My Friend the Mercenary

"This is James’s personal story of going to West Africa as a journalist covering the war in Liberia. He hired a protector and fixer to look after him and the fixer turned out to have been involved with Simon Mann and Equatorial Guinea so James just became immersed in the story behind the coup. It’s a fantastic view of the whole thing – and of the midnight phone-calls with people telling him what they knew. The picture we get is that there was the coup plot led by Simon Mann and thankfully it was stopped. But the politics behind it is fascinating. There was a lot of dodgy dealing. There would have been some hands-off approval from outside governments for the coup to happen but somebody obviously changed their mind about that approval. The way it works is this: you’ve got your face-workers, the guys on the ground who will actually do the job, and a lot of those involved with Mann, the South Africans, are still in prison in Equatorial Guinea. When there’s a change of government they’ll probably get out. That’s one of the theories about why Simon Mann has been so quiet since he was freed – there are still people in prison that they’re trying to get released and Mann doesn’t want to jeopardise their future. I met Simon Mann’s son last year and he said he used to get these phone-calls when his father was in prison saying: ‘Give me a million dollars and I’ll get him out.’ No. It’s all a stitch-up; it was better to wait for the system to work, and he was released. But ‘mercenary’ is a good word for a book title. Really, it’s all about money. The planned coup was business. Mark Thatcher thought he was buying…what? An air ambulance? What a load of rubbish. Mann would have done a deal to finance the coup – and the money men supporting him would get something out of it, like rights to some mineral mines or first refusal for a power station. That kind of ‘White Man Guns’ activity all stopped in the late 70s really – I got involved in it a bit in the 80s with the regiment when the guys coming to power weren’t the good lads government thought they were and we’d go in and redirect things, but Equatorial Guinea was really a throwback to the old days, to the old way of doing business. ‘White Man Guns’ doesn’t work any more. Simon Mann was a well-known private security contractor based in South Africa – he had his moment. But it’s more suits than flak jackets now and it’s all done in London and Washington. Lots of business is actually done at Lloyds – people need insurance, training, security. Every time the government talks about withdrawing troops the private security business is all ‘Oh, come on! Give war a chance!’ – isn’t that a P J O’Rourke quote? “But it’s more suits than flak jackets now and it’s all done in London and Washington.” There’s a Ministry of Defence white paper now about making use of private security firms. But Mann did it the old way. Even so, he’d have needed a tick in the box. There would have been some talk with the countries that had a vested interest in the outcome but then something changed. Well, there was a change of policy somewhere and, quite frankly, the politicians probably thought, fuck ’em. Let’s make an example of them. Fighting for the private military is illegal in South Africa now – technically, South African soldiers fighting with the British could be arrested when they get home. No. It’s always a question and never a statement. More like: ‘What would be the advantage of X, Y and Z being dead?’ ‘It would probably be good.’ That kind of thing. It’s a business. People don’t do this kind of thing thinking: ‘Yee haa! This is fun!’ They ask: ‘What will I get out of this?’"