"Roughly the size of South Carolina, Sierra Leone is a small, tropical country located in West Africa and bordered by Guinea, Liberia, and the Atlantic Ocean" (General Board of Global Ministries). Sierra Leone was, and still is a battleground, used for murder, rape, abduction, slavery, and torture. This was all a result of the Revolutionary United Front rebels, or RUF. The conflict began in March 1991, when "armed combatants crossed the border from Liberia into the south-eastern part of the country, attacking and subsequently occupying the border town of Bomary in the Kailahun district" (Centre for Documentation and Research).

In retaliation, the government increased its military force from three thousand, to fourteen thousand men during the first two years of the conflict. After the

Abandoning Africans is nothing new. But the Clinton administration has gone further. "It has tried to deny them the reality of their own experience, to bludgeon them into pretending that the horrors around them do not truly exist--so that they won't embarrass the American officials who proclaim so eloquently that their fates are inextricably linked to our own" (Tucker).

Now that the shaky cease-fire has come apart, another orgy of death, destruction and mayhem is beginning. "The insurgency in Sierra Leone has left 75,000 dead and 2 million homeless" (Gerry 338), and it is only the beginning. Only the insertion by the international community of enough forces to overwhelm the RUF can stop the barbarity. But that appears unlikely because the Western powers no longer see that they have any vital interests in places like Sierra Leone. It would be next to impossible to convince the American public that there is any reason to put the lives of American troops at risk in such a place, although humanitarian concern should be sufficient.

This civil war is being waged through attacks on the civilian population. Soldiers capture them, and commit these atrocities in hope to instill terror. The soldiers further terrorize their victims by forcing them to participate in their own mutilation, asking them to make choices about which finger, hand or arm to have amputated.

them for help, and talked bad about the RUF. They would light houses on fire, hide, then shoot the people running out of the house. They would also hide, and shoot people who went out to help their family or friends that lie in the street. Upon gaining control of a neighborhood or suburb, the rebels went on systematic looting raids, in which families were hit by wave after wave of rebels demanding money and valuables. Those who didn't have what the rebels demanded were often murdered; even the ones who gave them what they wanted were still murdered. While rape and abduction were widespread throughout the offensive, the pace of the executions, amputations and burning of property picked up dramatically as the rebels were forced to withdraw. The abuses committed in the last several days of rebel occupation of any given neighborhood were of immense proportion. It was stated that this was their punishment for supporting the existing government.

Some common words found in the essay are:
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Approximate Word count = 1628
Approximate Pages = 7 (250 words per page double spaced)