Previous British Deployments
British armed forces were deployed to Sierra Leone twice during the civil war prior to the large intervention in May 2000. In December 1998, the Royal Air Force (RAF) conducted a non-combatant evacuation operation under the codename Operation Spartic. Approximately 80 people – predominantly British citizens, many of them staff or dependants from the British High Commission – were evacuated in two days as the RUF advanced on Freetown.
After the Lomé Peace Accord was signed in 1999, the United Nations Observer Mission to Sierra Leone was replaced with the United Nations Mission in Sierra Leone (UNAMSIL), which included a force of 260 military observers. The observers were unarmed and tasked with monitoring the ceasefire mandated by the Lomé Agreement. The observer force, like UNAMSIL itself, was primarily made up of personnel from other African nations, but the United Kingdom contributed a small number of officers from the British Army and Royal Marines.
In addition to the observers in Sierra Leone, personnel from the Royal Logistic Corps were serving in New York, assisting UNAMSIL with organising air lifts to bring the mission up to its authorised strength.
Read more about this topic: British Military Intervention In The Sierra Leone Civil War
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