From SAS to Blood Diamond Wars

Fred Marafono, Hamish Ross

• Publisher: Pen & Sword Military
• Year: 2020
• Print ISBN: 9781848845114
• eBook ISBN: 9781848849761
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Military Biographies
• Index: History

Even by SAS standards this is the story of an outstanding warrior.
On the point of being demobbed from the SAS, Fred Marafono was recruited by David Stirling for his private security company. After Stirling's death, Fred found himself in the midst of Sierra Leone's Blood Diamond wars, and formed an unbreakable bonding with the country's champion of democracy, Chief Hinga Norman, whose leadership and tragic death are integral to the story.
Fred was recruited by Simon Mann for the finest of all private military companies in Africa, Executive Outcomes. Fewer than two hundred of them defeated the rebels in their strongholds. Through political weakness, Executive Outcomes were made to leave the country, and chaos ensued. Committed men like Hinga Norman and British High Commissioner Peter Penfold saw that in the absence of military commitment from the west, only high caliber mercenaries would win the fight to restore democracy: three of them kept a vital air bridge open ? 'What God abandoned, these defended'. Fred's final action was supporting the SAS in their brilliant hostage release, 'Operation Barras.'
Peter Penfold sums it all up in the book's foreword, writing of the, 'confidence, trust and admiration I have for this remarkable man.'

Part I

Chapter One

The Master’s Company

Stirling was a master of that art and it got him good results.

Blair ‘Paddy’ Mayne, Journal, Montevideo, 20 December 1945

It all began with a phone call. One Friday evening in May 1985, Ian Crooke, Second in Command of 22 SAS, rang Fred and told him they were going to meet someone in London the next morning; he would pick him up between 7 and 7.30 am, and, as an afterthought, told him to bring a tie. Travelling in civvies on a job was not unknown for Squadron Sergeant Major Fred Marafono MBE; during his twenty-one years in the SAS it had happened before. Fred was not his given name though, it was Kauata, and he was born on the Fijian island of Rotuman. Instead of pursuing his intention of studying veterinary science, first at Navuso Agricultural School and then continuing it in Australia, he was attracted by a recruiting drive on the island, and made the decision, as had his father before him during the Second World War, to serve in the British army.

Not until they were about to join the M4 at Swindon on Saturday morning did Fred asked Ian whom they were going to meet.

And he said, ‘We’re going to meet the Colonel.’ I said, ‘the Colonel?’ And he said, ‘Yes, the Colonel.’ I said, ‘Boss, I feel very honoured, I don’t know what to say.’ And he said, ‘Fred, be yourself. You’ll like the old man. He’s very easy to talk to.’

Ian was right. When they arrived at 22 South Audley Street, David Stirling, founder of the Special Air Service, put Fred at ease from the start: he looked him in the eye, spoke to him as an equal and was in no way condescending.

We sat down around his lovely old wooden desk, it was a lovely desk with a big black panther statue – the statue was beautiful, all the muscles were rippling. And David Stirling offered us cigars and a glass of wine. And then he started to explain to me why I was there. He said that Ian Crooke would explain to me the whole reason why I would be involved. ‘Ian and a few of you are due to leave the army shortly and Ian and I talked about forming a security company to provide employment for some of the men who are leaving the Regiment. Recruiting will be selective and Ian told me that you can do the job.’ I was very honoured and lost for words and only managed to say, ‘Thank you.’ Cigars were lit and we drank a toast to its success before Ian continued to explain the company’s philosophy and objectives and the part that each of us would play in it. My role was to find the recruits for the new company – KAS. And that was the beginning of me landing in the world of security after being in the Regiment.

From that beginning, Fred was to go on to develop a second military career and achieve an outstanding combat record in Sierra Leone’s blood diamond wars. Recruited by Simon Mann for Executive Outcomes, the classic private military company that stopped a war, he would progress from ground force commander to gunner in a helicopter gunship, culminating in supporting the SAS in Operation Barras.

Fred’s journey, however, from SAS through KAS and on to West Africa is not a gung-ho tale of intervention in a war-torn former British colony: his pathway was to become intertwined with that of Chief Sam Hinga Norman, a champion for democracy; it would run up against the cost of commitment to good men when political expediency dominates; and his record along the way raises issues about professional private military companies in conflicts where the western democracies are loath to risk their soldiers’ lives.

But first there was a learning curve to be navigated in the ways of private security companies. Fortunately, David asked Alan Hoe to be a consultant to KAS. Alan had served in the Regiment, and after he left and gained experience with International Risk Management (IRM), he set up his own company, which specialized in kidnap and ransom situations, particularly in South America and Italy. In the light of that background, he was able to offer advice; and eventually, after he got to know him better, he went on write the biography of David Stirling.

He asked me to look at his company and, being brutally honest, I thought that the future looked gloomy. Whilst he had some superb guys there: he had Ian Crooke, Sekonaia Takavesi (Tak), Fred Marafono, Peter Flynn and Andris Valters – all of whom had enjoyed good careers in the SAS; they were still soldiers, very enthusiastic soldiers and they all worshipped David Stirling. But there was no business experience and David himself was never a particularly shrewd businessman. They were trying to be all things to all men instead of looking at the market, deciding on their product and then selling it.¹

Opportunities were seized if they came their way. Images of a ship on fire, explosives in the hold, abandoned by its crew and adrift in the English Channel, appeared on television. Alan Hoe prompted them on the sequence they had to go through: Lloyds’ Register to find out the ship’s owners; contact the owners; Pete Flynn, who was also a pilot as well as ex-unit, to charter a helicopter; obtain advice and quotations on best type of fire-fighting equipment. The plan was they would abseil on to the ship, extinguish the fire, and Fred, who had been in the Boat Troop, would sail the vessel to port. They were slow, however, compared to the salvage crew that succeeded in beating them to it and towing the ship away. Alan Hoe’s view was that it could have been done, if they had been quicker off the mark.

They chased and won several small contracts like a Bulgari jewellery exhibition. But it earned the company very little, and they probably overspent on their endeavour to win it. The team lived from Monday to Friday in the top floor of 22 South Audley Street, or the penthouse, as they called it, and they earned a salary of £15,000 a year.

In theory at least, David Stirling’s fame would have brought kudos to a company that contracted with him and ought to have attracted clients. But it did not seem to work out that way.

David had some hugely potent contacts but he rather scared them off, I think, because they could not really get a handle on what he was trying to do. He would talk about starting a mercenary company one day, and the next he would be offering bodyguards and then looking after high value species the day after. He had good contacts like Margaret Thatcher, William Whitelaw and Dennis Healey as well as many influential business friends but he got little out of them because, I think, he frightened them off.²

One contact he did not frighten off was Prince Bernhard of the Netherlands, who was the first president of the World Wildlife Fund (WWF). It was well-known that elephant and rhino were endangered as a result of poaching for tusk and horn. The poachers and hunters did not make much from a kill, but the ivory and horn was finding its way along a route that led through the Middle East to the Far East. It was suspected that at least one Asian embassy was behind the trade: rhino horn was in high demand in Asia as a traditional medicine. Stirling spent years in central and eastern Africa, and had influence in some quarters. Alan Hoe was involved in setting up an infiltration operation.

I went over with Ian Crooke on one occasion to meet Prince Bernhard to discuss the proposition. We spent the best part of a day with the Prince talking about the project, and into the equation he brought John Hanks, who was a senior executive within the WWF, and was very much in favour of the project.³

Funding for what became known as Project Lock came from the WWF and, it was believed, from a department of the South African government. The operation was aimed at all parts of southern and central Africa ‘where the survival of rhino was threatened by poaching,’⁴ A small team, including Ian and Fred based itself in South Africa; there was an office in Johannesburg and another in Pretoria.

And it was very, very enjoyable. We were attacking at two levels: one group was to do the training with the game wardens in a park in Namibia. That was our first operation, to know the animals, to know their habits and everything. And then the other group were stationed in a base and had to try and get to the people who were actually dealing in these endangered animals. The decision was made that since I look like a Malay, and I could speak Malay − there’s a very big Malay community in South Africa, in Cape Town −, my background was that I was to be a Malay from Woodstock, overlooking the harbour in Cape Town. That was the cover.

But you cannot operate in South Africa without the approval of the South African government. Whether you like it or not that is the reality. We had two very nice business people who were very helpful. One of them ran a security company, and the other played a supporting role. The one who ran the company used to work for the South African intelligence service. He was very helpful; he was the one that made it possible for me to get into the network. He had the connections for me to get into the security company network. I eventually went across to Zimbabwe.

The thing was that before you could be accepted by these people, you had to be ready to show that you were interested in the endangered species, the rhinos and the elephants. And an English couple that ran the reserve for King Maswadi III were very helpful in showing us the different types of species: the white rhino, the black rhino. We learned a lot about the animals, we’d see them and learned what to do and what not to do. We then had to find out the people who were wanting to buy these animals, and go and try and make a deal. And I would be the seller.

For my first deal in selling a set of black rhino horn to a Chinese man in Manzine, we recced a site suitable for a team to set up a covert hide to photograph the whole operation. The car boot was rigged up with a covert microphone and the position where I was to stand forced the client to face the cameras. And it was a Chinese man who owned a restaurant. At the end of the deal I was supposed to collect the money. But of course, that was the thing, nobody goes around carrying a big wad of money. So he said, ‘Come to the restaurant to collect the money.’ What do you do; do you say no? I said that I’d come that evening. And I went back and I told the others. I was given a right telling off: that is risky, you’ll never get the money back. But a promise is made, I had to go and get the money; you have to carry it through; you just don’t turn around – whatever it is, it is.

I went, but the plan was that Nick Bruce (one of the team) would cover me in. He was to check out the place, looking for any suspicious signs, order a meal and when I came in half an hour later, if everything was OK, we were to make eye contact. I was to go to the bar, order a drink and ask for the boss. If things looked suspicious, Nick would cough when I was at the bar before he paid for his bill and left the restaurant. Nick was to go back to base and wait for my return.

So the boss man came. We shook hands, and he said, ‘Come to the kitchen and meet my family.’ So I met the family. Then he said that this was the amount we agreed but there was slight damage to the commodity – to the rhino horn – so instead of X amount he would deduct 7%.

That was the beginning. And then we were to go to Swaziland, Botswana and Zimbabwe.

Although KAS was beginning to get into the illegal marketing at this level, what it was not providing was conclusive evidence of the source promoting the poaching. Before they could refine and develop their approach to penetrate a deeper level of involvement, the whistle was blown on them. Not by embassy officials who may have felt they were being accused, but from inside the WWF. It was discovered that the WWF was funding mercenaries.

There was a lot of criticism bandied about when the media got hold of the story. John Hanks lost his job, a chap who had been an ardent member of WWF for many, many years. Prince Bernhard took a lot of criticism over it, but I don’t remember the press ever giving a fair, unbiased view. But these things happen in life. If you’ve got the name David Stirling linked – you’ve got controversy and the media rake over old ashes.⁵

President Mandela of South Africa later set up a commission headed by Judge Mark Kumleben to investigate the smuggling of ivory and rhino horn. The commission confirmed that ‘the covert unit operated against smugglers in Zimbabwe, Zambia, Namibia and other southern African countries.’⁶

However, David Stirling would not have achieved what he did in 1941, founding a unit in the North African desert that was destined to have a such a distinguished history throughout its first seventy years, if he had been deterred by the Jeremiahs of this world.

He had expectations of the men he recruited for KAS from their counter-terrorist experience in the Regiment, and through his contact with a leading figure in a key industry, he floated the idea of presentations to company executives on strategies to prevent terror attacks. Some of the team carried out surveys, and did a risk analysis. The result was that senior, hard-nosed executives, in spite of their disbelief, were forced to listen to presentations from, what they privately considered to be, a couple of madcaps depicting terrorist threat. Indeed, in the 1980s, such scenarios (which will be passed over here) might have sounded like some fantasy for a film script. They would not be reckoned improbable today.

A great plus factor in a small security company comprising former members of the SAS, combined with Stirling’s style of management, was that they were able to express and develop forward-looking ideas that Stirling, through his contacts, could bring to the decision-maker level. Ian Crooke, for example, explored with like-minded retired members of US Special Forces the idea of a joint UK/US operation,

whereby either government, or indeed any other approved government, could − if they had on their hands limited intensity conflict − avail themselves of a mercenary force that was composed of ex-US and ex-UK Special Forces soldiers.⁷

However, this was not to be a covert force designed to carry out the kind of work often attributed to the CIA in the past of destabilizing a government that was hostile to US interests in a particular region. This idea, which was prescient, was for limited conflict situations – of the kind, as we shall see later, in Sierra Leone – where there was a threat to an established government on the one hand, and on the other, a sympathy and a willingness by the west to give support, but a reluctance for political reasons to risk US or British soldiers’ lives. The idea got as far as White House level: David Stirling and Pete Flynn went to the States. Stirling met President Ronald Reagan; Pete was not present at the meeting, but he met Vice President Bush.⁸

Nothing came of the idea at the time. Yet only a few years later, a private military force was founded in South Africa of the same sort of calibre as the KAS concept; Fred was a member of it, and it stopped a rebel war at the request of the recognized government of Sierra Leone.

After Stirling died, new ownership took over the company. Fred and most of the team left. Fred’s hallmark is his loyalty, a loyalty that came to him naturally, from his heritage; such was his attachment to David Stirling that when the SAS Regimental Association held its memorial ceremony in honour of its founder, at Ochtertyre in Perthshire, Stirling’s home area, Fred flew especially from Sierra Leone to attend.

It was to be in this country that he would perform some of his best work, fighting insurgency in conflict diamond regions.

Chapter Two

The Chief

Pike Bishop: When you side with a man you stay with him.

from the film The Wild Bunch, directed by Sam Peckinpah

The team of six, led by Project Manager Alastair Riddell, formerly a senior officer in the Parachute Regiment, touched down at Lungi International Airport, Sierra Leone at around 9.30pm on 31 October 1994, looking forward to food and drink and a bed. But they found that, here, transfer to the hotel was tediously slow: there was a thirty-minute bus ride to Tagrin Ferry Point; a two-and-a-half-hour ferry trip to Government Wharf Ferry Point in Freetown; and finally a taxi to the Mammy Yoko Hotel, which they eventually reached at around 2.30am. They were contracted to provide security at the Omai Gold Mine and Golden Star Resources concession at Baomahun. For Fred, the contract was to open one of the most important periods of his life – a period in which he would form a deep friendship with a Sierra Leonean Chief, and one that would see him in combat again.

Soon after their arrival though, Fred had an introduction to the deceptions and graft that were common in everyday life. At the end of their first day, as they were having a meal by the hotel pool, a group of girls appeared and asked if they could join them. The girls said that they were refugees from the war in neighbouring Liberia, that they were all living rough in a tiny room and had to sleep on the floor. Fred and his colleagues felt sorry for their plight and offered them food. However, if they were to allow them to share their rooms, Fred knew that because of colour, his five colleagues would be compromising themselves in the eyes of the white community and the client company, whereas he would not. And so, on the understanding that it would only be for one night, Fred let the girls spend the night in his room; the girls slept on the bed; he on the floor, using his belt order for a pillow.

Next morning he left for work. But when he arrived back at the hotel at 5pm, one of the girls was still in his room. In response to his asking her why she was still there, she said, ‘You promised to pay me $100’. Realization dawned on him; he was being taken for a patsy, and in a flash of anger he said, ‘What $100? I never promised to pay you’. His room was on the third floor and he opened the window and told her that he was going out. And he said, ‘But when I come back, if you’re still here, I’m going to throw you from the window’. He took 10,000 leones (SLL) and put them on the table and said, ‘That is it finished’. Fred learned later that the girls were not Liberians but local girls working a racket with the hotel’s security staff.

That incident seemed to take on new life in expatriate folklore in Freetown, because more than four years later, in January, 1999, a British journalist in the, by then, war-torn capital wrote, under the headline, Street Life: Freetown: Mercenaries, prostitutes and other hotel guests, a sensational, heightened account of it and why it took place, as though it had just recently happened.

Fred, 58, took seven prostitutes up to his room the other night…. the adrenalin of dicing with death seems to make everyone hungry, thirsty and rampant.¹

To be sure, the insurgency situation in the country had deteriorated to such an extent by 1999 that the journalist’s use of the word mercenary had res...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Dedication
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• Foreword
• Acknowledgements
• Part I
• Part II
• Part III
• Part IV
• Appendix I: Hostage of the RUF, Swiss Honorary Consul-General, Rudiger Bruns
• Appendix II: Comparative Costs: Executive Outcomes, Sandline, Juba Incorporated and UNAMSIL
• Appendix III: Testimony at the SCSL on behalf of Chief Hinga Norman, General Sir David Richards, Chief of General Staff, UK
• Appendix IV: Observations on the Autopsy of Chief Hinga Norman, Dr Albert Joe Demby, Former Vice President of Sierra Leone
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index