Love and Betrayal: The Political Economy of Party Youth Violence in Post-War Sierra Leone

In postwar Sierra Leone, high levels of youth unemployment have been identified as a risk factor because of the connection often drawn between economic marginality and the likelihood of political violence. This paper argues that the leap from unemployment to the projection of political consequences is analytically reductive; we need to better understand transmission mechanisms from one to the other. It therefore offers a discussion of how recruitment for violence on behalf of the country’s major political parties relate to the political economy of work during an employment crisis. It reflects on the experiences of ex-combatants who have become remobilized as “security forces” for political parties, and their performance of violence and reactivation of wartime social networks as a means of securing a livelihood. This rests on an analysis of party youth’s moral economy, through the local concept of “love”, which reflects young people’s expectations of inclusion in redistributive networks.