AFRICA : In a Paranoid Land, Contagion of Fear Spreads : Sierra Leone’s military government downplays a rebel threat, but the people aren’t listening. Rumors abound.

To hear the fearful people of this nation tell it, they are cornered here on the Atlantic’s edge by ruthless bandits, savage kidnapers, wayward soldiers and a shadowy guerrilla fighter whose cause has never been explained and whose face is known to almost no one.

In the capital of this West African nation, people are fleeing--if they are among those with the means to flee. Airline flights out of the country have been expanded but still are booked to capacity. Fishing boats are leased for standby evacuations.

Others are trapped. Houses for five now sleep 30. Supplies of food are dwindling; prices are skyrocketing. Travel is safe nowhere outside of Freetown. Roads are ambushed; villages are burned.

And almost every day, a batch of leaflets is dropped somewhere promising blood-curdling atrocities.

But to hear the military government tell it, the enemy is but a ragtag assortment of 300 armed terrorists teamed with a few thousand marauders with cutlasses and clubs. The real threat, the army argues, is the contagion of fear that these rebels are spreading through Sierra Leone’s word-of-mouth society.

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Even the outside world is being dragged into the morass. Seven nuns--six Italians and one Brazilian--and nine foreign workers have been kidnaped in the countryside, abducted by whom and for what purpose, except grave mischief, no one is quite sure.

There is agreement on some matters: Refugees, who number 1.7 million, make up a large portion of the country’s population, many of them packed into Freetown. About 5,000 people have died in four years of turmoil. And this: Hardly anyone has the foggiest what the insurgents want, how many groups or factions they represent, who really leads them and why.

Maybe the rebels are men greedy for diamonds and gold--because this is a country whose greatest natural riches can be carried away in a satchel. Maybe it’s an everyday African power grab--because mysterious rebel leader Foday Sankoh was last heard demanding the resignation of the government.

But that was one government ago. Maybe the suffering of Sierra Leone is even cruder--a hellish blend of tribal revenge, opportunistic looting spilling over from the anarchy in neighboring Liberia and the kind of tragic diversion that guns provide from the aching boredom of African poverty.

Sierra Leone’s modern history is rich in corruption, coup and conflict. Three years ago, a group of disgruntled mid-level military officers called on the president with their complaints about pay. They emerged, bloodlessly, with one of their own, baby-faced 27-year-old army Capt. Valentine Strasser, as the new head of state.

Since then, Strasser has impressed Western countries with his economic reforms and his promise to move the country toward democracy. The United States has joined in providing aid, including surplus military equipment from the Persian Gulf War.

But at home, Strasser’s free-market ideas have yet to better the lot of the people. Cholera outbreaks have killed thousands in the last couple of years. And against his unfathomable enemy, Strasser has found no success as peacemaker. His offer to let the rebels form a political party and contest Sierra Leone’s future in elections went unanswered.

The war has only intensified.

And so have rumors that make Sierra Leone a bleak and paranoid country.

On Wednesday, the weekly Concord Times newspaper published a front-page story warning that a biology class mascot, a crocodile, was missing from a rural school. The newspaper speculated that rebels may have killed the reptile and were planning on using the evil power of its gall bladder “to inflict death on thousands of people.”

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Sierra Leone, Nation in Crisis

Just how serious is the strife in the tiny West African nation? Consider:

* Refugees make up a large portion of the country’s population.

* About 5,000 people have died in four years of turmoil.

* Cholera outbreaks have killed thousands in recent years.

* The political chaos has grown so complex that it is now unclear how many factions are warring, what exactly each wants and who leads them.

FACT SHEET

Population: 4.63 million

Size: 27,699 square miles (about the size of South Carolina)

Language: English, tribal languages

Economic activity: Mining (bauxite, diamonds, gold); tourism; fishing and agriculture, including cultivation of cocoa, coffee, rice and ginger.