Stop havoc. Let loose the dogs of war.

By Peter Fabricius

The unfolding catastrophe in Sierra Leone raises an extremely disturbing question; not so much whether in Africa at least, the United Nations and the international community it represents are essentially helpless to secure peace - that much is obvious - but whether they are not actually contributing to conflict and insecurity

The helplessness of the UN is plain for all to see; some 500 members of the largest UN peacekeeping force ever sent to Africa are now captives of the Revolutionary United Front (RUF) the barbarous marauders of Foday Sankoh.

This sorry position was entirely predictable; the UN sent in badly-trained, uncoordinated and fundamentally uncommitted troops from a variety of nations into one of the most dangerous places on earth. They will be lucky to get out alive or unmutilated since the political hallmark of the RUF is to chop off the arms legs and other body parts of those foes it does not murder.

These RUF monsters are actually part of the government. Kabbah was forced to bring them into a government of national unity under the Lome Accord of July 1999 to prevent them taking the whole country.

The UN and the international community urged him to do so despite its extreme distaste for Sankoh and the RUF, because it simply could not muster the courage, the commitment or the money to do what in an ideal world should have been done - send in a military force to exterminate the RUF and Sankoh or better still put him on trial for gross crimes against humanity.

The irony is that such a force had already existed and had proved more than capable of dealing with Sankoh and the RUF. It was of course South Africa's notorious mercenary company Executive Outcomes.

Between May 1995 and January 1997 barely 200 members of EO - supported by little more than a handful of helicopters, one of them called Bokkie, and a ragtag national army which they had trained to combat readiness - routed the RUF time and again, preventing it from capturing the capital Freetown and destroying hundreds of its warriors.

By September 1996 Sankoh was suing for peace to forestall the complete destruction of his army by EO. But by then the international community had grown sensitive about the elected government of Kabbah being propped up by former soldiers of apartheid South Africa and in January 1997 Kabbah fired them - to Sankoh's enormous relief.

Within 85 days Kabbah had been ousted and the RUF was in power. It took another mercenary outfit - Britain's Sandline, linked to EO - and some very heavy-handed Nigerian troops - to restore him in February 1998.

Later that year the international community discovered that the British Government had been behind the employment of Sandline - in contravention of UN sanctions against Sierra Leone -and Sandline was also forced to withdraw.

As a result the RUF recaptured Freetown again in January 1999 - killing, mutilating and raping hundreds of civilians as it did so. The mainly-Nigerian forces of the west African peacekeeping force Ecomog regained a tenuous hold on Freetown but Kabbah's military position was so insecure that he was forced to invited Sankoh and the RUF into the government in July that year.

The results of that agreement are now evident as Sankoh refuses to accept even the generous share of power which the Lome Accord gave him and pushes for absolute control.

The UN and the international community are now defending the extremely awkward predicament of the peacekeeping force with the old argument that "peacekeepers can only keep peace if there is a peace to keep."

Quite. And if the UN had simply stayed out of it, then EO and Sandline would probably by now have destroyed the RUF and there would be a peace which not even require keeping by the UN.

After Sierra Leone, the UN should ask itself very seriously if its half-hearted meddling in Africa is not more dangerous than complete neglect.