About a year ago, I picked up war correspondent, #1 New York Times bestselling author, award-winning journalist and documentary filmmaker, Sebastian Junger at the DFW international airport to attend the Mayborn Nonfiction Literary Conference. He was the keynote speaker. Junger had gone to  Sierra Leone to cover the 11-year-old civil war but only spent 12 days there before he was airlifted out by the Brits. He saw little or no action and described the war in one word, SCARY! So I reached out to another war correspondent Jim Hooper whom I know had been in the country twice during the war and was embedded with the mercenary outfit, Executive Outcomes, hired by the military junta to help defeat the rebels.

Brace yourself for what you are about to read.

Francis: Good afternoon Jim, thanks for this opportunity.

Jim: Good Afternoon Francis, and how dee body? Are you working on a feature story or a master’s dissertation? Since it was published in 2001, Bloodsong, my book on Executive Outcomes (EO), has been a primary source for about 20 masters’ or doctoral dissertations on private military companies. However, because of a few unfortunate misunderstandings I now insist on seeing the text my photos will accompany. Are you from Freetown?

Francis: Fine, thank you. Yes, I am from Freetown. Why is Bloodsong so expensive?

Jim: Bloodsong went out of print in 2003, when Harper Collins sold off its military history division. The book is now a collector’s item. The paperback edition is better than the hardback because it includes EO’s Sierra Leone contract. The hardback covers only EO’s contract in Angola. I have no control over the prices, nor do I receive royalties from second-hand sales. The best site for finding rare books is http://www.abebooks.com.

It is fortunate you left the country before Foday Sankoh returned from Libya and started the Revolutionary United Front( RUF.) I interviewed a few RUF prisoners and was sickened by the atrocities they committed. Strasser had already been sent to Conakry when I was embedded with EO, but I met the rest of the National Provisional Ruling Council (NPRC.) They reminded me of teenagers having a party with no adult supervision.

The most impressive man I met was Chief Sam Hinga Norman. He was a gentleman who exuded the charisma of natural leadership and was instrumental in forging the alliance between EO and the Kamajors. When the Kamajors handed prisoners to EO for interrogation, they asked that they be returned because it was time to make a “rebel stew.” 

Francis: You are not suggesting cannibalism was practiced in SierraLeone are you?

Jim: Ritual cannibalism is common throughout West Africa. When Liberia’s President Samuel Doe was captured, a video was made of him being tortured, he was beaten and his ears were cut off. Watching and giving orders was Charles Taylor’s second in command, American-educated Prince Johnson. The last word from the video came from Johnson, who says, “Turn off the video it’s time to eat.” Doe was the meal.

Before EO arrived in Sierra Leone, American mercenary Bob MacKenzie was killed and eaten by Foday Sankoh and his senior advisors. My friend Fred Marafono told me that the Kamajors often cooked and ate RUF prisoners, in the belief that it gave them magical powers.

But it is not just in West Africa. Today, albinos are protected by some NGOs in Tanzania, to save them from being murdered and parts of them sold by Sangomas to cure different diseases. The same happens even in South Africa where it is called “muti magic,” which is thought by some to cure AIDS. The primary source of this muti magic are refugees from Zimbabwe and Mozambique. The most expensive muti is the genitals from baby boys.

You might ask your Nigerian friend if it happens in his country.

If you explain this to good American progressives they will never believe it.

One of the EO men was a Fijian by the name of Fred Marafono, who was adopted as a brother by the Kamajors. His book, From SAS to Blood Diamond Wars, is an interesting tale. With my permission, he used a number of my photos, including one on the cover.

EO’s founder Eeben Barlow also wrote a book about his company in Angola and Sierra Leone. The title is, Against All Odds.

Soldier of Fortune was one of about 20 more serious magazines to publish that piece.

Just to be clear, I am a professional writer and hold the copyright on all my photos and published words. I paid all my expenses and suffered a lot of discomforts to get the material for my articles. As a result, I take a very dim view of anyone using more than about 50 of my words in anything they put together.

“The local Sierra Leonean battalion commander whose troops would be taking part was snoring gently. Colonel Hugo’s pointer tapped the map: The first Sierra Leonean infantry company would advance from the north towards the rebel-held town of Gandorhun. With the infantry and support elements in place, Nigerian air force Alpha jets would bomb the town, followed by the Mi-24 gunship using rockets and AGS 30mm grenade launcher pods.” Jim Hooper- Soldier of Fortune Magazine August 1996

Francis:  Why did you choose to live in London, England?

Jim: When I made the decision to become a war correspondent, I asked a friend who was a Reuters bureau chief, where was the best place to start. “Africa,” he said.”Plenty of small wars.” But then he added that there was no market for Africa in America. But the UK and Europe were usually interested because of their colonial history.

I’d already visited England a few times for international parachuting conferences and liked it. (It was also a lot closer to Africa than the states.) I packed up all my worldly possessions and moved here in 1984.

Francis:These are all facts right?

Jim: You came to me for help about Executive Outcomes in Sierra Leone. I was with them in Freetown, Koidu and Gandorhun. I also rode in helicopter gunships flown by Russian mercenaries supporting EO. If you choose not to believe any of my first-hand observations in Sierra Leone or any other place in Africa, that’s your right. You may even believe that whites are responsible for all the problems in the continent. You may also be convinced that all the problems African-Americans have today, is the result of slavery – an institution that was abolished by whites 154 years ago.

How many post-emancipation generations must pass before that excuse wears so thin it has to be kept in a hermetically sealed glass case in the National Archives? But here is another indisputable fact: You are welcome to use whatever second-hand politically- correct sources you want. I really don’t give a damn.

Francis: I was born in Sierra Leone and have been to every nook and corner. Never heard or seen anything like what you are saying. Must be one of the vagaries of war.

Jim: C’mon. It doesn’t mean ritual cannibalism is practiced by every tribe or ethnic group in West Africa, merely that it exists in most of them. (As well as eastern and southern Africa- as it is in Papua, New Guinea.)

I have better things to do than debate with defensive and argumentative people. If someone asks me about my experiences in various parts of the world, I usually try to help. But if they say, “you’re wrong, you don’t know what you’re talking about,” they’ve used up all the time I’m prepared to give. Better if they look elsewhere for help.

I don’t care what you write, unless you quote me out of context, to say something that is at odds with the original meaning of my words. It happened a couple of times. The consequences were, using my membership in the Society of Authors to explain the downside of their actions.

Francis: How about war-action photos?

Jim: After talking with the photo agency that syndicates my work, I was reminded of the contract I signed with them, which stipulates that they have all syndication rights. The way it works is that a query may arrive from someone somewhere. “Do you have any stock images of this or that?” My agency is owned by a bigger agency in Paris. So the London end charges say, 150 pounds sterling. Half of that goes to Paris, which in turn pays me half of what it receives from London.

The rationale is that before digital cameras were the norm – all my stuff was shot with wet film – they had to make dozens of copies to send to agencies around the world. Quite understandably, they want to recoup their investment and make a profit.

It’s the same with book publishers; the standard industry-wide contract prevents an author from selling his own book. The reason is that the publishing house has invested in proofreading, book design, printing and binding, promotion, distribution, shipping, and warehousing.

After that come the discounts to big chains like Daltons (50%) and, of course, Amazon, which gets a 66% discount. Their last expense is my royalty. From the retail price you see on a book, the author gets ten to twelve percent. You can see why Kindle is popular with them; when paper sales start to trail off, it costs about $500 to digitally format the book, and once that’s done there are no printing, binding, distribution or warehouse costs. Not so good for the author, however.

Photo agencies and publishers inhabit their own arcane world that’s little understood by folks outside it.

Francis: You spent a lot of time in Africa, especially southern Africa. Here in America, we have to deal with racism. In Africa, tribalism is prevalent. Did you encounter racial discrimination?

Jim: Tribalism is just a polite euphemism for racism. The best-known example being between the Tutsi and Hutu in Rwanda. (They each have certain physical characteristics that allow one side to identify the other). In Kenya, it is between the Kikuyu and Luo. In Sudan, it is between the Dinka and the Nuer. In South Africa, it is between the Zulu and Xhosa. In each case, one side sees the other as racially/culturally different and inferior.

In Sudan, I think the light-skinned Muslim Arabs and black Muslims use the same derogatory word for southern blacks, which is “abd,” the Arabic word for slave.

A friend in Nigeria, Takumbo King, is a British-educated lawyer and has a very successful legal practice in Lagos. King is not the name picked from some brutal overseer, but a name that an ancestor chose to identify himself as paramount chief of the largest coastal tribe.

Takumbo inherited the chieftainship. He happily admits that his family got his wealth and prestige as a result of his great-great-great-great-grandfather selling prisoners captured in the war to European slave traders. Over a couple of beers, he shook his head and said, “why do blacks in America always blame you whites for slavery? We have slaves centuries before whites arrived!”

The same thing happened all along the west coast of Africa -Sierra Leone included. You may be descended from slaves taken from Africa to America, whose children or grand-children were returned to Sierra Leone. You well know why Freetown got its name.

European and American slave traders never- never, sent hunting parties into the jungles. They did not know the terrain, the location of tribes or how to survive. Much easier and more practical to buy slaves from coastal chiefs. Why don’t blacks in America condemn the black Africans who sold their ancestors into slavery?

One of the reasons for the war in Sudan was Muslim slave traders capturing people from southern Sudan and selling them as slaves; this was happening until less than 12 years ago. A Christian NGO dedicated itself to raising money to buy them back and return them to their families in the south. Where was the African-American outrage over that?

You are well aware of how little your friends – both black and white – know about what happened in Sierra Leone. That’s because there is very little news about Africa, and also blacks killing blacks doesn’t fit the agenda of the media.

That said, I think we’ve exhausted the extent of our communication. I am so clearly misinformed that there’s nothing I have that you can use or trust. And that’s okay, your choice.

PS: Jim Hooper was a documentary research writer for WFLA- TV in Tampa Bay Florida. At some point during our conversation, we banged heads and he withdrew permission to publish this interview. We have since resolved our differences and he sent me the preface to his new book still in the works, as “a gift” (his words). Our communication lasted three days in July of 2017 before he shut me down. In January this year, it was resumed. I look forward to reading his new book upon completion. I know about Jim through tons of Soldier of Fortune magazine I used to read because of the war in Sierra Leone. It is now out of print. This is only an excerpt.

“For many people, war feels better than peace and hardship can be a great blessing and disasters are sometimes remembered more fondly than weddings or tropical vacations. Humans don’t mind duress, in fact, they thrive on it. What they mind is not feeling necessary.” Sebastian Junger