The New Mercenaries. Anthony Mockler.

(Demokratyczna Republika Konga, Nigeria, Angola, Benin, Komory, Seszele)

Anthony Mockler napisał jedną z ciekawszych książek o Afryce jaką czytałem. Mimo, że dotyczy tematów wojenno-militarnych za którymi nie przepadam, to jednak przedstawiona tutaj historia współczesna niektórych krajów afrykańskich zasługuje na więcej uwagi. Autor rozpoczyna całe dzieło wyjaśniając czym w ogóle jest pojęcie „najemnika” i skąd się wzięło, a dalej przechodzi do roli jaką biali wynajmowani żółnierze odegrali w różnych konfliktach na Czarnym Lądzie. Od Katangi, która chciała uwolnić się od Demokratycznej Republiki Konga po uzyskaniu niepodległości, przez biafrańską wojnę w Nigerii przechodzimy do Angoli, gdzie najemnicy walczyli głównie po stronie UNITA i FNLA. Chcociaż czy tysięcy kubańskich żołnierzy walczących po rządowej stronie MPLA i rosyjskich doradców wspomagających ich nie można także nazwać płatnymi najemnikami? W kolejnym rodziale znajdziemy opis dwóch, a właściwie trzech, zamachów stanu na Oceanie Indyjskim i w Beninie, którymi dowodzili Bob Denard (Komory i Benin) i Mike Hoare „Mad Mike” (Seszele). Jeden z przewrotów był udany, ten na Komorach, a następne dwa w Beninie i na Seszelach skończyły się fiaskiem i długoletnim więzieniem dla najemników (Hoare na Seszelach).  Książka ta, poza tym że ukazuje wpływ jaki armie płatnych żółnierzy wywierają na układ sił i życie polityczne w Afryce, przedstawia także wiele ciekawych szczegółów z życia prywatnego „sławnych” najemników, którzy wiele razy zmienili bieg historii. Gorąco polecam. Cytaty:

„He could have lived in peace (wrote Athenian) without incurring any reproaches but he chose to make war. He could have lived a life of ease but he preferred a hard life with warfare. He could have had money and security but he chose to make the money he had less by engaging in war. Indeed he liked spending money on war just as one might spend it on love affairs or any other pleasure. All this shows how devoted he was to war.”

„Certainly belief in it (dawa – rodzaj fetyszu), combined with chanvre, the drug with which all Congolese – Simbas, ANC, Katangese gendarmes, primed themselves for battle, gave the Simbas extraordinary, powers and the ability to go on living and fighting for minutes even when riddled with machine-gun bullets and technically dead.”

„He left Lagos, however, with a contract to hire British, Rhodesian and South African pilots at 1.000 pounds a month, paid directly into a Swiss bank account – all living expenses, including drinks and women, to be covered by the Federal government.”

„Biafra had begun the war with a lone B26 bomber piloted by a Pole known as Kamikaze Brown and six alouette helicopters under the command of a young Biafran named Augustus Opke.”

„I was Felix Houphouet-Boigny, know as `Le Vieux`, the black president of the Ivory Coast, who first formally recognised Biafra as an independent and sovereign state on 4 May; but it was the youngest and newest president in French-speaking West Africa who actually provided assistance Biafra so desparately needed. This was Omar Bongo, at the age of thirty-two the youngest head of state indeed in the whole world. The country which he ruled, Gabon, just north of the Congo, was about the size of Biafra but populated by only half a million backward and diseased inhabitants.”

(about Swedish pilot Von Rosen)

„From Sao Tome he broke the Nigerian blockade with a wave-hopping , hedge-hopping, flight in a DC7. `But I soon realised` he said, `that every priest, every doctor, every black and white man in Biafra was praying for arms and ammunition before food, because the idea of feeding children only to have them massacred later by cannon fire from Saladinns and Migs doesn`t make sense.”

„He (Von Rosen) had spent ten years after the war back in Ethiopia, helping Haile Selassie built up both the Royal Ethiopian Air Force and Imperial Ethiopian Airlines – for which he was rewarded (one of the few foreigners ever to be allowed to own land in Ethiopia) with a coffee plantation.”

„You were a foreigner. You came to a country that was not your own from a land far away, you came voluntarily, you came with guns. What are guns for? For killing. You were paid for killing. You are a hired killer, a paid assassin, guilty of aggression and invasion, guilty of crimes against peace, guilty of the crime of mercenarism.” Manuel Rui Monteiro, Procurador Popular, Luanda

„What has been astounding in Denard`s career has been his ability to recover from so many fiascos that would have discredited lesser or less confident men and still come bouncing back.”

Kolejny polski akcent:

„With Angola behind him, Denard was (…) engaged by President Bongo for yet another assassination attempt: this time of a Haitian who had seduced Madame La Presidente, Bongo`s wife. The Haitian fled to Miami; Denard hired first Jean Kay and then, when Kay, something of an idealist, cried off, another of his `mercenaries` Thadeus Surma, a fifty-two-year-old ex-Legionary of Polish origins, for the job.”

„General de Gaulle had, wisely, given the two vast French colonies of French West Africa and French Equatorial Africa their independence without fuss or delay when, in the sixties the `wind of change` blew through black Africa; and even more wisely has split these territories into a number of comparatively small independent states. Has the British done the same with their colonial giants, Nigeria and the Sudan, or the Belgians the same with the even vaster Congo, there would in all logic have been no bloodthirsty and unforgettable separatist civil wars in this wretched trio of countries.”

„When he was a comparatively young man, before he had ever dreamt of becoming a mercenary, Mike Hoare had fallen in love with the Seychelles. `Let me begin (he later wrote) by telling you something about the Seychelles and why I went there in the first place. There are ninety-three islands in the archipelago and they are formed by the tips of under-water mountains protruding through the sea. Coconut and bread fruit trees grow everywhere and the islands are lush with foliage which grows profusely in a climate drenched twice yearly by the monsoons. Hot and humid it can certainly be, after all Mahe, the principal island, is practically on the equator – four degrees south if my memory serves me right. Dense mangrove and takamaku trees on the edge of lovely white beaches, with cloves and vanilla high up in the hills and surrounding it all crystal clear water. Sounds enchanting, doesn`t it? Well it is – a regular paradise.”

„Mahe International Airport, as it was griandosely called, actually opened on 4 July 1971, though it was not officially opened till March the following year when the Queen paid her first and last visit to what was still, just, a part of her Empire.”

„The grand blancs had seen with regret their old style of life fading away: though the plantation owner like Henri Michaux, a grand blanc, could still boast – or rather state without boasting – that he had had over sixty children of his own on his plantation and that his grandchildren could be counted in their hundreds.”

„They had chosen June in order to watch the Independence Day parade of 29 June and to gain a first-hand impression of the Seychelles army, its numbers, weapons, equipment and general appearance. After the parade Hoare, satisfied, flew back to South Africa.”