The sheer dimensions of the brutalization in Freetown in the past few weeks have been hard even for resolute aid workers to withstand. The images that flash by them are otherworldly, they say. Marie de la Soudière, who heads the International Rescue Committee's Children in Armed Conflict Unit, is still haunted by the shy six-year-old girl outside Freetown who raised the stump of her arm and asked, "Will my fingers grow back?"

Ever since the rebels were driven into the countryside, they have used brutalization as a kind of strategic device, hoping the horror of war would lead Kabbah to sue for peace. One witness interviewed by Human Rights Watch said he saw rebel soldiers tell a boy that he was too tall. A soldier then took a machete and cut off the boy's left foot. When the boy fell to the ground, the soldier calmly shot him in the chest three times. Young rebels blithely ask victims if they want "long sleeves or short sleeves"--amputation at the wrists or elbows.

Such extreme violence is not characteristic of Sierra Leone. Jim Stearns, an emergency-relief-operations specialist for care, says that when he first started going to Sierra Leone in 1989, nearly all the violence was across the border in Liberia, which was then in the midst of a civil war. Freetown, which sits amid lush rice paddies and rolling green hills, was established in 1787 as a home for freed slaves. The British cut off the slaves' shackles on a block in front of a cottonwood tree that still stands today. But the country is no paradise: the U.N. ranked it the least-developed nation on earth in 1997. The average life expectancy is 34 years.

And there is no sign that the conflict that is ravaging the country will end soon. Though on-site negotiators pressed last weekend to get ECOMOG-R.U.F. talks started again, they faced a number of problems. The R.U.F. leadership vacuum is one. Another is that Kabbah's government, having seen the effects of a partial victory before, is in no hurry to sue for peace. Aid agencies say the city is still too hot to begin bringing in badly needed food and medicine. On Saturday night, civilians in Freetown were down to desperate rations: leather and pig food. Nigerian commanders planning an offensive for this week worried about what tactics could possibly contain thousands of drug-addled adolescents. Said a major: "This is a battle between democracy and dementia."

Questions

1. When and why did the rebel offensive begin in Sierra Leone?

2. What are the hopes for a cease-fire in the dispute? What are the obstacles to peace?

Answers

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