Sierra Leone was a rare case of the “Blair Doctrine” bearing fruit: an overseas military operation not for strategic or commercial interest, but for humanitarian purposes and in the name of an ethical foreign policy. Though the commander on the ground, Brigadier David Richards, never received official authorization from London for the project, within six weeks he and his men did the crucial groundwork of halting the rebel advances, restoring security to the capital, Freetown, and shoring up the Sierra Leone government and its army. A few months later, a major new UN peacekeeping deployment and a ceasefire led to the disarming of rebel groups and a swift end to a war that had lasted nearly eleven years and inflicted enormous human suffering.
Source : Sierra Leone, 2000: A Case History in Successful Interventionism
