Sierre Leone and The Natural Recourse Curse

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We have been talking about how natural recourses can ultimately doom a country and its economy. This happens around the world with many different products. We see in the middle east that they have conflicts because of the vast amounts of oil that are produced there. To help better understand this we watched the film "Blood Diamond" in class. This is a hollywood film that shows how diamonds in Sierre Leone were a main cause for the civil war that plagued the country for over a decade. What I learned from this film was how the diamonds cause so many problems. What happens is that these diamonds are mined by rebels and child soldiers and smuggled across the border into Liberia. They are then given to a middle man in this country where it is legal to sell diamonds. From here they are sold for heavy prices to places like the United Kingdom. The money that buys these diamonds then goes back to the rebels who mined them in Sierre Leone. They use this money to buy top grade military equipment to attempt to overthrow the government. This is where the problem occurs. If Sierre Leone had a strong government that could control the sales of diamonds and the money that comes in they would have a very strong economy. Instead the government can not control it and a civil war erupted because of it.

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