IN THE AFTERMATH OF WAR
I traveled to Sierra Leone with the United Nations to document the atrocities of the civil war that has ravaged that country for several years. I arrived in Freetown a few days after a tenuous sieze fire had been set in place. Sierra Leone Civil War devastated the country leaving more than 50,000 people dead, much of the country's infrastructure destroyed, and over two million people displaced in neighboring countries; mainly to Guinea, which was home to more than six hundred thousand Sierra Leonean refugees. The war was resolved in 2002 after the Nigerian-led ECOMOG troops were heavily reinforced by a British force spearheaded by 1st Bn The Parachute Regiment, supported by the British Royal Navy The arrival of this force resulted in the defeat of rebel forces and restored the civilian government elected in 1996. On January 18, 2002 President Ahmad Tejan Kabbah declared the civil war officially over. Since then the country has re-established a functioning democracy.