Operation Serval it had lost a few days earlier. French airstrikes appeared to stop the rebel advance to the south which prompted the intervention and destroyed an Ansar Dine command post near Konna. France asked the U.S. to speed up its contribution by sending drones to improve surveillance over the vast area of northern Mali. The Pentagon was reported to have studied the French request. Meanwhile, the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom announced that his country would lend logistical support to the operation. ECOWAS troops preparing to deploy to Mali also decided to move up their arrival date to January 14
British military intervention in the Sierra Leone Civil War first two were relatively minor operations: a series of air strikes against Iraq in 1998 codenamed Operation Desert Fox, and a deployment of a company of Gurkhas and special forces on peacekeeping operations in East Timor in 1999. The third operation, the first major deployment under Blair, was in Kosovo in 1999, where British forces led a NATO intervention in the Kosovo War. During the British operations in Kosovo, Blair delivered a speech in Chicago, in which he outlined his "Doctrine of the International Community". Blair advocated a greater use of humanitarian intervention—the use of armed force to protect a