West Side Boys
The West Side Boys , also West Side Niggaz or West Side Junglers, were an armed group in Sierra Leone between 1998 and 2000 . According to their own statements, they were already involved in the 1997 coup .
Its leader was believed to be Foday Kallay , but according to other sources a man by the name of Brigadier Bomb Blast or Brigadier Papa , whose true identity seems unknown.
The group was influenced by American rap music and gangsta rap music , specifically Tupac Shakur and the "gangsta" culture that is portrayed in this section.
Military defeat
On August 25, 2000, the West Side Boys overpowered a deviated patrol of the UNAMSIL peacekeeping force, consisting of eleven members of the Royal Irish Rangers and a Sierra Leonean liaison officer, confiscated their vehicles and weapons and took them hostage.
When five British soldiers and the liaison officer were still in captivity after negotiations, a task force of the British Special Air Service attacked on the morning of September 10, 2000 , heavily supported by the Special Boat Service and the Parachute Regiment , and freed them in the " Operation Barras “the six remaining hostages, as well as 21 Sierra-Leonean civilians from the captivity of the West Side Boys.
As a result, and further operations by the Sierra Leone Armed Forces and Royal Irish Rangers, the West Side Boys were crushed. They had about 600 fighters at their wedding.
filming
The documentary - TV Series Critical situation of the US television channel National Geographic in 2007 dedicated her third episode, Operation Certain Death , the operation Barras . The German-language first broadcast followed in 2009 by the National Geographic Channel as the 6th episode under the title SAS - Operation in Sierra Leone .
See also
literature
- Damien Lewis: Operation Certain Death. The inside story of the SAS's greatest battle. Century Publishing et al., London 2004, ISBN 1-84413-678-7 .
- Mats Utas, Magnus Jörgel: The West Side Boys: military navigation in the Sierra Leone civil war. The Journal of Modern African Studies, 2008, pp. 487-511.