This Occasional Paper is a survey and analysis of the series of external military interventions in Sierra Leone between 1993 and 2002. Though each of these interventions achieved some local or temporary success, until late 2000 none of them succeeded in creating a security situation that could foster a political solution to Sierra Leone's woes. Each intervention ran afoul of Sierra Leone's ethnic divisions, ineffective and corrupt governments and meddling neighbor states. Equally important to the purposes of this study, each of these military interventions was hampered by internal problems and ineffectiveness. Since 2002 a fragile veneer of democratic normalcy has been in place, UN programs have disarmed more than 70,000 fighters, and the economy of Sierra Leone is recovering. Sierra Leone remains, however, one of the very poorest countries in the world by nearly every measure.