Simon Mann (1)

Simon Mann as a person is a weird mix of upper class British, special operations soldier (SAS, although it appears was apparently some drama there), international businessman, abject idiot, weirdly introspective douchebag, and liar. He's also someone who has been through an incredibly traumatic experience and written a book about it. As a person, I don't know what rating you'd give him, but this is about the book.

The one thing the book desperately needs is an editor. I get the feeling no editor was going to stand up to the author vs. a bunch of self-indulgent prose. There's some good writing here but it's buried in pages and pages of shit, although the events he describes are weird enough that it's worth wading through anyway just to see where things lead in spite of the writing.

I did really like the parts about EO operations in Angola and West Africa; this seemed fairly written and showed wby private forces could be worthwhile.

The parts about the run up to the Iraq war made me furious; yet another random idiot pushing for a stupid war.

I'm not sure how honest the accounts of the coup itself were -- I'd trust Nick du Toit (on the ground in EG) a lot more than Mann. There are open questions about the level of international intelligence support for the coup and who was really in charge, and maybe there were forces which pushed them go move forward even after all the positive factors for the coup had disappeared, but it all seemed really dumb to anyone who has ever had to plan any operations in conflict zones. I mean, it is hard enough to get a bunch of people to show up on time in that kind of setting for a regular meeting, let alone running a coup on a shoestring budget with difficulties sourcing aircraft, weapons, etc. after your primary forces become unavailable due to their own wars being concluded ahead of schedule. Any reasonable person would have just cut losses and gone back to normal multi-million-net-worth lifestyle.

Basically, the lesson here appears to be "big boy rules apply when doing African coup shit". What's amazing is there were a bunch of people who appear to have learned that in Angola, Liberia, etc. and yet decided to move forward in violation of the rules.

There was a lot of information about what it's like to be in a notoriously shitty African prison in former Rhodesia, corruption/bribery/escape, lack of communications, untrustworthy lawyers and former business partners, being abducted from Zimbabwe to Equatorial Guinea to potentially face execution, selling out yet other people, etc. As a prison psychodrama for one man in his head, it was quite engaging, and a great reminder of why going to a prison in Africa over something political is pretty bad and why people have "a few extra rounds" or a frag or something.

It's hard to judge the events overall because there were so many incentives to distort the truth on everyone's side (i.e. don't convict yourself in your autobiography....), but this is one more book which adds perspective to a truly weird African coup adventure.… (meer)