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AFRICA IS NO PLACE FOR DOGS OF WAR

British mercenary Simon Mann

Friday July 11,2008

By Frederick Forsyth

I HAVE remained silent during the trial of Simon Mann down in the hellhole of Equatorial Guinea because when someone is on trial for his life in an African tyranny he already has enough problems.

Nevertheless, there have been frequent mentions of a book I wrote 35 years ago called The Dogs Of War about a mercenary-led coup on the island of Fernando Po (now Malabo), which is part of Equatorial Guinea.

It was only three years into independence from its century as a Spanish colony and it was a horror drawn straight from Conrad’s Heart Of Darkness.

The dictator was Francisco Macias Nguema; he was sadistic, insane and the uncle of the present despot – Teodoro Nguema, who was then head of the Praetorian Guard, which carried out the tortures and slaughters his uncle ordered.

Eventually the nephew toppled his uncle, hung him gibbering in a steel cage from the ceiling during a show trial and executed him. Nice place.

To any reader with a hankering for blood and thunder on the Dark Continent I would say: forget it.

Back then I investigated the feasibility (only) of a raid in darkness toppling a weak and barbarous regime and installing a new government by daylight.

I concluded it could be done but only under certain circumstances; one was that the force should arrive from the sea and not try to arrive by air.

After publication French mercenary Bob Denard did a replica attack on the Comoros Islands, arriving by sea, storming the capital and installing the pro-French puppet by sun-up.

South African mercenary Mike Hoare tried another replica attack on the Seychelles’ main island of Mahe. That was two years after the Frenchman. Both teams kept referring to their copies of The Dogs Of War.

But Hoare arrived with his mini-army by chartered airliner, was caught at the airport and the entire escapade was a fiasco. Simon Mann, as we know, never even took off.

So to any reader with a hankering for blood and thunder on the Dark Continent I would say: forget it. Things were different back then and the Boy’s Own Paper days are gone.