Word: sierras
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...Kosovo, the West went to war to stop ethnic cleansing; in Sierra Leone the international community appears unable to muster the will and resources to stop a ragtag guerrilla band that has already killed and mutilated tens of thousands more people than Slobodan Milosevic's forces ever did. The U.S. moved Monday to shore up the beleaguered U.N. peacekeeping mission to the war-torn west African country by offering to fly some 700 troops from Bangladesh into Sierra Leone, and also to provide logistical support should nearby Nigeria choose to resume its policing role in the former British colony...
...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...
...failure of peacekeeping, though, leaves the international 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...
...Sierra Leone, as in many other parts of Africa is not "the continuation of politics by other means"; it's the continuation of business by other means. And very ruthless business, meaning that the presence of United Nations peacekeepers is of little consequence to the fighters of the Revolutionary United Front, who continued to hold some 50 U.N. troops and officials hostage Thursday, after killing seven Kenyan soldiers of the international peacekeeping mission Wednesday. The RUF launched fierce attacks on U.N. forces when the peacekeepers attempted, in line with a peace agreement signed last year by the government...
...Sierra Leone peacekeeping debacle will weigh heavily on the mind of Washington's U.N. ambassador Richard Holbrooke as he meets Thursday with Congolese president Laurent Kabila to discuss plans to deploy a U.N. force in the similarly troubled Congo later this year. "Holbrooke has been warning for some time of the danger of sending in forces that are too small to deal with the scale of the problem and therefore vulnerable to attacks and kidnapping, which appears to be exactly what has happened in Sierra Leone," says Dowell. "But it's no simple matter to expand the peacekeeping force, because...