvre is driven by their own capacity to enforce a particular order and the legitimacy of chiefs, who draw their authority vis-à-vis the police from their legal status and their status as autochthons in the area that they rule. The perception among Sierra Leonean police officers is that there is a shortage of personnel and equipment within the force, which adds to the importance of entertaining good relations with the ‘local community’. However, the community is not constituted by neutrally distributed interest groups, but by a field of power that centres on the chiefs.
ORGANISATIONAL STRUCTURES OF THE LPPB AND THEIR ROLE IN ORDER-MAKING
An LPPB is set up in each police division, with an executive body headed by a Chairman, a Vice Chairman, a Treasurer, a representative of youth and women and a number of other positions. According to the 2011 Constitution, ‘Two (2) Traditional Chiefs’ may sit on the LPPB as advisers, but in reality section and town chiefs are often executive members.Footnote 10 To form the executive membership of the LPPB, five delegates from each section of a Chiefdom are put forward for election, and are selected for their ‘reputable character’ and on the basis of whether they are ‘dedicated to the course of security and community development’ (SLP 2011). While it is not explicit in the LPPB Constitution, chiefs have to be consulted and agree to the candidates who are put forward. Once elected, their appointment is marked by a certificate awarded by the local police chief. In principle, the LPPB executive body meets once a month.
Only central executive members at the police division level, who constitute the highest body of the LPPB organisation, are elected every two years. There is no LPPB coordinating body at the national level, and until July 2009, there was no Community Relations Department (CRD) in SLP headquarters in Freetown, as this police function had been decentralised to the divisional level in 2001. However, SLP leadership ‘saw that community relations are important’, Elizabeth Turay, Director of CRD in 2013 said, and the department was re-established in police headquarters – ‘we went back to our roots’ (Turay 2013 Int.).
In the individual chiefdoms, including sections and towns, chiefs and elders often play a more direct role in selecting LPPB members. In Peyima, for instance, between 2007 and 2011, the LPPB member was initially a central member of the group of elders in the town and was then replaced by a close ally of the town chief. Neither would have been appointed to this position without the town chief's direct involvement.
Only if an incident is deemed sufficiently grave by the LPPB member and the chief is it brought to the LPPB head of the Chiefdom and/or the nearest police post or station, both of which were located in Tombodu in Kamara Chiefdom. The LPPB Chairman of Kamara, as he called himself, had been appointed by the paramount chief as part of a political settlement surrounding paramount chief elections after the war and to ensure a balance of tribal representation in positions of some authority. (He was a Mandingo, not a Kono.)
As a point of departure, the SLP expect the chiefs to deal with matters within their own jurisdiction. While these cases are commonly referred to as minor, there is a notable grey area to what they entail, particularly when it comes to domestic violence. In principle, murder, sudden deaths, severe beatings (referred to as ‘blood crimes’), substantial theft and sexual abuse of children are considered to be ‘above’ the town, and to require police involvement – as much to protect the suspect from mob justice as to investigate and prosecute.
Generally, when a criminal act takes place, young men support, as necessary, the LPPB member in making an arrest. These youth groups constitute the physical force of community security. In rural areas, and particularly in a small town like Peyima, they are not considered a formal part of the LPPBs, nor are they recognised as such by the SLP.Footnote 11 Rather, the youth groups represent general order-making practices that existed prior to the introduction of community policing in Sierra Leone when interaction with the police was rare, feared and avoided, if possible.
In this regard, LPPBs as an expression of SLP presence have intertwined with already existing local structures of authority and practice in rural Sierra Leone. They do not function because they ‘fill the gap’ left by limited or absent state services, and thus cannot be reduced analytically to be the result of fragility or neoliberal globalisation (Pratten & Sen Reference Pratten and Sen2010). (This is also the case with respect to chiefs (Buur & Kyed Reference Buur and Kyed2007: xii).) On the contrary, LPPBs function because they are built up around specific cultural and historical notions of security and order, including particular relationships of interdependence, opposition and appropriation (Kyed Reference Kyed2009). These are constituted by a hybrid order of numerous actors, including the police, chiefs, quasi-vigilante groups, secret societies and others. Indeed, the LPPBs are constituted by representatives from these very groups. By extension, this also means that it is not always evident if LPPB members act in their capacity as LPPB members or in the capacity of being community members of a certain status (Albrecht et al. Reference Albrecht, Garber, Gibson and Thomas2014).
In order to demonstrate how community policing has consolidated chiefly authority, the paper now turns to two examples from Peyima where the LPPB was involved. Concrete interactions and negotiations over case resolution between the SLP and LPPB members have an important symbolic value in signalling the novel presence of state-sanctioned policing in rural areas and the status it has garnered. It is not the technical dimension of police investigation that is at stake, but the ability of the police as a body representing the central government to make a ‘final judgment’ that is significant.
The first example revolves around the sudden death of an epileptic boy, who fell into the swamp surrounding Peyima and drowned. It illustrates how a case of that nature is handled, both from a cosmological-ancestral perspective and as a criminal case that involved both the LPPB and by extension the SLP. The second example is a case of theft, which involved the LPPB, but where the SLP never materialised beyond the threat of their involvement. The two cases demonstrate the chief's control of local order-making, either by proxy through the LPPB member or – if resources are involved – through the chief's direct involvement. Making and defining order are distinctly political acts that garner a level of control, and by extension determine access to resources. These two cases show how LPPBs have become integral to this control, while still representing the novel presence of the police in rural Sierra Leone.
The Death of a Boy – Its Cosmological-Ancestral Implications
One day in Peyima, an epileptic boy had a seizure as he was crossing a narrow path through the swamp to reach his father's farm. He fell into the water and drowned. Nobody saw the accident. As the news of his death spread across town, the scene became quite dramatic. Everyone, it seemed, was drawn to the place, women yelling and screaming, shocked and in mourning for the boy and his family, running back and forth between the edge of town and where the boy had been found.
It was the second child in two months who had drowned. Many villagers believed that the devil had lured him down to the river and into the water. ‘We cannot see him’, one of the spectators said of the devil, ‘but he looks like you and me and is hungry for small children’. Suddenly, a whirlwind, quite small, but strong, passed through the banana trees, stirring up plastic bags, leaves, dirt. The devil who had taken the child, villagers said, had just swept through the place, attracted by the yelling and crying. That night a massive thunderstorm broke out. A few days later, a woman had a seizure while doing laundry by the river. She collapsed and died in the water.
These events and accidents may seem coincidental to the outsider, but the people of Peyima did not recognise coincidence; moreover, they connected the deaths to other occurrences. Diamonds were becoming increasingly scarce in the area, and investors who inject money and prosperity into the town from outside were no longer as forthcoming as they had been in the past. Many villagers believed that the town's ancestors were punishing their descendants for not paying appropriate attention and respect to them. Offerings had to be made. A woman dreamt that a rope had to be tied from one end of Peyima to the other. No reason was given for why this had to be done, but because villagers believed that it would please the ancestors, the rope was put up. A small hut was then built in a clearing down by the water where the epileptic boy died, and rituals were carried out in it by Pa Kongue, one of the main elders in town. Rice was boiled and fowl were killed, blood was dripped, food was prepared and the spirits of the ancestors were invoked. Some of the food was left in the hut for the ancestors; the rest was eaten by those who conducted the ritual.
The death. The scarcity of diamonds. Dangers and harmful forces are ubiquitous in Peyima. In such an environment, authority stems from the ability to keep these forces in check. Even so, and signifying an important shift in the local perception of police presence, it was decided that the boy's case should be attended to by the SLP, and by extension the LPPB.
The Death of a Boy – Its Criminal Implications
While cosmological-ancestral explanations for the boy's death were found and acted upon, it was also considered partly ‘above’ the town due to the age of the deceased. Ibrahim Kalilu Kamara, Peyima's LPPB member, came to play a central role in dealing with the incident. Kalilu, who was referred to as a Public Relations Officer (PRO)Footnote 12 of the LPPB in Peyima, and was a ‘trusted somebody’ to the town chief, came to the scene. Looking stern, like a police officer whose role he had assumed, he told people that nobody should touch the boy's body until the SLP had come to look into the matter.
As the embodiment of the LPPB, Kalilu represented the combination of different types of authority that emanate both from the locality of Peyima and extra-local organisations (the SLP). Kalilu referred to the inspector of police as his boss, but he had been appointed to the position of PRO by the town chief. In his hybrid capacity, Kalilu embodied the SLP's negotiated access to Peyima, which was shaped by terms set at the local level that incorporated both chiefly and centrally governed authorities.
Kalilu jotted down the course of events on a piece of paper and went to the nearest police post in Tombodu, the main town of Kamara Chiefdom, to report the death and to bring back a police officer to verify that a crime had not been committed:
So when reaching Tombodu, the police took a statement from me; then we made radio communication to the head of the police station, the one in Motema [headquarters of the police division]. They asked me some questions about the deceased, whether there is any foul play, I deny; there's no foul play there. To prove it, they gave me a sergeant, and we came together and observed the corpse that there is no foul play. (Kalilu 2009 Int.)
What was important here was the symbolic quality of reporting the death to the police, because if Kalilu had not done so, the police may have suspected that a crime had in fact taken place. Before the war, Kalilu explained, the SLP would not have come. Yet even if their presence would not make a technical difference to the investigation of the death of the boy, the fact that the SLP did appear closed the case symbolically.
Invitations for the police to visit a town are always given reluctantly, because the police will demand a ‘report in fee’ and expect to receive ‘transport money’ to travel from Tombodu. This is the micro-economy of policing in rural Sierra Leone; it is institutionalised, and therefore expected whenever the police are involved. Arrival of the police is followed by some negotiation, which inadvertently involves acts of boundary making. Kalilu explained to me what he said to the police when they arrived in Peyima:
This is community policing that I am doing, I'm not receiving any payment from the government so you are here to do your job. We are there to represent you, and if there is a case we will pay your transport to come and go, but [apart from that] we don't have money to give you. (Kalilu 2009 Int.)
This act of simultaneously distancing and rapprochement between Kalilu and the SLP, of boundary making between the locality and the central government, constituted a tacit agreement. If it was not abided by, if ‘transport money’ was not paid, instruments of the state would come more forcefully into play – at least this is what Kalilu anticipated:
If you won't give them transport money, they won't satisfy, some of the police will apprehend you, they will move with Land Rovers, take the corpse to the police station to see the doctor pathologist to check whether there is a foul play. They do all of this because they need money. (Kalilu 2009 Int.)
Thus, financial gain was at stake, and Kalilu's experience was not an exception to this rule of engagement. He might have told the police that he was not formally paid for his efforts, which was true, but he did receive money from the family of the deceased to deal with the police on their behalf. It was also evident that notwithstanding the exchange of money, the articulation of authority through state involvement was pivotal in dealing appropriately with the matter.
If the body had simply been taken out of the swamp and buried, the police could have reached the conclusion that ‘foul play’ had occurred, regardless of the fact that no technical evidence was available to make the case for or against. What was occurring was the negotiation of authority, not an investigation per se. It was the symbolic quality of making the police report that mattered, not a search for the ‘objective truth’ about the boy's death. (In any case, the SLP in Tombodu has no vehicle, nor is a ‘pathologist’ available.)
Kalilu's role was crucial in this regard. As the LPPB member at hand, he both accommodated the police by reporting the case and ensured that the town chief, who had appointed him, remained in control of how the case was dealt with. The police had a presence in Peyima, but it was only possible because the town chief had given his consent.
The police arrived a few hours after the boy had drowned. The situation had calmed down, and the boy's family was queried about what had happened while the sergeant jotted down a few notes on a piece of paper. The parents were scolded for not taking better care of their child, transport money was exchanged, and the police officer said that he would report back to Tombodu and Motema to verify that the child had died in an accident – not by ‘foul play’. According to Muslim tradition, the boy was buried on the afternoon of his death near the place where he drowned. He was not spoken of again.
The case of the deceased boy demonstrates how and when the concept of the LPPB is operationalised and has an effect in Peyima's security and justice field, including how its cosmological-ancestral and criminal dimensions are intertwined. It also demonstrates that the town chief played an indirect, yet central, role in managing the case. He had appointed Kalilu to the position of PRO and he was consulted on how and when to engage the police. He also paid a brief visit to the area where the death had taken place. However, the bottom line was that there were no significant resources to be generated from engaging in its resolution. In a resource-scarce environment such as Peyima – and Sierra Leone more broadly – this dimension cannot be underestimated.
A Case of Theft and the Reproductive Effect of the LPPB
The case of theft involved 1,000,000 Leones (approximately US$300) that was stolen from me. It was dealt with by the town chief and Kalilu in his capacity as a LPPB member; it never reached the police post in Tombodu or divisional headquarters in Motema. The case exemplifies the negotiated nature of order-making in Peyima, with the LPPB representing a police presence without the police actually being present, and under chiefly authority. The town leadership threatened to summon the SLP to look into the matter, but this was not acted upon. However, the fact that the threat was made emphasised the severity of the situation. Despite Kalilu's involvement in his capacity as the LPPB member, the town leadership in effect chose to deal with the issue ‘inside themselves’, a common way of saying that police involvement was not necessary – and a way to confirm chiefly authority.
The incident began a few months earlier when I promised Jimmy Sahr, my landlord in Peyima, to help him refurbish his house. I had returned to Denmark and had sent him 1,000,000 Leones through Western Union. Jimmy Sahr rarely went to Koidu, the headquarter town of Kono, so Fasalie, who had helped me when I first arrived in Kono, went to the bank to get the money. He handed over the money to Isaac, the first person I had met from Peyima when he was Peyima's LPPB member. While a lot of people were suddenly involved in the money transfer, it became clear that Isaac had kept it.
The incident was further complicated by the fact that Isaac had told Jimmy Sahr and the town chief that I had sent the money for small-scale alluvial mining, which, if true, could have put me in an awkward, if not dangerous, position within the town. White men do not mine without proper licences to do so; as investors, they are the only source of substantial income in an area where cash is in short supply. In addition, there are certain procedures that need to be followed, such as discussing mining opportunities with paramount and lesser chiefs, both to get formal and informal permission to mine. To continue my fieldwork in Peyima, which was underway at the time, I would need to explain to the town chief why the money had been sent.
I was summoned to the town chief's compound and seated in his Court Barry, a building where he usually held public meetings and local court sessions, surrounded by several elders who were always around when the town chief was in Peyima. Isaac, the last person known to handle the money, was there as well, looking extremely nervous. After an hour of waiting in awkward silence, I was called to the Chief's house alone, and sat down in the front room on a big green Chinese sofa. He proclaimed that he was the chief, meaning if I had something to say or give, I should do so now. I said I was a student, meaning I had nothing to hide or give. I stressed that I had not sent money for mining. If that had been the purpose of my trip, I told him, I would have come straight to him, particularly since apart from being the town chief, he was also the Mining Chairman of Kamara Chiefdom and signed off on all licences in the chiefdom on behalf of the government. (The town chief had been given this powerful position by the paramount chief, Melvin Ngekia, whom he supported during the paramount chief election.)
Isaac and Jimmy Sahr were then asked to come into the room, and were seated on each side of me, facing the town chief. At this stage, Kalilu entered the house to hear what the final say in the case would be and to take orders from the town chief. Jimmy Sahr was furious, demanding that the money be found. Isaac, becoming more and more timid, tried to defend himself, and appeared surprised, even hurt, that Jimmy Sahr had taken the case to the town authorities. They had grown up in the same house and were close. Jimmy Sahr was wondering out loud if Isaac did not want the house to be refurbished because it was not his, Isaac's, property.
The town chief intervened, telling Isaac to apologise to Jimmy Sahr. Suddenly, we were interrupted by a group of men from a mining company who appeared to be of Asian descent. They had come to discuss the matter of washing gravel with the town chief, which is done as part of the mining process. The meeting on my case was over. There were other more pressing matters to deal with, more money to be made and Kalilu now took over on behalf of the town chief.
We went back to the Court Barry next to the chief's house. A public apology had to be given in front of the town elders. Isaac had to admit his wrongdoing, which he did. Kalilu explained the case in Kono and Isaac apologised in front of the town elders to both Jimmy Sahr and me for what he had done. Kalilu then went on to say that ‘Mr. Peter’ had decided to let the case go, that the case was closed and that the police would not be involved. The case had been resolved ‘within themselves’. It had also become the talk of the town and Isaac had been publicly humiliated, which appeared to be punishment enough. The money was never returned; it had already been ‘chopped’.
As in the case of the deceased boy, Kalilu came to personify the hybrid order that LPPBs accentuate and consolidate. He assembled different types of authority by assuming the authority that came with being the PRO, i.e. embodying a police presence in Peyima. However, this role could only be assumed genuinely because it was consented to – and exploited – by the town chief. Indeed, the case had been arbitrated by him, with Kalilu executing and communicating the decision, which was done in a way that was shaped to fit, rather than disrupt, the chiefly hierarchy. (For a general discussion of this confluence of roles, see Ubink & von Rooij Reference Ubink, von Rooij, Ubink and McInerney2011: 8.)
Kalilu did not involve the police in Tombodu, although he could have and threatened to do so. While he told me on numerous occasions that in his capacity of LPPB member, he worked for the police, he also stated that he had rejected their offer of a uniform: ‘They are not paying me, so why are they asking me to take a uniform? I'm not interested’ (Kalilu 2009 Int.). Hybridity breeds contradiction, which Kalilu had to deal with. While he gained social status and minor financial benefits as he embodied a (state-based) police presence in Peyima, he would have to do so without compromising the authority of the town chief.
CONCLUSION
One of the objectives of re-establishing the SLP in the late 1990s and early 2000s was to project the imagery of vertical encompassment (Ferguson & Gupta Reference Ferguson and Gupta2002: 982–3), which had been shattered during the preceding decade of conflict. While this was not how the police explained the process, the concept articulates the ambition of the SLP to establish a police force (the state) as separate from and yet encompassing and integrated with ‘the community’. The approach was embedded in the new ethos of the police, Local Needs Policing, which articulated an ideal version of the SLP's transformation from a regime-preserving police force to a people-centred service provider.
The post-war community focus of the SLP did not explicitly seek to change local power structures. It aimed to re-establish a police presence in rural areas of the country, and thereby a policing function vis-à-vis the population. It is also the case, however, that making order and enforcing security have a distinctly political quality which has to do with who has the authority to both define what order is and determine access to resources. Therefore, as community policing evolved in rural Sierra Leone, it intertwined with already existing local structures of authority and practices and corroborated the hybrid order that paramount and lesser chiefs embody and govern.
Hybridity has become a central concept in contemporary peace and conflict studies. It represents an important challenge to the failed/fragile state discourse, and the binaries through which the modern state is often contrasted with traditional or non-state modes of political ordering in the global South (Millar Reference Millar2014a: 502; Albrecht & Moe Reference Albrecht and Moe2015: 1). Hybridity provides an analytical lens through which to explore in a more nuanced way how international and local practices, norms and institutions interact, merge and transcend universalising theories to include a plurality of social orders (Lemay-Hébert & Kühn Reference Lemay-Hébert and Kühn2015: 1). However, it is crucial to keep in mind that while LPPBs certainly were established as part of broad-based post-conflict peacebuilding efforts in Sierra Leone, they were introduced into an already existing hybrid order and became part of local power dynamics that centred on paramount and lesser chiefs that embody a range of sources of authority (see Ray & Van Nieuwaal van Rouveroy Reference Ray and van Nieuwaal van Rouveroy1996: 24; van Dijk and Van Nieuwaal van Rouveroy Reference van Dijk, Van Nieuwaal van Rouveroy, van Rouveroy van Nieuwaal and van Dijk1999; Spear Reference Spear2003).
This becomes evident as the practices of community policing are explored, specifically how the LPPBs are set up to deal with local crimes. To operate in rural Sierra Leone, the SLP must entertain good relations with paramount and lesser chiefs to ‘work effectively’, as was noted by Motema's police chief. By extension, chiefs have played a crucial role in establishing and managing the LPPBs. At times, they sit on the executive board of the LPPB and they are always involved in appointing the members put forward for election. Below the LPPB executive, the overlap between the chiefly hierarchy and LPPB members is almost complete, as the latter are appointed by, coordinate their activities with and execute the decisions of the former.
The exact implications of this are not only important to understanding the role of chiefs in order-making in contemporary rural Sierra Leone. Individuals and organisations that develop and implement large-scale police reform programmes would make their work more effective if they understand local power dynamics and incorporate this understanding into programming. Paramount and lesser chiefs (as well as quasi-vigilante groups and secret society members) play a central role in enforcing order and security at the local level in rural Sierra Leone. They are a fact of political life in the country's 149 chiefdoms and cannot be ignored; they will inevitably have a say in what security means in their chiefdoms, and how it should be delivered.
On one level, this is a strength of the LPPBs and explains in part why they are relatively efficient in the many areas across Sierra Leone where they function. They do not simply represent a foreign institutional import, but have been built up around, and appropriated by already existing structures of authority at the local level (Albrecht et al. Reference Albrecht, Garber, Gibson and Thomas2014: 59–60). On another level, LPPBs are also problematic, because when involvement of the community is mentioned by police officers in a rural setting like Peyima, ‘community’ has tended to mean local authorities – chiefs – rather than the general population. Thus, control of what order is and should be remains a largely elite affair with the concomitant possibility of power abuse (see Ubink & van Rooij Reference Ubink, von Rooij, Ubink and McInerney2011: 9).
This is not necessarily a critique of the introduction of LPPBs in rural Sierra Leone. Rather, recognising the possibility of power abuse by local chiefs should inject realism into the process of designing police reform in hybrid political contexts. In rural areas of Sierra Leone, LPPBs have consolidated the (re)formalisation of relations between the police and chiefs, but in the long term they may also lead to more inclusive policing where a broader range of individuals and actors are engaged.Footnote 13 Seen from this perspective, the initial establishment of LPPBs is simply a first step. And certainly, this paper suggests, continuous incremental change is the best that can be hoped for. In the short-term, wholesale transformation is neither feasible nor desirable, because attempts to induce abrupt change would either be ignored, wholly resisted or lead to rising tension and possibly conflict.
