by Simon Mann
UNITA: cowed and broken. The bomb had hurt nobody.
Phew.
Fighting did go on after that time. A low-intensity conflict. Armed banditry. This ongoing thuggery continued to make miserable the lives of Angola’s povos. But it suited the many inside and outside Angola who still wanted some kind of war – any kind – to carry on.
They managed to keep it smouldering until 2002, for their pockets. Then the FAA – or their proxies – finally caught and killed the UNITA leader: my old enemy General Dr Comrade Jonas Savimbi.
Nevertheless, the 1994 ceasefire secured by the ODAB bombs ended the war proper. UNITA never again came close to a victory over the MPLA. Crucially, the Clinton presidency then ceased US support for UNITA, proclaiming them bandits.
The UN wrote to de Matos about his use of the ODABs – to thank him for his humanity and his restraint. I was shown that letter.
Earlier, in ’95, I’d been in Jo’burg, where I’d met two old UNITA generals. They had not known who I was. Those generals were forthright: the ODABs had brought the war to a halt. The Executive Outcomes intervention at Soyo, and then countrywide, in 1993, had saved the MPLA, they said. EO, the spy plane, the constant attrition against their air resupply: all had made the war tougher and tougher. But, once the ODAB 500s had been demonstrated, that was the end.
I had seen FAA and UN reports. They all said the same. I felt vindicated. So did Tony and Coebus. Come what may, we could all truthfully say that we’d helped bring about a victory, the ending of a war: an end that, without us, would not have come so fast; might not have come at all.
So, I thought, sitting in the President’s stuffy waiting room, up there in Freetown, that’s one for the Game Book: ‘Helped Shorten and Win Civil War in Angola!’
I wound the tape back to the very start of that adventure: to that day in Tony’s office in January 1993 when we learned of UNITA’s attack on Soyo. I remembered just how far off my dream of life with Amanda had been back then.
What obstacles had there been! Each one had appeared unassailable: money, Jewishness, my eight-year-old vasectomy.
Soyo had solved the first of these – the dragon Soyo’s hoard of gold – and a skilful surgeon the third. The vasectomy had been an act of self-preservation during my not-so-good second marriage.
Now the business of making babies had to be juggled around the moon’s phases, my trips to Africa and other unfathomable things.
Then we tackled the Jew issue. I agreed to convert. I did so on the understanding that this was for child raising. Not religious conviction. I thought there little difference between being an atheist Christian (of which, in my father’s family, I was at least the third generation) or an atheist Jew. Amanda, an Orthodox Jewess, decided to accompany me through my learning. This helped us both.
After we’d learned plenty – all of it fascinating and a lot of fun – Amanda found out how rigid Judaism really is. She also found out that a child of a Jewish mother is, in Judaic law, a Jew. We came through it stronger, but Amanda asked me not to convert. I was happy not to do so.
Maybe our Jerusalem holidays’ dinner together – kosher and vegetarian and, for God’s sake, teetotal – helped us to make up our minds. Away had gone the final unassailable obstacle. Now all was sweetness and light. We would have children, we hoped, and live happily ever after.
Nearby chit-chat brought me sharply back to the Freetown waiting room. Campbell was talking with one of the protocol aides. Tony faked sleep. He had his own way of dealing with the wait. And with Campbell.
So, what was I doing in Freetown? I was diamond mining. That’s what I was doing. And wading into another civil war. Maybe.
The Angolans had wanted to restart diamond mining in their country. DM, some other generals and JD had all pressed Tony to form a joint venture with them. Power men of the moment. The country needed activity. Opportunity was there. Tony and our crew were the proven achievers.
If one Western company made a start, others would follow. Others could be made to follow. If we went in and mined diamonds, other concession holders could no longer point to the force majeure clauses in their concession agreements. They could no longer use the ongoing war and banditry as an excuse.
Tony had been enthusiastic. To him, a diamond concession and an oil concession must be the same. You win one, then sell it. Or you farm it out. Or you pull in punters. Then Andy Smith had passed by Tony’s grasp. Smith was a mining expert – especially diamonds, especially Angola.
Everything had come together: Tony and I had the money now. Coebus, and some of the other South Africans, would come in. The accountant, Michael Grunberg, had given the project his thumbs-up. Making money from Angolan diamonds would be a piece of piss.
My belief in Tony as a businessman, and in Michael’s judgment in money matters, was absolute. I had thought that the war must end first. Then the war met the ODAB.
Suddenly, without really making the decision – or so it felt to me – we were miners. We were real miners too: paying out large sums of money, for concessions and for exploration.
Smith was in charge, but neither Tony nor Michael would tell him no. Within months Branch Minerals had concessions, or concessions designate, in Angola, Uganda, Kenya, Tanzania, South Africa. The diamond concessions were all in Angola. The rest of the concessions – across Africa – were for gold.
Then everything changed. The new way forward, they told me, was to bring in outside investment. The only feasible way to do that was through a Stock Exchange listing. Diamond concessions were not like oil concessions. Not at all.
Then it was explained to me that, in order to list a diamond-mining company, that company must have hard rock concessions. Crucially, these concessions could not all be in one unstable country. Like Angola. But two unstable countries would do.
Suddenly, I found myself in a place I didn’t know, didn’t like. We had concessions to mine gold all over Africa. We had concessions to mine diamonds only in Angola. But that wasn’t enough to get the Stock Market listing.
The choice put to me became straightforward: we either go on pouring money into finding new diamond concessions outside of Angola, or we must stop, writing off all the investment so far. It scared me. I had to think of Amanda. Our child. All my children. Our future.
Tony and Michael had a different point of view. Neither had dependent children. Both were businessmen. They played and won, or lost, then played again. For them, this was just another game. For me, this was the only game. I’d poured everything into this. Branch Minerals had to work.
The next question had been: where do we find a hard rock diamond concession? Going cheap … but not in Angola?
Answer: nowhere – except Sierra Leone, where there is a good one. That nobody wants.
Question: how come nobody wants it?
Answer: because, in SL there is a peculiarly nasty little war going on.
Therein lay the opportunity. If Tony and I could introduce SL’s President to Executive Outcomes, then, maybe, EO could win the war for the President. We’d done it in Angola.
Why couldn’t we do it again?
Then Branch Minerals could make a fair bid for the diamond concession. This had all been hammered out by Andy Smith, Michael, Tony and I, but with a lot of head shaking and cigar sucking from Stavros. Smith had then placed the last necessary piece on the table.
Ian Campbell, his friend and partner. With him as Branch Minerals’ manager everything should work out. If he couldn’t win the Koidu Kimberlite concession, nobody could.
So it was decided: we’d hire Campbell on a short-term contract. We’d send him to SL to carry out a business and political reconnaissance. At the same time, EO would clandestinely send three black agents, unbeknown to Ian. Their mission: to conduct the military reconnaissance of the SL war. The SL Strategic Situation.
Nobody needed telling the full horror of the atrocities carried out in SL by the Revolutionary United Front (RUF). Atrocities which were to win them worldwide
condemnation. Nobody needed to tell me how Liberian boy rebels waged their sort of war (and most of the RUF were Liberian boy rebels). I’d been in Liberia in 1989 when Charles Taylor had taken the capital, Monrovia, and later killed President Doe. On that occasion, I had only just escaped a similar fate. But not before I had seen some truly terrible things. The recce, therefore, was to assess whether an EO force could defeat the RUF.
Ian’s recce went well. He, of course, had relished the role of would-be saviour. Now the stage was set for the SL President to meet Tony and me. That’s how we wound up in this waiting room.
Whispering grew. Someone came in, then went out. Someone else came in, waved his hands. An as yet unused door opened. At last, we were being ushered in.
But as we stepped into the President’s office, there was muddle. His long desk, longer than Tony’s in London, took up too much of the space. As soon as we entered the room, we were on top of the desk. On top of each other. Slapstick followed. We jockeyed for seats. After one false start, an aide waved me into the extreme right-hand chair, at the end of the row. To my left was Campbell. Then Tony was placed in the centre. The aides and the senior protocol officer fumbled about on the other side of Tony.
Having been the first to sit, I watched President Strasser. Slouched in his leather executive swivelling chair, sizing us up.
Valentine Strasser, 26 years old, was ‘De Captain’ and ‘De Main Man’. Rarely was he called ‘General’, although that was now his rank. To call the President ‘De Captain’ or ‘De Main Man’ was not to insult him. Nobody in Sierra Leone insulted the President. Not in public. Not anywhere else. Strasser had been smoking. There was a large glass ashtray on the desk. The air held a mix of smells: distant curry, the sour tang of tropical carpet, the exhaust of an unmaintained air conditioner and tobacco smoke. I watched Strasser. His eyes looked a little wild, unfocused: yes – I had it – and the smell of dakka.
De Main Man was Boomin’.
With everyone in their appointed seat, Campbell went into his party piece. Tony interrupted or endorsed for emphasis. Twice I chipped in. I had to strain to hear what Strasser said, he spoke so softly.
Behind the President was a large photograph of himself. In the portrait, as in the flesh, he was wearing tropical disruptive-pattern combats, with British-style general’s rank. Bright-red military-style collar tabs. A Hollywood African dictator.
Above the window, and to the right of it, the air conditioner rattled and banged, gamely competing with the noisy ceiling fan. The din made Strasser’s words even harder to make out.
Below one end of the air conditioner, a quarter-full bucket caught a steady flow of drips. This meeting, I knew, was but one step in a dance of time: meetings, protocol and negotiation. This was not where or how real decisions and plans would be made.
De Main Man’s gesticulations were growing grander, his eyes wilder. I hoped that this meant he was happy.
It was his desk that held my attention; it was covered in knick-knacks. Immediately in front of the President, a large doodled blotter. To his right hand, the telephone collection. Two of these were old-style, black, with rotating diallers. Others modern, coloured, push-button. Beyond the telephones, so out of reach, sat a desktop computer and a laptop.
I could lean forward slightly. Both computer screens were dead. The phones were not connected. In front of Strasser, beyond the blotter, was an old-fashioned glass pen tray, holding inkwells long dried up. Laid upon the tray, a plastic pink feather of the sort that holds a ballpoint pen at one end.
Beyond the tray, and therefore in pride of place, sailed a wooden model of an Arab dhow … a memento of Arab West Africa slaving, maybe? To Strasser’s left hand, other needs were satisfied. A Rolodex sat surrounded by a group of photo frames. Of these, I could only see the backs.
To their side stood a ten-inch-high crucifix. Christ, his cross and the stand were each made from a different, exotic hardwood. All beautifully carved and polished.
From the left arm of the cross, Jesus’s left, hung two brightly coloured bird feathers, the kind used in witchcraft. Below the feathers, on the desk, a bundle of four bones, next to two small animal-skin pouches. Beside the crucifix, close to the right arm, rested a shrunken human skull.
In West Africa, mumbo-jumbo magic is fact.
My eyes and Strasser’s met. He smiled apologetically, then turned back to his point with Tony.
My tour nearly done, I went back to the desk. Between me and the crucifix were parked a small model of the Mi-24 gunship helicopter (NATO codename HIND). Just like the one that Strasser had parked outside the barracks. The one that his men were failing to use. Another model, of a British Aerospace Hawk fighter, in the colours of the Nigerian Air Force was next to it. With these stood a Dinky toy, a London red double-decker bus.
That evening, back at the Mammy Yoko, Tony and I entertained ourselves over dinner by playing Kim’s Game. List everything you can remember off the desk. A pained Campbell looked on, hoping that the waiter was not one of Strasser’s secret police.
The four-day visit, and our meetings with De Main Man, were, however, deemed a success. Others followed. Two of which introduced the EO seniors: Coebus and two others. Meanwhile EO’s spies did their work.
I knew the basics about SL already. Sierra Leone, Lion Mountain, had been named by Portuguese or Spanish explorers. The hills above and behind Freetown, from the sea, can look like a lion lying on its front with its head up. From independence the consensus government, and what prosperity that Sierra Leone had achieved, did not flourish. The country went downhill to such a low point that, in April 1992, young Captain Strasser and his six ‘boys’ had staged a mutiny against their pay and conditions.
The mutiny had somehow become a Coup d’État. The new government – Captain Strasser and his boys – were often to be found in Freetown’s many nightclubs. Needless to say, they struggled with government. Rebel Liberian marauding grew apace.
By April 1995, the situation was dire. The RUF guerrillas were led by former corporal Foday Sankoh, an army signaller by trade. According to our sources, Sankoh personally ordered his men to carry out mass rapes and amputations. He had led the RUF well enough to garner some Sierra Leone support, which, mixed in with the drug-crazed, war-shocked Liberian teenagers, could make it to the capital. The population of Freetown, who knew well the RUF’s modus operandi, were beginning to panic.
We were keen to start. The problem was Strasser’s inability to pay. Should we go ahead anyhow? Or should we cut and run? Tony called for a big powwow at the end of April, in the King’s Road offices.
The meeting kicked off – or more accurately lit up – at 11. The models – the glamorous office girls hired by Michael – had been told to hold all calls. Tony and Stavros had Esplendidos burning, Michael and I Marlboros. Tony began: ‘Right. We know what we are here for: do we go for it in SL or not? If yes, then it may be tougher than Soyo’ – at this Coebus grinned – ‘if no, then I never want to hear of the bloody place again.’
Tony asked Coebus to go first. Coebus predicted that EO – with 200 men and the right air support – could turn the war around. He stressed that this view applied only if we went in before the RUF entered Freetown: an event forecast for any day soon. If we are to go, Coebus said, it must be now.
Next Tony asked Stavros, who looked asleep. ‘Why ask me, Tony? You and Simon will do what you want. You’re both fucking crazy…’
Coebus interrupted: ‘No, Stavros. This is a council of war. I want to hear what you think.’
‘OK. You’ve won the Angolan war. I’m amazed. It’s incredible – but there you are. You have made yourselves some powerful enemies, however – all those who backed UNITA, whether they pushed or helped UNITA back into war. They don’t like you.’
Tony and I both knew what Stavros had to say, but he went on regardless: ‘My advice is: the mining is a big mistake. “The first loss is the best loss”: get out now and cut your losses, then retire.’
Tony turned to me.
I said my piece: ‘Tony – I know how you feel, and I agree with you. I’m not going to bin the mining when we have so much at stake: we need SL.’
Tony looked round: ‘Exactly. Coebus, can we do it? If we say go?’
Coebus laughed. ‘Let’s find out!’
‘OK. Go it is.’
‘OK, let’s go… Now let’s go to lunch!’
My heart beat fast. One part of me had wanted to go just for the craic. Another part felt that, as with Angola, if we could bring a terrible war to an end, then we should.
But the biggest part of me was simply hell bent on making this mining work. According to Smith, Michael and Tony, this was an essential step. Win the war in SL. Win the hard rock concession, the Koidu Kimberlite. Put the diamond company up for a Stock Exchange flotation.
Seven days later, one of our two Boeing 727-100s landed at Lungi International, Freetown, with 100 EO men on board. The day before the two Mi-17 support helicopters had arrived. One was green, Bokkie. One was still in UN white, Daisy.
On the flight up from Angola, the two machines and crews had been arrested only three times. They had also made good practice with the EO in-flight refuelling system. Garage forecourt hand pumps: Jet A-1 from standard 35-gallon oil drums into the internal passenger compartment’s extra fuel tank.
The Boeing flight had left Jo’burg at 0300. On board were Coebus and I, plus many other of the EO old guard. Nobody wanted to miss this.
We refuelled in Luanda, without the Angolans being aware of our mission. We refuelled again in Abidjan, the Ivory Coast. Tony and Nick Potter had flown down from London to Abidjan to join the flight.
I found that I had to reassure Nick Potter. He and Tony had painted Abidjan bright red the night before. Both had ‘A One’ hangovers. As soon as we met, Nick took me to one side: was it possible to catch HIV/Aids from a blow job in the shower?
This was one of the easiest ways to catch it, I said. Normally viscous saliva dilutes in the water, thus becoming less viscous, and thus very much more mobile, more likely to go through the pores of the skin membrane and into the blood circulatory system.