Atrocities, Diamonds and Diplomacy Read online

  As always when I returned to London I went into what was known as the ‘third room’ of the African Department, where the head of section, Tim Andrews, and the desk officer, Lynda St Cooke, worked. They were the main officers with whom I maintained contact on virtually a day to day basis. I introduced Celia and she collected her passport, which was being processed for a visa. I handed in my ‘Annual Review’, one of the key documents of any post overseas. It was, as its name suggested, a review of all the events of the past year, and was done in the form of a despatch to the Secretary of State. As I was going to be away for the whole month of January, I was keen to get it into the system. Amongst other things it reflected my thoughts on where we stood with the Conakry Peace Plan and my view that only a credible threat of force would persuade the junta to honour its obligations under the Plan.

  I reported on my meeting with Kabbah and mentioned that I would be seeing Spicer. It was made clear to me that Spicer had been in touch with the department, though it was not to be until much later that I learned of the extent of these contacts. He had frequently telephoned the department, especially John Everard, the deputy head of the department, about events in Sierra Leone, and only earlier that month representatives of Branch Energy/Executive Outcomes had had a meeting in the office. Later, in the Legg Inquiry, both Tim and Lynda were to have only a hazy recollection of our meeting – indeed, they said that they were not sure whether it took place at all.

  My main purpose in seeing Spicer, as indeed the department’s, was to gather information on the security situation in Sierra Leone. In Conakry I was pretty well informed about what was going on given our range of contacts. The main gap in my knowledge was trying to find out what the Nigerians were up to. The strain in our relations with Nigeria, and in particular the embargo we had imposed on contacts with the Nigerian military, meant that it was difficult to find out what Ecomog was doing. Through the operation of its helicopter Sandline had personnel working alongside Ecomog at Lungi and this was a valuable source of information that was available to Spicer.

  I met up with Spicer in a restaurant on the Old Brompton Road. Tony Buckingham, the boss of Branch Energy, was with him. Reference was made to the draft contract but they seemed mainly interested in my views of President Kabbah – whether he was honest, whether he could bring stability back to Sierra Leone. The lunch lasted less than an hour as I was anxious to meet up with Celia. Spicer promised to keep me informed on developments.

  Celia and I spent an enjoyable Christmas at the Compleat Angler on the Thames at Marlow and whilst there Spicer telephoned to confirm that Kabbah had signed the contract. On our return to Abingdon we prepared to fly off to Canada to spend New Year with Celia’s sisters in Toronto. As I was going to have a complete break from Sierra Leone affairs for the whole month of January, I needed to ensure that any information I had was with the department. I wrote a letter to Ann Grant, the head of the African Department. In addition to Spicer’s information, I had spoken to Dai Harries in Conakry and also to the staff in Freetown so I was able to report to Ann that Christmas had passed off quietly in Sierra Leone.

  In the letter I noted, ‘I have been in touch with Tim Spicer over the holidays. Kabbah has signed the deal with Blackstone for EO/Sandline to provide $10 million of equipment and training for the civil defence militia. This will begin to flow in January.’ I also reported to Ann the conversation that I had had with Richard Dales, the Director for Africa, just before Christmas, in which I had expressed some reservations about the decision to appoint John Flynn as the Secretary of State’s special representative. I knew that Ann had been closely involved in the decision and I wanted to ensure that she knew my views. I also mentioned the awards about to be announced in the New Year Honours. On my recommendation the other four members of the team had all received awards – Colin, an MBE, Dai, an OBE, Andrew, The Queen’s Gallantry Medal, and Lincoln, the Military Cross. I had spoken to some of them over Christmas and they were embarrassed that I had received nothing.

  I kept a copy of the hand-written letter, which I posted in the little post box around the corner from my house before going off to Heathrow to catch the flight to Toronto. It surprised me subsequently to learn that this letter, dated 30 December, had gone missing. What was especially curious was that when I returned from holiday attempts were made to explain to me why the department had not put me up for an award in the New Year Honours. Why should they do so if no one had seen my letter?

  After New Year while I was still in Toronto, Lynda St Cooke telephoned to ask me to break my leave and attend some meetings with John Flynn in New York. I met up with John at the offices of the UK mission to the UN. He had flown in from Caracas, where he had previously served as Ambassador. He had been appointed the Secretary of State’s special representative mainly on the strength of his experience in Angola, where, as Ambassador, he had played an important role in trying to resolve the conflict in that poor country. John had also served elsewhere in Africa, but he had no West African experience. The UK mission had arranged various meetings for us, including with the Swedish Ambassador as Chairman of the UN Sanctions Committee, and the US delegation to the UN. Sir John Weston, our Ambassador, also kindly arranged a lunch in his small but fashionable New York apartment, to which, among others, he invited James Jonah.

  Whilst in New York I was able to spend an enjoyable evening with Andrew Murro reminiscing on our trip along the West African coast and then on 27 January, Celia and I flew back to London.

  While I had been away Spicer had gone into the Foreign Office for a meeting with Craig Murray, John Everard’s successor, and Tim Andrews. In the subsequent inquiries it proved impossible to reconcile the two versions of what had been discussed at this meeting. In essence Murray claimed that Spicer had not revealed that arms were included in the Sandline contract with Kabbah and that they had made it clear to Spicer that the provision of arms would constitute a breach of the arms sanctions. On the other hand Spicer claimed, equally adamantly, that he had made it clear that arms were involved but that at no time did the officials point out that this would be in breach of sanctions. In the inquiry set up to investigate the Sandline affair Sir Thomas Legg referred to the ‘diametric’ conflict of evidence about the 19 January meeting. In the findings of his report he noted:

  There is a conflict of evidence about what happened at that meeting which cannot now be fully resolved. Our conclusion is that Mr Murray and Mr Andrews probably left the meeting unaware that Sandline was supplying arms to President Kabbah. We have found no reason why they should have chosen to give Sandline encouragement or approval. We do not find that they did so. We also conclude that Mr Spicer could have left the meeting unaware that supplying arms to President Kabbah would be a breach of the arms embargo. Thus he may have assumed that he had been given tacit approval.

  At Spicer’s request we had arranged to meet again after my return to the UK. On 28 January I went to the offices in the King’s Road, the same as those for Branch Energy, where we discussed the general security situation in Sierra Leone to help bring me up to date. Spicer gave me a copy of a strategy paper that he had prepared on the assistance that Sandline were offering the Kabbah government, which became known as the ‘project python’ paper. Again, as with Kabbah, as it was widely accepted that the sanctions were directed against the illegal junta, I had no reason to believe that Sandline was breaching the UN sanctions order and therefore made no mention of them. I went into the African Department the next day and I handed over the ‘project python’ document to Tim Andrews. Tim subsequently told the Legg Inquiry that he did not understand it and sent it to the Ministry of Defence for an explanation.

  John Everard had now left the department and I met his successor for the first time, Craig Murray. Murray would later come to prominence as the Ambassador to Uzbekistan, from where he ditched his wife and took up with a local lap dancer. Upon his early retirement from the Diplomatic Service, he ran as an independent candidate in the 2005 elections in Br
itain in the Blackburn constituency against Robin Cook, but for now he was trying to impress his Foreign Secretary.

  Murray had only been in the department for a couple of weeks when we met. Apart from a brief tour a few years back in Nigeria he had no African experience, but he was already formulating his ideas on what to do about Sierra Leone. It seemed to me that he was considering ditching President Kabbah and going for some power-sharing arrangement with the AFRC and the RUF. This worried me. There was nothing wrong in looking at alternative policies, but acknowledging that President Kabbah’s government was the legitimate government was fundamental to the policy that we had been pursuing for the previous eight months. Not only was Craig Murray unaware of the sacrifices the Sierra Leone people had made to bring in their democratic government but also, if we shifted our position, it would encourage the weaker African governments to switch allegiances. The new and courageous policy adopted by the OAU of saying that once and for all military coups were no longer acceptable in Africa would be totally undermined. I went home that evening deeply disturbed and I prepared a paper entitled ‘Sierra Leone – The Way Forward’, which, while looking at ways of getting the Conakry Peace Plan back on track, re-emphasized the position of not abandoning President Kabbah’s government.

  I went back into the office the next day and handed in a copy of my paper. Ann Grant asked to see me, and together with Craig Murray, we had a meeting in her room. Ann was particularly concerned to be briefed on my meeting with President Kabbah before Christmas. I went over this in detail, and also outlined to her my two meetings with Spicer, noting that I had handed over the ‘project python’ paper to Tim Andrews the previous day. Ann’s concern was not regarding my contacts with Spicer per se, but whether my meeting with Kabbah and my subsequent meetings with Spicer could be interpreted as signifying that I supported the use of force. I made a distinction between the threat to use force to ensure compliance with the peace agreements and the actual use of force. She asked me to draft a note setting out my discussions with President Kabbah and Spicer so that she could assess the position.

  Over the weekend I prepared a memo to Ann Grant as requested. In the memo I referred to Sandline’s ‘purchase of arms and equipment and the provision of training’. I also referred to my earlier letter of 30 December. On the Monday I made a special trip into the office to hand in the memo. As it was graded confidential I could not post it from Abingdon. In the words of the subsequent Legg Inquiry, this memo became ‘a crucial document in our investigations’, but to all intents and purposes nobody took any notice of my memo. Ann Grant went off on a trip and did not read it until after her return a week later. Murray claimed he did not see it until the end of the month. Andrews saw it but claimed that he had spent most of the time trying to find my letter of 30 December.

  Although Murray had claimed that he not seen my memo, he had read my paper on ‘The Way Forward’ and John Flynn’s report from the discussions in New York. Murray submitted a memo to Richard Dales saying that in his view there was a dichotomy in our policy thinking on Sierra Leone. He claimed that I had advised President Kabbah to go for the military option and he criticized Flynn for advocating military assistance to the Nigerians. He recommended an early termination of my posting. In his reply Richard Dales told Murray that there was no dichotomy in our thinking. Her Majasty’s Government’s policy was that the Conakry Peace Plan should be implemented by Ecomog, under the cover of a UN Security Council resolution, monitored and assisted by UN advisers/observers and ‘using limited necessary force or the threat of force to ensure compliance by the junta.’ In other words, Richard Dales was confirming the policy that I had been advising in my Annual Review. Murray later told the Legg Commission that he was upset by Richard Dales’ response and that this was one of the reasons why he chose not to let me know that I was under investigation.

  Murray also advised Dales that in his most optimistic estimate the High Commission in Freetown would not reopen for at least another six months. On this he was also wrong. I was to be back in Freetown to reopen the High Commission within a month.

  Chapter Five

  President Kabbah Restored – 1998

  By the time I arrived back in Conakry on 10 February, the Ecomog forces had already started to retake Freetown. For the previous eight months their forces had sat patiently at Lungi and at Kosso camp on the outskirts of Freetown, but they were frustrated. Every now and again the AFRC and RUF forces had launched raids on the Ecomog positions trying to provoke them into action in the misguided belief that any Ecomog retaliation would be condemned by the international community and thereby force Ecomog’s withdrawal from Sierra Leone. Each attack was repulsed successfully, often inflicting heavy casualties on the drug-induced junta forces. In one foolish attack reputedly 300 RUF youths were slaughtered. But Ecomog also suffered casualties. At the beginning of February an Ecomog vehicle was blown up by a landmine planted by the junta and a number of Nigerian soldiers were killed.

  The new Ecomog commander, Colonel Maxwell Khobe, and his men were becoming increasingly frustrated at having to sit there and take these provocations. Abacha, sitting in Abuja, was also no doubt increasingly concerned at the losses his forces were suffering. No publicity was given back in Nigeria for these deaths but he could not keep having Nigerian soldiers being flown back to Nigeria in body bags without it being noticed and leading to a groundswell of resentment among the Nigerian public. The cost of the Ecomog operation in Sierra Leone was enormous; some experts put it at over $3 million per week. As time went on Abacha needed increasingly to have something to show for this drain on the Nigerian coffers. There was no sign that the junta was serious about standing down. Abacha decided to go for the military option. Whether he told President Kabbah in advance became a matter of debate but, given that Nigeria was calling all the shots, it mattered little. Sierra Leone was now a pawn in Nigerian politics.

  Ecomog Retakes Freetown

  By 8 February the fighting was in earnest. Khobe led his forces into the city. Right from the start it was obvious that Ecomog planned to retake Freetown. Abacha was astute enough to realize that for Nigeria to win the glory and the recognition of the international community, restoring Kabbah was not enough. It would have to be achieved with the minimum loss of life and destruction of property.

  Julius Spencer accompanied Khobe and his forces into Freetown and continued broadcasting live reports on Radio 98.1. As they came along the Kissy Road, 98.1 announced where the Ecomog forces were and advised the civilian population to stay off the streets and remain in their homes. In this way Ecomog knew that anyone they saw on the streets were junta supporters. After the radio had announced that an area was cleared the people came out and cheered the Ecomog forces, offering them food and water. In this way civilian casualties were kept to a minimum. It was a most effective use of radio broadcasting in warfare and a further feather in our caps that the radio had been financed by the British Government, so that indirectly we again contributed to saving lives.

  In Khobe, Nigeria had selected a remarkable military commander. He led his men from the front, advancing into Freetown just carrying his swagger stick. His men believed that he was invincible and when he ordered his force to divide into two, all of them wanted to stay with him. At one point the group of soldiers he was with were pinned down by a 12-year-old RUF fighter who was sniping at them from a building. Khobe’s men wanted to blast the building with RPG rounds, but Khobe ordered them to keep firing warning shots until the youth ran out of ammunition. They then captured the youth and moved on. Coming under a further attack Khobe was wounded, suffering shrapnel wounds to his leg, but he refused to withdraw and continued to lead his men. A legend was made.

  By 12 February Freetown was secured. The junta forces had either surrendered or fled. Khobe had deliberately left a backdoor open to enable the junta forces to escape around the peninsular and out through Tombu. The city had been taken with remarkably few casualties, either military of civilian.
r />   Back in Conakry we followed the events closely by telephone and radio reports and when word came through that Ecomog forces were around the Cotton Tree and had taken State House, there was jubilation. By contrast London appeared to be preoccupied as to whether the Ecomog deployment was legal or not. They wanted to condemn the Ecomog action because there had been no UN resolution allowing it. These thoughts were far removed from the feelings of the people in Freetown and Conakry. I went and saw President Kabbah and asked him when he would be returning. He said, ‘Pretty soon!’

  The Royal Navy Sails In

  The decision was taken in London to pre-position HMS Monmouth off the coast so that she would be available to help me get back and be on-hand to offer assistance to President Kabbah’s government. Major Peter Hicks was flown out to be my military liaison officer, or MILO, as the Ministry of Defence referred to him. At the same time the ODA sent out a consultant, David Hill, to help co-ordinate emergency and humanitarian assistance. Colin was already with me so from a solitary existence for so long, I suddenly had all these staff, and a British warship to boot.

  We sought diplomatic clearance from the Guinean government for HMS Monmouth to come into the port at Conakry and I went down to see the captain. We were keen to get Monmouth into Freetown and I sought diplomatic clearance from President Kabbah. I assumed that this would be a formality. However, he said that he would need to speak to the Nigerians. I was somewhat concerned. Although President Kabbah was dependent upon Ecomog and the Nigerians for the security situation in the country, we were anxious that his government re-assume the running of the country as soon as possible and be seen to be doing so. We had not supported the restoration of his government all this time to see Sierra Leone become a feudal state of Nigeria. Kabbah was flying off to see Abacha in Abuja and said that he would discuss the Monmouth visit with him. I pointed out that we could not keep a Royal Navy vessel hanging around indefinitely and suggested that once he had spoken to Abacha he should pass the clearance for Monmouth to go into Freetown to our High Commission in Abuja.