James Brabazon's "My Friend the Mercenary"
Finished reading this morning, and it's.... difficult to talk about, I think, but we'll see how this goes.
I picked up the book because it said "mercenary" and I've had a fairly long-standing interest in mercenaries in the real world. When I was younger, of course, as I've said in a previous post, I read the Hammer's Slammers series of books, and loved them. I'm sure there's other titles but that one really stuck with me. A deeper interest developed in university as I studied development issues (political science development - the poor countries of the world).
A bit of an aside, but absolutely fundamental to understanding my point of view regarding mercenaries: In a development class, it's intriguing to watch what people want to focus on. Predictably there's those who want to look at women's rights, property laws, microfinance, education, children's health (and maternal health). Even Christopher Hitchens had repeatedly (and loudly) declared that allowing women control of their own bodies is one of the surest ways to bring a nation out of poverty. I believe it was in debate with Tony Blair where he said that we know how to cure poverty, it's women's rights. I'm certainly not going to say these aren't important topics to study, they absolutely are. There was a raging debate when I was in school on whether or not microfinance worked and under what conditions, i.e. who do you give the money to. I don't know how that debate turned out in the end. There is however a necessary precondition to all those development strategies, one thing that, if lacking, virtually guarantees none of those strategies will succeed, and that one thing is security. Without security, no amount of aid, land reform, extension of rights, you name it, will matter. It is in this realm of security that mercenaries can step in and be useful. They can also harm, in the case of weak states, and Brabazon's book illustrates this with the example of Equatorial Guinea, but I think this to be the exception rather than the rule. Most of the cases cited where mercenaries damage the state (ie Angola), the state has already collapsed in to bloody conflict. Mercenaries can fairly be said to have facilitated or prolonged the conflict but they can rarely be accused of starting it.
Without security, no other fancy scheme matters. It's difficult to distribute aid in Sierra Leone are hacking off the arms of villagers; how does one guarantee the rights of women in the Congo or Liberia when their respective states are being torn apart in brutal combat?
I got interested in "My Friend the Mercenary" because of "mercenary" in the title, and flipping it open to discover the mercenary in question was formerly with Executive Outcomes, I knew I'd want to have a better look at the book. Executive Outcomes was, as previously stated but worth repeating, one of three groups that intervened successively in Sierra Leone's brutal, brutal civil war. It was by far the cheapest and most efficient intervention, despite being the only private, that is non-governmental, intervention. It cannot be stressed enough that a couple hundred mercenaries did what over ten thousand United Nations personnel could not, and shame on the African, and on the world community, for seeing the success of Executive Outcomes and then demanding an end to the contract without having a follow-on solution in place. How many hundreds, thousands, tens of thousands of people would suffer apalling violence, violence that is so unimaginably grotesque that it's painful to read about, I can't imagine witnessing or suffering it first hand, and all because of politics and the very word, "mercenary."
I also cannot understand how disgusting the attitude must have been of those politicians. "We're terribly sorry for the physical disfigurement you've suffered at the hands of the rebels, but it's a lot better than allowing mercenaries in, don't you think? You didn't really need that arm, or leg, or to have children, did you?"
Brabazon is heading to Liberia to film the conflict there and is put in touch with a mercenary familiar with West Africa to act as a bodyguard. The adventure they have is an epic in its own right and described in lurid terms. The rebels they travel with are at times the good guys, and other times seemingly less than human, and all the while Nick guides and protects Brabazon so the latter can film. After their first adventure, Brabazon goes back again without Nick, and at this point in the story Brabazon is beginning to seem dangerously unhinged. His mental condition after this however plays a much less important part of the story, as details emerge of another operation Nick was planning, that ends up going disastrously wrong.
So, what to make of this work? It was difficult at times to read, as I'm sure it was difficult to write. Where my imagination allows me to illustrate, or caricature, what Brabazon was describing, he likely can recall exactly what he saw, and undoubtedly it's worse than I can imagine. That he would be a little messed up after is unsurprising. Less charitably, after Nick's arrest I can't say I agree with the logic Brabazon took in his investigations. Likely he had a lot more information he couldn't divulge, or didn't remember; perhaps it was just his understanding of Nick's personality and character that we, as readers, cannot fully fathom.
I would like to ask Mr Brabazon why on earth he would interrogate Nick just a few days after Nick's release from nearly six years in a hellish, African prison, where those days in between were spent in debriefing with the South African government and more than likely no few questions from Nick's wife and family. Couldn't he have a few days hanging out with friends and family to enjoy before having to relive the previous six years? To me, at that point in the story, Brabazon seems less a friend and more the journalist that he is, which is a shame.
"My Friend the Mercenary" was well worth picking up. It helped fill in the background on mercenary organizations in Africa, as well as vastly underreported conflicts in the continent. It was also an intensely human story. I would definitely recommend to those who can handle gruesome and have an interest in the conflicts that have embroiled Western Africa.
