Ochora was notorious for being a heavy drinker and carrying multiple phones that rang incessantly during meetings. True to form, he opened our conversation by setting a satellite phone and at least three cellphones on the table before ordering his very unusual usual—a drink he called “seven of seven”: seven shots of Bond 7 whisky served in one tall glass, no ice. He bobbed his large head agreeably as I described our current work on the Early Warning Network.
“Good,” he murmured, his voice thick and deep. “Well done.”
Colonel Ochora wasn’t just physically large, he was larger than life. After seeing his father murdered in the early days of Idi Amin’s regime and training at one of Africa’s most celebrated military academies, he had become a rebel leader, staging a successful takeover of the State House in Kampala and serving as de facto president of Uganda for three days before withdrawing. He had waged war against President Museveni in the 1980s. Now he was Museveni’s most trusted official in the north. And he had a long and complicated history with the LRA: on at least one occasion Kony had reportedly sent a hit squad to his home in Gulu; the LRA had also invited him into the bush multiple times to try to broker peace with Kony.
As I watched Ochora contentedly empty his glass, I wondered what was going on in his mind. Did our offer to help the Ugandan military to defeat the LRA seem outlandish to him? Was he suspicious of our motives? Or did he even take us seriously? I’d been so eager to meet him and put our plan in motion. Now I was nervous. This was my one shot to make the pitch. And I was all too aware how easy it would be to misunderstand each other, or for something simple to trip us up.
“Sir,” I began carefully. “The communications projects are a start, but we are prepared to consider going even further to put an end to the LRA. The community leaders we partner with throughout Central Africa have been demanding for years that the international community finally arrest Joseph Kony, or that local armies receive the training they need to get the job done. The UPDF seems to be the regional force most dedicated to this end. We are considering the possibility of hiring a private, professional military trainer to train the Ugandan army in counter-LRA tactics.”
I almost hoped for Ochora to laugh. To pull us out of this crazy scheme. To thank us for the help with communications, and wish us a good journey home. But he didn’t laugh.
“Come to the Emin Pasha Hotel this evening at six p.m. You will take tea with General Aronda,” he said. He shone his wide smile like a flashlight beam on me. He shook my hand warmly. “When you get back to Texas, tell President Bush, Jr., hi for me.”
I laughed and jokingly agreed.
* * *
—
In the dark-toned library sitting room of the Emin Pasha Hotel, I sat with my cup of milky African ginger tea—my fourth in as many hours—trying not to lose hope. The general was late, very late.
He had every reason to be. He had every reason not to show up at all. On any given day, he was incredibly busy, his schedule often booked late into the night and even into the wee hours of the morning. Today he was navigating a national crisis. Just a few days prior, al-Shabaab, an Islamic Somali rebel group, had launched suicide bombings at two locations in Kampala, attacking crowds gathered to watch screenings of the final match of the World Cup, tragically killing at least seventy people, including one of Invisible Children’s longtime volunteers and roadies, Nate Henn, who was watching the game with an Acholi friend he’d met while interning. As head of the entire Uganda People’s Defense Force, the national military of Uganda, General Aronda was charged with maintaining security for both civilians in Uganda and his troops stationed in Somalia and elsewhere. All day I had expected to hear that he had canceled our meeting. But Ochora kept insisting that the general was on his way.
He arrived at 11:00 p.m., a tall, imposing man, his uniform weighted with decorations, his eyes heavy with exhaustion. When he called Colonel Ochora out into the hall to brief him prior to our meeting, the absurdity of the situation hit me. I didn’t know what I was most afraid of—that General Aronda would consider us a waste of his time, or that he would agree to work with us.
He came somberly back into the library and took a seat in an armchair near the long couch where Laren and I had spent the last five hours worrying that he wouldn’t be able to come. Ochora sat in an armchair across the room, smiling to himself, doodling on a napkin. The general nodded at me sleepily, my signal to begin.
I familiarized him with our work so far in the region. He listened with his eyes half closed, appearing not to register my words. I wondered if he was even awake.
“General, our understanding is that you’re on a thin string out there fighting the LRA.”
He nodded.
“We’ve been told there are some gaps you’re contending with in the counter-LRA mission, and we’d like to help,” I said. “We understand that the biggest hurdles to stopping the LRA are in training and communications. Would you agree?”
“Yes,” he said. One tired, detached syllable. No elaboration. He sat completely still, his shoulders sagging down wearily, his eyes still half closed.
“General, we have some resources. And we’d like to use them to help you capture Kony and put an end to the LRA.”
“I’ve already put in orders to cut our counter-LRA troop allocation in half,” Aronda replied. He had spoken so few words that the sound of his sleepy voice took me aback. “There’s an election coming up next year,” he continued. “We need the security here at home.”
I felt a strange mixture of disappointment and relief. It wasn’t going to work. And yet he had agreed to meet with us amid a national crisis. I had to at least ask if he could accept our help.
“I know this is a busy time for you,” I said. “And I know your army is stretched extremely thin. What would it take to keep your counter-LRA efforts on track? To help you finally bring an end to this conflict?”
The general didn’t answer right away, and I worried that he had actually fallen asleep this time, or that we had hit another dead end. That even the head of the Ugandan military was resigned to another decade of violence. But then Aronda spoke.
“We need intelligence support,” he said. “Cellphones, satellite phones, GPS tracking devices. Fixed-wing aircraft for surveillance. And we need increased mobility. Our Mi-8s are on contract and they’re not cutting it. We need Mi-17s for moving troops and supplies.”
“What about a private military contractor to train your troops?”
“That would help,” he said. His tone was straightforward, but guarded, his eyes so droopy I almost wanted to take the toothpicks on the table and use them to prop open his eyes, to make sure that he was really seeing and hearing us at the end of his very long day. It was now well after midnight.
“If we find and fund the right partner, would you want to train a specialized group within your army to stop Kony?”
“Agreed,” the general said.
It was a wary response, more circumspect and seasoned than optimistic or engaged. But it was a yes.
When we stood to leave, Colonel Ochora handed me the napkin he had been doodling on. I saw a picture of a woman with bouncy hair in tall boots. I realized it was meant to be me. Below the picture he had written: Iron Lady from Texas.
He was only teasing. But I didn’t feel like a person steeled for action. I felt like I’d waded in too far, too deep.
15
NON-NEGOTIABLES
IT WAS IMPOSSIBLE to sleep that night. Laren was amped with excitement. I was flooded by reservations and second-guessing. We sat up in the empty restaurant at the Lake Vic Hotel. Outside, lights glowed along the path that led through the groomed lawn to the deserted pool. The bartender slowly threaded his way among the dark tables. Laren and I went over the details of our crazy day, trying to hash out next steps, the first of which was to find someone much more experienced than we were who co
uld help us with this project: a private military entity we could contact about training the Ugandan army.
I had never imagined that the conversation about a possible military intervention would go this far, and short of contacting Greg at State for potential contractors, I had no idea whom to call for help. The only military contractor firm I could think of off the top of my head was Blackwater—and only because of the terrible media stories I’d read about the Blackwater contractors and their horrific behavior in Iraq. How was I going to find people capable and trustworthy enough to work with us and train a specialized force in the Ugandan army to pursue the LRA?
“I’ve already got a short list,” Laren said. “I started doing some reading on the best bush fighters in the world as soon as it looked like we might consider doing a tactical intervention.”
He showed me his list of names: James Acker*, the head of a UK-based company that claimed to handle a substantial number of the US Department of Defense private military contracts; Lafras Luitingh, head of Saracen International, which had an office in Uganda; and Eeben Barlow, the chairman of Specialised Tasks, Training, Equipment and Protection (STTEP) International, in South Africa. Laren thought that Luitingh and Barlow were the most promising. Eeben Barlow was often referred to as the grandfather of private military contractors. He had founded Executive Outcomes, the world’s first-ever private military group, and had waged successful—though controversial—campaigns against rebel groups in Angola and Sierra Leone. Lafras Luitingh had been Barlow’s business partner at Executive Outcomes for a time before they had parted ways.
As Laren shared his months of research, I felt another wave of unease. Only months ago, I’d been the one pushing hardest for an intervention, running full speed like a horse out of the gate. Now Laren was racing and urgent, and I wanted to pull back on the reins. It had been such a leap for me to even consider doing anything militarily against the LRA, and now that a partnership with the Ugandan military seemed viable, all I could see were the potential risks.
The Ugandan Minister of State for Foreign Affairs’ assurance that this would be a mission to capture, not to kill, was a start in addressing my extreme discomfort. But there were other conditions that had to be met before I could agree to move forward. These had to be crystal clear before we began the search for a potential partner. In the dark, quiet bar I listed my non-negotiables.
Traditionally, private military contractors charge a project fee on top of salary and expenses, but my first non-negotiable was that Bridgeway would pay no extra fees to a private military organization—just basic expenses and salaries for the trainers. This mission wasn’t about lining pockets. It was about giving a local group the training they needed to protect civilians, free people in captivity, and pursue and apprehend LRA commanders, and I only wanted to work with someone who shared that sense of purpose. Second, we would need to establish a vetting process of all the soldiers involved to avoid putting tactical resources in the hands of people who had committed or might commit human rights abuses. Last, the Ugandan military needed to bear the operational costs of the mission. This was a collaboration—a partnership—and we needed to share in all the pieces of the project, from planning to financing to implementation. And if at all possible, I wanted to hire an African private military company, professionals who would have a closer contextual understanding of Central and East Africa, and who believed that the solution lay within.
As I named my terms, Laren shook his head in dismay. “There’s no way,” he said. “That’s not how these guys work. These are completely unrealistic terms. There’s no way we’re going to get this.”
“We can’t erode our principles,” I insisted. “These terms are not negotiable.”
“Okay,” Laren said. “But if this is going to work, I think you’re going to have to be ready to compromise.”
We agreed to split the list. Laren would contact Eeben Barlow and Lafras Luitingh, and I would reach out to James Acker. We had a short window. If we were going to partner with the Ugandan military, we had to offer a specific plan before General Aronda began the drawdown of counter-LRA troops.
16
AL DENTE
“I WANT TO own an island,” James Acker said in the blue light of the rooftop Italian restaurant in Georgetown where he had agreed to meet for dinner after a full day of Pentagon meetings in the summer of 2010.
He laughed, but I had the strange feeling that he wasn’t entirely joking.
He had been talking almost exclusively about money the whole evening, and I couldn’t tell how seriously to take him—or how seriously he was taking me. Over aperitifs Acker had gone on a lengthy diatribe about the extreme wealth of African presidents, comparing how much various leaders spent flying on private jets, staying in penthouse hotels. He’d spoken with unfiltered disgust about what he saw as pervasive African corruption. “The Ugandans have plenty of money, don’t let them fool you,” he said. “And don’t let them prey on you as a soft target for a few million.”
Maybe he was trying to be helpful, schooling me in his worldview, but it felt more like he was trying to shock me than inform me, going for the brash and sensational angle, not the nuance or heart. But his company handled a lot of the US Department of Defense private military contracts. He was well vetted in the field—I just didn’t have any personal comfort. Later I would add a fourth non-negotiable to my list: I would have to have some basic, instinctive trust in any future potential partner. I plowed on with the meeting, asking whom he’d recommend to train the Ugandan military.
He didn’t ask for more details. He didn’t pause to consider the job at hand. He just said, “No private military contractor in his right mind will accept this job for less than a $25 million fee in addition to costs. You better budget thirty mil, minimum.”
I’m sure he could see my jaw drop. The figure he named was such a far cry from my non-negotiable number: zero. I felt a surge of discouragement. It seemed Laren was right, that my ideals were too pie-in-the-sky. I knew that private military entities were businesses, and those involved needed to make a living. But I had hoped that people in that world were also motivated by the need to protect. Now it seemed that finding someone who would meet even one of our terms was going to be impossible.
I hoped the meeting would turn around, but our disappointing dinner went even further south. First Acker berated our server because his pasta wasn’t al dente. (I wasn’t even sure what al dente meant.) When the check came he complained to the server again until her eyes brimmed with tears. He demanded to talk to a manager and insisted that his overcooked pasta dish be removed from the bill. Then he handed me the check.
By the time I sank into my hotel bed, a terrible taste lingered in my mouth. I was ready to cut our losses and find a different way to help stop the LRA.
17
IMPOSSIBLE TERMS
IN LATE JULY, Laren called from Johannesburg.
“I found our man,” he said. “How soon can you get here?”
A few weeks later Laren and I flew to South Africa for a meeting with Eeben Barlow, the chairman of STTEP International. I trusted Laren’s respect for Eeben’s résumé: his impressive track record fighting a rebel group in Angola; his success in containing the “blood diamond” violence—rape, torture, severed hands, murders—in Sierra Leone. His work in Sierra Leone was especially important to us because the topography and brutality were similar to those in the regions threatened by the LRA. His company had succeeded in stopping a war where nearly eighteen thousand UN peacekeeping troops had failed to curb the violence. And the Ugandan government had called on him to do a threat assessment of the LRA back in 1996. He had knowledge and firsthand experience with the LRA context that no one else in the industry had.
But he had an undeniably checkered past. He had worked for the apartheid government. I found it difficult to believe that someone who’d been on the wrong side of those dark years of op
pression and violence would feel a responsibility to stand beside the world’s most vulnerable populations.
Eeben came to the airport in person to pick us up. He was not at all as I’d imagined him; he was of a medium build, with a low-key presence and graying hair. He wore wire-framed glasses and his smile was warm. On the drive to his home in Pretoria, he smoked menthol cigarettes, one after another. He seemed comfortable in silence, and I resisted the urge during our forty-five-minute drive to clutter the space with words.
We took tea on the veranda of his beautiful, art-filled home, and then met his wife and teenage son for dinner at a local restaurant. Chris, his wife, was delightful. A reporter, she had a fierce spirit for exposing wrongs, from corruption to domestic violence.
“You wouldn’t be here tonight if it weren’t for my son, J,” Eeben said, affectionately thumping his son’s back. “Laren had sent me this urgent message through the ‘contact us’ button on my blog. I had no idea who this guy was, and I was ignoring him. But my curiosity got the better of me. We met, he gave me an Invisible Children film, and J happened to walk by just as I was sitting down to watch it. We ended up watching it together, and at the end he said, ‘Dad, you’ve got to help them.’ ”
We hadn’t even talked about the project yet, and I hadn’t resolved my misgivings about Eeben’s past, but I felt unexpectedly at ease in his presence. I found myself nodding again and again in agreement with the things he said, and I liked how his wife and son seemed to support and even motivate his work. But we hadn’t talked specifics, and I couldn’t tell if my list of non-negotiables would turn out to be a bridge or a block to our partnership.
When we returned to Eeben’s house after dinner, Eeben and I sat alone on the veranda. It was time to talk business. I outlined what we were considering. When I was done speaking we sat together in another long silence.
To Stop a Warlord Page 10