This book examines the complex of factors that resulted in the Sierra Leonean intra-state war and the first Ivorian Civil conflict. Qualitative field-data and interpretive methods are used to explore the validity of many assertions in the secondary sources, comparing respondents' views of the root-causes with experts' analyses to understand how and why these West African countries slipped into internecine fighting. It is demonstrated how manipulation of ethnic differences for political ends, where the ordinary people had no effective voice, combined with the mismanagement of the national economies and ensuing economic breakdown, mass poverty and major youth unemployment, all precipitated the region into avoidable blood-letting.