Graeme Wood

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27 January 2012 • 4:32 pm 0

Death of a Poseur

Jonathan “Jack” Idema, the pseudo-mercenary who was jailed after being convicted of operating a private prison in Kabul, died of AIDS in Mexico last week.

For the International Herald Tribune, I visited his semi-abandoned office building in Fayetteville, N.C., and found chains on the doors.  Idema’s adjoining apartment, where he allegedly conducted his assignations, had a poster for the Broadway musical Urinetown on the wall and a single cowboy spur rusting in the grass outside.

Filed under: International Herald Tribune, , ,

16 December 2011 • 5:06 pm 1

Mercenary Hires Self, Has Fool for a Client

I reviewed Simon Mann’s memoir, Cry Havoc, for The National.

John Blake Publishing Ltd

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Everyone’s favourite kind of coup d’état is the bloodless one: El Presidente is surprised in his pyjamas, or while shopping in London, his trusted military aides turn out to be snakes, and he ends up, along with his loyalists, either under house arrest or in exile – padded at first, then increasingly threadbare as the secret accounts are frozen, one by one. Meanwhile, if you are an average citizen of his beleaguered country, not much changes. The money flows to anyone but you: meet the new Presidente, same as the old Presidente.

Simon Mann, one of the most famous living mercenaries, set out in 2004 to manage what he insisted would be a bloodless coup to topple Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo, president of oil-rich Equatorial Guinea. But the Wonga Coup was so bloodless that it barely got started. Mann chartered a Boeing 727 full of armed men and planned to fly into the capital of Malabo, where an advance team led by the South African mercenary Nick du Toit intended to take over the airport. Mann hoped to install Severo Moto, the leader of a government-in-exile headquartered in Spain, as president, and in return reap millions in oil revenues.

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Filed under: National, , ,

17 April 2011 • 6:49 pm 0

The Bay of Pigs

The cartoonish Bay of Pigs plot falls short in every way

Originally appeared in The Daily.

When Fidel Castro kicked the capitalists out of Cuba in 1959, he created an embittered exiled class only too eager to help his main enemy, the United States of America, oust him as soon as possible. If you want to topple a government, its exiles can be a tempting tool: They have money, spies on the inside and a level of rage so incandescent, you could read a map by it on a moonless night. Unfortunately, as President John F. Kennedy learned 50 years ago today, all that and a few hundred million dollars in military training won’t buy regime change.
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Filed under: Daily, , , ,

6 March 2011 • 6:57 pm 0

The Barbary Pirates

North African pirate states meet the U.S. Navy

Originally appeared in The Daily.

Two U.S. Navy vessels, the Ponce and the Kearsarge, are nearing the Libyan coast, officially to provide humanitarian aid and evacuate straggling Americans. The shores of Tripoli are well known as a historic landing ground for the U.S. Marines. But for the U.S. Navy, the coast is even more hallowed as the site where it came into its own as a fighting force, where it executed one of the most daring raids in naval history and where, for the first time, the young nation’s sailors truly kicked ass. Read the rest of this entry »

Filed under: Daily, ,

23 February 2011 • 7:27 pm 0

Gadhafi’s Killer Mercenaries

Originally appeared in The Daily.

Libyan refugees and opposition groups say the most feared presence on the streets of Tripoli are mercenaries from elsewhere in Africa who drive around in tan-colored military jeeps and shoot anything that moves.

The country remains a swirl of rumors, but a constant theme is trigger-happy, non-Arabic-speaking foreigners who try to spread fear and persuade protesters to return to their homes. “We don’t know where they’re coming from,” one man told a Reuters TV crew after fleeing across the Egyptian border. “They’re African mercenaries. They’re shooting people randomly.” Read the rest of this entry »

Filed under: Daily, , ,

15 September 2010 • 9:31 am 1

Can you win the Medal of Honor for jumping on a mango?

At Big Questions Online, I have a piece about moral luck and the Medal of Honor.

Filed under: Big Questions Online, ,

10 May 2010 • 4:12 am 0

Back to the Afghan Future

Anup Kaphle and I reported last year from Lashkar Gah, Afghanistan.  We’ve published a piece on the British Army Gurkhas here, in The Weekly Standard.

Filed under: Weekly Standard, , ,

8 April 2010 • 2:35 pm 1

Joseph Kony’s Hike to, and from, Hell

The Lord’s Resistance Army has been kidnapping, brainwashing, and murdering unlucky adolescents in a remote corner of the Central African Republic.  The Ugandan military is trailing the LRA, sometimes killing them and sometimes not.

Click through to read my report for The National on the world’s most technologically outmatched insurgency.

Filed under: National, , , ,

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