Turned away from the democratically elected government that Britain, the US and others pressurised into the deeply-flawed Lome Agreement – an agreement that forced President Ahmad Tejan Kabbah to share power with Foday Sankoh and the Revolutionary United Front, who showed no interest in the real business of government? Should Britain have left another UN operation to be defeated and humiliated and yet continue to trumpet its right to be one of the permanent five on the UN Security Council?
Of course, there are undercurrents to Britain’s actions in Sierra Leone. The present government has been a consistent supporter of President Kabbah, but it also needs to live down the embarrassments of the Sandline Affair of 1998 when the Foreign Office seemed to have backed Kabbah by conniving with Sandline mercenaries to break the UN arms embargo.
