British Military Intervention in The Sierra Leone Civil War - Confronting The RUF

Confronting The RUF

The capture of the Royal Irish patrol reinforced to the British government that its efforts so far – and those of the international community – would not be sufficient to bring the civil war to an end. In Westminster, meanwhile, opposition politicians renewed their objection to the continued presence of British forces in Sierra Leone. The government was seeking an exit strategy that would end a politically unpopular deployment without abandoning Sierra Leone.

In August 2000, the United Nations Security Council passed Resolution 1313, which blamed the RUF for the continuing conflict in Sierra Leone and cited multiple breaches of the Lomé Peace Accord. The resolution increased the size of UNAMSIL and strengthened its mandate, which prompted the UN to once again apply pressure on the British government for a troop contribution. Several nations were reluctant to send their own troops to Sierra Leone without contributions from Western nations, and felt that the United Kingdom in particular should be contributing to the UN mission.

However, the MoD continued to lack confidence in UNAMSIL leadership. Thus, the British government refused to place combat troops under its command, but did second additional staff officers to UNAMSIL, to the UN headquarters in New York, and to the SLA. The officers attached to UNAMSIL were tasked with assisting its commanders in planning and mounting operations and were led by a brigadier who became UNAMSIL's chief of staff. In New York, the officers attached to UN headquarters provided planning support for logistics operations to bring UNAMSIL up to its mandated strength. At the same time, the focus of the British training programme shifted. Although six battalions had been trained, the SLA still lacked many combat support functions and command and control capabilities, and so the STTTs provided the next set of recruits with more specialised training in addition to basic infantry skills.

Resolution 1313 was a significant shift in attitude for UNAMSIL, away from its previous neutrality to support of the Sierra Leone government, which made the governments of several troop-contributing nations uncomfortable. In particular, the governments of Jordan and India – two of the largest contributors, with nearly 5,000 troops between them serving with UNAMSIL – were moved to withdraw their forces. The withdrawal coincided with the end of the rainy season – after which there were fears that the RUF would resume its attacks on the government – and the UN and British government feared that UNAMSIL would be vulnerable while the Indian and Jordanian contingents were replaced. In order to deter the RUF, the ARG was once more deployed off the coast, and was instructed to conduct amphibious landing demonstrations as a show of force.