Add into that the recent diamond deals that the RUF have done with al-Qaeda operatives (conflict diamonds being an untraceable and unfreezable form of almost ready cash), then IMATT was in effect taking on the minions of Osama bin Laden and his world-terror network as well.

Where we have failed is understanding the high cost of intervention on the innocent bystanders

The conventional ‘Rules for Armed Combat’ have disappeared. Civilian populations, rather than being afforded protection, became the targets and tools of war. Murder, rape, mutilation, looting, abductions, human shields, child soldiers, land-mines, property destruction; Sierra Leone is rife with such issues.

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 the telling of their story there is also the opportunity, indeed the need, to discuss the wider issues thrown up by this short chapter on the history of suffering in a country like Sierra Leone. That discussion in part concerns our response to the demands of international peacekeeping in strife-torn regions across Africa and in the wider, conflict-torn world.

We need to be happy in this wonderland without once being merely comfortable.

The economics of a global economy demand a change in the way we think of managing the resources of the very globe this economy rests upon.

The poet only asks to get his head into the heavens. It is the logician who seeks to get the heavens into his head. And it is the head that splits.