Word: leoneã
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Dates: during 2001-2001
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...Edgar family never felt particularly threatened because they were reassured that Freetown was “as safe as can be” because its security was reinforced by a prominent United Nations presence and a concentrated domestic military effort to safeguard the symbolic center of Sierra Leone??s political life. The evening news often recounted rebel attacks and the Edgar family opposed the rebels because, though they fought against a lackadaisical government, they routinely killed innocent civilians. As Edgar observes wryly, however, “often the time you think you’re the safest...
...family witnessed first-hand. The two major players in the nations’s civil war are the freely elected government, which is backed by the UN and a host of neighboring West African countries, and a band of militia rebels who, among other things, want to control Sierra Leone??s profitable diamond mines. The rebels call themselves the Revolutionary United Front (RUF) and are responsible for the death and maiming of over 10,000 Sierra Leonians...
...until it seemed safe to venture outside again. “All you could hear were bombs and all you could see was smoke,” says Edgar. The nightmare took an even more frightening turn when Edgar looked out the window to see the President of Sierra Leone??s helicopter over head. Though there were competing reports saying that the President was organizing a resistance movement from within the country, it was clear that he had simply “given up on the country” and fled the war. “At that...
...broke it in May of 2000 by capturing 500 UN peacekeepers. Then in November of 2000 another peace accord was signed and some of the violence in the western part of the state, including Freetown, subsided. The RUF still controls much of the east, however, including Sierra Leone??s prosperous and contentiously coveted diamond mines...