The Kingdom of Morocco is the most westerly of the North African countries known as the Maghreb.

Strategically situated with both Atlantic and Mediterranean coastlines, but with a rugged mountainous interior, it stayed independent for centuries while developing a rich culture blended from Arab, Berber, European and African influences.

Morocco was a French protectorate from 1912 to 1956, when Sultan Mohammed became king. He was succeeded in 1961 by his son, Hassan II, who ruled for 38 years. He played a prominent role in the search for peace in the Middle East, given the large number of Israelis of Moroccan origin, but was criticised for suppressing domestic opposition.

A truth commission set up to investigate human rights violations during Hassan's reign has confirmed nearly 10,000 cases, ranging from death in detention to forced exile.

A former capital, Marrakesh is famed for its architecture

After his death in 1999 Hassan was succeeded by his son, who became King Mohammed VI and was seen as a moderniser. There has been some economic and social liberalisation, but the monarch has retained sweeping powers.

Morocco is bidding for membership of the European Union, its main trade partner, but there appears to be little enthusiasm for this within the bloc.

To the south, the status of Western Sahara remains unresolved. Morocco annexed the territory in 1975 and a guerrilla war with Algerian-backed pro-independence forces ended in 1991. UN efforts have failed to break the political deadlock.

To the north, a dispute with Spain in 2002 over the tiny island of Perejil revived the issue of the sovereignty of Melilla and Ceuta. The small enclaves on the Mediterranean coast are surrounded by Morocco and have been administered by Madrid for centuries.

Morocco has been given the status of non-Nato ally by Washington, which has praised its support for the US-led war on terror. After deadly suicide bombings in Casablanca in 2003, Morocco launched a crackdown on suspected Islamic militants.

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Most buildings in the area have been badly damaged

But the United Nations is building eight military bases in this region – a clear sign that they think this is where any trouble will come from.

One by one, the villagers we meet from ethnic groups assumed to have voted for former President Gbagbo are coming out of the jungle.

They have little left to return to.

Every house is damaged in some way, all the metal sheeting has vanished, thatched homes have been burned, food stores and every other possession looted.

The forest undergrowth here has already reclaimed the primary school.

It is the rainy season but many are sleeping under the stars. The lucky ones get plastic sheeting from the Ivorian Red Cross to replace their vanished roofs.

On the morning of our final day in the region, I wandered out to look for breakfast and came across a battered minibus, parked up outside the wooden street-shack in Toulepleu, where a man called Alpha could make you a sugary tea with omelette sandwiches while you listened to the BBC.

The roof of the bus was loaded high with plastic water-containers and bags of clothes. The travellers on this particular odyssey sat around enjoying the cool of the morning.

Years of exile

These voyagers, it turned out, were on no ordinary road trip.

In this remote corner of the world, we had stumbled on a group of Liberian refugees returning from camps in Ghana.

Some had spent close to two decades in exile. They were Liberians crossing the stormy Francophone seas of Ivory Coast, and now within touching-distance of home.

Home – what a concept.

The day before, I had been to the border post, which was little more than a few huts on a mud track in the forest.

Six hundred Ivorian refugees had crossed over that morning.

For many of them, Liberia was a hellish place where the food made them sick. As one woman said to me, “all the children do is die” – after that, they would be placed in cloth bags and buried without the usual ceremony.

But these Liberians saw their country with quite different eyes.

Spirits were high at the end of a long journey, there was much banter, and even a certain optimism that this stranger who had just strolled up to them out of the blue in this quiet, battered town might just buy them all breakfast.

Promised land

Liberia for them was a country of hope – a place to rebuild, rediscover family and the ancestral earth.

It was a place of goat soup, rice bread and sweet potato pone (another kind of bread).

It was a beautiful place, a place that had filled their dreams during those long years in exile, constantly reminded by the population around them that they did not belong.

They had spent the last few days inside this tin can on wheels, at one point sweating it out for four hours at a roadblock manned by Ivorian soldiers, who not so long ago had been rebels. The soldiers had demanded a bribe of $200 (£126).

The Liberians had bumped and scraped across one of Africa's freshest war zones, through the Ivorian “Wild West”, and they were now just 30 minutes from the border.

In the hills on the other side of the Nipoue river, lay their promised land, their Ithaca.

“Home is home. There is peace back home so we have to go back home,” one woman, Grace, told me in an accent that hinted at the American South.

She had been away for 17 years.

“We have been out for so long. I think now we understand the evilness of war and we just want peace.”

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Senegal has been held up as one of Africa's model democracies. It has an established multi-party system and a tradition of civilian rule.

Although poverty is widespread and unemployment is high, the country has one of the region's more stable economies.

For the Senegalese, political participation and peaceful leadership changes are not new. Even as a colony Senegal had representatives in the French parliament. And the promoter of African culture, Leopold Senghor, who became president at independence in 1960, voluntarily handed over power to Abdou Diouf in 1980.

The 40-year rule of Senegal's Socialist Party came to a peaceful end in elections in 2000, which were hailed as a rare democratic power transfer on a continent plagued by coups, conflict and election fraud.

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At a glance

Politics: Abdoulaye Wade came to power in 2000, ending four decades of Socialist Party rule; he won a second term in February 2007

Economy: Agriculture drives the economy; tourism is a source of foreign exchange

International: Senegal has mediated between Sudan and Chad over Darfur tensions; many African illegal migrants use Senegal as a departure point for Europe

Security: Despite a peace deal, a low-level separatist rebellion simmers in Casamance, in the south

Senegal is on the western-most part of the bulge of Africa and includes desert in the north and a moist, tropical south. Slaves, ivory and gold were exported from the coast during the 17th and 18th centuries and now the economy is based mainly on agriculture. The money sent home by Senegalese living abroad is a key source of revenue.

A long-running, low-level separatist war in the southern Casamance region has claimed hundreds of lives. The conflict broke out over claims by the region's people that they were being marginalised by the Wolof, Senegal's main ethnic group.

The government and rebels signed a peace pact at the end of 2004, raising hopes for reconciliation.

On the world stage, Senegal has sent peacekeeping troops to DR Congo, Liberia and Kosovo.

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Some inmates are innocent, al-Judaida's warden acknowledges

“I can assure you that these things are not organised. Maybe the abuses are the actions of individuals, not more,” he said.

“Our revolution was carried out because we want human rights, so we cannot permit these things.”

In al-Judaida, inmates pressed their faces to the bars of their cells to tell their stories.

‘Please help’

“Only 1% of the people in here are guilty,” said one detainee.

“The people who are really guilty have all fled. We've all been rounded up because they think we supported Gaddafi. But everyone had to support Gaddafi.”

Another man said he had been detained because pro-government militias were looking for his brother who had served as a soldier. One was picked up after a picture of Col Gaddafi was found under his car seat.

Another said he had simply been caught up in a private vendetta.

“They have done no investigation, nothing,” he said, with tears rolling down his face.

“I want to go home.”

Mr Husnein acknowledges that some of the inmates are innocent of any crimes.

Among them are hundreds of Nigerians and other Africans – men and women – who had been detained because they did not have the right paperwork to stay in Libya.

“Please, please do something to help us,” begged a desperate woman, Olichi Dioka.

Amnesty International has acknowledged the major challenges facing Libya's new authorities.

But it has urged them to ensure that continued abuse does not “stain the new Libya's human rights record”.

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Controlling access to the Red Sea, Djibouti is of major strategic importance, a fact that has ensured a steady flow of foreign assistance.

During the Gulf War it was the base of operations for the French military, who continue to maintain a significant presence.

France has thousands of troops as well as warships, aircraft and armoured vehicles in Djibouti, contributing directly and indirectly to the country's income. The US has stationed hundreds of troops in Djibouti, its only African base, in an effort to counter terrorism in the region.

The Port of Djibouti on the Red Sea is the main shipping terminal for the Horn of Africa

Djibouti's location is the main economic asset of a country that is mostly barren. The capital, Djibouti city, handles Ethiopian imports and exports. Its transport facilities are used by several landlocked African countries to fly in their goods for re-export. This earns Djibouti much-needed transit taxes and harbour fees.

An Afar nomad transports salt across Lake Assal, one of Djibouti's vast, barren landscapes

After independence from France in 1977, Djibouti was left with a government which enjoyed a balance between the two main ethnic groups, the Issa of Somali origin and the Afar of Ethiopian origin.

But the country's first president, Hassan Gouled Aptidon, installed an authoritarian one-party state dominated by his own Issa community. Afar resentment erupted into a civil war in the early 1990s, and though Mr Gouled, under French pressure, introduced a limited multi-party system in 1992, the rebels from the Afar party, the Front for the Restoration of Unity and Democracy (Frud), were excluded.

Thus, Mr Gouled's Popular Rally for Progress party won every seat and the war went on. It ended in 1994 with a power-sharing deal which brought the main faction of Frud into government. A splinter, radical faction continued to fight until 2000, when it too signed a peace deal with the government of Gouled's successor, Ismael Omar Guelleh.

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