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Mercenary companies are increasingly contracted to resolve low-intensity conflicts, especially intra-state disputes in Africa. The use of such troops in Sierra Leone demonstrates a link between such conflicts, strategic minerals, and the security vacuum produced by collapsed African states.

Get ready to go native. Beginning this year, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), the international body that doles out Web addresses, will allow non-Latin characters in [...]

The article assesses the role of contribution of domestic and international actors in facilitating the torturous road to peace. It cites the situation in Bomaru in the eastern Sierra Leone, in which the place was disturbed by the guns of the RUF. The disturbance is reportedly caused by the RUF's desire to overthrow the corrupt and inept All Peoples Congress (APC) government. To settle the conflict, two actors have entered the scenario as the main facilitators of a political settlement; one is the group of civil society organizations which includes the Inter-Religious Council, while the other is the group composed of multilateral intervention, intergovernmental and international organizations. Both have initiated a peace agreement between the two conflicting parties.

The wave of democratization in the 1990s has brought considerable challenges and opportunities for post-cold war Africa. One such challenge is the democratic intervention of the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) under the aegis of the multilateral intervention force, ECOMOG, to restore a democratic government and constitutional order. The ECOWAS democratic intervention in the West African state of Sierra Leone can be located in a wider debate about international dimensions of democratization. In several respects, it also reflects the changing nature of international politics in the post-cold war period particularly with regards to certain traditional norms of international society, namely non-intervention and state sovereignty. The ECOWAS democratic efforts in Sierra Leone demonstrate that it is increasingly becoming acceptable for regional and international organisations to 'defend' democracy, albeit under the auspices of forcible as well as non-forcible humanitarian intervention. However, these kinds of external intervention on behalf of democracy have in most cases led to its retrenchment. This article therefore critically assesses how the nature of domestic politics led to the suspension of democracy in Sierra Leone, the domestic and international implications of the ECOWAS defence of democracy there and the country's post-conflict democratic prospects. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]