From SAS to Blood Diamond Wars Page 4

  However, there was an attempted follow-up to this proposal that Fred did not know about until fourteen years later. The SAS invited Fred to the camp at Hereford on 6 June 2009, to a function celebrating the forty-fifth anniversary of the reforming of ‘B’ Squadron after its disbandment at the end of the Malayan campaign. Because of his seniority, Fred found he was sitting at the top table next to John Moss. After the meal, the two discussed Sierra Leone and the lost opportunity. And John filled in the outline of what happened on his return to the UK on 11 March 1995. At Control Risks they felt that they had invested some time in working up a proposal that sounded both feasible and worthwhile, so they reviewed it, revamped it and priced it at £10 million. They then put the proposal to the MoD with a request for funding. The MoD turned them down. But as Fred put it, the MoD would have to pay a lot more a few years later to support the government of Sierra Leone.

  Thwarted at official level, in March 1995, ideas about training and supporting local fighters had to go on the back burner for Fred, but a new assignment came his way; and he seized the moment, because it meant that he would be paid again. When the RUF kidnapped personnel from the Sieromco mine in January, they took them deep into the bush. Nothing was known of their whereabouts and no ransom demands were made. Eventually, however, the rebels made initial contact by radio with the Freetown office of Sieromco. The rebels had quite a sophisticated radio communication system, for Foday Sankoh had originally trained as a radio operator with the British army. One of his hostages, Rudi Bruns, took note of how Sankoh used his communication system when he was in the RUF leader’s base at the time, Camp Zagoda.

  Foday Sankoh was in regular contact at specific times with his commanders. His radio station, powered by solar panels (probably stolen from SierraTel transmitter stations), was not far away from our huts and we were able to listen to his communication. We even heard him one day talking to Charles Taylor. He was using an old British military code system when he was giving commands and instructions. His strategic military chart was a Shell Road Map of Sierra Leone, available in most book shops. Coloured stickers marked the position of his troops. The same Shell map with coloured stickers I was to see later in the office of the Nigerian ECOMOG commanders at 1st Battalion Wilberforce Barracks in Freetown.8

  As a result of the radio contact, the company contracted Control Risks in the UK to carry out negotiations with the rebels. Negotiations were expected to be protracted, so Control Risks deployed two negotiators, who would work in rotation over a two-week cycle. They had to have security; as he was already in the country, Fred was asked if he would protect the negotiator. He accepted with alacrity. The first negotiator on duty was Jonathan Atkins. In addition, a team of British police negotiators was sent out to give advice. Dialogue with the rebel group, however, was conducted by a Sierra Leonean.

  Fred was impressed by the professionalism of the British negotiators. In the background, they stressed the importance of writing down all that had to be said on each radio call; they briefed on how to manipulate dialogue so that the rebels had the sense that they were in control, whereas they were really working to an agenda set by the team. Permission was given to speak to each hostage, so it was established that all the hostages were in the one place; and as each conversation with the rebels was finishing, confirmation of the timing of the next radio call was always pushed for. All the time, a picture was being built up. It seemed that Foday Sankoh had control of the situation and that the hostages were unharmed. And it was through this patient work that the Red Cross became involved. For some reason, Foday Sankoh trusted the Red Cross and was prepared to have a dialogue with one of its representatives.

  The representative of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) was Primo Corvaro. With his arrival, the balance of responsibilities changed: the negotiators now worked directly to Primo, and dialogue took place between him and Foday Sankoh. Having raised the profile of the RUF, Sankoh gave indications that he would adopt a humanitarian approach with the hostages. Negotiations reached a delicate stage. Then came the breakthrough. On the evening of Sunday 16 April, after his conversation with Sankoh, Primo told the negotiation team that he thought they should fly to neighbouring Guinea the following day in anticipation that Sankoh, in the next few days, could release the hostages at the border. The Control Risks negotiator on duty was uncertain about this and asked the advice of the British High Commission and police team. Both counselled against it, advising that they stay in Sierra Leone. He then asked Fred what he thought:

  I said, ‘Jonathan, are we working for the British government, or are we working for the client?’ He said, ‘We are working for the client.’ I said, ‘If the client says go, he wouldn’t ask us to go without a good reason.’

  Jonathan made his decision and a senior manager of the company Sieromco, Joe Blume, arranged for a helicopter to fly them to Guinea the next day, along with the luggage of their hostage personnel in the bush.

  When they landed at Conakry, the Guinean authorities were very difficult: at first they would not allow the team to get off the helicopter; after discussion between the Guinean government and the Red Cross, they were allowed to disembark; then the helicopter was held at the airport for about four hours before it was allowed to return to Sierra Leone. The next obstacle was passing through Customs. Fred, Primo and Jonathan had the hostages’ luggage on a trolley. The officials wanted them to open the baggage. Fred took his job seriously and he refused, saying that it belonged to people out in the bush. Then the officials wanted to open Fred’s cell phone, but he argued that they needed it on duty. At this point, a sympathetic woman official on duty took charge and allowed them through.

  The speed of their move to Guinea meant that no preparatory work had been done for their reception, and Fred found that his job description became pretty elastic. He and Jonathan first went to the office of the British Consul for assistance. The Honorary British Consul, Val Treitlein, was in London, but her daughter gave them her car and was very helpful, guiding them round the system and making arrangements for them. This particular contact was to turn out to be very important for Fred two years later. Sieromco, the mining company, liaised with a bauxite mining company in Guinea which provided a compound where the hostages could be received.

  My job was to organize the reception, isolate a certain area, clear the area and occupy it in readiness before the hostages arrived.

  All these arrangements had to be made very quickly, for in Primo’s opinion the release of the hostages was imminent. And sure enough, the following evening, which was Tuesday, after his discussion with Foday Sankoh, Primo said, ‘They’re releasing the hostages on Wednesday.’ So they drove to the border to receive them.

  The remainder of the negotiating team, who had advised against going to Guinea, were still in Sierra Leone, and they now undertook a mad scramble to get to Conakry. Meanwhile, Primo and the team met the hostages at the border, took them into the care of the Red Cross, and then drove to a half-way house to spend the night there. As it turned out, among the hostages was the rutile mine’s head of security, the same head of security who had had such a condescending attitude to him when Fred first met him on his early fact-finding tour of mining sites.

  And when he came in, I looked at him, and he looked at me and bowed. And the thought crossed my mind –‘anything that happens within a hundred miles I know immediately.’ But then I thought back to when I was a kid; I was told to fight like an Englishman: when he’s down you don’t kick him. When he’s down you pull him up.

  The hostages had indeed been through a rough time in the three months they spent in the bush. Rudi Bruns was glowing in his praise for the Red Cross.

  The ICRC is a very thoughtful organization. My highest respect! Being in the bush for three months, not thinking of women apart from our wives, no beer or other beverages, what did we find in the ICRC vehicles which took us to Conakry? Lady drivers, soft drinks and beer in the boot. I immediately placed myself in the front
seat. A beer can was passed on to me and, thanks to the efficient air conditioner of the vehicle, within a few minutes we had our first cold beer in three months. Everybody was happy.9

  That evening, though, they were able to talk to their families by satellite phone.

  Then there had to be a period of re-orientation before the expatriates were handed over to their embassies; and Fred’s new role, and that of the negotiator, was to stay on in the country and help in the process of the hostages readapting to normal life. For a brief period Fred organized trips to one of the islands and they went swimming. Then the hostages were handed over to their embassies. Sieromco’s manager Joe Blume had already block-booked a number of seats with various carriers: KLM, Air France and Sabina.

  The world’s press seemed to be waiting at the front gate of the bauxite compound, from where a fleet of cars could be seen lined up. But at the back gate of the compound, out of sight, were also one or two vehicles; and it was in these, from the rear of the compound, that the German Ambassador led a small convoy, taking the hostages to the airport.

  Two days later, on 7 May 1995, Fred left for a break in the UK. He had hardly been home three weeks before a means of fighting the rebels in Sierra Leone returned to the front burner: he was contacted by Simon Mann and offered the chance to return to Sierra Leone and take on a job which opened the way for him to have a combat role with one of the most effective private military fighting units in the world.

  Part II

  Chapter Three

  Executive Outcomes

  From the Gadites there went over to David at the stronghold in the wilderness mighty and experienced warriors, expert with shield and spear, whose faces were like the faces of lions, and who were as swift as gazelles upon the mountains.

  1 Chronicles, Chapter 12, 8

  Executive Outcomes (EO) stands out above all other private military companies for the effective and efficient way it defeated an insurgency, and so enabled democracy to be restored to a country. A South African, multi-racial company of highly experienced combat veterans with years of counter-insurgency operations in southern Africa behind them, it was contracted by the Sierra Leone government who, by now, had come to accept that the country’s military lacked the capacity to defeat the RUF. With no help forthcoming from the western democracies, the government hired a private military company to do what the state was unable to do. The Sierra Leone government initially intended to fund the cost out of treasury receipts, which would have included tax receipts from mining concessions as well as other internal sources. And the contract stipulated that in the first year EO would deploy between one hundred and two hundred men.

  Yet, as we saw, only a few months earlier the head of government, Valentine Strasser, had told John Moss that they were unable to fund a training scheme based on an earlier SAS model, which would have been delivered by ex-SAS personnel. What had changed in the government’s fortunes in the meantime? Essentially nothing had changed, which suggests that Strasser, who, after all, was the head of a military regime, had no intention of arming and training a militia as an alternative force to the army, and simply fobbed off the training proposal with lack of funds as an excuse.

  Fred had been recruited to provide training for the EO contingent in jungle warfare. On 8 June, he arrived back in Sierra Leone, and learned that Executive Outcomes were already in the country and in action.

  It turned out to be quite an interesting day because that was the day, when I arrived, there was a battle going on – on the ground in Sierra Leone. Executive Outcomes were shaking themselves out in their formations and so forth and they were ambushed at this village just outside Waterloo. They were ambushed from both sides: in other words they were set up. Somebody in the Headquarters must have been passing information. The rebels were waiting for them. Unfortunately for them, Executive Outcomes were very well trained, very seasoned troops. And they beat the attackers, and they regrouped themselves. The only casualty they had was one of the commanders had a small piece of shrapnel in his eye. And that was the only one. Otherwise they beat the rebels. They regrouped and spent the night there, and they extracted themselves and regrouped; they debriefed the following day and went over what were the weak points. But they regrouped brilliantly.

  Treachery, then, was very much a factor within the Sierra Leonean army. It is not difficult to see why: some people, it seemed, were hedging their bets, for the rebels had penetrated so far west that they were in the outskirts of Freetown. Every morning, in the capital, their radio call-sign, ‘House of Culture’ could be heard. Soon after he arrived, Fred saw for himself the extent of their deployment only about 15 kilometres from Freetown outside Waterloo, where the ambush had been sprung on Executive Outcomes.

  Later on, in group search, we were to find a very big base camp just outside Waterloo that could hold 600–800 men, including sick bay; and it was a well-stocked camp. The question was how come they could build a big camp like that without anybody knowing. And the answer is very obvious – with the connivance of some of the people in the army, because they would not be seen on the map. When we eventually found the camp we discovered that it was only about five kilometres away from the ambush. But of course when they got beaten by Executive Outcomes they were cooking the food, and they fled and left everything. They only carried what they could carry. After that we spent the night there in the camp and destroyed everything that needed to be destroyed and then we pulled out.

  Before he became part of the combat unit, however, Fred was to have provided it with jungle warfare training. He was highly experienced in this field; when he was in the SAS, he had been an instructor in jungle warfare in Brunai. And so on that basis, and also because he knew some of the country, he was approached by former SAS officer, Simon Mann, and contracted with Branch Energy, a company which was part of a group that included Executive Outcomes.

  Men who have had a lot of combat experience are able to size up potential comrades very quickly; and when Fred met the EO personnel, he recognized their calibre.

  I arrived and I saw these guys sleeping downstairs in bunk beds with mosquito nets and a shower outside. And I thought to myself, can you imagine getting a group of British people to sleep like that? I soon realized that there was nothing I could teach these people. And second, the last thing you want to do is to confuse people: they had a very good, very well-oiled machine; they were a very disciplined and well-trained force and very successful. Why change them? That was when I volunteered to join the fighting unit.

  The commander of Executive Outcomes in Sierra Leone at that point was Brigadier Sachse, who was ex-South African Defence Forces (SADF). Because Brig Sachse had had Fred recommended to him by Simon Mann, he readily agreed, and Fred joined the fighting force.

  Executive Outcomes had an impressive capability, underpinned by a clear understanding of the guerrilla war they were fighting: the company was self-sustained and did not have to rely on local back-up; it had a Boeing transport plane to bring equipment and supplies from South Africa; it had helicopter gunships, the formidable titanium-plated Mi-24 and Mi-17, bought from former Soviet bloc countries after the fall of communism; it had a mortar section and armoured vehicles complete with transporters; it had night vision equipment; and it had sophisticated intelligence.

  Its first operation was to clear rebel forces from the area around Freetown. This the company achieved in a matter of days and it was during the operation, when Fred was with them, that they came across the now deserted base camp from where the rebels set out to launch their ambush of EO, as a result of what looked like a tip-off from army HQ. Having cleared the Freetown area, EO now prepared for the larger operations into the country.

  The commander of these operations was Colonel Rudolph (Roelf) van Heerden, who had an extensive military background, with combat experience going back to the 1970s. He had served in the war in South West Africa in 1978 in the 102 Battalion; then he transferred to South Africa and became the Senior Operations Officer in 82
Mechanised Brigade, and was on operations in Angola. After his staff college course, he was transferred to covert collection in army intelligence. When that directorate was closed down due to political pressure, he was among the first members to be recruited to Executive Outcomes, and he worked with the company as Operations Officer in various countries. And for the forthcoming operations in Sierra Leone, Roelf was prepared to use Fred as one of the front men.

  He was recommended by Mann, Simon Mann; Simon and also my previous boss, Brig Sachse. He was recommended to me: I was told that he had some knowledge of Sierra Leone areas and the local population, and that we should use him. And we did.

  I met him right there at the beginning. He was a friendly face. Well OK, he was not part of the planning phase but, when we started the operations, he was clearly a front man there.

  This was our second operation after signing the contract with the government. Having driven the RUF rebels from the outskirts of Freetown, which was very successful, we planned to take up the second phase of the operation in taking over the diamond area of Kono. We were 64 men from EO with about 10 men from the SLMF (Sierra Leone Military Forces) and Fred.1