Lansana Gberie's edited collection undertakes the ambitious task of reviewing post-conflict reconstruction in Sierra Leone. While often cited as a success story, the extent to which conventional ‘peacebuilding’ has addressed the systemic issues that drove pre-war discontents remains questionable. The contributors highlight interplays between transitional justice, security sector reform (SSR), economic governance and donor engagement. While the primary focus appears to be a technical evaluation of institutional efficiency and accountability, many contributors draw links between global pressures, patrimony politics, historic cleavages and inadequate institutional or process outcomes. Rescuing a Fragile State suggests that the interaction of these variables instructs the success of medium to long-term reconstruction and peacebuilding in Sierra Leone. In particular, the contributors look at how aid, transitional justice and SSR have affected local and global socio-economic and political pressures. The most instructive of these pressures are Sierra Leone's ethno-regional patrimony politics and neo-liberal economic orthodoxies. Lansana Gberie and Ian Smillie's critical contribution identifies corporate support for these systemic problems, and the extent to which these forces overwhelm anti-corruption efforts, aid, institutional reform, and any move towards a new social contract.

The aforementioned insight is to some extent diminished by some distorted assertions. Some contributors, including Penfold, Gberie, Saunders and Smillie, adopt historical narratives that subsequent inquiries, including that by the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, have dispelled. One is that the RUF solely caused the 1999 Lomé Peace Agreement's disintegration. The Kabbah government, supported by the UK, also played a destructive role. Penfold and Smillie rightly highlight Clinton administration support for Liberia's former President Charles Taylor, the RUF, and the Lome peace process. However, they fail to identify the importance and weight of Anglo-American congruence and coordination in policy towards the region. Zoe Dugal and Peter Penfold identify the change in transitional justice emphasis from truth and reconciliation to prosecution, without linking it to a US shift in policy towards the region, particularly over Charles Taylor. These processes also assisted the reassertion of patrimony politics and a culture of selective prosecution. The US position helps explain Special Court politicisation identified in Penfold's analysis, and the expediency of the ‘blood diamonds’ narrative Lansana Gberie cites as so influential in mobilising the international community around Sierra Leone.

At the local level, Ozonnia Ojielo examines the political role of chieftaincy and societal cleavages. He cites government failure to address chieftaincy's role in patronage politics as the systemic causal factor behind Sierra Leone's ‘poor’ governance, asserting that this failure undermines government initiatives on transparency and institutional oversight.

This book also confronts an issue that facilitated and prolonged conflict, namely Sierra Leone's weak security apparatus. Ishmail Rashid and Major Don Saunders provide academic and practical insights into the institutional challenges and consequences of failing to get the balance right between fiscally responsible downsizing and management of demobilised combatant expectations and discontents. The contestation of the presidency by former Junta leader Julius Maada Bio elevates these concerns and lends weight to Danny Hoffman's claims that community militia mobilisation is legitimate where security forces threaten civilians. The UK's role as primary donor, examined by Mark White,Footnote ¹ should be employed to ensure elections are free and fair, while procuring clear recognition for the legitimacy of that process.

As Sierra Leone moves towards its 2012 elections, the role patrimony politics plays may determine whether a ‘fragile’ Sierra Leone can be ‘rescued’. For this purpose, Rescuing a Fragile State identifies both continuing and emerging peacebuilding concerns. It is an important read for those seeking to understand where post-conflict Sierra Leone has come from, and where it might go in the future.