‘Reading’ British Armed Humanitarian Intervention in Sierra Leone, 2000–2

Abstract

Few modern efforts by the international community to resolve complex emergencies through military force have been as widely celebrated in scholarship and the popular imagination as the UK’s military deployment to Sierra Leone between 2000 and 2002. In both academic and policy circles, it is almost universally agreed that the UK mission was a resounding success. A small but elite element of British troops is credited with stabilizing the Government of Sierra Leone (GoSL) and the United Nations Mission in Sierra Leone (UNAMSIL), a 17,000-strong peacekeeping force on the verge of collapse at the hands of the insurgent Revolutionary United Front (RUF). Only months after Britain’s arrival, the RUF found itself turned back from a position of strength to one of country-wide retreat before GoSL and UNAMSIL counter-offensives coordinated under the direction of the newly arrived UK Army. Shortly thereafter, the country’s 11-year old civil war came to a close, with the main rebel ranks surrendering wholesale to the UN’s disarmament, demobilization and reintegration (DDR) process a year later. Today, more than decade on, Sierra Leone remains a stable post-conflict state, the beneficiary of sustained British foreign development and advisory assistance.1