WI during the 2000 Sierra Leone crisis, the British intervention force (Op PALLISER) was given a mandate beyond simply evacuating Western civilians from Freetown and supporting the ineffective UN PKO (UNAMSIL), to actually hunt down and destroy the RUF who'd restarted the civil war and were committing atrocities against both civilians and captured UN peacekeepers ? Of course, preferably such robust military action should've been undertaken after the last of the 500 peacekeepers taken hostage had been released into Liberia. The Brits had an amphib taskforce including HMS INVINCIBLE and embarked No. 42 Commando IIRC + a bn of paras from 16 Air Assault Bde, the British Army training mission to the SL army, and SAS and SBS elements incountry, who could've supported the SL army, anti-RUF KAMAJOR militiamen and UN contingents defending themselves against RUF attacks (such as the Nigerians, Kenyans, Indians, Ghanaians and Jordanians), in systematically taking apart and destroying the RUF once and for all. It was the RUF who triggered this new crisis by taking up arms again in May 2000, and they could've overrun UNAMSIL and again taken Freetown to embark on a new reign of atrocities (esp systematic forced amputation of civilians, kidnapping children for use as child soldiers or prostitutes), had it not been for British military intervention. Could the British have easily squelched them and prevented them from ever again terrorising SL, in the same systematic efficient manner as the SAS and paras rescued the kidnapped British soldiers of the Royal Irish Regt from the 'West Side Boys' during Op BARRAS in Sept ? How would the Blair govt have looked in undertaking such direct military action in a former British colony ?