Word: rebel
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Writing off Sierra Leone's malaise as some sort of inevitable "Heart of Darkness" scenario that simply confirms the futility of intervening in Africa's conflicts may be a temptation, but it's also more than a little misleading. The tragedy unfolding now as an unfathomably brutal rebel army scoffs at peacekeeping efforts and fights its way toward the capital is not a product of some collective psychosis of the Sierra Leoneans. It is, instead, a sordid tale of ruthless pursuit of a buried treasure - diamonds - in the world's poorest country, and of political calculations, miscalculations and plain wishful...
...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 at times matched the brutality of the rebel fighters...
...Secretary of State Madeleine Albright last October to encourage him to keep the peace. But the international community failed to read the glaring signs that the RUF had no intention of laying down the weapons that were the source of their political and economic power. "General Mosquito" Bokarie, the rebels' chief field commander, chastised Sankoh for making peace, ordered his men to hold onto their weapons, and warned the U.N. troops who'd come to disarm them to keep their distance. Sankoh fired Bockarie late last year, but the commander fled to Liberia, where he began to organize...
...peacekeeping troops still in the hands of the RUF. The peace agreement they were meant to police is no more than a bit of litter on the floor of Sankoh's trashed house (where a New York Times reporter found an original, signed copy after the rebel leader had fled) and the international forces are scrambling to organize defenses to stave off a rebel assault on the capital. Britain, the country's former colonizer, has some 700 paratroopers in there to evacuate Europeans and to stiffen the spine of Freetown's defenders. And the U.S. has promised...
...doomed peace agreement from the outset. Everybody knew that bringing Foday Sankoh and other rebel leaders into the government was a recipe for disaster. But even though Sankoh and his men had committed horrendous crimes, people in Sierra Leone were so traumatized by war that they were prepared to give up justice in order to secure peace. They'd have accepted the deal, if it was workable. The reason it wasn't, though, was because of the diamonds. This is not a civil war in the true sense. Sankoh doesn't represent the poor, or have any coherent political program...