In today's edition of the Daily Mail, Stephen Glover writes a comment piece entitled 'Genocide, and this stench of hypocrisy' in which he considers the UK's 'ethical foreign policy'. Mr Glover makes some interesting and illuminating observations comparing the application of this policy in Kosovo and Sierra Leone. The Daily Mail does not publish on the Internet, therefore, in this comment piece we have extracted verbatim some of Mr Glover's observations from the article:
Tony Blair put it very clearly in an article he wrote for the US magazine Newsweek in April. He called for a 'new internationalism' which would not tolerate dictators who 'visit horrific punishments on their own people to stay in power'. Whenever Western countries see a tyrant abusing his own people they should feel compelled to intervene, regardless of the convention that what a state does within its own sovereign borders is its own business.
Between 50,000 and 100,000 people are thought to have been killed [in Sierra Leone]. A quarter of the country's population of four and a half million are refugees. At least 50,000, maybe more, have been mutilated, for that was the particular speciality of the Revolutionary United Front, some of whose 'soldiers' are in their early teens and operate in a permanently drug-induced state.
Britain did do something. Some £30 million has been spent by the Government on Sierra Leone over the past 18 months. We had a resourceful High Commissioner there called Peter Penfold, who did what he could. Meanwhile, with more than a nod and a wink from Mr Penfold, a British company called Sandline managed to restore the lawfully elected President Ahmad Tejan Kabbah to his position as Sierra Leone's head of state.
Sandline was certainly on the right side. However, Mr Cook was very anxious to show that he'd nothing to do with its activities because the company had ignored UN sanctions and shipped weapons to President Kabbah's forces. Mr Cook was subsequently cleared by an official inquiry, after which the British media's brief interest in Sierra Leone quickly subsided, only to be revived last week by the capture of five British officers by renegade rebels who have not accepted the peace settlement welcomed by the contact group.
Few British governments can have ever been party to so bizarre an agreement as this. The genocidal Revolutionary United Front has been granted four out of 20 cabinet seats in a new government headed by President Kabbah. Even more bizarrely, Foday Sankoh, erstwhile leader of the Revolutionary United Front, has been released from prison, where he had been justifiably incarcerated for his many crimes, and has been gazetted as vice-president in charge of - wait for it - the diamond mines.
As I say, the contrast with Kosovo could not be greater. What do we make of politicians who wage a humanitarian war in one place, and give their blessing to wicked men in another?
Footnote: Mr Glover does make one prediction in his article -- 'It seems rather unlikely that this settlement will stick. It might, I suppose, if the politicians who want the diamonds get their hands on them.' Time will tell....