It is a message that still escapes the Labour-dominated Foreign Affairs select committee and the Tory opposition Of course, it is right to be concerned about Sandline. The whole murky affair does raise important issues of truth and accountability. We had Sandline and Sandline and more Sandline.Robin Cook was right to announce extra aid to Sierra Leone this week and right to insist that the mayhem on the ground was the dominant issue, not Sandline. Place in your mind for a moment the dreadful image of the psychiatric patients in Kissey (again, according to the UN's report) who were rounded up and executed for their madness, or that of the 10 policemen hacked to death beside the beautiful giant cotton tree that stands in the centre of the city.And while all of this was going on, did we hear loud voices of protest from the Opposition? Did we hear demands for action to protect these former colonial subjects? Did we hear them call for the defence of Sierra Leone's government (a very imperfect, but democratically elected government)? Not a bit of it. That is a lot of people to be killed in a few weeks, even by the lamentable standards of our times.Let us consider the United Nation's estimates for a moment: 150,000 people displaced; 1,000 children who have simply disappeared, many of them forced to become soldiers in the rebel army; hundreds of women and young girls who have been raped; scores of people who have been burned alive in their homes; hundreds of people who have had their hands or legs chopped off by the rebels. While the British Opposition was still gnawing at Robin Cook's trouser leg, somewhere between 4,000 and 6,000 people were being butchered in Freetown. Nigerian sentries coming out to greet them were shot down.To travel through Freetown these days and to listen to the stories of its survivors is to enter a different universe to that occupied by Michael Howard and his Sandline-obsessed colleagues.

After many apologies from us, the sentry waved us through.It is hard to blame the Nigerians for being so jumpy. When the rebels swept into Freetown in early January, many of them wore Ecomog uniforms. Our driver decided to reverse, stealing backwards as the sentry screamed abuse and then cocked his weapon and got ready to shoot I leaned forward and thumped the driver on the back Yes, thumped.An act of violence I admit it But the man needed to be shocked out of his mad retreat The thump did the trick and he stopped the car. I wish to record that our driver, a gentleman by the name of Kabbah, was among the most witless whom I have ever encountered.On the hill near the British High Commission we came up to a Nigerian post where the sentry jumped out into the middle of the road with his gun raised. It was a 5am start that took us along the empty coast road with its ghostly ocean and abandoned hotels. The Nigerian soldiers and local militia who man the checkpoint get jittery after curfew.The other morning we had to drive in the dark before the end of curfew.

Curfew is at six, so if you want to medicate away the tension and fear of a Freetown day, then you get to Paddy's in time for several beers before the drive home And you make damn sure not to stay too late. There is none of the fevered hustling that you find in bars in East and Central Africa. If you don't want to do business you will be left alone.Paddy's regular crowd starts to roll in around four o'clock. But the girls formed a union and picketed the new bar.There were negotiations. Paddy's streetwise business partner, Alec, persuaded the girls to lift the picket.