CHAPTER SIXTEEN

THE Mi-24 HELICOPTER GUNSHIP GOES TO WAR

There was also a lot of intrigue in Sierra Leone in June 2000. Neall recalls that:

As the conflict gathered momentum, you never really spoke your mind to somebody you didn’t know really well … and even then you could make a mistake. There were times when the war deteriorated into a kind of limbo and neither side was making headway. Then RUF supporters would quickly put the word out that the government was losing and that Sankoh’s people had taken the initiative. In truth, neither side was actually winning, but it was difficult to prove otherwise because that’s the way these insurgencies go. One of the immediate consequences was that many people hedged their bets. Like the Sobels, they would be government supporters one moment and powerfully pro-rebel the next. It was almost a kind of life insurance.

Neall says that those who acted this way included ‘people who we believed we could trust and work with’. Among the worst culprits were some senior members of the Nigerian Army, in particular the unpredictable second-in-command of the United Nations Mission in Sierra Leone (UNAMSIL) forces, Major General Mohammed A. Garba. Eventually, the UN Force Commander in Sierra Leone, Indian Major General Vijay Jetley, accused a group of Nigerian political and military officials at the top of the international military mission in Freetown ‘of working hard to sabotage the peace process … and the Nigerian Army command of looting diamonds in league with the rebel leader, Foday Sankoh’.

This was nothing new, said Nellis:

The media had been aware for a while that the Nigerians were playing silly buggers with the rebels because they wanted their grubby paws on the diamonds, which was really what it was all about. Then, about halfway through my stay in Sierra Leone, things took another turn, following the interception of a signal at army headquarters which caused me to ambush a rebel convoy on the road between Lunsar and Makeni. That strike killed and wounded some of the key players in the rebel command.

Ironically, though Nigerian staff officer Garba was implicated in an anti-government plot, General Vijay Jetley, the Indian officer in charge of UN operations in Sierra Leone, ended up losing his job.

Nellis went on to say:

What Garba’s subterfuge did for me was to indirectly offer the Freetown government the opportunity of a risky but daring raid against RUF command elements. It was an ambush that relied more on gut instinct than military intelligence and that it came off at all was remarkable … obviously we had our share of luck.

Here, Nellis outlines the events that led up to this attack and sets the scene for what followed:

A few days before 19 June 2000, we intercepted a radio message from the regional rebel headquarters in Makeni. Everything we heard suggested that the RUF command had been in contact with Nigeria’s General Garba. Sankoh’s people couldn’t have been aware that we were monitoring his calls, nor was Garba for that matter, and everything that subsequently took place only happened because we had good intelligence that he was already dealing directly with the rebels.

The message we’d intercepted said that the rebels had been given Garba’s satellite phone number and that a meeting was scheduled for the following week. The nub of it was that Garba had apparently told the rebels that the UN wanted to deal which, of course, was nonsense. He told them that it was his job to explore the possibility of all the parties involved in the war making peace.

What he didn’t tell the RUF was that the Freetown government had absolutely nothing to do with any of it. In fact, they didn’t even know he was talking to Foday Sankoh’s people, never mind that he had arranged a meeting. Essentially, he was committing treason.

There were no specifics about time or place, but Garba suggested in one of his secret calls that the conference take place in Makeni. He suggested that it should be with the rebel command and there would be representatives of several African countries present (again, under supposed UN auspices which, of course, was not the case).

We got the impression fairly early on that Garba was determined to be present, if only for the diamond rewards he imagined would be his if this tidy bit of sedition succeeded. At the time, only a handful of people were aware of what he was up to because details were restricted to a few of the senior people at the top, including the president. This was one time they didn’t want any leaks.

On Saturday, 17 June, Army Intelligence had determined a tentative date for Garba’s ploy. It was to take place on the following Monday, just two days away. At that stage, everything pointed to it happening not at Makeni, but at Lunsar, a small town between Freetown and Makeni, though we couldn’t be certain. It made good sense though, as the town was close enough for both sides to get to without too many problems and Garba could reach it easily enough in one of the UN choppers. Also, Lunsar was relatively isolated so whatever took place there wouldn’t draw attention, especially from the government or the media. The probable time was set at about 10h00 hours.

On the face of it, it seemed that Garba had brokered an arrange ment convenient to both himself and the rebels.