Feral Jundi

Sunday, June 2, 2019

Books: To Stop A Warlord, By Shannon Sedgwick Davis

This is very cool and I wanted to get this book out there for folks to check out. It is on Kindle and hardcover and would be a great addition to your library on all things PMSC. What makes this story unique is that Eeben Barlow’s company STTEP was brought in by the author of this book to help in the hunt for Joseph Kony of the LRA.

Awhile back I was able to write about the deal and check out this post for more information. Eeben also filled in a few of the blanks about this contract and it was quite unique. STTEP was training Ugandan military to conduct pseudo-operations against the LRA! –Matt

 

 

One woman’s inspiring true story of an unlikely alliance to stop the atrocities of a warlord, proving that there is no limit to what we can do, even in the face of unspeakable injustice and impossible odds

“This compelling and inspiring book beautifully moves each of us to take action to help the most vulnerable among us.”—Archbishop Emeritus Desmond Tutu 

Late one night in the summer of 2010, Shannon Sedgwick Davis, a lawyer, human rights advocate, and Texas mom to two young boys, first met a Ugandan general to discuss an unconventional plan to stop Joseph Kony, a murderous warlord who’d terrorized communities in four countries across Central and East Africa.

For twenty-five years, Kony and his Lord’s Resistance Army had killed over a hundred thousand people, displaced millions, and abducted tens of thousands of children, forcing them to become child soldiers. After Sedgwick Davis met with survivors and community leaders, aid workers and lawmakers, it was clear that the current international systems were failing to protect the most vulnerable. Guided by the strength of her beliefs and convictions, Sedgwick Davis knew she had to help other parents to have the same right she had—to go to sleep each night knowing that their children were safe.

But Sedgwick Davis had no roadmap for how to stop a violent armed group. She would soon step far outside the bounds of traditional philanthropy and activism and partner her human rights organization, the Bridgeway Foundation, with a South African private military contractor and a specialized unit within the Ugandan army. The experience would bring her to question everything she had previously believed about her role as a humanitarian, about the meaning of justice, and about the very nature of good and evil.

In To Stop a Warlord, Shannon Sedgwick Davis tells the story, for the first time, of the unprecedented collaboration she helped build with the aim of finally ending Joseph Kony’s war—and the unforgettable journey on an unexpected path to peace. A powerful memoir that reads like a thriller, this is a story that asks us just how hard we would fight for what we believe in.

100 percent of the author’s net proceeds from this book will go to organizations seeking justice and protection for civilians in conflict zones.

“This is an extraordinary memoir by an extraordinary leader—it’s impossible to read without feeling moved to do more to help those with less.”—Adam Grant, New York Times bestselling author of Originals and Give and Take

Buy the book here.

 

Sunday, December 15, 2013

Industry Talk: Pseudo Operations And The Relentless Pursuit Of Kony

But then she reminds herself of the numbers. In the past two years, L.R.A. violence has dropped by ninety-three per cent, from seven hundred and six killings in 2010 to only fifty-one in 2012. According to Resolve, a U.S.-based analysis and advocacy group, the L.R.A. had approximately four hundred fighters in 2010; by June, 2013, they were down to a hundred and eighty Ugandan fighters and fifty armed zande—abductees from Congo and the Central African Republic.
“It was only ninety-three per cent because of relentless pursuit,” Davis said. “If we pulled out, that would plummet. I know that is something to celebrate. And if Kony dies a natural death under a mango tree someday, I’m O.K. with that—I know he’ll see justice, as long as he is not hurting kids and women.”
“We don’t need accolades,” Davis told me. “We are not bleeding at the end of the spear, getting pursued by crocodiles and killer bees. The Ugandans are.” And they show no signs of letting up.

Thanks to Adam for sending this one, and a big congrats to Eeben Barlow and his team for all the work they did on this contract. Also, I have much respect for Shannon Sedgwick Davis and her crew for actually taking action and having the courage to contact Eeben and funding this contract. You did the right thing. A hat tip as well to the Ugandan forces who embraced this training and made it work for them out in the field.

What makes this story significant is the fact that pseudo operations was taught to the Ugandan military by a private company, and there are actual tangible results that we can point to after they received this training.  Although I wouldn’t mind seeing a more academic study applied to how much of  an impact pseudo operations really had, it would seem to me that these initial findings are encouraging.

The other really cool aspect of this story is that for those of you that follow the blog and read the discussions I had with Eeben Barlow a couple of years ago about the concept of pseudo operations here and here,  you will quickly realize that in fact, something positive did come about from those conversations. That someone reading those conversations and posts over at his blog, whom actually had the money to fund such a contract, came forth and embraced the idea for the relentless pursuit of Joseph Kony and the destruction of his LRA. Here is a quote referencing how this group came to Eeben via his blog.

Poole had been reading a military and security blog written by Eeben Barlow, who had been a commando and a covert agent for the South African apartheid regime’s most notorious squads. He was also a visionary and a dreamer. Back in 1997, he told me that his goal was to create the best and biggest military consultancy in the world. The private army he founded, Executive Outcomes, hired itself out, in the late nineties, to end civil wars in Sierra Leone and Angola in exchange for lots of cash and access to diamond and oil fields.
Davis went to meet Barlow in South Africa, and, after a family dinner with his wife and son, he told her he would take the job—and that he did not want a fee. He did not want to make money on this, he told her; she would just have to pay his trainers and underwrite his expenses. This was the kind of partner she was looking for.

 Pretty cool. Here is a quote about the pseudo operations training the Ugandan’s received.

The effects of the training were evident. Charles, a lieutenant from West Nile, told me that in the old days they would unleash a thousand bullets every time they encountered the L.R.A. Now, he said, they would wait and track in silence. The South Africans had taught them tactics for crossing rivers with logs and ponchos, how to swim and how to avoid crocodiles, which had killed one soldier and attacked another. “The South Africans taught us ‘pseudo,’ ” Charles said. “You behave like your enemy so you can approach him, or even infiltrate inside the camp. We pleated our hair like they do, put on civilian shirts, uniform pants. Sometimes we went barefoot. We used to travel forty or forty-five in a team; now we can go six.”

Here is the quote about the raid that missed Kony. It certainly hit intel pay dirt though!

In September, 2011, the first special-operations group trained by the South Africans crossed into South Sudan and caught Kony by surprise at a meeting with all his commanders. He escaped, but the Ugandans took back a haul of valuable intelligence: satellite phones, a computer, and diaries. Defectors later revealed that the L.R.A. fighters were baffled by the attack: Was this some new Ugandan army? After the raid, Kony lost contact with his entourage. He roamed the bush alone with one of his pregnant Sudanese wives, and helped deliver her baby—one of probably more than a hundred small Konys now in the world. When he reëmerged, he was so furious that he demoted all his commanders. According to defectors, he had moved to a new camp, in southern Darfur.

And this is what DoS thought about the whole thing.

By the end of 2011, Barlow and his trainers were gone. “Even folks at State and the Department of Defense acknowledged the training Bridgeway offered was very helpful in advancing the Ugandan Army’s capacity,” a Washington-based analyst told me. But they are not yet willing to say so publicly. When I asked a State Department official about the significance of Davis’s work, he refused to comment beyond noting that “the Bridgeway Foundation is an independent organization that does not have an official relationship with the U.S. government.”

So with that said, I think Eeben and his crew deserve a great deal of recognition and thanks for a job well done. He has proven once again that private industry can indeed produce amazing results through innovation, dedication and hard work. That pseudo operations or PO can be taught and it can be effective in some types of warfare. As Sun Tzu would say, ‘all warfare is based on deception’, and PO is an excellent deceptive tactic. –Matt

 

shannon-sedgwick-davis-1-465

Shannon Sedgwick Davis.

How a Texas Philanthropist Helped Fund the Hunt for Joseph Kony
October 21, 2013
Posted by Elizabeth Rubin

One night in July, 2010, Shannon Sedgwick Davis, a lawyer and activist from San Antonio, Texas, and the mother of two young boys, found herself seated across from the chief of the Ugandan Army, General Aronda Nyakairima, at his hilltop headquarters, in Kampala. “It was one of those out-of-body experiences,” Davis told me. Davis was on the verge of becoming deeply involved in the campaign to capture Joseph Kony. In the course of a quarter century, Kony abducted tens of thousands of people, mostly children, and conscripted them into the Lord’s Resistance Army (L.R.A.), which was conceived as a Ugandan rebel force but whose primary target has been civilians in several African nations. “I am a full-blown mom, sitting here with this Ugandan general,” Davis said. “And I can’t believe I have an audience with this man, and that he didn’t write me off as crazy.”
Davis had two questions for Aronda: Would military trainers and communications make it easier for the Ugandan Army to chase down Kony—who is wanted by the International Criminal Court—in the jungles of Congo, the Central African Republic, and Sudan, where he and his commanders have scattered, and, more important to her, rescue the women and children still in his clutches?
Yes and yes, said the general. His eyes looked so tired, Davis recalled, that she hadn’t been sure she had his attention. “You almost want to pry them open so you make sure he’s still listening. But he said they would welcome any assistance, and that it was their problem to solve.” It was late, and in that first meeting Aronda seemed unsure what to make of this passionate, small blond woman from Texas. But the meetings persisted. Together, they began to map out what the general wanted and the guarantees that Davis would require from the Ugandans before embarking on an unorthodox venture: the charitable organization she heads, the Bridgeway Foundation, would hire private military contractors to train an African army.

(more…)

Thursday, March 1, 2012

Technology: Urgent Tweet In Kenya Village–Help, Sheep Missing

Filed under: Africa,Kenya — Tags: , , , , — Matt @ 12:19 PM

This is another great use of technology and leveraging the established networks and their personal technologies to increase the security and commerce in a rural place. Notice the tools being used?  Basic cell towers, cellphones with SMS capability, basic low cost cell services, and an administrative chief building a snowmobile out of all of those pieces. The end result is that a government can communicate with it’s people, and the people can communicate back. A people scattered and remote, yet still brought closer together because of technology like this. That network has now increased it’s security and commerce, because it can plan and react based on better information coming in.

Some other things with this is that the local populations are using this technology and getting educated on all the various ways of connectivity with the tools they have. They have learned how to post a tweet using their text messaging feature and basic services on their phone. Wow, that is awesome. Just imagine each village with a smart phone or computer?  It will happen, they will learn how to use it and exploit it, and governments need to pay attention. It empowers the citizenry, and it empowers the government to react to the needs of that citizenry. Doom on that government that does not pay attention to this interconnected and knowledge empowered citizenry. Especially if a government has depended upon it’s people not knowing what it is doing, or what it has done in one city/region versus the other. The light is definitely threatening the darkness…..

I also like the addition of this technology to what is already popular and available. That would be radio. A broadcast on a radio can now be met by a population that can answer back with their cellphones. That is quite the capability if used correctly. You could create offense industries with that set up, and possibly use RIM and these networks to find guys like Joseph Kony and his army. –Matt

 

Urgent tweet in Kenya village: Help, sheep missing
By TOM ODULA
Feb 15, 2012
When the administrative chief of this western Kenyan village received an urgent 4 a.m. call that thieves were invading a school teacher’s home, he sent a message on Twitter. Within minutes residents in this village of stone houses gathered outside the home, and the thugs fled.
“My wife and I were terrified,” said teacher Michael Kimotho. “But the alarm raised by the chief helped.”
The tweet from Francis Kariuki was only his latest attempt to improve village life by using the micro-blogging site Twitter. Kariuki regularly sends out tweets about missing children and farm animals, showing that the power of social media has reached even into a dusty African village. Lanet Umoja is 100 miles (160 kilometers) west of the capital, Nairobi.
“There is a brown and white sheep which has gone missing with a nylon rope around its neck and it belongs to Mwangi’s father,” he tweeted recently in the Swahili language. The sheep was soon recovered.
Kariuki said that even the thieves in his village follow him on Twitter. Earlier this year, he tweeted about the theft of a cow, and later the cow was found abandoned, tied to a pole.

(more…)

Monday, November 7, 2011

Colombia: Alfonso Cano, Leader Of The FARC, Killed In Raid

Filed under: Colombia,Military News — Tags: , , , , — Matt @ 10:13 AM

The air force attacks on the Cañon de Limon and the army incursion of the valley just north of the town of Chaparral forced the FARC leader to move out of the Tolima highlands, first southward and ultimately into the more western Cauca department.
Military sources told weekly Semana that this operation was the beginning of the end of Cano, who had been protected against Army and Air Force by the extreme cold and almost constant fog in the mountain valley.
Following the attack, the military created a militarized corridor from north to south, preventing provisions and reinforcements from the FARC’s Eastern Block to reach Cano’s Central Block, Semana said. This forced Cano to seek reinforcements from the Western Block which had been enforced over the year’s with some of the best guerrilla fighters.

This is fantastic news. Cano did have a bounty on his head, but as you can see from the quote up top, this was purely a military operation. I think this is also a very interesting operation in terms of smoking out tough opponents located in hard to reach zones.

Cano was in a great location, because the fog and terrain was limiting the effectiveness of aircraft, and probably drones for that matter. Although I am sure they were able to get some ISR going up in those hills. Perhaps reconnaissance teams were the best option for locating and targeting?

But the big component here to this operation, looks to be the militarized corridors that were north and south of that position. To basically deny Cano supplies and reinforcements, and force him to move in order to operate. Couple that with the constant bombing runs on his camps, and that was a great combination for getting him out in the open.

Perhaps there are some lessons here for the hunt for Joseph Kony in Africa? Perhaps the strategists in this operation had a metaphorical ‘Trojan Horse’ to defeat Cano with, hence the Odysseus operation name? I would have to think that if you could get one mole into Cano’s group up in those mountains, then you could get the kind of information that could be advantageous. Good job to the Colombians! –Matt

 

Alfonso Cano, leader of Colombia’s FARC rebels, killed in raid
By Juan Forero
November 5, 2011
The bookish communist intellectual who led the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, one of the world’s oldest insurgent groups, was killed Friday in a military strike in the biggest blow against that organization in its 47-year history.
Guillermo Saenz Vargas, who was better known to Colombians and American military advisers by the nom de guerre Alfonso Cano, was shot in a firefight with Colombian security forces during an operation in which the military bombed his position and deployed elite commandos, military officials said early Saturday morning.
The death occurred outside the town of Suarez in Cauca, a mountainous state in Colombia’s southwest that for years has been an epicenter of conflict between the armed forces and the FARC.
“The death of Alfonso Cano, the No. 1 commander of the FARC, has been confirmed,” President Juan Manuel Santos said in a brief nationally televised address shortly after midnight. “It is the biggest blow against the FARC in all its history.”

(more…)

Saturday, October 15, 2011

Military News: US Sends Military Advisers To Africa To Hunt Down Joseph Kony And The LRA!

Filed under: Military News,Uganda — Tags: , , , , — Matt @ 4:50 PM

Yes! This is a mission that just makes sense and I will be cheering it on all the way. It is about time and hopefully these guys can find them and eliminate them. Especially since Invisible Children has set up a communications network to give a voice to the people.

Perhaps that will be a big focus in the beginning, and that would be to upgrade the communications networks and even expand them throughout all of the villages.  That map I posted shows exactly the areas that the LRA is at, and the more updates and data coming in from that network, the better. Couple that with some of the toys that these advisers will have, and I am hoping that this mission won’t take long.

But who knows?  The LRA are some serious jungle dwellers, and have survived this long. Personally, I could care less how long it takes, because this is one of those deals that should have been taken care of a long time ago. It is worth the push and it is worth the effort. –Matt

 

Obama sends military advisers to central Africa
By Matt Spetalnick and Laura MacInnis
Oct 14, 2011
President Barack Obama said on Friday he was sending about 100 U.S. troops to central Africa to help and advise government forces battling Ugandan Lord’s Resistance Army rebels accused of murder, rape and kidnapping children.
Obama — who once denounced the LRA as an “affront to human dignity” — made clear the troops would serve as trainers and advisers in efforts to hunt down rebel leader Joseph Kony and would not engage in combat except in self-defense.
In a letter to Congress, Obama said the first U.S. forces arrived in Uganda on Wednesday and would be deployed to South Sudan, the Central African Republic and the Democratic Republic of the Congo “subject to the approval of each respective host nation.”
Obama’s decision commits U.S. forces to help confront a rebel group that has drawn international condemnation for decades of chilling violence, including hacking body parts off victims and the abduction of young boys to fight and young girls for use as sex slaves.
While the U.S. military has maintained a large base in Djibouti since 2003, the latest mission marks an expanded role in conflicts in sub-Saharan Africa by putting U.S. troops in the field to support local forces in direct combat with insurgents.

(more…)

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