British Military Intervention in The Sierra Leone Civil War - Impact

Impact

The intervention in Sierra Leone was the fourth deployment of British forces abroad during the premiership of Tony Blair. During his remaining time in office, British forces undertook operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, but Sierra Leone was the only unilateral operation and the only major deployment widely regarded as successful. This success encouraged the Blair government to continue its support to Africa, particularly with regard to resolving conflicts.

Sierra Leone also encouraged Blair's policy of humanitarian intervention. In his autobiography, Blair described the operation as one of the least-discussed aspects of his time in office but one of the things of which he is most proud. Blair was keen to intervene in other African nations where civilian populations were at risk, particularly Darfur and Zimbabwe. However, the lack of political support for the operation in Sierra Leone, combined with the pressure of large deployments to Afghanistan and Iraq after the 11 September attacks on the United States, prevented further interventions in Africa during Blair's premiership.

The experience in Sierra Leone proved the effectiveness of relatively small numbers of well trained and equipped soldiers. It inspired the British government to work more closely with European allies, particularly France after the latter led a UN-mandated intervention in the Democratic Republic of Congo in 2003. After a summit in 2003, the two governments called on the European Union (EU) to develop the capability to rapidly deploy a battle group of around 1,500 personnel, which would be able to respond to crises, particularly in Africa. The remaining member states of the EU approved the creation of 13 battle groups in 2004.

Sierra Leone convinced Blair and his Defence Secretary Geoff Hoon of the need to alter the focus of British defence policy towards less conventional conflicts and away from more traditional wars between states, which was exemplified in a white paper, "Delivering Security in a Changing World", published in 2003. The white paper also revisited aspects of the 1998 "Strategic Defence Review" – which had focused on the Middle East and North Africa, and had not envisaged a need to deploy troops to sub-Saharan Africa other than for a potential non-combatant evacuation operation in Zimbabwe – and recommended preparations for relatively short, intense operations against forces with inferior technology.

The rapidity with which forces were required to deploy to Sierra Leone emphasised the need for the United Kingdom to retain high-readiness forces, and vindicated concepts such as the ARG and the spearhead battalion (the capacity in which 1 PARA was serving when it deployed) and largely protected them in the 2004 review of the infantry structure. The same review – which reduced the total number of British Army battalions from 40 to 36 – was inspired by the success of Operation Barras to create the Special Forces Support Group under the command of the DSF, which was initially formed around 1 PARA.