Thread by @wretchardthecat

The UN had an effectiveness problem. In Sierra Leone, desperate to achieve something they hired mercenaries.

foreignpolicy.com/2016/06/23/the…

"The other problem was that they won. EO soundly beat back the Revolutionary United Front (RUF), complicating the peace deal that the U.N. was trying to broker. EO was enough of a threat that its ouster was a precondition for the rebels agreeing to the accord.

"Some Sierra Leonean military officers openly resented the presence of foreign advisors and quietly accused them of human rights violations, while privately colluding with the rebels. And, as everyone from EO predicted, the peace deal fell apart the moment they left.

"What followed was a series of horribly bungled interventions, first by the Economic Community of West African States, then the U.N., that accomplished little beyond confirming its critics’ worst prognostications about the wisdom of such endeavors.

The RUF restarted its brutal campaign with renewed enthusiasm. The war that EO had largely won continued for several more years at the cost of thousands more innocent lives. What became the largest U.N. intervention in the world almost became its biggest failure. "