EXCLUSIVE: US ‘terrorists’ receiving military training in Mpumalanga

Alameen Templeton
Well, this is embarrassing. It turns out the 95 Libyans arrested at the White River “military camp” were part of the Arab Armed Forces falling under key western ally and warlord Khalifa Haftar.
So, don’t expect any of the mainstream, white news outlets to continue covering this story in any great depth.
Because you don’t have to scratch very deeply to find stories about former US Special Forces soldiers in Mpumalanga who are “training South African game rangers to fight rhino poachers”.
And they’ve been active near our Mozambican border for over 10 years.
But that’s alright: they’re American, they have dollars, they’re white and definitely not Muslims. That appears to be the sole criteria the local media use when differentiating the kinds of tourists we like to see in South Africa from dangerous jihadis.
Finding peace of mind
The UK’s Guardian newspaper, in a 2017 article headlined “US army veterans find peace in protecting rhinos from poaching”, says: “The men are not mercenaries, or park rangers –they work for Ryan Tate’s Veterans Empowered To Protect African Wildlife (Vetpaw), a US-based nonprofit organisation funded by private donations. All have seen combat, often with elite military units, in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere.”
Now, imagine if you will, what would happen if a group of former ISIS fighters who “have seen combat, often with elite military units, in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere” decided they also wanted to protect our wildlife.
The former Marines stroll unobserved and untroubled across the veld separating South Africa from Mozambique “equipped with vehicles, trail bikes, assault rifles, sniper suits and radios”, The Guardian reports, before observing tangentially: “The initiative is not without controversy. Some experts fear “green militarisation” and an arms race between poachers and gamekeepers. Others believe deploying American former soldiers to fight criminals in South Africa undermines the troubled country’s already fragile state.”
You won’t find any of those “others” who are troubled by the military implications working in South Africa’s mainstream newsrooms.
Embedded presence
But, wrap a towel around trainees’ heads and call them “Abdul” and suddenly all sorts of creatures that have spent the years since 1994 staying well out of the public eye will come crawling out to spout their “informed” opinions about the dangers of “terrorists”.
Seven years ago, Vetpaw was already spreading its influence: “(Tate’s) teams now work on a dozen private game reserves covering a total of around 200 000 hectares in Limpopo …
“One advantage for local landowners is the protection heavily armed combat veterans provide against the violent break-ins feared by so many South Africans, particularly on isolated rural farmsteads. The team has also run training courses for local guides and security staff.”
Does the presence of “heavily armed combat veterans” really make you feel safer?
Still, that’s not the main reason why they’re here. The Guardian tells us they’re here for some much-needed “peace of mind” after working hard to destroy other people’s countries and murdering their citizens.
Mentally unstable
“Everyone gets PTSD (Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder) when they come back from war … you are never going to get the brotherhood, the intensity again … [There are] all these veterans with billions of dollars of training and the government doesn’t use them. I saw a need in two places and just put them together,” Tate told The Guardian.
But the prospect of heavily armed, mentally unstable men patrolling our land without any outside controls is not alarming to our mainstream media.
Mpumalanga police were alarmed three weeks ago when they raided the Milites Dei (God’s Army) training school outside White River. The similarities between facilities at the camp to conventional military facilities were too concerting to overlook.
The fact that the facilities looked definitely military was the main reason why the police acted and arrested the men.
Yet, this was no cause for alarm when The Guardian visited Tate’s facilities: “The Vetpaw base in the bush in Limpopo, though considerably less spartan than most ‘forward operating bases’, is familiar to anyone who has spent time with US forces. There is a rack of helmets and body armour, a detailed map pinned to the wall and banners with the insignia of US special forces hung above a dining table. There is the banter, and the jargon. The team talks of tactical missions, intel, and ‘bad guys’.
‘Kill everything’
“Despite lines on a whiteboard reading ‘In the absence of a plan move towards the sound of gunfire and kill everything,’ Tate says he has selected combat veterans because they will resist the temptation to use lethal force.”
Aaaaaaaah, Grandpa! That assurance is bound to relieve a few headaches and comfort our security forces who might fear the former special forces soldiers might be operating out of a US psyops textbook.
“This is textbook counterinsurgency here. It’s unconventional warfare,” says Kevin, a British-born veteran who quit US elite special forces last year after a decade and a half largely on active duty, frequently in close quarter combat. “Shooting and killing is easy. The hardest thing is not shooting but figuring stuff out … if you kill someone do you turn a family, a village against you?
“Like other members of Vetpaw, Kevin did not want to be identified by his full name.”
Someone didn’t tell Kevin not to draw parallels between their operations with military procedure, particularly if you’re mentally unstable and think “shooting and killing is easy”.
Winning Hearts And Minds
But the parallels don’t end there.
Remember WHAM? That’s the term apartheid’s security forces used in the townships in the Nineties when they realised brute force alone would not end democratic enthusiasm.
So, they turned to WHAM – Winning Hearts And Minds, a module straight out of the CIA’s Vietnam textbook that former Defence Minister Magnus Malan was schooled in while serving alongside US intelligence officers in Saigon in the Sixties.
“The thinking is rooted in the ‘hearts and minds’ approach developed by the US military a decade ago when senior officers realised their massive firepower was winning battles, but not campaigns.
“Tate says poachers coerce local communities into providing safe houses or other support – much as US army officers once explained assistance given to insurgents in Iraq or Afghanistan.”
So, we’re talking about mentally unstable, professional killers with heavy weapons applying strategies learned in the killing fields of Iraq and Afghanistan to the peaceful Mpumalanga bushveld.
Nothing to worry about here, folks – the white farmers are happy. Certainly, there’s no reason for the mainstream, white media to be worried.
Wooden weapons
But let’s return to Haftar’s boys who’re getting ready to board planes back to their war-torn country.
They had been receiving training via webcam from Haftar’s forces, whistleblowers told City Press and Rapport this past weekend.
Some were formerly part of the Islamic State group, who had been paid to join the Haftar’s LAAF. Middle East Eye was unable to independently verify the claim.
The 95 men received training in sea survival, parachuting and marksmanship. One source told Rapport that the fighters trained with wooden weapons because instructors were afraid any real weapons would be used against them.
The source added that the men were part of a larger group of over 900 Libyans who were supposed to train in South Africa in preparation to join Haftar’s forces. South Africa did not comment on the report.
America’s Inkatha
But the newspapers’ “experts” fail to realise their intel is about 30 years out of date. They fail to appreciate Haftar is one of the West’s “good” bad guys who enjoys rich funding streams from the UAE that founded ISIS on request from former US foreign secretary Hillary Clinton back in 2013.
ISIS has basically been to the US what Inkatha was to apartheid in the Nineties.
So, you can expect the West’s bush telegraph to start chattering soon to close down the local media’s rubbernecking on the sidelines of the “Yankee Jihad” movement.
Haftar was a former colonel under long-time ruler Muammar Gaddafi until he was exiled to the United States in 1991. He returned to Libya in 2011 following the country’s revolution and maintain significant assets in the US.
Not quite Osama bin Laden, is he?
In addition to the ongoing violence in Libya over oil revenues, Haftar’s forces are also very busy in Sudan where they’re helping the Rapid Support Forces sow mayhem and genocide across the country.
Potential war crimes by Haftar’s forces and allied groups have been well documented, including a Middle East Eye report in 2020 which revealed mass graves found in the city of Tarhuna.