Atrocities are now a daily occurrence in the West African country of Sierra Leone, and while the death toll there does not yet approach Rwanda's, the horrors are commensurate. Rebels, apparently encouraged by the thuggish Charles Taylor of Liberia, and with no goal other than the seizure of power, specialize in chopping off the hands or arms of their victims, among them small children. Tens of thousands of people have been killed, and hundreds of thousands displaced, and an already unstable part of the world is growing more unstable. Some 15,000 Nigerian soldiers, along with token contingents from one or two other countries, are fighting a particularly nasty war. But whether the Nigerians will continue to fight is at least an open question.
Wars cost money, and Nigeria is broke.
Tumbling oil prices and government corruption have wrecked the economy. Moreover the military regime is preparing to hand over power to a civilian government, and it is not all certain what a civilian government might do. No matter how worthy the Sierra Leone intervention, the cost in blood and treasure is high, and the new government might not want to pay it. This is roughly equivalent to what a congressman might suck up from the public trough to modernize his district's post offices. By and large, the State Department is hopeless in these matters.