page_title: British military intervention in the Sierra Leone Civil War
section_title: Build-up to the intervention
hierarchical_section_title: British military intervention in the Sierra Leone Civil War / Build-up to the intervention
caption_attribution_description: British Chief of the Defence Staff, Gen. Sir David Richards at the NATO Summit in Chicago, Ill., May 20, 2012.
context_page_description: The United Kingdom began a military intervention in Sierra Leone on 7 May 2000 under the codename Operation Palliser. Although small numbers of British personnel had been deployed previously, Palliser was the first large-scale intervention by British forces in the Sierra Leone Civil War. In early May 2000, the Revolutionary United Front —one of the main parties to the civil war—advanced on the country's capital, Freetown, prompting the British government to dispatch an "operational reconnaissance and liaison team" to prepare to evacuate foreign citizens. On 6 May, the RUF blocked the road connecting Freetown to the country's main airport, Lungi. The next day, British soldiers began to secure the airport and other areas essential to an evacuation. The majority of those who wished to leave were evacuated within the first two days of the operation, but many chose to stay following the arrival of British forces.
  After the effective completion of the evacuation, the mandate of the British forces began to expand.
context_section_description: In accordance with the Lomé Agreement, UNAMSIL set up disarmament camps throughout Sierra Leone that were intended to disarm the Sierra Leone Army, the RUF, and the militia groups operating in the country. The SLA and some militia groups began to enter the camps but the RUF did not. In April 2000, 10 members of the RUF entered a UNAMSIL camp without the knowledge of the RUF's leadership. Upon locating its fighters, the RUF demanded their return. The military observers refused, and the RUF responded by besieging the camp and attacking other UNAMSIL bases in the area. They took large numbers of UN personnel prisoner, and then began to advance into areas previously controlled by the Sierra Leone government. On 3 May, the RUF took control of the town of Kambia. Foreign diplomats in the country estimated that the RUF could be in Freetown within a week, since the SLA had been confined to barracks and had handed over most of its weapons in accordance with the Lomé Agreement. The United Nations issued a statement condemning the violence, after which Secretary-General Kofi Annan told the British representative to the UN that it expected the United Kingdom, as the former colonial power, to intervene in Sierra Leone directly, rather than relying on the international community.
  On 5 May 2000, the British government continued to state that it would provide only logistical and technical support to UNAMSIL, but was privately exploring its options for a military deployment. The United Kingdom had a greater level of political involvement in Sierra Leone than in any other African country and, with the country's stability deteriorating, it was reluctant to see that investment wasted. In addition, an estimated 1,000 entitled personnel were in Sierra Leone, and the government feared for their safety. Academics have since suggested that the credibility of UNAMSIL and future UN peacekeeping operations would have been at stake had the mission in Sierra Leone been allowed to fail. The British Armed Forces were not as widely deployed in 2000 as they were to be later in the decade. The British Army had two brigades serving with NATO in the Balkans, and the Ministry of Defence (MoD) had ongoing commitments to Cyprus, the Falkland Islands, and elsewhere, but the armed forces—particularly units threatened by proposed cuts to the defence budget—were keen to participate in an operation. Senior officers thus advised the government that an operation in Sierra Leone was feasible. Over the following days, there was debate within the British government as to what the aims of a military deployment to Sierra Leone would be. The Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) advocated a full-scale intervention to assist UNAMSIL, arguing that a non-combatant evacuation operation would not be sufficient and would undermine the UN, but the MoD believed that the armed forces would be unable to sustain a larger-scale operation.
  The British government's emergency committee, COBRA, was convened and presented with three options for an evacuation of entitled persons—deployment of aircraft and special forces to conduct an evacuation via  Lungi airport, deployment of regular ground forces for a similar operation, or re-routing the Amphibious Ready Group (ARG). COBRA concluded that it lacked sufficient information to recommend one of the three options and instructed the MoD to continue to develop them, while also recommending that an "operational reconnaissance and liaison team" (ORLT) be sent to Sierra Leone to assess the situation and advise on how the military could be useful. The Prime Minister, Tony Blair, approved the ORLT, which was led by Brigadier David Richards, Chief of Joint Force Operations. Richards had previously visited Sierra Leone twice during the civil war—first on HMS Norfolk in early 1999 and again in early 2000—and was familiar with the political leadership of the country. He and his team left from RAF Northolt eight hours later accompanied by a close protection force, and arrived in Freetown in the early hours of 6 May. The ORLT established itself in the Bri
caption: General Sir David Richards (then a brigadier) commanded British operations in Sierra Leone.
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