Word: powers
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Dates: during 2000-2000
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...center of the orgy of killing, maiming and torture that has gripped Sierra Leone for the past decade is a portly, ebullient former army corporal and wedding photographer. But Foday Sankoh doesn't personally hack the hands off children or slaughter their parents in his drive for political power and control over Sierra Leone's diamond fields; for that he relies on an army of abducted teenagers, forced at gunpoint to rape or kill loved ones - a brutal measure designed to cut off the road home - before being dragged into the bush, where Sankoh's drug-addled legions become their...
...group of army officers, tired of fighting the RUF on behalf of a corrupt elite, seized power. But rather than fight on, the new regime of Captain Valentine Strasser hired a South African mercenary firm, Executive Outcomes, which was composed primarily of apartheid-era special forces officers who'd had plenty of experience in southern Africa's brutal wars of the '80s, to deal with the rebels. The mercenaries' price included a substantial share of the country's diamond mines. Although their 21-month sojourn in Sierra Leone cost the country $35 million, they got the job done. The rebels...
...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 at times matched the brutality...
...personal visit in Freetown from 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...
...year with an 87-75 record, and contended for a playoff spot until the final two weeks of the season. They have put together a core of young talent led by a triple-crown threat in first baseman Jason Giambi, a potentially dominant young hurler Tim Hudson, and several power hitters including outfielders Matt Stairs and Ben Grieve...