Mission Liberty (5 page)

He clicked on the laptop to add an overlay of red dots to the map, half of them concentrated in the south along the coast
and the rest scattered along the country’s eastern and northeastern border.

“This might sound like ancient history to some of you, but none of this is irrelevant to the current conflict. I’ll say this,
for the lay people among us. The struggle in Liger has always been between the Fasori and the Kum, and the Da have always
been caught in the middle. Religious fundamentalism on both sides in recent years has only accelerated and amplified what
was already there.

“Liger became independent in 1962. As revolutions go, this one was as soft as you get. The Fasori have traditionally been
the ruling class in Liger, the most highly educated, controlling about 90 percent of the economy. Prior to 1962, the British
governor worked with the monarchy, in the person of Fasori king Mufesi Asabo, who asked for and negotiated the British departure.
Asabo, who was very popular, was overthrown in 1972 in a bloodless coup by General Sesi Mutombo and assigned a more symbolic
role, something like the British monarchy. Mutombo was overthrown by President Daniel Bo, the father of the current president
Bo, in 1980. The king was placed under house arrest. Mutombo was captured, tried, and beheaded, all in the same day, and then
his body was literally hacked into a thousand pieces by the crowd that had gathered to witness the execution. Last year someone
tried to sell one of the pieces on eBay, so they’re still around, kept as souvenirs.

“The red dots you see are oil deposits. Those along the coast and offshore were developed by British Petroleum and by Shell.
The deposits in the east and north represent more recent discoveries, being developed by Exxon-Mobil and Chevron-Texaco and
the Italian Agip group.”

Kissick clicked four more times, each click adding in overlay a shaded area that began in the north, labeled 1990, and extended
south in multiyear intervals. By 2005, the shaded area covered the northern half of the country.

“These overlays represent drought, and with it, famine. Conditions of near-drought and near-famine extend south from these
lines for about one hundred kilometers at each interval. Theories as to the reasons for the drought vary, including global
warming, deforestation, and so on. We’re concerned more with the effect, which has been to cause tremendous social and political
upheaval. For years, the Kum and the Fasori held to a kind of truce where it was possible for one group to keep to the north
and the other to the south, with the Da region as a buffer zone. With the drought, famine, disease, cholera, starting in the
north, the Kum reached the point where they depended on assistance from the government, which was and is, as I indicated,
Fasori and Christian. President Bo, who I have to stress has long been an ally and staunch supporter of the United States,
began to realize he could use that dependence for leverage when he needed concessions, mainly to develop northern oil assets.
Liger is, today, the United States’ fourth-largest supplier of oil, ordinarily at about 1,200,000 barrels a day. Instability
in the north has cut production to four hundred thousand barrels a day, and you all know what’s happened to gas prices back
home as a result.”

Kissick clicked on a new map, showing the northern half of the African continent, strewn now with blue dots against a tan
field.

“Enter IPAB,” Kissick said. “Islamic Pan-African Brotherhood. The blue dots are training facilities, all in the Sahel region,
sub-Saharan, which, as far as we can tell, no country has ever figured out how to govern or police. It’s mostly training for
military or terrorist activities, but some are more like schools for Islamic study. IPAB was initially an offshoot of the
Muslim Brotherhood, which began in Egypt in the fifties. Bin Laden’s number two man, Abdullah al-Wahiri, was one of the founders
of the Muslim Brotherhood. Beginning around 1995, various small, not terribly well-organized rebel elements in Liger began
attacking oil facilities in the north, provoking various reactions by the government and by the oil companies, which found
it necessary to hire and train their own security forces, with the blessing and cooperation of the government. Such attacks
were sporadic and poorly planned, at first, but with the help of IPAB, rebel factions became better organized and better armed.
Al Qaeda certainly had a hand in the training and in the funding, but we think it goes beyond Al Qaeda.”

Kissick clicked again to show the satellite image of an African village.

“So here’s what’s going on today,” he said, clicking again to zoom in one level of magnification. “After 9/11, rebel forces
inspired and emboldened by the attack on the World Trade Center declared full-out civil war against President Bo’s government
with the intention of overthrowing him and establishing an Islamic government. If you count the number of Muslims in Liger,
and include the number of Da who add Islam to the list of religions they embrace, then Muslims represent the majority by about
65 percent or so. If you count Christian Fasoris and add in Christian Da, you get about 50 percent. Bo suspended planned elections
after the declaration of civil war, but he’d promised and suspended them for several years prior to that, seeking to avoid
the same fate as Sesi Mutombo, I gather. The war smoldered until six months ago, when civil unrest in the north escalated.
That unrest flared up again a month ago when President Bo said he was going to nationalize the oil industry, in order to better
defend it. The main body of the rebel forces is calling itself LPLF or Ligerian People’s Liberation Front, led by General
Thomas Mfutho. Mfutho was at one time thought to be third in command in Liger, behind Bo and General Emil-Ngwema, Bo’s right-hand
man, but apparently some years ago he decided he could do better on his own. We estimate he has between seventy-five hundred
and eight thousand troops, poorly trained, most of them, moderately equipped. Minimal air support, a handful of helicopters
and triple A. However, in the last month, a large amount of arms and equipment supplied by the U.S. to the Bo government has
fallen into enemy hands. We also believe he’s been supplying himself from weapons cached in Iraq that we, unfortunately, failed
to prevent from leaving the country.”

He clicked again to zoom to a lower level of magnification. DeLuca saw a collection of circular structures that he took to
be the thatched roofs of a number of huts or houses in the village.

“Let me show you what’s going on in this country. There are currently about two million displaced people in northern Liger.
That includes Da, Kum, Ashanti, Twi, Fur peoples driven out of Sudan by the Janjaweed, who still occasionally make raids on
horseback into Liger. The joke going around the Pentagon is that we’re going to have to dust off some of our old cavalry uniforms
from the 1800s and dig up John Wayne to lead the troops.”

The Republicans on the congressional fact-finding delegation laughed. The Democrats didn’t.

“Most of the time, however, the Pentagon is not in a joking mood.”

He clicked to a lower level, at the same time adding a pair of insets, photographs of two men, one of whom DeLuca recognized,
the other not.

“On the right, this is Samuel Adu. You may have read about him in the paper. It looked like he was going to overthrow the
government of Sierra Leone until the Sierra Leonese government brought in white South African mercenaries to kick him out.
He took exile in the northern Ligerian capital of Kumari, not because Bo invited him in but because Bo lacks the power right
now to kick him out. As dangerous as Adu was in Sierra Leone, he accomplished most of what he accomplished there with nothing
more than machetes and a few hundred AK-47s. Now that he’s hooked up with IPAB, he’ll be much better armed, particularly after
IPAB forces overran the government armory in Baku Da’al last week and seized a significant amount of equipment. We’re trying
to get an inventory but right now that’s not possible. We suspect the rebels are still reading the manuals, but we’d like
to hit ’em before they finish. And we know that some of the IPAB training camps teach recruits how to arm and fire captured
U.S. weapons. Again, some of the weapons in country were also from looted armories in Iraq.

“The man on the left is Kum warlord Mujhid John Jusef-Dari, popularly known as ‘Brother John’ Dari. This is a high school
picture, but it’s the most recent one we have, and we suspect he’s altered his appearance. Educated in Massachusetts at Mill
River Academy, after he was brought over and sponsored by a Baptist church in Oklahoma whose missionaries discovered him when
he was orphaned after his parents disappeared, possibly at the hands of the government. Originally a member of the Da tribe.
Converted to Islam in prep school and returned to Africa after he was expelled for having sex with an underage girl. They
call him ‘Brother John’ because he’s seen as something of a Robin Hood figure, robbing from the rich and yada yada yada. Some
call him the Ace of Spades. A reference to the deck of card designations we used in Iraq. So let me show you what this so-called
‘Robin Hood’ and his people are up to.”

He clicked again. DeLuca saw the village in greater detail, an array of broad plank tables on one edge of the village where
the locals dried their cocoa beans, and in the middle, a central common. Another click revealed a large crowd of people gathered
in the common. A subsequent click showed that some of the people gathered were holding guns on the others, including a group
that seemed to have been taken prisoner. In the center of the common was the communal cooking area, Kissick said, and then
he clicked without saying anything. He zoomed in, until they saw, as clearly as if the picture were taken from atop a tall
ladder, two large cast-iron cook pots, in one, human heads, and in the other, hands.

“These pictures were taken above a village called Yamagor, about halfway between Kumari and Baku Da’al. This is one of the
cannibal gangs operating in the country. The come into a village, round up the leaders, and then they mutilate them while
they’re still alive and eat the parts. I apologize, but there really isn’t a more delicate way to say this. They especially
like the hands. They make everyone else in the village watch. Sometimes they force the onlookers to partake. This is terrorism
at its most undiluted level.”

He clicked again, showing only a map of Liger. The sense of relief that swept over the room was palpable.

“Believe it or not,” Kissick said somberly, “I’ve spared you some of the worst pictures. Those involve women and girls. We
believe this behavior is organized and intentional. There is also much behavior going on that is neither, but rather acts
of random violence, instigated by radio exhortations or simply as the result of mob behavior, but equally horrible. Ambassador
Ellis’s embassy issued a directive two weeks ago that all American citizens were to evacuate. As you know, the president has
vowed that he will not sit idly by and allow another catastrophe to occur similar to what happened in Rwanda, 1994. And unfortunately,
a number of Americans decided to ignore the directive to evacuate—Ambassador, about how many, do you think?”

“Too many,” Ellis said. “Maybe a thousand.”

“And Mr. Berger, how many of your oil workers would you say have remained in country?” Kissick asked.

“About five hundred,” Berger said. “We’ve hired protective services, but the danger is still great.”

“Officially, the main rebel faction is the LPLF. We’re actually much more concerned with Adu and Dari, and through them, IPAB.
The White House has given General Mfutho until Saturday, seven days from now, to pull his troops back above the line you saw
on the map dividing traditional Kum and Da territories, and to turn over to UN troops anyone suspected of being connected
to IPAB or Al Qaeda. And to respect the cease-fire. We do not anticipate compliance. Failing that, we have twenty-five hundred
Marines on the
Cowper
and another twenty-five hundred on the
Glover
who I’m told are so eager to deploy that they’ve started to chew holes in the bulkheads. And we have the 27th Infantry ready
to fly in once the Rangers have secured the airfields. We don’t expect any significant resistance. People are going to say
we’re trying to fight three wars at once. We’re not. It’s the same war, on three fronts. The president’s well of human compassion
is anything but dry. Prompted in part by the capture of this man.”

He clicked again. DeLuca saw the picture of a white man, perhaps forty, standing in the white light of the sun with his wife
and two children.

“This is Reverend Andrew Rowen. You may have read about him. Rowen disappeared ten days ago. The CIA believes he was taken
in an effort to forestall the invasion, and as close as the president is to Andy Rowen, he’s made it clear that his concern
for his personal friend will not have any effect on matters of national security. He would, if possible, like to at the very
least know where Rowen is before we start the air campaign. Just to make it clear in everybody’s mind, this is a matter of
national security. Letting our friends in Africa know they can count on us to protect their liberty is absolutely essential.
Stopping the spread of IPAB is as important as stopping Al Qaeda. IPAB was Al Qaeda’s sister organization when they blew up
the embassies in Kenya. Stopping IPAB here stops a pan-African jihad.”

“It’s also believed that if the oil supply of Liger falls into the hands of John Dari or IPAB, within a year, the price of
oil in America will rise to over four dollars a gallon, at which point our global economic dominance, and therefore our security,
will be severely compromised. I emphasize that we’d like to circle-slash the idea that we see this as a war of blacks against
whites and Muslims against Christians, because that’s not going to pass anybody’s smell test, but that is effectively at least
part of what it is, a race war and a holy crusade. We didn’t make it that way. We’re not even there yet. That’s the rule for
IPAB in Liger. And for the LPLF. Kill the whites and kill the Christians. The report in front of you lists some of the atrocities
perpetrated so far against whites and Christians. For all these reasons, the delicacy of this matter cannot be overstressed.
Mr. DeLuca, do you have any questions yet?”