perseus
Active member
When Britain sent a battalion of paratroops - just 800 men - to Sierra Leone in May 2000, they came not as peacekeepers but, in effect, as combatants.
They backed the democratically elected government, whose army had fallen into decay and disarray, against a rebel army with a record of recruiting child soldiers, terrorising civilians and chopping off limbs.
British troops were welcomed in the capital, Freetown, and given popular credit for saving the city from another brutal rebel invasion.
Prime Minister Tony Blair remains wildly popular here. For the British rebuilt the government armed forces, bringing discipline, guns, and expertise - sufficient to end the war not by negotiating a peace, but by winning it; by driving rebel forces out.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/africa/6693055.stm
They backed the democratically elected government, whose army had fallen into decay and disarray, against a rebel army with a record of recruiting child soldiers, terrorising civilians and chopping off limbs.
British troops were welcomed in the capital, Freetown, and given popular credit for saving the city from another brutal rebel invasion.
Prime Minister Tony Blair remains wildly popular here. For the British rebuilt the government armed forces, bringing discipline, guns, and expertise - sufficient to end the war not by negotiating a peace, but by winning it; by driving rebel forces out.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/africa/6693055.stm