We the Young Fighters: Pop Culture, Terror, and War in Sierra Leone

by Marc Sommers

We the Young Fighters is at once a history of a nation, the story of a war, and the saga of downtrodden young people and three pop culture superstars. Reggae idol Bob Marley, rap legend Tupac Shakur, and the John Rambo movie character all portrayed an upside-down world, where those in the right are blamed while the powerful attack them. Their collective example found fertile ground in the West African nation of Sierra Leone, where youth were entrapped, inequality was blatant, and dissent was impossible.

When warfare spotlighting diamonds, marijuana, and extreme terror began in 1991, military leaders exploited the trio’s transcendent power over their young fighters and captives. Once the war expired, youth again turned to Marley for inspiration and Tupac for friendship.

Thoroughly researched and accessibly written, We the Young Fighters probes terror-based warfare and how Tupac, Rambo, and―especially―Bob Marley wove their way into the fabric of alienation, resistance, and hope in Sierra Leone. The tale of pop culture heroes radicalizing warfare and shaping peacetime underscores the need to engage with alienated youth and reform predatory governments. The book ends with a framework for customizing the international response to these twin challenges.

488 pages, Paperback

Published October 1, 2023

Reviews

[Christopher G. · Rating 5 out of 5]

We the Young Fighters is a deeply insightful and impressively thorough account of Sierra Leone’s vicious civil war and its enduring aftermath. It should be required reading for every diplomat, development worker, and soldier preparing for deployment to a conflict or post-conflict zone. Its discussion of the disconnect between diplomats and development workers with reality on the ground, including the moral hazard of authoritarian kleptocrats who intentionally create feeble “fake states” for personal enrichment, applies in many contexts and in many countries. Drawing on extensive interviews with former rebels and their victims, Sommers deftly unpacks the nexus between exploited, alienated youth and the hope offered to all sides in the Sierra Leone conflict (and beyond) by pop culture icons as diverse as Bob Marley, Tupac Shakur, and John Rambo. Sommers, who has spent much of his career engaging in peace building in countries ravaged by acute and chronic violence, does not fall into the trap of only listening to elite voices. He rejects the insidious temptation of the Westerner abroad to excessively valorize the narrative of well-spoken, well-dressed, and Western-educated interlocutors.

Indeed, We the Young Fighters gives a voice to the voiceless – the former rebels, both male and female, who are condemned by Sierra Leone’s closed economic system and exclusive political opportunity structure to a life of drudgery, scorn, and marginalization. We hear the voices of brutally exploited diamond miners, prostitutes, and drug dealers who are forced to live on the margins of society. Sommers trenchantly observes that the core cause of Sierra Leone’s civil war – exclusion of the majority, especially young people, by an exploitative elite – remains unaddressed by both the current government and development donors who, despite ostensibly good intentions, have recreated and in some cases strengthened the pre-civil war power structures. Yet, Sommers insists, most of the victims do not succumb to violence or despair but continue to strive for a better future against all odds.

Sommers concludes with a succinct and realistic recipe for foundational change; Sierra Leone is the model, but its lessons apply in many contexts. The solution to marginalization and the simmering threat of violent rebellion is not heavy-handed repression but good governance and system-wide efforts to integrate the excluded. If only more governments, diplomats, and development workers would heed this lesson!

My sole regret upon finishing We the Young Fighters was that I did not have the benefit of its wisdom before serving as an American diplomat in Haiti, Burkina Faso, Burundi, and Pakistan. This is a “must read” book for anyone who wants to understand not just why Sierra Leone exploded into years of hellish violence but who also seeks a roadmap to avoid revisiting that nightmare in Sierra Leone and elsewhere. (Chris Palmer, Foreign Service Officer (ret.)

[Charlie Matthews · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is the crowning work of the highly acclaimed anthropologist, Marc Sommers - the Margaret Mead award-winning author of Fear in Bongoland. We the Young Fighters is a product of Sommers' trademark exhaustive research, conducted over many years and is further evidence of Sommers' remarkable ability to immerse himself in a cultural phenomenon and reveal the dignity of real-life characters who come to respect and admire Sommers as much as he does them. What results is a portrait of a struggle - in this case, rebel warfare and brutal government oppression - in living color, making the reader feel they can walk right into the profoundly moving cover picture of young warriors and get to know them, as Sommers has devoted his numerous books to doing: knowing people, and getting their story right.

This story is about rebel fighters in Sierra Leone, in many cases far too young to be brandishing weapons of war and driven in a kind of tragically ironic way by the messages of Tupac Shakur, Bob Marley and Rambo (portrayed by Sylvester Stallone), along with a brainwashingly steady diet of marijuana - which serves to catalyze their cause. As symbols of the young soldiers' rebellion, Tupac, Marly and Rambo, and still other Hollywood-created live action figures like Chuck Norris, take on near mythological status in the rebels' fight for independence, and self actualization.

Their story is a powerful one, and could only be brought to life through Sommers' exhaustive research and his uncanny ability to make connections with people, often in the worst circumstances. Those connections enrich everyone involved in the mix and now, through We the Young Fighters, we the readers feel like we are witnessing the story first hand as well.

C.D. Matthews

[Daria S. · Rating 5 out of 5]

How did Tupac, Rambo, and Bob Marley, three pop culture icons, each deeply rooted in the western imagination, come to mean so much to the disenfranchised male youth of Sierra Leone, a modestly sized African country most Americans couldn’t pinpoint on a map? And, more intriguing, how did their individual messages, especially as understood in the west, get usurped and exploited to such an extreme, they ended up fueling arguably one of the most brutal conflicts on the planet?

In "We the Young Fighters", Marc Sommers (my cousin, yes, but that doesn’t mean I’d give him a break) unravels this explosive mystery in an electric book that is both an investigative thriller and heartbreaking tale of vulnerable human beings who have nothing left to lose. Brilliantly researched and contextualized, the author’s vast reservoir of knowledge never overwhelms. While his narrative exposes the horrendous consequences of immoral leaders preying upon the desperate youth in Sierra Leone, it also serves as a sober reminder of how globally connected we all are. This is a stunning work that will change the way you see the world.