Volume 47, Number 11 · June 29, 2000
The Worst Place on Earth
By James Traub
Sierra Leone is a tiny West African country famous now only for its evil. Once it was known as the source of some of the world's highest-quality diamonds, but the stones have been plundered for generations by colonial mining companies, corrupt heads of state, Lebanese merchants, and profiteering warlords, and the supply of the finest diamonds has been depleted. Now Sierra Leone is known as the place where its rebels chop off people's hands and feet, rape little girls and old women, press-gang children into combat, and use civilians as human shields. A visitor to Sierra Leone has an inevitable impulse to inquire into this evil. It may be pointless, but you want to know: How could human beings do these things?
Feature, 6918 words
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