About 300 Pakistani soldiers, the last contingent of what was once the world’s largest peacekeeping operation in one of the poorest countries on earth, on Thursday left Sierra Leone. Four years on from the brutal 1991-2001 conflict which cost some 120 000 lives and left thousands mutilated, the United Nations (UN) Security Council in June judged conditions in the west African country to have improved sufficiently to end a UN mission mandate there on December 31. Full Story