From SAS to Blood Diamond Wars

by Ross, Hamish

  During the initial phase, Bokkie’s air compressor for the brakes seized and the other two replacement compressors only lasted one mission and also failed; so Juba, therefore, decided to fly without wheel brakes and only use aerodynamic braking on the ground. Another time, with a load for ECOMOG as well as ammunition, medicine and rice for the CDF, they found that they had taken on too much at Spriggs airfield, and were unable to fly normally at low speed. Experience taught the pilot what to do: he turned back, and flared up, coming in low and fast, pulling the nose up at the last minute, using the rotor disc as a wind-milling airbrake to slow the aircraft, and slammed it onto the ground before they fell out of the sky – a very skilled manoeuvre. Juba really did know what he was doing. After offloading a few bags of rice they were airborne again.

  Juba’s reason for flying so heavily loaded was as a result of the limitation of routes into Sierra Leone and the fact that Charles Taylor’s troops as well as the RUF and AFRC were all intent on shooting down Bokkie. They had to change routes all the time in order not to set a pattern and be trapped. When anti-aircraft guns were moved into place between Liberia and Sierra Leone by the Liberian forces, Juba again changed routes and flew over the ocean, not closer than 10 kilometres and no higher than 15 metres above the water.

  At first I was flying at 5 metres above the water, but two dolphin jumped out of the sea next to the helicopter, almost as high as the rotor head; and when these two hit the water, another two jumped out close to the cockpit but missing the main rotors. I told the others I would fly a bit higher because it would be difficult for search and rescue to find us if we had a dolphin strike. After this incident a marlin sailfish jumped out of the water, and a whale and her calf surfaced just to see what was the strange noise they heard.4

  The air waves too became important as a source of hope and encouragement for people in Sierra Leone. Working from his hotel room in Conakry, Peter Penfold managed to get the British government’s approval to receive funds from the Department for International Development (DFID) to buy a radio transmitter. Bokkie was used to transport it to a masthead at Lungi.

  We flew the equipment, Juba and myself and set it in position. Juba said to me to lie out and look down and tell him left, right, forward or back. There were two guys waiting on the top of this tower. And it was put there, spot on.

  Radio Democracy, 98.1, as it was called, became a symbol of hope for a lot of people. Its purpose was, said Peter Penfold, ‘Just to keep democracy alive.’

  From my hotel room in Conakry, I would phone Julius Spencer, who was in this tent with his radio set and one of these great mobiles; and I would talk to him from my mobile and he would put it to the microphone, and I would talk to the people of Sierra Leone, or mainly Freetown, from Conakry. And yeah, I’d be saying, ‘Don’t lose hope. We are still committed to getting rid of these terrible people. Don’t worry, we know things are terrible for you.’ And I’d talk to them in the early hours of the morning or whenever. The people in Freetown put their radios under their pillows, because if anybody was found listening to radio 98.1, they were killed. So they would go to bed with the radio under their pillows.5

  While the ferrying of food and fuel to the troops and militia was going on, the international community took supportive measures to back Kabbah’s democratically elected government. President Kabbah went to New York and addressed the United Nations General Assembly. And on 8 October, the UN Security Council voted unanimously to adopt a British-sponsored resolution imposing sanctions against Sierra Leone’s military government; the sanctions included a ban on the sale of arms and military equipment to the junta.6 This indeed is how UN Resolution 1132 was subsequently modified: an embargo on ‘the sale and supply of arms and related matériel of all types to Sierra Leone other than to the government of Sierra Leone through named points of entry.’7

  In the West African theatre, the Economic Council of West African States (ECOWAS) began negotiations in Conakry with representatives of the AFRC in an endeavour to restore the democratic government to Sierra Leone. That government was not a party to the negotiations, but it had observer status. The talks took place in the absence of President Kabbah who was attending the Commonwealth Conference in Edinburgh. The bargaining at Conakry produced a formula which promised the return of Kabbah to power, and an expectation that the RUF leader, Foday Sankoh, would be released from house arrest in Nigeria and ‘return to his country to make his contribution to the peace process.’8 But whether the AFRC/RUF were serious about restoring a democratic government, or whether it was a charade to gain immunity for the coup leaders and reinstate the RUF as a power in the land was in question. Within days, fighting was taking place in the country, and a spokesman for Kabbah’s government claimed that President Charles Taylor of Liberia was trying to undermine the agreement, and that the AFRC was importing truck loads of arms from that country. Certainly Kabbah, on his return home, expressed some reservations about elements of the agreement, which suggests that he had learned something from his experience of negotiating with the RUF a year earlier. Thus far at least though, he seemed to pin his hopes on a negotiated settlement.

  By contrast, the road that Hinga Norman took, as the only way to restore Kabbah’s government, was hard and dangerous. In this brief note he wrote to Fred, requesting items to be air-lifted to him, Hinga Norman gives a vignette of the range of responsibilities he took on himself: a resistance leader in the bush with day to day concerns for cooking utensils; requirements for fuel; and specifications of weapons and ammunition. But he was also a figurehead with a secretary, channelling information to him from a communications network. It is simply addressed, ‘To Mr Fred Marafono, with kind appreciation.’

  November 8, 1997

  Dear Fred

  Kindly collect from Maj Del Yakuku few items including the ones we left behind the day of our departure:

  1 drum of engine oil and 5 cartons of cartridges. In addition we have requested for AK grenades and 8 drums of petrol and diesel (4 each).

  We mistakenly dropped a bag of mine at Gendema on our way on Wednesday. I will appreciate were you to kindly pick up that bag along with 2 sets of cooking pots from Gendema (SL – Lib) border whenever you have a chance to fly this way again. Please liaise with my secretary, Mr Zorokon, who will contact Mr Harding at the border to have the items ready whenever you fly them.

  Also contact Mrs Norman through Mr Zorokon for messages and dispatches.

  Kind regards

  (signed) Sam H Norman

  Hon. Sam Norman9

  Base Zero was the destination for Hinga Norma’s requests. It was situated in a wooded area surrounded by swamplands not far from the sea, in the Chiefdom of Bonthe, about forty-five minutes flying time from the Liberian border. The build- up of CDF militiamen there had been concentrated into a two-day slot in Bokkie’s schedule. Of course, the CDF had not been airlifted from Spriggs, but from the clearing in the bush on the Sierra Leone side of the border that they had established as their eastern base in September. The area that had been made into a landing strip for a helicopter had a road leading into it. And that road helped the helicopter gain transition to normal flight when it was heavily loaded. Optimum capacity for personnel with packs that the Mi-17 can comfortably cope with is said to be about thirty-two. Fred organized the embarking of the militiamen for Base Zero.

  Putting up the fingers of my hands, that’s the number of men; and I lined them up, 20, 25 or 30, and I would say to whatever number. ‘You come with me.’ And I lined them up with their loads, light loads. So when we came to the sixth flight − the last flight − when they found out that it was the last flight to the war front, and that Chief Norman was at the war front! I nearly hit the Sierra Leoneans: I plucked them off from here, I plucked them off from there; they were even hanging on from the portholes. They wanted to go to the front; it was quite an incredible sight. When we took off we went up with 73 initially and Juba kept Bokkie in the hover for 5 seconds, then he landed back and told
me to offload 5 passengers as we were too heavy. The second time we got airborne with 68 people on board! 68 people on board, 65 of them and 3 of us. I said to Juba, ‘That was heavy.’ He said, ‘Like fuck, it was heavy.’ I said, ‘Juba why didn’t you land?’ He said, ‘It’s out of a confined area and once you start to move up and forward, I know when Bokkie is willing or not to carry the weight. If I was to try to land back, we would have fallen from the sky, we haven’t got the power to overcome the momentum, so I would rather use it to our advantage.’

  The landing at base Zero was going to be interesting, due to their brakes not working; and it was also a confined space with high trees upwind. Juba planned to break the speed in the turn from downwind to final approach, and then clear the trees with forward speed above transition speed to get into ground effect with the extra lift still available to help stop their rate of descent in the confined area. Once into the in-ground effect, his idea was to get Bokkie on the ground and pull the nose up to maximum without putting the tail rotor into the ground. There was a tail rotor skid that stopped the pilot from doing that on hard surfaces, but over the rainy period the soil was soft and the skid could plough the surface. With all the landings already done that day into the same landing zone, dust also became a consideration.

  I told Fred that when we touched the ground with the main wheels, he must jump out and put the wheel chock in to help us stop such a heavy load. Fred jumped out as planned, but because of the dust he did not realize that the nose was so high above the ground and that the speed was still quite high. His feet and body almost simultaneously hit the ground, and he realized survival was now important, because there was a big wheel on its way and 13 tons of helicopter above it. He rolled to the side out of the wheel’s way when it passed in the dust, and he hoped it would stop before it hit the trees. I kept the nose high, hoping to stop in time; because I realized the chock did not do what it was supposed to do, and so now the aerodynamic breaking was the only option.10

  Once the helicopter stopped, Juba dropped the nose, and when the dust settled, Bokkie’s blades were about 2 metres away from a massive tree’s trunk and in its shade. After shutting down, there was a clear mark on the ground where the tail rotor skid dragged on the ground and broke in places.

  Hinga Norman anticipated a large consignment of arms from Sandline; the weapons and ammunition that the CDF had, thus far, were either captured from the RUF or a token distribution from ECOMOG. But until they received a weapon supply, Hinga Norman saw to it that that training continued intensively. Bokkie’s schedule for a CDF delivery of food and medicine often called for an early drop off at Base Zero before going on to Lungi. Fred recalls a frequent sight.

  In the morning, it might be 7am or 7.30 am, we’d be landing with food; and the Chief was in PT shorts, and training with the guys coming up. And there he was − the leader of this group. And the training was quite incredible; and later on they were to prove it. Weapons were to be given to them to fight and take over all the AFRC positions, and kick them out from up-country. But unfortunately the weapons never reached them.

  The AFRC and the RUF, on the other hand, despite the UN arms embargo on them, seemed to be getting supplied overland from Liberia, as well as from the sea − as Fred and Juba once saw for themselves.

  On one of their supply flights, they spotted a vessel close to shore off Sulima bay. And on the beach about ten metres from the water’s edge they saw, what they knew from their years of combat experience to be, shallow, green ammunition boxes of varying sizes in the process of being taken inland by a number of men, who, when the helicopter flew overhead, made a sprint for the cover of the vegetation about twenty to thirty metres away. On their return to Monrovia, Juba contacted the ECOMOG Chief Air Officer (CAO), Group Captain Tijjani Easterbrook, and reported the landing. The CAO ordered an Alpha Jet to be scrambled; the ship was intercepted and strafed.

  In the sequel, the CAE called Juba and Fred to his office to meet the daughter of the ship’s owner, who was a Ghanaian businesswoman.11 The daughter remonstrated that they had had ECOMOG authorization for the ship to be in those waters, that her mother nearly had a heart attack when she heard it had been fired on, and she claimed that it had been unloading fish for the local people. Which perhaps goes to show that entrepreneurial flair, often said to be inspired by thinking outside the box, was on this occasion thinking inside the box, utilizing ammunition boxes instead of fish crates as a novel method of bringing a catch ashore. But what about the men on the beach running for cover? Perhaps just simple people’s superstition about a hovering helicopter. And as for the unorthodox landing of fish on the sands instead of at Sulima harbour, well an entrepreneur might admit to the fiscal peccadillo of avoiding paying harbour dues. However, Gp Capt Easterbrook pointed out to the daughter that there was an embargo on shipping activities in the area, and directed her to the Chief Naval Officer (CNO) to sort things out.12 A few days later he got a note from the CNO saying that the owner of the vessel − not the daughter − was in his office. Gp Capt Easterbrook slipped into his colleague’s office as the meeting was in progress, without introducing himself, and listened in. The drift of the owner’s complaint was that she knew nothing of an embargo, and had now lost so much money she would never recover her investment. Subsequent events went from bad to worse for her investment; so much so that the owner might even have concluded that ECOMOG was intent on thwarting honest business endeavour, for on 8 December, ‘A Nigerian warship seized two fishing vessels owned by a Ghanaian businesswoman operating in Freetown. “The vessels were escorted to the ECOMOG headquarters in Monrovia.”’13

  But arming the legitimate government of Sierra Leone was also underway. It was now December, and in Conakry, at one of his regular meetings with Peter Penfold, President Kabbah told him that he had been approached by Sandline who were prepared to train and equip a number of his still loyal forces that were at Lungi. What would the British High Commissioner advise? Peter Penfold looked over the draft contract, and told Kabbah that the decision was his to make: on the one hand, Sandline seemed to be an off-shoot of Executive Outcomes, the company that had a very high reputation in Sierra Leone; but on the other hand, he told Kabbah that he had picked up in diplomatic circles that President Mandela of South Africa had adopted a hostile attitude to the company – this was a factor to bear in mind if Kabbah wished to keep good relations with other African leaders.14

  Shortly afterwards, Peter Penfold went on leave to the UK, where he was contacted by Tim Spicer of Sandline who explained that Kabbah had phoned him and requested that he brief the British High Commissioner. The two met for lunch and Tim Spicer outlined more of his proposal. This led to another meeting among a series that Tim Spicer was having with Foreign Office officials ; and one advantage of these meetings for Peter Penfold was that he could find out what the ECOMOG forces were planning, since Sandline was flying into Lungi airport.15 Nigeria was the key player in ECOMOG, yet the irony of Nigeria’s strong support for restoring Kabbah’s government to power was that Nigeria itself was not a democracy; there was a coolness at official level – perhaps even a ban – in the UK about its military talking to the Nigerian military. So, thanks to Tim Spicer’s knowledge from his people on the ground, Peter Penfold was getting some insight into the security situation in Sierra Leone, and what Nigeria, in particular, was intending.

  In the sub-region, that intention was pointing to the military option. Certainly it was not Nigeria’s decision alone, but Nigeria held the chairmanship of ECOWAS and was the prime mover. The Task Force Commander in Sierra Leone was the Nigerian, Colonel Maxwell Khobe. He announced that a build up of troops would be flown in from Liberia. This was said to be in response to increased attacks on the force by the junta. On the ground, the Kamajors were increasingly harassing the junta in the south and south east of the country. A co-ordinating committee of ECOMOG and CDF oversaw the Kamajor activities. In December, Hinga Norman, in a BBC interview, referred to a set of actions, authorized by
the Government in exile, code named Black December, where Kamajors made concerted attacks on the junta’s supply lines. And in a symbolic gesture that took place on Sierra Leone soil, on 21 December President Kabbah flew to Lungi airport and met Hinga Norman and Vice President Joe Demby. News of the meeting was broadcast to the Sierra Leone people on the government’s radio station, Radio Democracy 98.1 at Lungi, a reassurance that the time would come when the junta would no longer be in power.

  Meanwhile, the entire burden of keeping the Task Force and Base Zero supplied was carried by Bokkie. Men and machine were stretched to the limit each day. And each long day began about 5am, the helicopter having been loaded the night before; they took off around 6am, and flew to Sierra Leone, offloaded, distributed, loaded up – sometimes they took personnel going on rotation, sometimes, acting as medivac, they had a steady trickle of wounded from continuing skirmishes with junta forces – then took off and flew back to Monrovia. They went through this sequence three times in the long day. Fred noted the details of each flight in his diary, and at the end of the day Juba used these notes to write up his flying log book.

  Most of their route was over water, but as the whole project was being done on a shoestring they did not even have life jackets. As they approached the Sierra Leone coastline, the adrenaline really started to flow: they could be subject to ground and air attack. The junta had one Mi-17 helicopter and one Mi-24 gunship; Fred’s concern was that his GPMG was no match for the Mi-24. The gunship’s four-barrelled Gatling guns could fire 12.7 mm shells at the rate of 5,000 rounds per minute, and it was also equipped with four rocket pods. On the ground, the junta had access to the Sierra Leonean army’s arsenal of weaponry, and the RUF component of the People’s Army was rumoured to have a Surface to Air Missile (SAM) but apparently they had not been trained in its use. Juba’s final approach to Lungi was made at high speed and at a very low level so as not to give the army gunners a chance. He called the technique, ‘mowing the lawn.’