Word: sierras
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...contrast could not be more marked: The British soldiers in creased, clean uniforms, smile at visitors and turn pink in the midday sun; their Sierra Leonean counterparts sport whatever fatigues are available, and they don't smile too much - but neither would you if you'd just returned from years fighting some of the toughest rebels in the world. And here, at the Benguema training center on the outskirts of the capital, Freetown, the soldiers' chiseled black faces are working up a serious sweat as they train under Britain's watchful...
...Sierra Leone's former colonial masters sent troops to that troubled west African nation last year after Revolutionary United Front rebels broke a peace deal and took hostage hundreds of U.N. peacekeeping troops. The arrival of the British was applauded by Freetown citizens, who, for a few days, had believed that the RUF rebels were about to launch another of their murderous attacks on the city. The presence of a disciplined, well-trained Western force turned the mood within a week...
...Initially Britain was there to evacuate its own nationals. Since then, though, some 600 soldiers have stayed on to train Sierra Leone's army. It's a huge challenge. "Some are bright; some can't read or write, some can't speak English," says Major Tim Radford, head of the senior leadership cadre at Benguema. "It's a mixed bag really...
...Pointing to a diorama he and other Sierra Leonean soldiers have just built, Lt. John Kailie says, "This is a model." Villages are marked with scraps of paper, tracks are marked in chalk, twigs mark a river crossing. Like most of the troops in 5 Platoon, Kailie has only recently returned from three years of fighting rebels in the country's rugged north. Many of the men training today have not seen their families since 1998. They are battle-hardened, although often weakened by poor diet, and are keen to be based closer to home. They are also eager...
...spread more quickly. Revolutionary United Front rebels, for instance, routinely kept women as sex slaves and used rape as a shock tactic in their bloody campaign. Drug use, especially among teenage soldiers, was also common. "These are high-risk people," says Moses. "But they just don't know it." Sierra Leone's army says it has been too busy fighting to worry about the disease. "This is a war situation," says the army's medical director Colonel Kis Kamara. "Everything's mixed up. If we talk about this now it will be exaggerated. By September we will be very much...