by Matt Potter
For these reasons, and in many cases the trust placed in me by these men and women, the names and characters, not only of the man, men, and combination thereof whom I have elected to call Mickey and his crew, have been changed, scrambled, and composited, along with enough physical, business, geographical, and biographical details to make them wholly unidentifiable—and although Mickey and Sergei are now dead, it is out of respect to them and their associates, as well as regard for the small world in which they operated, that I adhere to this policy there, too. For the same reason, and because flight plans are filed and kept, I have changed dates and locations for the action around flights and destinations in almost all cases. (To be clear: None of the men who could be this pilot was named Mikhail, Misha, Mickey or anything like; they were not from Siberia or Vitebsk, and the real Mickey’s features have been altered to render him unidentifiable. So if you think you recognize him, Sergei, or any of the others from the physical description, name, personal history, flight paths, airplane details, or by patching together flight times and places, you are mistaken, and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is a coincidence.
Otherwise, throughout the text I have changed or withheld other names only when expressly asked either for a pseudonym or to be quoted off the record for that contribution or part of his or her overall contribution. In some instances I have changed and/or withheld names gained in conversations and interviews long ago for other projects, simply because I believe that not to do so would have been to compromise the individual and betray his or her trust.
For all of these reasons and more, and with apologies to the aviation-hardware buffs out there: Even though I make no suggestion that their employers, colleagues, or other contacts are involved in or even necessarily aware of any of these activities on a corporate level, I have also elected not to specify the precise models of the planes on which I was privileged to have been invited, nor their businesses, numbers, or distinguishing features by which they can be identified, and enough locations and dates have been altered to render them securely anonymous—and such inconsistencies as that entails are acknowledged. For legal reasons, I have in many cases withheld identifiers.
It is worth noting that the term Russian is used by many—especially in Africa, Arabia, and the Far East—including by Russians themselves (Evgeny Zakharov calls the Tajik and Ukrainian planes Russian here), as a cover-all for people from largely Russian-speaking Slavic countries of the former USSR. While this blurring is deplorable (ask any Welshman, Scotsman or, heaven forbid, Irishman who’s been called English abroad), it is understandable, and as the strange cases of Viktor Bout and Leonid Minin show, such blurring is often positively encouraged by the men themselves.
My policy has been to correct infelicities of language in my interviewees, cutting out stumbles over words and repetition—this has simply been done for clearer reading, and not to change the sense. For instance, Richard Chichakli refers to “the Eastern Bunny” in his original letter to me, and in person, many of the airmen’s conversation is almost as littered with pauses, vocab questions, and malapropisms as my Russian.
Finally, the men who form the core of this narrative are also what used to be called Soviets, simply because they were the ones in the eye of this particular hurricane, and they are the ones whose lives I glimpsed. They are men—no better or worse than any others—and indeed they could be, and just as often are, Americans, British, Germans, Ugandans, Moroccans, South Africans, Chinese, Dutch, French, Mexicans, Italians, Congolese, Brazilians, you, me.
Acknowledgments
My thanks to the many friends, aviators, monitors, fellow travelers, and experts who gave their time, and sometimes more, even at risk to their personal safety, generously. And most of all, my friendship and gratitude to the crews, and to Mickey’s crew—Mickey and Sergei especially, wherever they are.
Special thanks: First and foremost, my thanks to the crewmen with whom I flew, drank, and talked.
Thanks to: Marshal Evgeny Shaposhnikov, Nikolay Viktorovich Korchunov, Brian Johnson-Thomas, Milos Vasic, Igor Salinger, Nigel Tallantire, Katya Stepanova, Ambassador Dmitry Rogozin, Peter and Ira, Evgeny Zakharov, Martin Ssebuyira, Ilya Neretin, Iain Clark, John MacDonald (and his Secret Friend), Moisés Naím, Ernest Mezak at the Komi Memorial Commission of Human Rights, Linda Polman, Andrei Soldatov, Mira Markovic, Aaron Hewit, Arthur Kent, Andrei Lovtsov, Sharren (Shazz) Glencross, Terry Bonner, Dr. Mark Galeotti, Richard Chichakli, Dominic Medley, Ahmed Rashid, Dmitry Tarasevich, Tatyana Parkhalina, TRAFFIC, Andrey Formin, Patrick Matsiko wa Mucoori, Peacock at Red Pepper, Kigongo at New Vision, Sarah Robson, Kevin O’Flynn and Oksana Smirnova at the Moscow Times, Branislav, Planecrazi, Dr. Christopher M. Davidson, the Embassy of the Republic of Byelorussia in Great Britain, Alexey Zaytsev, Haroun, Tricia O’Rourke, Jock, Andrew Hirsch, Dean Fitzpatrick, Savita Singh, Rachel Butters, Boris, Zayna, Jamie, Gordana and Natalya, Ian Belcher, “The Antonov Man,” Hugh Griffiths at SIPRI, Damian Clarke at Olympus, “A” at Ilyushin, the nice guys at the MONUC compound (you know who you are), the amazing, elusive Vreme writers who worked with Milos Vasic on that story, Jovan Dulovic, Ilija Vukelic (Belgrade) Branko Stosic (Moscow) and Sergei Kuznetsov (Ekaterinburg), who worked with Milos Vasic at Vreme and whose investigative brilliance, along with Vasic’s, formed the basis for my account of the Surcin crash, and the countless crews, ground staff, witnesses, researchers, and businesspeople who have given their time freely and gone to greater or lesser lengths to contribute, and have trusted me to use their input responsibly. I hope I have not let you down.
Without whom this book would not have been possible: Peter Danssaert of the International Peace Information Service (IPIS) generously put his time, assistance and expertise at my service at several crucial moments over the course of this book’s gestation, and I am endlessly grateful. Jane Mulkerrins, Doug McKinlay, Humfrey Hunter at Hunter Profiles, Clare Conville, Jake Smith-Bosanquet, Susan Armstrong and Henna Silvennoinen at Conville & Walsh. Ben Adams, Michelle Blankenship, Nathaniel Knaebel, Patti Ratchford and, copy editor Will Georgantas at Bloomsbury USA. Ingrid Connell, Bruno Vincent and Ali Blackburn at Pan MacMillan, Juergen Diessl at Ullstein, Alan J Kaufman, David and Linda Potter, Richard Hamilton, Laura Cope, Alisdair Donaldson, Jeremy Points, Jacqui Grice, Ron Piper and the mysterious Mr E. You know who you are. Most of all, very special thanks to my wife Lila, whose help with the countless interviews conducted for this book has been invaluable, and whose patience and belief made it possible.
THE FAMILIES OF THE CREWMEN WHO DIED IN MOGADISHU
A charitable fund has been set up by the company who employed the crew of Candid EW-78849, shot down over Mogadishu in 2007, to help support the families of the slain Byelorussian crewmen. For information on how to contribute, visit www.transaviaexport.com.
Bibliography
Further reading, and books to which, to a greater or lesser extent, I am indebted:
PRIMARY BOOK SOURCES
Although my focus and conclusions differ from the authors’, I am deeply indebted to the research carried out by Douglas Farah and Stephen Braun in Merchant of Death.
For their expertise on the planes and their history and specifications, as well as stories of the exploits and mishaps seen by the planes and their crews, I am similarly indebted to the excellent series of guides by Dmitri Kommisarov and Yefim Gordon, the most essential of which (to me) are mentioned below.
My account of the Belgrade crash owes much to the work of the newspaper Vreme—not just the reporters mentioned above, but the entire organization.
Alexeivich, Svetlana. Zinky Boys: Soviet Voices from a Forgotten War. London: Chatto & Windus, 1992.
Armstrong, Stephen. War PLC: The Rise of the New Corporate Mercenary. London: Faber & Faber, 2009.
Barrand, Jude, and Dominic Medley. Kabul: The Bradt Mini Guide. Chalfont St. Peter, UK: Bradt, 2004.
Bowden, Mark. Killing Pablo. London: Atlantic Books, 2001.
Boyles, Denis. African Lives
: White Lies, Tropical Truth, Darkest Gossip, and Rumblings of Rumor—from Chinese Gordon to Beryl Markham, and Beyond. New York: Ballantine, 1989.
Bulgakov, Mikhail. The Master and Margarita. London: Picador, 1989.
Collin, Matthew. This Is Serbia Calling. London: Serpent’s Tail, 2001.
Conrad, Joseph. Heart of Darkness. London: Penguin Classics edition, 2007.
Davidson, Christopher M. Dubai: The Vulnerability of Success. London: C. Hurst & Co., 2009.
Farah, Douglas, and Stephen Braun. Merchant of Death. New York: Wiley, 2007.
Feifer, Gregory. The Great Gamble: The Soviet War in Afghanistan. London: Harper Perennial, 2010.
Gilby, Nicholas. The Arms Trade. Oxford: New Internationalist, 2009.
Glenny, Misha. McMafia: Seriously Organized Crime. London: Vintage, 2008.
Goldman, Marshall. Oilopoly: Putin, Power & the Rise of the New Russia. Oxford: Oneworld, 2010.
Hatfield, James. Fortunate Son: George W. Bush & the Making of an American President. London: Vision, 2002.
Hobsbawm, Eric. Bandits. London: Abacus, 2001.
Hoffman, David E. The Dead Hand: The Untold Story of the Cold War Arms Race and Its Dangerous Legacy. New York: Anchor/Random House, 2010.
Holdsworth, Nick. Moscow: The Beautiful and the Damned. London: Andrew Deutsch, 2003.
Klebnikov, Paul. Godfather of the Kremlin: The Decline of Russia in the Age of Gangster Capitalism. New York: Harcourt, 2000.
Klein, Joe. The Natural: The Misunderstood Presidency of Bill Clinton. New York: Doubleday, 2002.
Kommisarov, Dmitri, and Yefim Gordon. Antonov An-12: The Soviet Hercules. Hinkley, UK: Midland Publishing, 2007.
_____, Ilyushin 76: Russia’s Versatile Airlifter. Hinkley, UK: Midland Publishing, 2001.
Lanning, Michael Lee. Mercenaries. New York: Presidio Press, 2005.
LeBor, Adam. Milošević. London: Bloomsbury, 2003.
Litvinenko, Alexander (with Yuri Felshtinsky). Blowing Up Russia. London: Gibson Square Books, 2007.
Meyer, Karl E. The Dust of Empire: The Race for Mastery in the Asian Heartland. New York: Public Affairs, 2004.
Naím, Moíses. Illicit: How Smugglers, Traffickers and Copycats Are Hijacking the Global Economy. London: Arrow, 2007.
Parsons, Anthony. From Cold War to Hot Peace: UN Interventions, 1947-94. London: Penguin, 1995.
Polman, Linda. War Games: The Story of Aid and War in Modern Times. London: Viking, 2010.
Rashid, Ahmed. Taliban. London: IB Tauris & Co., 2000.
Robbins, Christopher, Kazakhstan: The Land that Disappeared. London: Profile, 2008.
_____ Air America. London: Corgi, 1988.
Rogozin, Dmitry. The Hawks of Peace. Unpublished manuscript, 2010.
Schroeder, Matthew, Dan Smith, and Rachel Stohl. The Small Arms Trade. 2007.
Soldatov Andrei, and Irina Borogan. The New Nobility: The Restoration of Russia’s Security State and the Enduring Legacy of the KGB. London: Public Affairs, 2010.
Stiglitz, Joseph. Globalization and Its Discontents. London: Penguin, 2003.
Stockholm International Peace Research Institute. Armaments, Disarmament and International Security: SIPRI Yearbook, 2009. Stockholm: SIPRI, 2009.
Taylor, Brian D. Politics and the Russian Army: Civil-Military Relations 1689–2000. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003.
Transparency International. Preventing Corruption in Humanitarian Operations: A Handbook. Berlin: Transparency International, 2010.
Vaisman, Alexey, and Pavel Fomenko. Siberia’s Black Gold: Harvest and Trade in Amur River Sturgeons in the Russian Federation. Cambridge: TRAFFIC Europe, 2006.
SELECTED REPORTS
Amnesty International. Democratic Republic of Congo: Arming the East, 2005.
_____. Blood at the Crossroads: Making the Case for a Global Arms Trade Treaty, 2008.
Danssaert, Peter, and Brian Johnson-Thomas. Disarmament Forum. Illicit Brokering of SALW in Europe: Lacunae in Eastern European Arms Control and Verification Regimes, 2009.
Finardi, Sergio (TA), Amnesty International. Dead on Time: Arms Transportation, Brokering and the Threat to Human Rights, 2006 .
Finardi, Sergio, Brian Johnson-Thomas, and Peter Danssaert. IPIS vzw (21 December 2009): From Deceit to Discovery: The Strange Flight of 4L-AWA; and IPIS vzw (8 February 2010): From Deceit to Discovery: An Update.
_____. IPIS (3 December 2010): Mapping the Labyrinth: More on the Strange Weapons Flight of 4L-AWA. Available at ipisresearch.be.
Griffiths, Hugh, and Mark Bromley. SIPRI/SEESAC, Air Transfers and Destabilizing Commodity Flows, 2009.
_____. Stemming Destabilizing Arms Transfers: The Impact of European Union Air Safety Bans, 2008.
Griffiths, Hugh, and Adrian Wilkinson. UNDP, SEESAC, Guns, Planes and Ships: Identification and Disruption of Clandestine Arms Transfers.
IPIS vzw: All Party Parliamentary Group on the Great Lakes Region: Arms flows in Eastern DR Congo, 2004.
Mercury Public Affairs LLC, on behalf of its foreign principal His Highness Sheikh Khalid bin Saqr Al Qasimi. Ras Al Khaimah: A Rogue State in the UAE?, (2010).
_____. Ras Al Khaimah: Gateway to Trade with Iran.
Reports of the Group of Experts Submitted by the Security Council Committee Established Pursuant to Resolution 1533 (2004) Concerning the Democratic Republic of the Congo, 2004–2010.
Reports of the Monitoring Group and the Panel of Experts on Somalia and Submitted Through the Security Council Committee Established Pursuant to Resolutions 751 (1992) and 1907 (2009) Concerning Somalia, 2002–2010.
Reports of the Security Council Committee Established Pursuant to Resolution 1267 (1999) Concerning Al-Qaida and the Taliban and Associated Individuals and Entities, 1999–2009.
Reports of the Security Council Committee Established Pursuant to Resolution 1521 (2003) Concerning Liberia, 2003–2010.
Reports of the Security Council Committee Established Pursuant to Resolution 1591 (2005) Concerning the Sudan, 2005–2010.
Reports of the Security Council Committee Pursuant to Resolutions 751 (1992) and 1907 (2009) Concerning Somalia and Eritrea, 2005–2008.
SEESAC/UNDP. Western Balkans Parliamentary Forum on Small Arms and Light Weapons. Analysis of National Legislation on Arms Exports and Transfers in the Western Balkans, 2006.
Wood, Brian, and Johan Peleman. The Arms Fixers. Peace Research Institute, Oslo, 1999.
NEWSPAPERS AND PERIODICALS
I am particularly indebted to Serbia’s Vreme, whose investigation into the Belgrade crash and its significance laid the foundations for so many subsequent monitoring reports as well as the account here; and Zyrianskoe Zhizn, whose tireless chasing (by activist-reporter Ernest Mezak) of the causes and motivations surrounding the crashes of Russian airmen in Africa, and statements from authorities and airmen, have shaped my understanding of their world. Ernest, thank you for your generous assistance. I also owe a debt of thanks to the New York Times for the quality and foresight of the interviews with Damnjanovic and Bout, and The Guardian for its arms dealers series. Others: the Moscow Times, Pravda, Sovershenno Sekretno, Take-Off, Current Digest of the Post-Soviet Press, Kommersant, Moskovsky Komsomolets (Moscow), St. Petersburg Times (St. Petersburg), Zyrianskoe Zhizn (Komi), Vreme, Politika, VIP (Belgrade), the Guardian, the Independent, the Times, the Economist, International Who’s Who (UK), the Independent, the Daily Monitor, New Vision, the Eye (Kampala), Foreign Policy, the New York Times, Washington Monthly, An-Novosti/Antonov News (from the Antonov Aeronautical Scientific/Technical Complex, Ukraine), Afghan Daily (Kabul), Gulf News, Gulf Today (UAE)
ONLINE RESOURCES
Afghan newswire: www.pajhwok.com
Amnesty International: www.amnesty.org
Aviation Safety Network Database of the Flight Safety Foundation: www.aviation-safety.net
Ethical Cargo: www.ethicalcargo.org
International Peace Information Service: www.IPISresearch.be
The Professional P
ilots’ Rumour Network: www.pprune.org
Registan news source in English for Central Asia: www.registan.net
The South Eastern and Eastern Europe Clearinghouse for the Control of Small Arms and Light Weapons (SEESAC): www.seesac.org
Stockholm International Peace Research Institute: www.sipri.org
SOME OF THE PEOPLE IN THE BOOK
Air Cess: www.aircess.com
Viktor Bout: www.viktorbout.com
Richard Chichakli: www.chichakli.com
Adam Curtis: adamcurtisfilms.blogspot.com
Mark Galeotti’s excellent blog: www.inmoscowsshadows.wordpress.com
Arthur Kent’s documentary news channel: www.skyreporter.com
Doug McKinlay: www.dougmckinlay.com
Amb. Dmitry Rogozin: www.rogozin.ru
Andrei Soldatov’s index on Russia’s secret state: www.agentura.ru
The Yorkshire Ranter: www.yorkshire-ranter.blogspot.com
Evgeny Zakharov’s Soviet Air Charter: www.sovietaircharter.com
A Note on the Author
MATT POTTER is a British journalist, editor, and broadcaster. He has reported for BBC Radio from Eastern Europe, Afghanistan, and Southeast Asia, and copresented its award-winning global travel shows. As a journalist, his nose for the unusual has seen his writing appear in places as diverse as the Daily Telegraph, Golf Monthly, Sunday Telegraph, Jack, Maxim, and the Irish Examiner, and his stories on cocaine trafficking in Latin America have been translated into Russian, German, and Spanish. As a journalist in Belgrade, he broke the story of the NATO “spy” giving away secrets to Serb forces on the Web. He speaks a handful of languages to wildly varying degrees, but attempts to speak at least twenty more. Find out more on Outlaws Inc. and Matt Potter at www.mattpotterbooks.com.