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Operation Barras: The SAS Mission, Sierra Leone 2000
William Fowler
2004
Weidenfeld & Nicolson, London
214 pages
Reviewed by Sheka Tarawalie
It is a rather cruel co-incidence for the British army that I am doing a review on William Fowler's book, Operation Barras, The SAS Mission: Sierra Leone 2000, at a time when British soldiers are arguably at the centre of one of the most critical moments of their institution, that is their reported inhuman actions towards prisoners of war in Iraq. It is definitely not a question of adding salt to injury, but rather one of those rare occurrences that cannot be easily explained other than by ascribing it to fate.
This review is a kind of supplement to a response I had earlier written after extracts of Operation Barras appeared in the UK's Daily Mail (6 March 2004, with my comments published on allafrica.com). In that commentary, I had stated that I wished I could get the book, as I would probably review my position on how I felt Fowler had distorted the facts or embellished the story so much that, far from contradicting him, I felt it was necessary to put the record straight. Well, now, the African Review of Books has responded to my wish, and here am I making my critique after reading Operation Barras.
This book revolves around a British military rescue expedition in Sierra Leone, code-named Operation Barras. When the Lomé Peace Accord, signed by the Sierra Leone government and the Revolutionary United Front (RUF) rebels in July 1999, was on the brink of collapse in May 2000, the British government sent its military to the West African state to evacuate its citizens, together with "European Union citizens, those from the Commonwealth, so long as it was a country with a recognisable name, and Americans", as Fowler describes. The operation, called Palliser, was successful and at the same time the security situation did not deteriorate to anarchy, thanks to an unforeseen alliance being formed by the former warring parties: namely the civil defence forces dominated by the kamajors loyal to the government of President Ahmad Tejan Kabbah and former renegade soldiers who went by the name of West Side Boys, who were loyal to former military leader Johnny Paul Koroma. This alliance then operated against the RUF rebels and a remnant of the West Side Boys holding out in the jungles on the outskirts of Freetown, the capital.
| "Fowler writes like a coloniser, indicating that those who might have contrary views to his story could either be 'insiders' finding 'minor factual errors' or unreliable witnesses 'motivated by greed'" |
The British army saw this fragile stability as an opportunity to train or retrain a new army, so that when the bulk of the British soldiers who had participated in Operation Palliser returned home, "a strong British military team" of about 200 personnel remained in Sierra Leone. It was clearly stated and understood that "the British training team were to have no combat or patrol duties, but could use force to defend themselves if attacked". It was in the course of this programme that, on 25 August 2000, 11 British soldiers and one Sierra Leonean soldier, led by Major Alan Marshall, after visiting a UN mission, or UNAMSIL, base some 50 kilometres outside the training centre, made a "spur of the moment" decision to visit an area which the high command of the UNAMSIL had described as "a no-go area" as it was controlled by the remnant West Side Boys.
All of them were captured by the militia, which led to a round of rigorous negotiations for their release. Five days later, five of the men were released. But the others remained with the captors who made several demands, including the formation of a new government. However, having received a satellite telephone from the British, the West Side Boys could not be granted more. After much pressure, including the intervention of their relatives on 7 September 2000, the West Side Boys reduced their demands to merely being granted a safe passage to another country. But, in the eyes of the British, the militia was unreliable and could change their word at any moment – and could harm the captives. The only available option was a rescue operation. On 10 September, Operation Barras was launched, freeing all the hostages and dismantling the West Side Boys, whose commander, self-styled Brigadier Foday Kallay, was captured.
This is the story that William Fowler apparently sets out to recount. But, to be plain with Fowler, he made a mistake by calling his book Operation Barras. To me, it is an overview of Sierra Leone's history. Because, of its nine chapters, only three (that is about 72 pages out of the 214-page volume) actually deal with the operation itself, while the others ramble on about pre-colonial Lion Mountains, Graham Greene's colonial 'Heart of the Matter', independence, the rebels' 'Operation No Living Thing', the activities of the United Nations mission, and Operation Palliser. There is absolutely nothing wrong in Fowler touching on all these subjects – necessary as they are – but much of this detail is superfluous to an understanding of Operation Barras.
The book reads more as a history of Sierra Leone, but not an entirely accurate one. I took cogniscance of Fowler's advance notice for his book's inadequacies when he noted in the Introduction that, "Military history, however, can be an imprecise art... (and) can sometimes distort the reality of war"(my emphasis). After reading the book, especially the sections that dealt with Operation Barras itself, I tended to agree with Fowler on his earlier position about having "...drawn my own conclusions about Sierra Leone and..... Operation Barras" – because, the account of the operation, having really been distorted, was actually Fowler's own conclusion, and not exactly what happened.
As a Sierra Leonean journalist who covered the war from the beginning to the end, the events of Operation Barras were – and still are – certainly familiar to me. As editor of a newspaper during this period, I was placed in a position to interview all participants in the operation, including the British forces and their Sierra Leonean assistants. And one thing I realised when reading Fowler's book was that, he was caught between two worlds: the world of his father as a colonial master, in which the young William participated, and the world of William Fowler the British man whose army had gone back to the former colonial territory to stamp its authority in the course of a civil war.
"We know that the British have practically re-colonised Sierra Leone," was the reaction of Charles Taylor, former Liberian president and now an indicted war criminal, as recorded on the BBC's Online Country Profiles, Timeline Liberia.
I emphatically do not subscribe to Taylor’s view, but when one reads Fowler's book, it is as if there is a theme of re-colonisation connecting the events – until perhaps the last few pages. Fowler himself writes like a coloniser, indicating that those who might have contrary views to his story could either be "insiders" finding "minor factual errors" or unreliable witnesses "motivated by greed". The underlying nature of Fowler's colonial tendencies is portrayed in his sources: virtually all British, except Expo Times (an online paper published by a Sierra Leonean based in France) and Aminata Fornah (another Sierra Leonean not living in the country).
Fowler's book demonstrates the danger of relying on outside "sources" while writing about events that occurred thousands of miles away. The feeling I have is that Fowler is out to do a sincere job for both Sierra Leone and Britain; but in the process, while perhaps doing it too hastily, got caught by the snare of narrating a real-life story that comes to be read almost as fiction.
"Commenting on the training programme (organised by the British for the new Sierra Leone Army), one expatriate sneered over his evening drink in Freetown, 'Brilliant, if we get the army really smart and efficient and disciplined, maybe...the next coup will be a bloodless one'." Such flip-flop quotations, without any proper source or reference, are numerous. The impression I get is that Fowler, sitting in London or in Hampshire, creates characters and puts words in their mouths as if he interviewed them or was present when they were speaking. He would quote a man saying this, or a woman saying that, without saying when they said it or to whom. In pages 74, 75, 80 and 86, among many, one can find similar poorly sourced, rather un-referenced, quotations and assertions. Even when quoting newspapers like The Guardian as on page 75 or The Daily Telegraph as on page 150, Fowler could not tell the reader which edition of the paper he was referring to – which is just too bad for researchers. And when he makes the correct reference, as when quoting Expo Times of 30 August 2000, he makes the mistake of calling the paper Freetown-based, when it is based in France.
Yet it does not occur to me that Fowler does not know his job. He knows he is juggling facts for a particular British readership who do not expect him to misrepresent issues. And he has a prestigious background of having been educated at Cambridge, and concentrating since 1972 on military history, current affairs and defence technology, and has been a "researcher at the Royal United Services Institute, Whitehall, during the Falklands War in 1982, and from 1983 to 1990 land forces editor of Defence magazine.... In August 2002, HarperCollins published his book (on) the first full account of the successful action by No. 4 Commando at Dieppe in August 1942". Indeed with such a laudable trail of writing, knowledge and military insight, one would only review any of Fowler's writings with the caution and wisdom of a serpent. He is, I admit, a fine writer in the field of military history.
Yet being a fine writer is not the same as being historically accurate. And in Fowler's story of Operation Barras there is no indication that he ever visited Sierra Leone to conduct interviews. Eventually, what I discern is that Fowler is following the age-old tradition of soldiers standing by their colleagues to the end. Because, in truth, he was a "soldier in the Royal Green Jackets" who "served with British forces in the Gulf War of 1990-91". And I recalled the old saying of 'once a soldier, always a soldier', concluding that this was a loyal British soldier indeed, extolling the virtues of his institution. Yet, doing it at the expense of history is dangerous.
In his bid to protect his institution and its personnel, Fowler opened a Pandora's box of questions which in the end left much to be desired. Instead of saving Major Marshall's name (the commander of the kidnapped soldiers), Fowler exposed him as having unnecessarily, if unwittingly, caused the death of one British soldier. And instead of making Operation Barras look like "the biggest British military operation on the continent [of Africa] for a generation", he portrayed it as a rather wasteful fight against about 100 to 200 West Side Boys, "with an average age of 19". Of this militia many "were not former soldiers" (www.sierra-leone.org, August 27, 2000), with only their commander having been "a member of the AFRC (Armed Forces Revolutionary Council)" ( www.sierra-leone.org, September 7, 2000).
And this points to one thing: that the "unit" the British Army was fabulously preparing to confront was not the original group that appropriately bore the epithet of "jungle guerrillas". William Fowler knew that, but he has seemed to evade the fact. However, the Sierra Leone web (www.sierra-leone.org) from which he quoted extensively, but without acknowledgement (save for stating that the Krio [the local ligua franca] proverbs quoted at the beginning of each chapter were from it) has several instances to show that the real West Side Boys had since left the jungle and were in fact part of the government forces. A few examples from sierra-leone.org will suffice.
After the RUF had tried to derail the peace process earlier in May 2000, the West Side Boys played no small role in putting things in order: "Pro-government forces led by the exSLA's (Sierra Leone Army's) West Side unit, have retaken the town of Masiaka from RUF rebels....Chief of Defence Staff, Brigadier Tom Carew, inspected the town as the West Side fighters celebrated their victory by firing their assault rifles into the air." (Sierra Leone web, 13 May 2000). "A coalition of pro-government forces consisting of.... soldiers of the AFRC's West Side unit loyal to Johnny Paul Koroma pushed as far as Magbeli bridge over the Rokel River...." (Sierra Leone web, 17 May 2000). Apparently referring to the West Side Boys for these victories, the commander of the British forces in Sierra Leone, Brigadier David Richards, said, " I believe that Freetown is now secure by the UN and the new government forces." (Sierra Leone web, 14 May 2000)
Fowler did not completely hide the fact. He quoted The Guardian's Chris McGreal as having stated that "the British were so keen to find troops to defend the government that the West Side Boys were supplied with ammunition, food and medicines". He also wrote that "a British Lieutenant Colonel was reported to have directed the West Side Boys' attack on the rebels" and about "British Special Forces working with the West Side Boys". He even recalled an earlier incident of three British majors and one lieutenant-commander serving with UNAMSIL having escaped from an RUF hold-up in Makeni to Mile 91 "and were pleased to learn that.... the West Side Boys were moving towards the town to assist in its defence".
But it seems Fowler was doing all this to insinuate that it was these same West Side Boys that had now captured the 11 British soldiers – which was apparently not the case. The truth is that all the soldiers that had left the jungle on the orders of Johnny Paul Koroma never returned to the bush again. The residual West Side Boys who had taken over the Okra Hill base were, except for Kallay, definitely not soldiers and by all indications had never been involved in direct military combat before.
But the real factual error that Fowler commits in Operation Barras lies in presenting the operation as an exclusively British affair. From negotiations to planning to execution (apart from alluding to consultations between the West Side Boys and their relatives, or talking to UN officials, or getting President Kabbah's rubber-stamp consent), Fowler implies that it was wholly and solely British business, "working on the basis that plans and intelligence were classified UK eyes only".
It will be an unending review if I should try to dissect graphically how Fowler over-glorified the British army's assiduousness in Operation Barras. But the simple reality is that, had the British not used the original West Side Boys against the remnant West Side Boys holding the wayward British soldiers, all the quoting of fictional characters to have said "not even the US could probably have done as well", would have told a completely different story.
I am not a sadist, for in Sierra Leone I was at the forefront of journalists calling on the West Side Boys to release the British; and from the developments that were taking place, after releasing five, and then dropping their political demands to ask for a safe passage to another country, the West Side Boys were ultimately capitulating to the point where it is highly likely that, even without Operation Barras, the hostages were going to be freed unharmed anyway. Fowler quotes a relative of one of the West Side Boys as saying: "They assured us that they will soon come out of the bush after they release the remaining British."
But it seemed three forces were itchy to make or save a name. First, the British wanted to display military might (albeit late in the 11-year war) so that whatever good might come out of the peace process in Sierra Leone would ultimately be alluded to them – because as early as 3 September 2000 the British "planning" team had already arrived in Senegal for the operation in Sierra Leone, and UK Prime Minister Tony Blair "had already given permission to mount the rescue several days earlier". Second, the original West Side Boys wanted to teach their former comrade Kallay and his gang a lesson for not listening to the calls of their leader Johnny Paul Koroma to join in being retrained as the new Sierra Leone Army. And third, President Kabbah wanted an example from the British to further justify his earlier Nigerian-led intervention against the West Side Boys. (This intervention was smeared by the infamous "arms to Africa" row over British officials having deals with Sandline International, which has been linked with mercenary operations, by breaking a UN embargo to supply arms to President Kabbah's forces). Thus Operation Barras came about.
In Fowler's account, the second group is conspicuously missing in action. He has done this so meticulously, so consciously, and so deliberately that any allusion to the British forces having received some help only comes in the last chapter, Aftermath. Quoting a Sierra Leone government statement apparently found in the Sierra Leone web, Fowler states, "government is very pleased that... the Sierra Leonean troops that were involved in the operation acquitted themselves well". The reader , having come this far, is bound to be confused as to which operation the government – and Fowler – are talking about. Even British Defence Secretary, Geoff Hoon, was reported to have told reporters that Sierra Leonean troops had provided "support and assistance" to the rescue operation (Sierra Leone web, 10 September 2000). But in Fowler's story in Chapter 8 titled 'Operation Barras', the whole operation was carried out by the SAS and other British personnel "only"!
Overall, however, Fowler should be thanked for his book, which, in effect, has opened a source for further research on Operation Barras. Despite one or two proof reading mistakes, like writing 4th December for 4th September (p.123) or using the definite article twice in the phrase "...the Lynx crews picked the up the cluster of WSB..."(p.144), I hold the view that he is an excellent writer of military history. He has the military language at his finger tips, he knows the weapons, the ammunition, and even the men. With his frequent references to famous military campaigns, ancient and contemporary, no author has in recent times so raised the name of Sierra Leone to the height of an international player in military "balaclava". However, if it were on a football team, Operation Barras would have been booked for unfair play. Nonetheless, this is a book to be noted for reference by all Sierra Leoneans and anyone else interested in the recent tumultuous history of the country once called the Mother of British West Africa.
Sheka Tarawalie is a Sierra Leonean journalist visiting London. He was a newspaper editor and is publications officer of the Centre for Media Education & Technology in Freetown) |
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