Externally encouraged policies of liberalization in Sierra Leone in the 1970s and 1980s fed into civil war in the 1990s; yet such policies are now being revived. This article analyzes the impact of liberalization on the war in Sierra Leone, suggesting that it affected the conflict in four ways: first, by encouraging inflation, extreme devaluation, and private oligopolies; second, by reducing key state services such as education and health; third, by fueling corruption as real state salaries were cut; and fourth, by taking attention away from soldiers’ abuses under the military government of 1992–96, a government that was praised and rewarded for its liberalization agenda.
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