This is a CBSI on the world. I'm John Bachelore. Defense and Foreign Affairs takes us immediately to West Africa. There's trouble in all directions. We start with Sierra Leone.

Gregory, we've focused on the francophone countries that are in tattered shape right now,

having evicted democracy and replaced it with either

Huntas or the unknown in Burkina Faso, Mali and Niger.

What is the status of Sierra Leone at this moment?

Well, Sierra Leone has also abandoned democracy

along with the other coup states in the region, Guinea, Niger, Mali, Burkina Faso and the like, but it did so at the

ballot box on June 24th last year. The election that or the run-up to the election was filled with

enormous amounts of violence and intimidation and corruption and the election was then really stolen through

corrupt manipulation of the ballot box. It was overwhelmingly rejected by the international community of election observers.

And many people were dying for months after that election

as the government attempted to suppress opposition

around the country.

Now it's interesting that this was not called a coup, which it was, but the actual military coups in Niger, Mali and Burkina Faso

altogether didn't kill a fraction of the number of people who were killed in the serially owned problems.

Now talk about lack of the game, the Echowas, the economic community of West African states, had threatened to punish Bekina Faso Mali and particularly Niger for their military coups,

unless they reversed those coups and handed power back to the electorate.

As a result, those three Sahelian states from close up to the Sahelian region of West Africa basically said they

were withdrawing from Echowas as a result and that'll take about a year to

take effect and meanwhile they'll be wooed back I'm sure or attempt to woo them back into

ECOWAS. But those countries basically broke up the ECOWAS block so as a result Echowas did not jump up and down too much

when the Sierra Leone situation got out of hand they threatened Sierra Leone and certainly Sierra Leone

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