Word: ecomog
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...wrought havoc in the countryside, and then a coup by former Strasser loyalists led by Colonel Johnny Paul Koroma overthrew Kabbah and invited the RUF into the capital for an orgy of bloodletting and looting. The West urged Nigeria to take charge, and in February 1998 the ECOMOG intervention force seized Freetown, restored Kabbah to power and arrested Foday Sankoh, who was later sentenced to death. But a year later, the RUF overwhelmed ECOMOG and recaptured the capital, freeing Sankoh and savaging the civilian population. Government control was only restored after weeks of fierce fighting, in which Nigerian troops...
...Barnes: By the time I arrived in the region there was only a small section of Freetown left in the hands of the government and its Nigerian allies. The only way in was through a single Nigerian ECOMOG helicopter that was still flying in. I had to bribe my way onto the last flight of the day. As we flew over the sea, you could see dozens of corpses floating in the bay, and the city burning in the distance...
...only by accompanying an ECOMOG patrol that was fighting its way back into downtown. It was too risky to move around alone. After a couple of days the Nigerian troops got their act together and began to retake the city, street by street, in one of the most brutal campaigns I've ever seen. The problem was that nobody knew who the rebels were. Many of them had sneaked into the city unarmed, by joining refugee columns. Then they'd collected weapons that had been stashed in Freetown and simply went berserk. At a certain point the ECOMOG forces appeared...
...only successful effort, partial at least, to keep peace in Sierra Leone came when a Nigerian-led force, known as ECOMOG, intervened two years ago to stop the rebels from overrunning the country. But the RUF controlled diamond fields that could finance a long-term insurgency, and when ECOMOG withdrew recently, complaining that the mission was too costly, the RUF became emboldened. The peace deal was supposed to mean giving up their control over the diamond fields, but that wasn't something an exceedingly brutal army - which had adopted systematic dismembering of the civilian population as a tactic...
...community facing an ugly choice: Simply pulling out leaves Sierra Leone at the mercy of thugs far worse than Milosevic's, but eliminating the danger requires a military commitment far larger than anyone is prepared to make. Even if the cash-strapped Nigerians can be persuaded to send their ECOMOG contingents back, those were previously able to restrict the rebels' advance on the capital, but not to eliminate them as a fighting force. So even in the best-case scenario, now, Sierra Leone will go back to square...