General Sir David Richards (Photo: David Rose)
General Sir David Richards is retiring as Britain?s most senior soldier. His finest hour came in 2000 when he commanded the small British expeditionary force that saved Sierra Leone?s capital, Freetown, from falling into the clutches of a brutal rebel army.
The lesson, I think, is that small numbers of professional soldiers can have a hugely disproportionate impact. In Sierra Leone, one battalion of British paratroopers ? about 700 men ? saved a capital city with a population of almost one million. By striking a heavy blow against insurgents from the Revolutionary United Front, they also hastened the end of Sierra Leone?s civil war, thus changing the course of history in a country of six million people. Not bad for a group of men who would have fitted on board 10 London buses.
Something similar has just happened in Mali where a French force that never totalled more than 4,500 personnel prevented al-Qaeda and its allies from overrunning the country. That tiny handful changed the destiny of 15 million Malians.
Compare and contrast the performance of vast, sprawling and hugely expensive United Nations peacekeeping force. As it happens, Sierra Leone had a UN peacekeeping mission at the same time as the British intervention back in 2000.
Unamsil, as it was known, had 17,500 soldiers, making it the biggest force of its kind in the world at that time. No doubt it had achievements, but they were out of all proportion to its numbers in exactly the wrong direction; in other words, Unamsil accomplished far less than you might have expected.
Why? The truth is pretty sensitive, but let?s be blunt: UN peacekeeping missions are usually roadshows for the third rate soldiers of the worst armies in the world. As it happens, I was in Sierra Leone back in 2000. One morning, I got in a helicopter and flew to a place called Port Loko to visit the UN peacekeepers based there.
I met their commander, who happened to be a British officer, and he told me about his little force. There was a bunch of Ukrainians, who typically rolled out of bed at noon, cracked open the vodka, and drank until dawn the next day, before going back to bed. The commander no longer bothered asking them to do anything. Then there was a contingent of Nigerians, who turned out to be tough and able fighters. But there was a problem. After several unfortunate incidents, my friend had discovered that he could not let the Nigerians go anywhere near the civilian population.
As he was describing this to me, a soldier walked through the door without knocking, said a few words in a language I couldn't place and then walked out again. ?Ah yes,? said the commander. ?And then we have the Guineans.? The nearby Republic of Guinea-Conakry had sent a contingent, but these soldiers spoke no language that anyone in this corner of Sierra Leone could understand or even recognise. So the commander had written them off too.
He was left to rely on a tough and professional contingent of Kenyan soldiers. What proportion of his force could he actually count on? About a third, was his answer. It would have been better for everyone if two thirds of them had stayed at home.
That is pretty normal for UN peacekeeping forces. In fact, some UN commanders would count themselves lucky if as many as a third of their soldiers were any use.
Read General Romeo Dallaire?s book about his time commanding UN peacekeepers in Rwanda during the genocide in 1994. He had a contingent of Bangladeshis who were so useless and cowardly that they took to sabotaging their own vehicles in order to avoid going out on patrol. Dallaire could rely only on a small unit of professional soldiers from Ghana.
All these lessons have been repeated in Congo, which currently hosts the biggest UN peacekeeping mission in the world, now calling itself Minusco. Last November, I was in Goma in Eastern Congo just after the city had fallen to a rebel army without the local UN peacekeepers lifting a finger. The bewildered Uruguayans and portly South Africans had done nothing to prevent the rebels from walking in. As it happens, there wasn?t a terrible massacre. But there might have been.
How different the story would have been if one battalion of British or French infantry had been on the scene. Then, I suspect, the armed groups in eastern Congo would collapse as quickly as the RUF in Sierra Leone and al-Qaeda in Mali. And the lives of millions would be transformed. So, if you want to help Africa, just think about what a handful of properly trained, professional soldiers could achieve.
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