This is the second installment of what I felt was the brilliant Analysis that Damien Lewis appended to the end of Operation Certain Death. In looking at the issues that face the world today, there is great value in understanding the nature of conflict and peace and this is a greate case study.

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Many of those to whom I have spoken about the story of the Sierra Leonean hostage crisis and Operation Barras cannot help but make comparisons with the 1993 mission in Somalia – the US-led Operation Restore Hope and the catastrophic Day of the Ranger that followed. In Sierra Leone, the British military won the trust of the majority of the Sierra Leonean people, and defeated a recalcitrant and murderous rebel minority. The hostage crisis was just one of the most high-profile and dramatic chapters in the much longer story of British military intervention in that country. The greatest success of the British military appears to have been that, while waging war in Sierra Leone, they succeeded in convincing the people of that country that they were to stop the conflict and win the peace.

By contrast, in its 1993 Somali adventure, the US military seems to have quickly lost the trust of the Somali people. Rather than demonstrating to them that it was on a war-terminating, peace-building mission, the US military appears to have done the opposite. And it behaved with a degree of arrogance and insensitivity that fuelled a growing sense of Somali alienation. This is not to disrespect the heroic sacrifices of the seventy-odd US servicemen who died or were injured on that day of infamy in the Black Sea district of Mogadishu, doing their duty and following their orders. In fact, the US military maintains that its political taskmasters sent American troops into Somalia against their advice, with little or no accurate intelligence or understanding of the situation on the ground, and with an unworkable, unachievable mission. And the US military could not refuse their political taskmasters.

The very popularity of British troops in Sierra Leone demonstrated the wholehearted support that the people gave to the British military intervention. It is this popularity, this winning of the battle for the hearts and minds, which goes some of the way to explaining why British forces succeeded in Sierra Leone, whereas US forces failed so badly in Somalia. In Somalia, the US military managed to turn an enthusiastic welcome from the Somalia people into outright bloodlust and hatred of US forces in a little under six months. Heavy-handed military strategies, and an over-reliance on technology are some of the factors that lay behind this US failure.

My opinion is some of their mandates -- i.e. not being able to intervene when civilians were coming under fire, and not being able to proactively engage violent factions would obviously create ill will in the general populace. But beyond this I think there is one other very clear difference between the US mission and the British mission that the author overlooks and that is one of pure geography. Engaging an extremely violent gang of drug crazed people in jungle is vastly different than attempting to do so in the middle of a city with divided factions in the middle of the general populace. There are very clear accounts in Black Hawk Down of people picking up arms against the American forces purely because they saw their own people being shot. As the (probably fictional quote) from the movie so eloquently points out “when the first bullet goes past your head politics and all that shit goes right out the window”.

http://www.amazon.com/Black-Hawk-Down-Mark-Bowden/dp/0552999652/ref=pd_bbs_sr_7/105-6828698-5270064?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1182062966&sr=8-7

http://www.cinemanow.com/Rent/1000,0,5,,1,4,51810/Black-Hawk-Down.htm

Had British forces behaved in the same way in Sierra Leone as the US forces did in Somalia, Operation Barras might arguably have ended up going as disastrously wrong as the infamous Day of the Ranger incident did for US forces in Somalia. This is a lesson that US forces will have to learn better in future if they are to successfully intervene militarily outside of their own boarders. Recent events in Afghanistan and now Iraq also demonstrate this to be so.

Again while I in general agree with the author on this I do feel he is mixing apples and oranges in comparing anything of Operation Barras with the current fiasco in these two theaters of war. The nature of the conflicts and the geopolitical conditions are very different.

In fact, the contrasts and similarities between the Somali and Sierra Leonean missions go further still – and likewise the lessons to be learned. Somalia was a nation torn apart by warlords, clans and the power of the gun. At the time of the US military intervention, it was also a nation ravaged by famine – the mass starvation of the Somali people being the initial reason for intervention by the international community. Sierra Leone was a country that had been destroyed by a rebel insurgency employing a degree of senseless brutality and evil that is hard to convey. Only the Khmer Rouge in the time of Cambodia’s killing fields appear to have equaled the RUF, the West Side Boys and the renegade military in the levels of horror visited on a people. At the time of the British military intervention, Sierra Leone was once again being plunged into anarchy and mayhem, and facing the total collapse of the rule of law. It was this that prompted the first British military intervention, under Operation Palliser. Both the Somali clans and the Sierra Leonean rebels used drugs to fuel their fighters’ courage: khat in Somalia and alcohol, cannabis and crack cocaine in Sierra Leone.

But that is where the similarities stop. In Somalia, the failure of the US-led military intervention led to the collapse of the international effort to bring peace and security to that suffering country. In the wake of the withdrawal of US forces, the UN mission to Somalia all but collapsed. Over a decade later, Somalia remains a state where little has changed; it is still riven by warlordism and is ranked as one of the ‘failed states’ among the international community. As a nation and a people, Somalia has been branded a disaster. And the Americans – who possess the world’s most powerful armed forces and remain the single, greatest funding source of the UN – walked away from Somalia humiliated and badly burned – since then they have been loath to set foot back in Africa.

Ever since Somalia, the US administration has sought not to cross the so-called ‘Mogadishu line’ as far as policy to Africa goes. But how long can that continue? The events of September 11 and the so-called war on terrorism are beginning to force a change in the US stance, as the needs of international security become paramount. As evidence, see the US’s limited intervention in the Liberian civil war. And Africa’s growing strategic importance post-9/11 should not be ignored. US imports of oil from Africa stand at around 15 percent, and are growing. Soon, they may have reached strategic levels to rival those of the Middle East – giving the US administration an alternative source of supplies to those from largely Islamic regimes.

In Sierra Leone, by contrast to the US in Somalia, Britain stood by its military commitment, by not withdrawing its troops in the aftermath of the hostage crisis. As academic and security expert Paul Williams points out: “Such a withdrawal would have been foolish, because it would have signaled to the world that the British Army is as casualty-shy as its US counterpart, and would simply encourage groups in other parts of the world to ensure they surpass the necessary casualty threshold.” The success of the British-led military intervention led in turn to the reinforcing of the UN’s mandate in that country. After Operations Palliser and Barras, and with the British military’s ongoing commitment to train and equip the Sierra Leonean armed forces, the RUF and the West Side Boys were quickly brought to heel. As a result, the UN-led international initiative to bring peace and security to the nation was consolidated. Less than half a decade laters, much of what was promised to the suffering people of Sierra Leone has been achieved.

Paul Williams is the author of a number of great articles including this on “No bread without peace” http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0KZH/is_5_18/ai_n15789644

In Sierra Leone, Britain achieved proof of concept, a test case exemplifying how war-termination and peace-enforcement can be successfully achieved. Sierra Leone had suffered over a decade of terrible trauma and pain at the hands of a wily, well-armed and entrenched group of rebels. Against all the odds, it has effectively been brought back into the community of peaceful nations. In May 2003, the head of the UN refugee agency was able to call post-war Sierra Leone ‘an island of stability’ in a largely chaotic region. ‘There is an enormous difference now,’ the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, Ruud Lubbers, said of the country, ‘and I commend Sierra Leone, as compared to twenty-seven months ago, when it was a refugee-producing country.’

http://www.un.org/News/Press/docs/2004/sc8099.doc.htm

http://hrw.org/english/docs/2001/04/03/sierra248.htm

http://web.amnesty.org/report2003/Sle-summary-eng

Britain’s success in Sierra Leone has been achieved only with the tacit and real support of its foremost ally, the US. At all stages of the British military intervention, the US was privy to British policy and plans. This relationship was not without its conflicts, but in the wider analysis, it worked tolerably well. And since the events of May and August 2000, and the last-ditch UN rescue mission led by the British, the level of real US support to Sierra Leone has greatly increased. The Clinton administration’s African Crisis Response Initiative (ACRI) ploughed some $110 million into supporting the Nigerian military’s peacekeeping efforts in Sierra Leone and Liberia, providing ‘non-lethal’ military equipment. After the near collapse of UNAMSIL in May 2000 (the catalyst for Operation Palliser), hundreds of US troops were sent out to Nigeria to train five Nigerian battalions, and one each from Senegal and Ghana, for deployment to Sierra Leone, at a cost of some $260 million.

This deployment was arguably the US’s single largest and most direct involvement of US troops in an African conflict since Somalia. Short of crossing the Mogadishu line, it represented a relatively robust response to events in Sierra Leone, training African soldiers to do the peace-keeping job that US (and European) nations are loath to do. ‘Sierra Leone is a test case of America’s commitment to democracy,’ Susan Rice, the Clinton administration’s Assistant Secretary for African Affairs said. ‘Either we support democratic governments, institutions and peace-keeping efforts, or we risk allowing insurgents to spread terror throughout the region.’

As part of the international effort to win the peace in Sierra Leone, the UN Special Court has been set up to try the leaders of rebel groups and rogue army officers for war crimes – with strong backing of the UK and the US. ‘We hope that the people who have consistently violated all the rules of international and national behaviour, who have committees such gross violations of human rights, will understand that the noose continues to tighten around them as we move forwards,’ said the US Permanent Representative to the United Nations, Richard Holbrooke. ‘The concept of bringing all parties in Sierra Leone together in a peaceful way should continue. But the RUF [and other rebel] leadership has written itself out of any legitimate role in this process.’

The Special Court’s work is ongoing in Sierra Leone, and complemented by South Africa-style Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC). President Kabbah testified at the TRC in July 2003 on the role senior SLA offers played in the May 1997 coup, which brought the AFRC to power – in effect ushering in months of murder and mayhem under the rule of the RUF, the West Side Boys and renegade SLA officers.

One of the key sponsors of the Special Court is the USA, and the Bush administration may now be waking up to the importance of this whole region in the fight against international terrorism. The US is also the largest financial contributor to the ongoing work of the UN peacekeeping forces in the country. Bush has noted the ‘close, friendly ties’ between the two nations and has praised the country’s efforts to recover from a decade of civil war. And Bush paid tribute to the work of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, the Special Court, and the government’s Anti-Corruption Commission in bringing a sense of closure to the conflict and of normality back to the war-ravaged country.