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From Diagnosing the Problems to RemediationRichards, quickly expanded this mandate to include a helping hand to the UNAMSIL andthe government of Sierra Leone. Richard’s 1,200 elite soldiers trained and prepared for realcombat and with support from the British Air Force and Navy, managed to turn the tide ina matter of days. Under pressure, the rebel army collapsed like a house of cards. A numberof weeks later the RUF signed a peace agreement.Operation Palliser was a massive success with minimum losses and costs and directlyled to the end of a long and tragic war. Imagine how the situation in Rwanda a few yearsbefore would have been different if the French had sent in the Foreign Legion or if theAmericans had sent in the Marines. Or maybe the European Union, if of course, it had fastresponse units capable of such action at the time. The EU’s combat units, known as battlegroups,finally reached combat-readiness in 2007 and who knows when Europe will beable to agree on their use in a situation with a clear and present danger of a loss of lives. 154They could end up saving hundreds of thousands of lives. The paradox is that while theAmerican mission in Somalia and the genocide in Rwanda have become the subjects of verysuccessful films, 155 the public at large did not learn of the successful British intervention inSierra Leone by watching a film.On the Fringe of History: Cubans in AngolaThe world knows much less about another fascinating tale of military interventionin Africa. Perhaps this is because it occurred towards the end of the Cold War and wasovershadowed in the U.S. and Europe by the events of 1989 and perhaps because the herois a small country, ostracized by the USA and other former Communist countries: Cuba.The story of Cuban military intervention in faraway Angola is exceptional in that it illustratesthe long-reaching consequences military intervention in a single country has on theentire region, or more specifically how civil war in one country can escalate into furtherproblems that can destabilize many of its neighbours as well.A number of Angolan groups had conducted a protracted armed struggle against theirPortuguese colonizers. The fall of the military dictatorship in Portugal opened the doors forAngola to declare independence in 1975. The only thing that was clear was that once thePortuguese left Angola, the one-time partners in the struggle for an independent country154 A Czech-Slovak battlegroup is a part of the EU’s battlegroups (CZE-SVK BG EU), reaching combat readinessafter three years of exercises on 1 st July 2009. The European Union has 18 battle groups trainedand equipped to be able to operate in any climate within 6,000 kilometres of Brussels, an operationalradius that includes all of western and a large part of central and eastern Africa. The Czech and Slovakunits are a part of other EU battlegroups along with troops from Poland, Germany, Latvia and Lithuania.No EU battlegroup has ever been deployed to Africa as of the writing of this book.155 The 2004 film Hotel Rwanda from America is likely the most well-known film depicting the genocidein Rwanda and has also been called the African Schindler’s List. The role of the fictive colonel leadingthe UN forces in the film was inspired by the actual commander of the UNAMIR forces, brave CanadianGeneral Roméo Dallaire.169