People watch implosion with growing anger

It has left the people of Freetown to watch in anger and sadness as the foreign nationals in their midst are plucked to safety. They are left to observe a peace plan that is unravelling and an inept United Nations force that is rarely seen outside its fortified compounds.

Residents are trying to understand how UN troops could have been captured by the Revolutionary United Front (RUF). "Haven't the peacekeepers got guns? Did their weapons jam?" one man asked me. The consensus here is that the only way to disarm the RUF would have been with a formidable show of force. The atrocities they have committed suggest they understand no reason and see no limit to the horror they can inflict.

At one camp for survivors of RUF attacks, run by Care International, the glimpse into the war is disturbing. Hundreds of civilians have been mutilated, their limbs hacked off whenever they were captured by RUF guerrillas. But few scenes are as numbing as the one we came across. Marie is just six months old and was sitting on her mother's lap. Her left hand had been cut off at the wrist. She had been just two weeks old at the time.

It is these grotesque mutilations that have also raised questions about the peace plan signed last year. Should the rebels really be offered an amnesty? Should their leader, Foday Sankoh, be rewarded with the job of vice-president? This has become a moral dilemma for the UN, as well as a peacekeeping crisis.

What is clear is that this ill-equipped multinational force is proving ineffective. If peace is to be achieved it needs the Western nations to deploy significant military resources to Sierra Leone. Instead a hesitant deployment has left the peace accord in jeopardy and raised questions about the credibility of UN peacekeeping throughout Africa.

In the heat and dust of Sierra Leone is a highly improbable mix of peacekeeping troops. On the road to Freetown the first checkpoint is manned by British paratroopers. The next barrier is watched over by Chinese soldiers. Then come the Nigerians, the only troops really respected here. And into the mix there are Kenyans, Jordanians and Indians. What is evident to everyone here is that this is a peacekeeping operation going from bad to worse. Up to 500 peacekeepers are still missing behind rebel lines. Some have been captured by the RUF, others it seems are simply lost and unable to communicate with their commanders.

Amid the post-mortem on this disaster, under way throughout west Africa and at the UN headquarters in New York, some facts are indisputable. The force is under-manned and under-resourced. There are only 8,000 UN troops on the ground and they are unable to carry out their most crucial mission, the disarming and demobilisation of the anarchic fighters of the RUF.

There are perhaps only two armies on the scene who could do it. But the west African peacekeeping force, dominated by the Nigerians, has been replaced by other and far less effective African troops. And the British contingent - also with the military skills to make a difference - is politically restricted, for fear of being sucked into the civil war.

Robert Moore is ITN's Diplomatic Correspondent.