ABSTRACT
Sierra Leone https://s3-euw1-ap-pe-df-pch-content-public-p.s3.eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/9781315637631/0dfd750b-31b3-40f5-9e68-14ffce6d9f0c/content/fig4_1_C.jpg" xmlns:xlink="https://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"/> Source: Sierra Leone, Map No. 3902 Rev. 5, United Nations, January 2004. Reproduced with permission. Sierra Leone proved Robert Kaplan wrong. In 1994, four years before the first peace operation in Sierra Leone, Kaplan, in his article, ‘The Coming Anarchy’, 1 predicted that the country would fall into a lasting mayhem, which was bound to spread like a disease to the whole West African sub-region. Yet, within seven years, the conflict in Sierra Leone was curbed by the successful intervention of the peacekeepers. Though anarchy did not prevail in Sierra Leone, this outcome was hard to predict in the mid-1990s. The Sierra Leonean case has much in common with Liberia. Not only did the Sierra Leone conflict entail the same actors as the Liberian one, but also the same peacekeepers. Those who were intervening in Liberia were re-hatted and sent to the Sierra Leonean mission. The four peace operations in Sierra Leone, however, were spread over approximately half the time that it took in Liberia, a bit more than seven years – and the United Kingdom, not the United States, was the ultimate intervening great power.
