The West Side Boys were an armed group in Sierra Leone, sometimes described as a splinter faction of the Armed Forces Revolutionary Council. It captured and held members of a mostly West African peacekeeping force (including members of the Royal Irish Rangers) in 2000, and was subsequently destroyed by units of the British Special Air Service, Special Boat Service and Parachute Regiment during September 2000 in Operation Barras, and follow-up operations by the Sierra Leone Army and Royal Irish Rangers. The group was influenced to some extent by American rap and gangsta rap music, especially Tupac Shakur, and the "gangsta" culture portrayed therein. The group was also known as the West Side Niggaz or West Side Junglers.[LINK: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2000/09/03/wsie103.xml] "Caught with their guard down", The Telegraph, 19 June 2001 Since the former would