This Monograph is sponsored by the government of Norway through the Training for Peace in Southern Africa project.

The maps are reproduced with the kind permission of the United Nations and the tables with that of the National Commission for Disarmament, Demobilisation and Reintegration (Sierra Leone).

The ISS and the authors would like to express their sincere gratitude to the Special Representative of the UN Secretary General for Sierra Leone, Ambassador Oluyemi Adeniji and his personnel for the assistance, hospitality and excellent co-operation afforded by all interlocutors within UNAMSIL. While the latter are too many to list, we would like to express a special vote of thanks to the Force Commander, Lieutenant General Daniel Opande and his personal staff for the logistic and administrative support provided the authors.

We are also very grateful for all those - from UNAMSIL, the Government of Sierra Leone and from the Revolutionary United Front - whose names appear (unfortunately only) in the endnotes to this monograph, for granting the authors such cordial and candid interviews.

Finally, our thanks to Mr Gebremedhin Hagoss, Chief, Policy and Planning Section and Chairman of the Working Group on Policy Planning, UNAMSIL for the effort that he and his colleagues made to review an earlier draft of this report.