Republic of Sierra Leone

The capital:             Freetown

The inhabitants enumerated:             5,614,743 breath of air (estimate of July 2002)

The language:            The English

The sweat:             Citizen of African, [tymn] (30%), [mndy] (30%), African faction last (30%), [krywl] (10%)

The climate:             The uniformity

Regime of the governing:             Democratic

The economy                        

- the currency:             Leon

- [aalmwaaryd]:             Diamond, wood, gold, [bwksaayt], iron ore, coffee and ginger.

The religion:             The Islam, Christ and traditional beliefs

History

Numerous African tribes inhabited Sierra Leone when it was visited and named by the Portuguese in 1462. Freed American slaves were settled there at the end of the 18th century. Cape Sierra Leone became a British colony in 1808, and the interior was made a protectorate in 1896. Independence within the Commonwealth was gained in 1961, and it was made a republic in 1971. 

On 25 May 1997, the democratically-elected government of President Ahmad Tejan KABBAH was overthrown by a disgruntled coalition of army personnel from the Armed Forces Revolutionary Council (AFRC) and the Revolutionary United Front (RUF) under the command of Major Johnny Paul KOROMA; President KABBAH fled to exile in Guinea. The Economic Community of West African States Cease-Fire Monitoring Group (ECOMOG) forces, led by a strong Nigerian contingent, undertook the suppression of the rebellion. They were initially unsuccessful, but, by October 1997, they forced the rebels to agree to a cease-fire and to a plan to return the government to democratic control. President KABBAH returned to office on 10 March 1998 to face the task of restoring order to a demoralized population and a disorganized and severely damaged economy. Many of the leaders of the coup were tried and executed in October 1998. In January 1999, the situation had deteriorated even further, with commerce at a standstill, hundreds of thousands of people driven from their homes, and bitter fighting between the AFRC/RUF and ECOMOG troops intensifying by large-scale import of arms. 

A peace agreement, signed on 7 July 1999, offers hope that the country will be able to rebuild its devastated economy and infrastructure, but previous peace efforts have failed. As of late 1999, up to 6,000 UN peacekeepers were in the process of deploying to bolster the peace accord.