Daru (Sierra Leone), Aug. 1 :    Daru (Sierra Leone), Aug. 1:  The rebel Revolutionary United Front in Sierra Leone has earned itself a place on a roll call of infamy that includes the Khmer Rouge and the Third Reich. To the battalion of Indian United Nations peacekeepers in Daru, a village near the eastern border of this West African state, the RUF is an enemy they encounter everyday - largely when rebels come to surrender their arms. Daru is a four square kilometre outpost surrounded on all sides by rebel-infested rain forest. Many of the Indian soldiers here were surrounded by RUF guerrillas in Kailahun and almost all participated in Operation Khukri, which lifted the siege two weeks ago. It has been quiet since then, partly because the rebels have a great respect for the Indians' fighting ability. An Indian officer explained: 'Until Khukri, the RUF derided Indians as all being Gandhians.' Rebel and jawan still meet face to face: every day two or three guerrillas walk into the two surrender camps on Daru's outskirts. The surrender camp has an armoured personnel carrier manned by a Sikh soldier whose pugree is coloured the light blue of the UN. Flanking him are two sandbagged machine-gun posts. Today a band of five RUF rebels has come to give up the bad fight. The UN gives them $ 300 for their weapons - rusty but workable rifles tied together with tape and rope. Their clothes are in tatters and they are shod with rubber sandals. None of them speaks English, not even the pidgin that is Sierra Leone's lingua franca. The interpreter, translating from tribal Mende, says they have fought for the RUF since childhood. Two of them, about 16 years old, have been with the rebellion since it began in 1991. Their lives have centred around killing since then. They are illiterate, orphaned and now weary. 'They want to surrender because their huts have been burnt down, they have no food and they have nothing to show for all these years,' says the interpreter. The five faces are dull and unsmiling, a stark contrast to the liveliness of Daru's locals. The interpreter says it is rare for rebels of the class of 1991 to surrender. The records show a minor uptake in surrenders since Operation Khukri. In a nine-day period after the operation over 30 rebels surrendered, against a previous average of 10 a month. Of course, for the 12,000-strong force this is a pinprick. One Indian soldier in Freetown explains: 'One RUF leader told me, 'If I lose 10 men, so what? I just grab 50 children from a village and force them to join me. Maybe 10 will die, maybe 20 will run away. But I will have 20 new men at the end of it'.' This cold-blooded use of children, including desocialising them by forcing them to kill parents or eat human flesh, has made the RUF reviled worldwide. It is said that the RUF began in 1991 as the response of marginalised hinterland tribes to the oppression and corruption of Sierra Leone's coastal elites. A parallel rebellion in neighbouring Liberia successfully seized power. However, over the years the RUF seems to have lost its original vision of empowerment. Yet, unlike other rebel groups in Sierra Leone - and the civil war has bred many, the RUF has not degenerated into banditry. Many UN officers believe the reason is that the RUF has been taken over by Liberia and its rebel-turned-president, Charles Taylor. Taylor's main interest is the diamond fields the RUF controls and the estimated $300 million in revenue they generate. By the data the Indian battalion in Daru has painstakingly accumulated by questioning rebels and intercepting signals, it is clear the RUF is far from a ragtag bunch of villagers. It is organised into six brigades with headquarters in the northern town of Makeni. A brigade has five battalions of roughly 1,000 men each. Like a regular army, it is organised down to the level of squads of 12 to 15 men. The RUF also has an officer corps of colonels, captains and so on. RUF attacks often begin with waves of children - a tactic that unnerved the first UN troops to arrive in Sierra Leone and which Indian jawans had to be psychologically prepared for. The rebel speciality is the ambush. One RUF brigade head, 'Major' Thomas Sandi, warned an Indian officer: 'We have 1,500 techniques to lay an ambush. Our ambush is bad.' Until Operation Khukri, no foreign force had been able to break a rebel ambush. The road to Kailahun is strewn with the burnt hulks of armoured vehicles and 200 corpses from an earlier push by a West African multilateral force. The Liberian presence is evident in the upper ranks of the RUF. The military head of the RUF, 'Colonel' Martin George, is believed to be a regular officer of the Liberian army, as is the head of the RUF's mortar units. Indian UN helicopter pilots based near Freetown say Liberian helicopters are sighted along the border and land in rebel-held towns. Taylor and the man who trained him, Muammar Qaddafi, are the only foreigners the RUF rebels cite for inspiration. The undefined border between the RUF and UN held areas has been quiet, if tense, since Khukri. The UN troops await further orders from New York City. Even in this short span, Daru's marketplace has experienced a small economic revival. A Lebanese businessmen even gave a positive response when an Indian officer recently asked him to open up a restaurant. In the heart of Daru is a large camp of about 600 inmates. They are all surrendered rebels or other social flotsam of the civil war who are being rehabilitated and trained in farming and crafts by non-government organisations. The camp is managed by Indian soldiers. Their influence is evident when the camp's cultural troupe stages a colourful mix of Bollywood and traditional African dance for visitors - grass skirts flouncing to an energetic rendition of Mithun Chakraborty's I am a Disco Dancer. It is almost possible to forget that the frontline of the world's darkest war is only 500 metres away.