World on Fire - Brownstein, Michael [63]
“This is the original Tower of Babel,” Harris said. “West Indians, Africans, real Indians, Syrians, Englishmen, Scotsmen in the Office of Works, Irish priests, French priests, Alsatian priests.”
“What do the Syrians do?”
“Make money. They run all the stores up-country and most of the stores here. Run diamonds too.”
“I suppose there’s a lot of that.”
“The Germans pay a high price.”
32
By the early 1990s, on the eve of civil war, the Lebanese—not even 1 percent of the population—dominated all the most productive sectors of the economy, including diamonds and gold, finance, retail, construction, and real estate. During the war, rebel forces—rumored to be funded by Liberia’s president Charles Taylor, who in turn is said to be funded by the Lebanese Liberian businessman Talal El-Ndine—took over the diamond mines for two years, with disastrous economic effects.
33 Although many Lebanese left during these years, the tiny, internationally connected Lebanese merchant community in Sierra Leone continues to be the country’s most dynamic economic force.
As the country struggles to recover, black Sierra Leoneans’ feelings toward the Lebanese are decidedly ambivalent. I had the good fortune recently of meeting with a group of five native Sierra Leoneans. The group’s leader, whom I’ll call Mr. Michaels, was a prominent Freetown lawyer and law professor. The other four were his adulating and exceptionally smart students. All were visiting New Haven as part of an exchange program sponsored by Yale Law School’s human rights clinic. We met in a student coffee bar.
Filled with ghastly visions of amputees, child armies, and villagers burned alive, I was struck by the optimism of the Sierra Leoneans I met in New Haven. Putting on a good face for the outside world was clearly a priority.
After discussing at length the latest cease-fire with the Revolutionary United Front (RUF) and the ongoing U.N.-supervised truth and reconciliation process, I turned to the question of economics. “So, who’s rich in your country?” I asked.
“Anyone who works hard,” one student immediately answered. (English is the official language in Sierra Leone.)
“Not just corrupt people?”
“No, this is not Nigeria.” They all laughed—except for Mr. Michaels, who had a lot of gravitas for a thirty-six-year-old.
“How is Sierra Leone’s educational system?” I asked. According to the United Nations, nearly 70 percent of Sierra Leone’s population is illiterate.
“We used to be the Athens of West Africa,” they replied, almost collectively. “The best students from Kenya, Nigeria, everywhere in Africa came to study.” Fourah Bay College, they reminded me several times, was established in 1827. “Of course, education has taken a nosedive since the war. But we are on the way back up again.”
There was more optimism, on almost every issue. When I asked whether some groups in Sierra Leone prospered more than others, Mr. Michaels shook his head, almost as if he disapproved of my question. “Tribalism is not a serious problem in Sierra Leone,” he replied. “We are not like Kenya. We are all first Sierra Leoneans.” Also from Mr. Michaels: “Sierra Leoneans are a very open-minded, hospitable people. We treat foreign investors better than our own kinsmen.” He even said, although 75,000 Sierra Leoneans have been killed and 30,000 maimed in the civil war, “Our country is a land of opportunity. Our constitution bars any form of discrimination.”
When I specifically mentioned the Lebanese, however, a more complex picture emerged. “What is the status of the Lebanese today?” I asked.
“Oh, they dominate business. They are very rich,” was the uniform reply.
But the Lebanese no longer dominated the diamond industry?
No, the students explained. The diamond fields were now under the control of the United Nations. “Of course,” they added, “the Lebanese are still smuggling.”
Was there much resentment or discrimination against the Lebanese minority? I asked.
The students found this question exasperating. “You have it