Hunt Can We Be Great Again?

Why a Dangerous World Needs Britain
1. Auflage 2025
ISBN: 978-1-80075-119-4
Verlag: Swift Press
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: 6 - ePub Watermark

E-Book, Englisch, 320 Seiten

'A masterly analysis of why Britain has much more global influence than it thinks' Eric Schmidt, former CEO Google 'Enthralling' Daily Mail Since the global financial crisis, Britain has been through a difficult period, leading many to conclude the country is doomed to inevitable decline. Jeremy Hunt was at the top of government as both Foreign Secretary and Chancellor. In Can We Be Great Again? he persuasively rebuts those who think Britain is no longer capable of shaping the world we live in. With the election of President Trump, a world that was already becoming more dangerous has also become more unpredictable. But when it comes to the big challenges facing the world - whether on European security, the future of democracy, migration, trade or climate - the UK remains one of the most influential countries. Hunt does not shy away from our weaknesses but argues that they should be considered in perspective and without underestimating our many strengths. If we want a world that remains safe and free, now is the time for countries with influence to use it wisely.

Jeremy Hunt was elected Conservative MP for South West Surrey in 2005. He was first appointed Secretary of State for Health in September 2012, then served as Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs from July 2018 to July 2019, and Chancellor of the Exchequer from October 2022 to July 2024. Before his election as an MP, Jeremy ran his own educational publishing business, Hotcourses. He also set up a charity to help AIDS orphans in Africa in which he continues to play an active role. Jeremy lives in Godalming and London with his wife, son and two daughters.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Hunt, Jeremy

Leseproben

1

Security Anchor

Ramatu was just fifteen when ten men with guns broke into her house. She and her family were ordered outside, along with thirty or so of their neighbours. At gunpoint, the rebels then selected six of them, including children. Ramatu was one of them. They were marched up a hill and held face down on concrete slabs. Then the rebels started hacking off their hands or arms, sometimes one side, sometimes both. Ramatu lost her arm. ‘And then they walked away,’ she later told Human Rights Watch. ‘I couldn’t even bury my arm.’1

This was the bloody work of the Revolutionary United Front, or RUF, whose insurgency in Sierra Leone started in 1991. Their cruelty was notorious – not just amputations but torture, rape and kidnappings. What made their approach even more merciless was the extensive use of child soldiers. Children were ‘recruited’ by abduction. They were then brutalised, sometimes even forced to go back to their home and murder their own parents, to prevent them from returning home.2 The weapons they used were funded through the sale of diamonds, which adorned the necks and arms of the wealthy and famous around the world. Most, but not all, were oblivious to the history of the gems, which became known as blood diamonds.

Over the next decade, the civil war in Sierra Leone cost an estimated 75,000 lives. Two million people were turfed out of their homes.3 Many of the fatalities were civilians, and stories like Ramatu’s were commonplace. What sustained the conflict was not ethnic or religious tensions. It was the demand for diamonds. The price was so high that human lives were cheap by comparison.

The Lomé Peace Agreement, signed in July 1999, was intended to be a turning point after years of failed peace talks and ceasefires. Under the deal the RUF agreed to surrender their forces in return for participating in a new unity government. The fragile peace lasted just six months.

As the rest of the world celebrated the new millennium, Sierra Leone slipped back into bloodshed. This time the insurgents had their sights on Freetown, the capital. Meanwhile the ineffective UN mission charged with implementing the peace agreement was losing control. Like the ill-fated UN mission to Rwanda six years earlier, an ignominious retreat loomed.

Then the British army arrived.4

The original purpose of Operation Palliser was straightforward: the evacuation of British and other non-combatants. Brigadier David Richards, commanding the British forces in Sierra Leone, decided to stretch the interpretation of his mandate to its limit. His orders were not to put down the rebellion, but simply to do what was necessary to evacuate civilians. But the wording of the mandate was vague, merely charging him to ‘support the UN’. That gave him a chance to turn a Nelson-like blind eye to what UN bureaucrats and the British government had intended.

Brigadier David Richards in Sierra Leone

Having been a maverick for many years, what Richards did next should not have surprised his superiors: he made the momentous decision to commit British support to the government of Sierra Leone, promising the country’s president that he would personally take command of the war effort and defeat the rebel forces. He knew the risks he was taking, both with the lives of his troops and with his own career. But having heard stories like Ramatu’s, he was resolved. Under the cover of a less ambitious operation, he pressed ahead.

Within days most of the six hundred-strong battalion of 1 PARA had joined Richards in Freetown. In order to stave off the expected assault by the rebels, he needed more men. So he stitched together what he called an ‘unholy alliance’ of UN forces, the Sierra Leonean army and the Kamajor and West Side Boys militias. After some convincing, each group agreed to take part in the operation.

Then he decided to lure the RUF into a trap. A small group of twenty-seven men from the Pathfinder Platoon, or X Platoon, were deployed to a village called Lungi Lol north-east of the airport. They were to act as bait for the rebels, who he thought would not be able to resist attacking them. He was right. After just over a week of waiting, the RUF launched their attack. Hundreds of RUF fighters opened fire in the middle of the night and several hours of intense fighting ensued. It was the British army’s first jungle battle for forty years.5 What the Pathfinders had planned as a two-day mission turned into a sixteen-day ordeal. But in the end the insurgents retreated and the village was saved. For his bravery, Sergeant Steve Heaney was awarded the Military Cross, the UK’s third highest military decoration.

After that, Operation Palliser made good progress. The British-supported ‘unholy alliance’ capitalised on the psychological setback suffered by the rebels and managed to capture RUF leader Foday Sankoh, after which the operation drew to a close. A British military training team of around two hundred people was sent to train and support the Sierra Leonean army through the transition.

But a couple of months later, a patrol of eleven soldiers from the Royal Irish Regiment arrived in the Occra Hills, territory controlled by the West Side Boys. Because the West Side Boys had been part of the ‘unholy alliance’, the patrol took a detour, to investigate a rumour that they were disarming. The visit, however, turned sour and the gang’s leader Foday Kallay ordered the British soldiers to be seized. Outnumbered ten to one, the patrol surrendered.

Their weapons were confiscated, and then they were stripped and taken by canoe to the gang’s base in Gberi Bana, fifty miles east of Freetown. They were held in huts made of bamboo and mud. Negotiations for their release started two days later, under the leadership of Lieutenant Colonel Simon Fordham. There was some early success, with the release of five hostages secured in exchange for a satellite phone. But on instructions from above, Fordham started planning a military operation in case the negotiations fell through. Special Forces were deployed to the area, where they set up reconnaissance near the West Side Boys’ base. From there they gathered intelligence, watching safely from their position in the dense vegetation.

Things were grim for the captured soldiers. They were beaten and forced to take part in mock executions. But an opportunity arose when at one point Fordham was allowed to see some of the hostages. One of the men saluted and shook hands with him, secretly passing over a sketch of the village layout.

Two weeks later, the negotiations were going nowhere. Fordham became concerned that the captured patrol could be executed at any moment. He got permission to intervene, and on 10 September Operation Barras was launched. At dawn, Special Forces, supported by the Paras, flew in via helicopter. To distract the insurgents from the noise of the choppers, they fired flares. Two helicopters then circled, providing support fire. To prevent the West Side Boys from intervening in the rescue mission at Gberi Bana, the Paras attacked nearby Magbeni as a diversion. This required jumping into a deep swamp. Despite some of the men being wounded by mortar, they were victorious and managed to release civilians being held there. They also regained possession of the patrol’s vehicles. Over at Gberi Bana, Special Forces fast-roped down from their helicopters and began looking for the hostages. Reconnaissance troops secured their position and drove the insurgents into the jungle.

All the hostages were safely rescued. The British suffered one fatality, but considering the risks of the mission the cost could have been far higher. In just ninety minutes they delivered a devastating blow to the West Side Boys. Morale among the rebel troops fell to rock bottom and within a couple of months they reluctantly agreed to a ceasefire. On 18 January 2002 President Ahmad Tejan Kabbah declared the civil war in Sierra Leone over. For the last twenty years, the country has been a beacon of stability in West Africa.

The geostrategic implications of the civil war were small. But the two operations showcased the effectiveness of British ‘hard power’. They demonstrated the combination of technical skill, resourcefulness and controlled risk-taking for which the UK’s armed forces are renowned. It showed the effectiveness of giving full operational independence to troops on the ground, especially with high-quality intelligence and after careful diplomatic groundwork. Many lives were saved, and a small country was given back control of its destiny. It was a textbook example of a successful military intervention, a big and welcome contrast to earlier Western impotence in Rwanda.

But what happened in Sierra Leone was a small-scale operation. It was followed – and indeed overshadowed – by much larger missions involving the British army in Afghanistan and Iraq. In those later conflicts the troops displayed the same courage and professionalism, but the absence of a coherent vision for how peace would work led to ignominious failure. A total of 457 British lives were lost in Afghanistan and 178 in Iraq.6

That severely dented British confidence. But the impact on the US, which led both missions, was even more profound: hesitancy from Barack Obama and Joe Biden over being a ‘global policeman’ combined with more explicit isolationism from Donald Trump. Nor was the change simply a rejection of neoconservative policies associated with the likes of Donald Rumsfeld: Trump has repeatedly made clear that American...