From SAS to Blood Diamond Wars Read online

  The main site of the sampling operations was about 3 kilometres south of Yara village on the west side of Lake Sonfon. And from the initial sampling area, the company cleared a road round the lake for more test sites. The lake was thought to be rich in gold and diamonds; it was certainly rich in wild life – habitat of buffalo, crocodile and pigmy hippopotamus.

  In the months that followed, thanks to Fred’s links with Chief Hinga Norman, Cape International was exceptionally granted approval to carry weapons. One afternoon, Fred presented the approval document from the Ministry of Defence authorizing Cape International to carry weapons in the execution of their duties to the Chief of Defence Staff, Brigadier General Conteh. Such approval meant that the army could provide certain types of weapons to company personnel: shotguns for locals and pistols and AK-47s for expatriates, on condition that expatriates were responsible for supervision of training and testing and the security of weapons. When Fred met Conteh he was with his intelligence officer in the map room that EO had set up; his only response was to tell Fred to leave the document on the table. However, weapons were duly provided. And so now, recruits had to be given weapons training with shotguns. Some of the shotguns, Fred discovered, were antiquated and some were amateurishly adapted and too dangerous to be allowed on the shooting range. Most of Fred’s local security staff were ex-Tamaboros, a local militia of hunters that had been disbanded. He found that they were very good men, who proved their worth during the critical days that lay ahead.

  Part of the function of a responsible company exploring the resources of an area, as Fred saw it, was to put something in to the welfare of the local community. And as Fred observed local customs, he became aware that lack of simple hygiene was resulting in a lot of cases of eye infection, so he suggested to one of the village elders of Yara that the company’s medical orderly could give health talks to the people of the village. This idea had to be put to the local chairman, who agreed. The medical orderly gave his first talk to half of the village wives, who not only received it well but asked that the same input be made for the men of the village. So successful was the venture that it ended up being delivered to all the villages in the chiefdom of Diang.

  Meanwhile, at state level, President Kabbah was intent on achieving his election pledge to bring the war to an end; and he decided he would do so by entering into negotiations with the rebels. On the face of it, he was in a strong position: the RUF could not now succeed militarily, thanks to the impact of Executive Outcomes. Fighting still continued, though, but the rebels had been pushed back and were being sought out by EO alongside units of the Sierra Leone army or the Kamajors. So this was the strong hand that President Kabbah held when, on neutral territory in the Ivory Coast, he sat down to negotiate with Foday Sankoh, head of the RUF.

  The negotiations concluded on 30 November 1996 with the Abidjan Accord.

  Article 11 of the Accord stipulated that a UN body, a Neutral Monitoring Group (NMG) would be set up and be responsible for monitoring breaches in the peace agreement. However, given the way the pendulum had swung over eighteen months from the point when the RUF were on the outskirts of Freetown to their being crushed in battle by an agency acting on behalf of the State, a key paragraph, Article 12, spelled out ignominious defeat – but not for the RUF.

  ARTICLE 12

  The Executive Outcomes shall be withdrawn five weeks after the deployment on the Neutral Monitoring Group (NMG). As from the date of the deployment of the Neutral Monitoring Group, the Executive Outcomes shall be confined to barracks under the supervision of the Joint Monitoring Group and the Neutral Monitoring Group. Government shall use all its endeavours, consistent with its treaty obligations, to repatriate other foreign troops no later than three months after the deployment of the Neutral Monitoring Group or six months after the signing of the Peace Agreement, whichever is earlier.4

  President Kabbah later admitted that it had been a mistake to terminate the contract in the face of popular demand for Executive Outcomes to remain in Sierra Leone, at least until all threat from the RUF was eliminated.

  But because of the persistent demand of the RUF that they would sign the Abidjan Accord only if it contained a provision for the termination of the contract of the Executive Outcomes, I yielded to their demand in spite of the popular opposition and the heavy financial consequences that followed from the wrongful and premature termination of that contract. My Government is still paying the damages which followed from such termination.5

  The cost in human life, damage to property and lost revenues to the country from that decision to withdraw Executive Outcomes turned out to be horrendous.

  Yet the extent to which Foday Sankoh was deceiving President Kabbah became known to the Sierra Leone government within days of the promulgation of the Accord when government agencies intercepted a radio message from Sankoh to one of his field commanders, Sam Bockarie, explaining to him that he had no intention of abiding by the agreement and had only entered the peace talks to get the international community off his back.6 And to pile insult on ignominy, Sankoh, the day of the signing of the Agreement, refused to sign the document that Kabbah had personally drawn up, authorizing the deployment of 90 UN peacekeepers to monitor the observance of the ceasefire. This document required both their signatures as a pre-condition to the group’s being deployed.7 As a result no peacekeepers came to Sierra Leone; yet, in terms of the Accord, it was subsequent to this body being deployed that Executive Outcomes were required to leave the country.

  So at this juncture, when the good faith of Foday Sankoh was known to be lacking, President Kabbah tenaciously persisted in terminating the contract with Executive Outcomes, and so clawed defeat from the jaws of victory.

  In terms of the contractual arrangement between the previous government and Executive Outcomes, provision for terminating the contract provided for specified notice to terminate following the conclusion of a subsequent full calendar month. And so, in December 1996, Sierra Leone’s Attorney General, Solomon Berewa, issued the formal notice in writing, which, at 31 January 1997, resulted in EO departing the theatre.

  Before that happened, though, EO recommended two options that they could deliver to the Sierra Leone government: the retention of an intelligence gathering capability and/or a helicopter-mobile QRF (Quick Reaction Force). Considering the perilous position the government was now in with a military riven by factions and an intelligence capacity that the President later acknowledged could not be trusted, these were two shrewd options, probably calculated to be politically acceptable to a government that had just signed a peace agreement. Neither option was taken up.

  The final payment for the contract, like the earlier payments, came from funds provided to the Sierra Leone government by way of World Bank economic support. It was not a direct payment, of course, for EO’s services, because the charter of the World Bank precluded the funding of military or religious activities, but it could come under the budget heading of security in the country’s submission to the World Bank.

  On 30 January, the day before they were due to leave, it was reported that Executive Outcomes had pulled out of Kono one month ahead of the expected deployment of the UN peacekeepers. 8 It would seem then, at this stage, it was not widely known that the peace-monitoring process was in a cleft stick since it lacked Sankoh’s agreement, a vital prerequisite for the UN to send the monitoring group. Then on 3 February, it was reported that Executive Outcomes had left the country the previous Monday; and its Commander, Brig Bert Sachse , was quoted as saying, ‘I believe the government is quite capable of handling its own internal security problem. We must now leave the country.’9 However, the report went on to include a piece of misinformation that has often re-appeared in print about the reason why EO left the country: ‘On January 31 the group’s Sierra Leone contract officially ended and was not renewed.’10 Whereas in truth, it had been terminated in writing by the government.

  On 14 February, news sources quoted the UN Secretary-General, Kofi Annan,
giving a nuanced slant on the fragility of the peace process, in which he said, ‘We are still trying to get Sankoh’s agreement to the deployment of the force without wanting to give him a veto power over deployment of the force.’11 Yet, a veto was precisely the power Sankoh held since 30 November. But by 7 March, the tone at UN level was more realistic: a senior official, arriving in Abidjan with the intention of persuading Sankoh to accede to the deployment of the mission said, ‘We hope he will consent and let the mission be deployed.’12 It was a forlorn hope.

  Deputy Minister of Defence, Sam Hinga Norman, seemed to have no illusions about Sankoh. After rebels carried out a series of ambushes in which twelve soldiers and twenty civilians were killed, the government authorized the army and the Kamajors to flush out RUF groups. According to the terms of the peace agreement, the rebels were supposed to report to demobilization camps; yet three months into the ceasefire, only about 30 RUF fighters had turned themselves in. Hinga Norman said, ‘Sankoh is vicious and is betraying the peace process.’13 Trouble was brewing in other quarters as well: about twenty people died in a shoot-out between soldiers and Kamajors over diamonds. It was reported, soldiers started digging for diamonds in a gravel pit, and, when they were challenged by the Kamajors as to their right to do so on their lands, firing ensued.14

  That incident was but an indication of a more deep-seated tension between the army and Kamajor militias: elements in the army saw them as a rival force, nurtured at their expense; while civil groups, after years of bitter experience, often distrusted the Sierra Leone army and looked on militias as more loyal. The term Civil Defence Force (CDF) came into being; the problem became so serious that President Kabbah set up a committee under the chairmanship of Bishop Keilii to investigate and make recommendations. Then the unexpected happened, the RUF leader, Foday Sankoh, went on a private visit to Nigeria and was first detained, carrying a firearm; then he was arrested.

  In March a man arrived in the country who would become so committed to supporting this fragile democracy that it would cost him his diplomatic career, but earn him the highest honour that Sierra Leone could confer: the new British High Commissioner, Peter Penfold. By the time he was appointed, Peter Penfold was already a very experienced member of Her Majesty’s Diplomatic Service who had dealt with civil emergencies and humanitarian relief in third world countries; but something about the sacrifices that people made to restore democracy in Sierra Leone made a profound impression on him.

  They showed how to remove an illegal military government peacefully and to usher in a democratic civilian government. People made great sacrifices. One story had a major impact on my thinking. As we know in Africa, it’s not all that sophisticated, after a person has voted they usually have the back of their hand marked with indelible ink. If the rebels found anybody with that mark on the back of their hand they chopped the hand or their finger off. One person who had had his hand chopped off by the rebels because he had voted was asked how he now felt about democracy and about voting. And he waved the other hand and said, ‘I have got his hand, I can use this one next time to vote.’ When I heard that it had an incredible impact on me. It made me wonder just how many people back in Britain, for example, would bother to vote if they had to fear losing a hand. It therefore gave a sense of how important democracy was to these so-called illiterate, uneducated people. It embraced the fundamentals of what democracy is in a way I found staggering. I therefore was fully committed to the struggle to ensure that this fledgling democracy did not wither and perish.15

  But it was a fragile democracy, with factions of discontent within the army; and the government was now bereft of the intelligence gathering capability and the stability that Executive Outcomes had provided. President Kabbah had to call on the help of Nigeria to provide specialists to investigate allegations of an incipient coup. As a result, an army major, Johnny Paul Koroma and one or two junior officers were arrested. However, this did not stop the rot.

  On 16 May, Deputy Defence Minister Hinga Norman sought President Kabbah’s permission to call a meeting, which would be attended by the President and to which would be summoned the Chief of the Defence Staff, the Chief of the Army Staff and the Inspector General of Police. At the meeting Hinga Norman accused the Chief of the Defence Staff and the Army Chief of having prior knowledge of an impending coup against the government and doing nothing to stop it. Here, he gives an account of the outcome.

  After I had finished talking, the President turned to the two officers and said, ‘Gentlemen, did you hear what Chief Norman said?’ They said, ‘Yes sir.’ Then His Excellency went on further to say, ‘Do you have anything to say?’ The officers said, ‘No sir.’ The President then turned to me and said, ‘Chief Norman, they say they do not have anything to say.’

  I became lost for words for a while. After a few minutes, I said, ‘Your Excellency, I did not invite these two officers to say something, but since it is conclusive you do not intend to do anything, I am therefore inviting your Excellency as the Minister of Defence, Commander in Chief of the Armed Forces of Sierra Leone and the President of the Republic to order these officers not to carry out the coup or to allow it, otherwise, if they do, I shall have no alternative but join the people of Sierra Leone to fight and reverse the coup. Thereafter, your Excellency will be constitutionally required to sign their death warrants after due process of law. As of now I shall pray that God will make you survive the coup and see the consequences of your not taking the appropriate action to protect the people and the state.16

  It was later reported that Hinga Norman felt a sense of betrayal by the President’s unwillingness to act. And rightly so, as later events would prove − and as Fred put it, ‘The saddest thing was that the Chief was the most loyal servant that he, Kabbah, had ever had.’

  Later in the week, the British High Commissioner, Peter Penfold, and the American Ambassador also picked up rumours of discontent in the army that could lead to a coup; it was not specific, but it was worrying, and so they, along with the UN special envoy, met with President Kabbah. Peter Penfold felt that the President was a bit dismissive of their information: saying that he would have a few of the soldiers round and talk to them. But chatting with a few high ranking officers would not solve the problem – because they were the problem.

  Peter Penfold found himself well placed to observe the way that the consequences of corrupt practices in the military played out. Britain had agreed to provide a military training assistance programme for the Sierra Leone army; a two-man team led by a major was dispatched to the country to train two battalions of its army. Not long after their arrival, the major came to Peter Penfold with the news that the Chief of Defence Staff had just informed him that he could not find 600 men to take part in the training programme. Peter Penfold immediately went to see Brigadier Conteh, Chief of Defence Staff, and expressed his disbelief that in an army of about 15,000 it was impossible to muster 600 for training. And he exerted pressure: the situation would have to be known at the highest levels for if the training programme could not be delivered other aspects of British aid to the country might be called into question. After hemming and hawing, the Chief of Defence Staff admitted that a more accurate assessment for the strength of the country’s army was a fighting force of 6,000 with about 2,000 administrative staff. Peter Penfold reported this to the Deputy Minister of Defence, Sam Hinga Norman, who blew his top that the army had withheld this information from him.17

  A meeting was called with the President, at which the true figures of the army’s complement were revealed. The mythical missing legions of soldiers sustained a gigantic corruption: rice was issued to the army on overall numbers and it was rationed out according to rank: a private soldier got one bag of rice a month, and by the time it got to senior rank, a full colonel got thirty-one bags of rice, ‘so in effect the officers were rice traders.’18 In the light of this corruption, as well as the fact that there was a rice shortage in the country, the President ordered that the rice allocation should
be computed afresh, commensurate with the true figures of the army’s complement. However, the Chief of Defence Staff, instead of issuing an order for a proportional cut in the ration for all ranks, ordered that the rice ration to the private soldiers should be cut to half a bag of rice a month.19 In so doing, he laid a smoke screen, concealing corrupt practice at higher levels in the army, imputing blame for the cut in rations to other ranks slap-bang at the door of the civilian politicians.

  Chapter Five

  Fubar

  Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;

  Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world

  W. B. Yeats, ‘The Second Coming’

  Two years, to the very month, after Executive Outcomes stopped the RUF on the outskirts of Freetown, the rebels were handed the capital on a plate. A coup d’état was sprung less than a week after the discovery of the scam about army numbers and the rice ration. Early in the morning of Sunday 25 May 1997, the Chief of the Defence Staff, Brig Conteh, received a radio message from an officer in the Signals Squadron stationed at Wilberforce that armed soldiers had sped by in a Mercedes Benz, claiming that they were staging a coup, and taking over the country. While the CDS tried to establish more details, sporadic firing broke out over the city. President Kabbah, an early riser, was monitoring the radio broadcasts between the CDS and the signals officer, and he contacted the CDS to find out what efforts were being made to quell the coup. The situation was unclear, and the President made several calls to Conteh.

  Even among the fleet of foot, President Kabbah, Minister of Defence and chief of Sierra Leone’s armed forces, had few challengers when it came to his swiftness of flight; he was already on his mark, and when the radio went off the air, the President, deducing that the instigators of the coup had already succeeded, ‘quickly accelerated his plans to leave the country.’1 He was taken to Lungi International Airport by the Nigerian ECOMOG troops, and flown to neighbouring Guinea.