DYSENTERY, MERCENARIES, AND JUST MISSING OUT ON VISITING HELL – PART 2

This is part two of our interview with James Brabazon, a photographer turned filmmaker who was one of the only foreign correspondents to cover the bloody civil war in Liberia at close hand. While he was there, in between dodging bullets, death squads, and tropical disease (with varying levels of success), he befriended Nick du Toit, a mercenary. That friendship went on to see James narrowly avoid incarceration at Black Beach Prison alongside the infamous mercenary army led by Simon Mann in the attempted coup in Equatorial Guinea in 2004. Reading this without the first part won’t make any sense, so we recommend you look at part 1 here.

Vice: So you were a target for death squads under Taylor’s directions? Why were you a specific target? James Brabazon: Well, I was a royal pain in the arse for them. There were no other journalists on the front lines. Taylor could say “I have taken this territory” and then I would pop up on a satellite phone telling the BBC World Service that he hadn’t. It drove him nuts. When the first film was made, someone I knew was in the room with Taylor when he saw it, an American intelligence guy, and apparently he went apoplectic. We started off getting radio intercepts from government forces saying, “Don’t let the white men escape.” Then GCHQ over here intercepted a telephone call made between Taylor and one of his commanders in which our execution was ordered and a bounty was put on our heads. That was then relayed to different agencies and filtered back to me via US intelligence; I had a very good contact there and he actually said, “Look, now it is time to go. It’s not a question of you surviving on the front line. There are two groups specifically tasked with killing you. You need to go.” And at that point I had responsibility, not only for myself, but also for the film, and more importantly for Tim. We had just been shot at for 24 hours, at close quarters. The idea of going back in with these death squads there, I could not in good conscience ask Tim to do it, especially as he would probably have said yes. The key to the game is knowing when to quit.

So how did this coup work out? I have this image of you sitting at home when Nick calls and says, “Hi, I have this coup planned for next Tuesday. Would you like to come?”, but I am guessing it wasn’t quite like that. It was a multi-stage event. First of all I was in the Republic of Guinea, sitting in a bar with Nick, waiting to go back to Liberia at the end of 2003. He told me he had been approached by business associates of his who wanted to overthrow a “nearby government” because the president was not cooperating with the oil industry. They wanted to turn it into the “Switzerland of Africa.” No names were given, but it was easy to work out which country they were talking about —it became very clear that it was Equatorial Guinea. At that point the plan was to launch a seaborne assault using Liberian rebels, and storm the beach on the island of Malabo. It was to be a classic beach assault—a small number of troops but with a lot of firepower.

Why Liberian rebels? And why did they want you?

They wanted to make it look like a local uprising, not like a reunion of an apartheid-era South African special forces unit—that would have been a lot less popular. So they wanted me to film it, only showing black faces, and release that footage, so that it would seem local. I couldn’t agree to broadcast propaganda. I was faced with this dilemma: on one hand I was offered this incredible insider access and an amazing scoop that no one else could have access to, but as a journalist what I was being asked to do was unthinkable. Rather boiling it down, I decided to say yes on the grounds that I could always say no later. Best to stay in the game.

So why weren’t you there when they were rumbled? I was on 48-hour standby to go, umming and ahhing, and my grandfather died. He had raised me and was a very important figure in my life. I told Nick I would be out of the loop for a few weeks. I had the mourning period—no email, no radio, very quiet. I came back to London and switched the news on to see that Nick and Simon had been arrested. I called Nick on his cell phone and it was answered, there was a scuffle, and the connection went. I called back and the phone was answered by an official wanting to know who I was, why I was calling. For a long time I believed that my grandfather’s death had saved me. The initial idea was that I would go in on the front wave of the attack, but then Nick thought that it might be better for me to come in with the new guy. If I had been there with the first wave I would have been straight to Black Beach Prison with the others.

How long was Nick in Black Beach? Five years and eight months.

Did you have any contact with him in that time? No, his wife made several visits and I was able to pass messages to him through her. When Nick was released in November 2009 I told him that I had always been under the impression that my grandfather’s death had saved me. I asked him if he thought it was true, and he said, “I’m not as big a cunt as people think I am, I look after my friends.” He basically said that if it had been a well-planned operation I would have been there, but it wasn’t, so I wasn’t.

Do you find yourself thinking like these mercenaries? Do you want to go back and return to combat? Or have you had your fill? When I was first starting out I had a strong desire to prove to myself that I was able to do it. I wanted to prove to myself that I was a worthy inheritor of the lives my grandfathers had led, which I think they would have found horrifying. It was unhelpful, because that very egotistical drive interferes with doing work as a journalist. After Liberia I never felt that desire again, I knew what I was capable of. Every time you are in combat it is different. It’s very surprising, it’s not about being in a firefight, it’s about the totality of the experience of war—it chips away at you, or adds to you, depending on your views. I feel now I have no problem going back into conflict, it’s what I do for a living. Do I need the adrenaline of war? No, I don’t. I would be lying if I said that being in war wasn’t, at some base level, actually enjoyable. It’s a very dark place to go to, but there is something fundamentally atavistic, and it’s understanding that atavism and channeling it that is the key. That adrenaline junkie thing is not me. I have two small children and I fully intend that they will grow up with a father.

Are there any conflicts at present you intend to cover, or ones that are not being covered appropriately by the media in your view? Well, I strongly suspect that things are going to get interesting in the Republic of Guinea soon. I am sure there will be a new generation of intrepid young reporters out there cutting their teeth in West Africa. Same shit, different day. There are so many unreported conflicts. I mean, what do we know about the war going on in the north of Yemen? There is a Maoist rebellion in north India, Maoists control a strip of land all the way to Hyderabad. There is a Maoist parallel state there, huge swathes of territory that the Indian security forces can’t move through. There are many we just don’t know about because of the way the media works—not the time or the resources to send people to cover them. Gone are the days when don McCullin was sent to Vietnam for months on end by the Sunday Times. Conversely, there are these apparently very well-reported conflicts like the Israeli situation, but actually if you put together, end to end, months or even years of news reports about the conflict in Israel, you are not really going to get any further in your analysis of the situation. BRYAN BAYLISS