Posted on 08/06/2003 9:12:04 AM PDT by Oorang
Scare Tactics Why are Liberian soldiers wearing fright wigs? By Mark Scheffler Posted Friday, August 1, 2003, at 9:56 AM PT
Bewigged fighter sends otherworldly message
Few things exemplify the chaos of Liberia more than the sight of doped-up, AK-47-wielding 15-year-olds roaming the streets decked out in fright wigs and tattered wedding gowns. Indeed, some of the more fully accessorized soldiers in Charles Taylor's militia even tote dainty purses and don feather boas. Why did this practice begin and what is the logic behind it?
The cross-dressing combatants blipped onto the Western press's radar screen right around the time the Liberian Civil War started on Christmas Eve in 1989. During Taylor's rebel siege on Monrovia in the '90s, his band of dolled-up marauders—aka the National Patriotic Front of Liberia—put on one of the most disturbing horror shows the planet has ever seen. Between 1989 and 1997, 150,000 Liberians were murdered, countless others were mutilated, and 25,000 women and girls were raped. The NPFL's shock-and-awe antics were apparent from the very start of the conflict. In an essay in Liberian Studies Journal, an administrator at Cuttington University College tells a story of Taylor's forces storming the rural campus during the initial stages of the war in "wedding [dresses], wigs, commencement gowns from high schools and several forms of 'voodoo' regalia. … [They] believed they could not be killed in battle."
According to the soldiers themselves, cross-dressing is a military mind game, a tactic that instills fear in their rivals. It also makes the soldiers feel more invincible. This belief is founded on a regional superstition which holds that soldiers can "confuse the enemy's bullets" by assuming two identities simultaneously. Though the accoutrements and garb look bizarre to Western eyes, they are, in a sense, variations on the camouflage uniforms and face paint American soldiers use to bolster their sense of invisibility (and, therefore, immunity) during combat. Since flak jackets or infrared goggles aren't available to the destitute Liberian fighters, they opt for evening gowns and frilly blouses.
The cross-dressing "dual identity" isn't just a source of battlefield bravado, though. Cross-dressing has deep historical roots in West African rites-of-passage rituals involving "medicine men" who would recommend wearing masks, talismans, and bush attire as a means of obtaining mystical powers. Rebels dressed in gowns and wigs and adorned with bones, leaves, and other "forest culture" trappings are practicing a modern variation on this technique of using symbolic "clothing" to access sources of power far stronger than their own. And in common Liberian initiation rituals—which exist in memory throughout the country, if not always in practice—a boy's passage to adulthood is symbolically represented by the donning of female garb. He must first pass through a dangerous indeterminate zone between male and female identity before finally becoming a man. A soldier dressed in women's clothes—or Halloween masks, or shower caps, etc.—on the battlefield is essentially asserting that he's in a volatile in-between state. The message it sends to other soldiers is, "Don't mess with me, I'm dangerous."
Liberia's adult warlords appropriated and updated these rites-of-passage rituals in order to form tight-knit proxy fighting forces. The strongmen persuaded impoverished youths to join their battalion by offering them the chance to be part of a secret society and attain supernatural powers. In a country where the young had few if any options, this was seen as an opportunity to "be somebody."
After Charles Taylor's Cuttington University attack, other offshoot Liberian militias vying to control the country embarked upon similar gender-bending rampages. One of the more notorious henchmen of the era was Joshua Milton Blahyi, a commander whose nom de guerre was "General Butt Naked." Hired for his ferocity by rebel leader and Taylor contemporary Roosevelt Johnson, his "Butt Naked Battalion" consisted of drug-fueled teens who went into battle in flowing dresses and colorful wigs. The general himself reportedly wore only laced-up boots and his weapon.
Not surprisingly, these troops became poster children for the war. Dressed in gowns and shower caps and "fortified by amphetamines, marijuana and palm wine [they] sashayed irresistibly for photographers," writes Bill Berkely in The Graves Are Not Yet Full: Race, Tribe and Power in the Heart of Africa. "Liberia's fifteen minutes of infamy seemed to spring full-blown out of the most sensational Western images of Darkest Africa."
Today, some 14 years after Taylor's troops first began their march toward Monrovia, Blahyi has put his clothes back on and supposedly found God. Prince Y. Johnson*, who tortured former Liberian president Samuel K. Doe to death in 1990 and recorded it on video, is talking about returning from exile in Nigeria with a promise to solve problems with "elections, not guns" once Taylor is gone. And Taylor himself is sitting in his Monrovian compound being shelled by new bands of rebels wearing bathrobes.
Correction, Aug. 4, 2003: This article originally misstated the name of the man who tortured and killed former Liberian President Samuel K. Doe. It was Prince Y. Johnson who tortured and killed Doe, not Roosevelt Johnson.
Oh yes, and it's not at all limited to the locale or tribal cultures around Liberia.
During the Rhodesian counterinsurgency of the late 1970s, a pal of mine located there to pursue his occupation as a highway paver, a critical occupation when a large part of that fight was the mining of public roads to harass and terrorize the civilian forces and destroy the occasional military vehicle as well. One tale he related from that period is certainly germaine.
It seems two border-crossing terrorists had successfully pulled off their infiltration from Zambia, bringing along with them a Soviet TM-46 antitank mine. While inserting the fuse and arming the device, they noted that the slaked TNT filler inside was a crumbly dull yellow clumped powder, and decided to enhance the magic of the device by doubling its charge by surrounding the mine in the hole they'd dug for it with mealie meal, approximately the corn meal staple of the African diet in those parts. Trouble was, the ground was wet, making the meal swell up in a mound that betrayed the location of their little surprise. No problem.
They began tamping it down, stomping it back down flat, until in the best traditions of roadrunner foe Wiley Coyote, one of them jumped down directly atop the detonator, originally designed to go only beneath the weight of a heavy armoured vehicle, but which had been field modified to fire from the lesser weight of a civilian halfton farm pickup or passenger car. In any event, the combined weight and enthusiusm was enough.
The guy's stunnned partner was captured still alive and explained the African logic behind the event to the bemused troopies who took charge of him. Kids, don't try this at home with your antitank land mines....
Oh yes, and it's not at all limited to the locale or tribal cultures around Liberia.
During the Rhodesian counterinsurgency of the late 1970s, a pal of mine located there to pursue his occupation as a highway paver, a critical occupation when a large part of that fight was the mining of public roads to harass and terrorize the civilian forces and destroy the occasional military vehicle as well. One tale he related from that period is certainly germaine.
It seems two border-crossing terrorists had successfully pulled off their infiltration from Zambia, bringing along with them a Soviet TM-46 antitank mine. While inserting the fuse and arming the device, they noted that the slaked TNT filler inside was a crumbly dull yellow clumped powder, and decided to enhance the magic of the device by doubling its charge by surrounding the mine in the hole they'd dug for it with mealie meal, approximately the corn meal staple of the African diet in those parts. Trouble was, the ground was wet, making the meal swell up in a mound that betrayed the location of their little surprise. No problem.
They began tamping it down, stomping it back down flat, until in the best traditions of roadrunner foe Wiley Coyote, one of them jumped down directly atop the detonator, originally designed to go only beneath the weight of a heavy armoured vehicle, but which had been field modified to fire from the lesser weight of a civilian halfton farm pickup or passenger car. In any event, the combined weight and enthusiusm was enough.
The guy's stunnned partner was captured still alive and explained the African logic behind the event to the bemused troopies who took charge of him. Kids, don't try this at home with your antitank land mines....
Another point that reporters always miss is that African warfare is very different than Western warfare. In the West, we fight with the single purpose of destroying an enemy's ability to resist. In African warfare, combat is not traditionally conducted in a direct encounter with enemy forces. Traditional African warfare was geared towards capturing slaves, not killing people (which explains the failure of the musket to catch on in western Africa, even though Arab and European slavers were always ready to exchange guns for human cargo). Rather, in its modern incarnation, it is a hodge-podge of guerilla tactics, tribal vendettas and psychological bluff. Combat deaths are low, as most killing is done against defenseless civilians from rival tribes, as enslaving them is no longer an option.
Believe me: add in the assortment of Kalishnikovs, leftover WWII burp guns, RPGs and PK light machineguns, and they are indeed quite dangerous, and unstable. And neither are their traditional weapons to be overlooked, either, as they'll happily use them on unarmed or wounded victims.
Kewl Story Archy ......Thanks and Stay Safe !
Sun Tzu's Newswire Press Release - 9753
Monday, August 18, 1997, 6:45 pm U.S. Eastern Time
Out of Africa: Butt Naked Battalion
---- by Sun Tzu's Newswire Staff
An Associated Press story by Tina Susman contributed to this piece
In Monrovia, Liberia, Joshua Milton Blahyi was General Butt Naked
during Liberia's civil war that claimed up to 200,000 lives before
the warring factions signed a peace accord.
Blahyi was hired by warlord Roosevelt Johnson. His group of drugged
and drunken teenagers entered battle in drag wearing wigs, flowered
dresses, and carrying purses.
General Butt Naked, as Blahyi has been named in press dispatches out
of Monrovia, wore only his shoes as he led his Butt Naked Battalion
into battle.
Blahyi claimed a pact with the devil at age 11 consummated a satanic
ritual. He said he was required to perform human sacrifices and go
into battle naked to ensure his safety on the battlefield.
Many of Blahyi's sacrifices were small children, some taken underwater
as they played and others simply butchered.
In 1996 Blahyi claims that God told him that he was a slave to Satan
and from that Blahyi asserts that his conversion to an evangelical
religion began.
Blahyi is now an evangelical preacher in Monrovia.
Sources: AP, Aug. 4, 1997, Tina Susman, Sun Tzu Organization files
Well, there is a comparison to be made, but it's better compared under the heading of morale enhancement rather than a comparison of varying equipment.
The flag the Marines planted at Iwo Jima offered no practical shelter or protection from Japanese fire, but it was certainly a welcome sight, and the raising of it was more than just a symbolic act that deservedly endures today. That the totems and images Africans prefer tend to be more individual and personalized than the national flag WWII American Marines preferred may simply reflect a difference in cultural or tribal preference. The motivation as a morale enhancer is similar, however.
What is frightening in this article is that there are so many people who believe this kind of stuff. Not just in Africa but in many places. Look at all the people that believed Clinton. Rational, independent thought is a good thing. Unfortunately it is all too rare.
You happen to catch the name of the Nigerian general heading the advance team sent by the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) to assess the situation in Monrovia? I swear, a fiction writer couldn't come up with details as bizarre as those to be found in the Liberian mess.
The Liberian LURDs have more and better support weaponry; the San Franciscans more and better vehicles. The capabilities of the leadership of either group is questionable.
Akin to the Scottish practice of flashing the enemy before a battle?
Possibly, though I believe Shaka's Zulus resorted to something similar while in ranks.
But I also recall an event from the U.S. Civil War/ War for Northern Dominance of undersupplied troops wearing dresses, skirts and fancy women's hats taken from the shops of a small town they had raided. Probably no wigs, however, and I doubt they were under any misapprehensions about their stylish outfits causing bullets to swerve.
-archy-/-
Either a Sudarev-designed PPS-43 or possibly the earlier PPS-42 version. As for its provenance, most any sort of weapon is liable to turn up most anywhere in Africa; the place is a collector's dream and an armourers and logistician's nightmare.
But the things also turned up in Rhodesia during the 1970s, and I believe were also used and possibly produced by the North Koreans for their airborne forces before being replaced with Kalishnikovs, making the surplus Sudarevs available as military aid to *National Liberation* movements- or paying customers with the right cash.
True, but the Marines on Iwo didn't delude themselves into the belief that raising a flag would offer anything other than a morale effect- which it did, amongst other things.
Believing that wearing a dress and a feather boa will deflect a bullet, and seeing that it doesn't, and continuing to act as if it does, is a simple inability to grasp the logic of cause and effect.
We tend to do things because they work. We discard them if they don't, and try something else until we find something that does work.
I guess I am seeing this more as an issue of practical soldiering, rather than than a study in belief systems.
Hey, I hope they keep on believing this stuff. We may have to fight them someday.
My 'in your face' tone was meant for the author, not yourself or any other poster on this forum, and was an expression of frustration with newsies. I try to keep my disagreements with others on a civil plane, and focused on the idea and not the poster. No offense was intended.
(1) M-16s require much more maintenance than a Kalashnikov or its Soviet-era ilk. Your average African militiaman is simply too poorly educated, untrained and unfamiliar with mechanical devices to really maintain anything complicated.
(2) The primary weapons dealers in Africa are either Chinese, Ukranian or Serbian. Their wares are almost exclusively former Soviet weapons, or their modern counterparts.
(3) Africa is awash in Kalashnikov ammo. It makes military and business sense to keep your men supplied with stuff that can easily be repleneshed locally.
As a combat vet, this is why I thought Apocalypse Now despite all it's sureality, was one of the most realistic war movies ever made. It captured the unbelievable, upside down insanity of war.
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