GABON’S NATIONAL CREDO: IF YOU
CANNOT COMPETE, CONDEMN!

by Motmou Benote

Let us begin with the obvious: gang violence and brigandage are unacceptable wherever they may originate. But unless Gabon ceases it efforts to make others accountable for the outlaw problem in its northern districts, casting blame elsewhere rather than engaging in an aggressive pursuit of homegrown malefactors and tribal agitators, its police and military forces will soon be pointing their guns skyward to guard against menaces from distant galaxies. . . .

They toiled in the steamy midmorning heat, a dozen men in jungle fatigues swinging their machetes through the parched brown sedge and waxy clusters of euphorbia beside the dirt road. They kept their sleeves rolled down and wore heavy protective gloves, taking care to cover their skin; the succulents were filled with burning latex juice, and had thorny spurs all along the ribs of their fat, tangled branches.

The men thrashed at the dense vegetation. Their head wraps were drenched with sweat. The camouflage hoods they would put on were still stuffed in their pockets, unneeded as yet. There were no eyes about to see them, and they were not in any hurry to feel the heavyweight Nomex/Kevlar fabric slicken against their streaming wet cheeks and brows.

They worked in the heat, worked ceaselessly, creating clear fields of fire for their ambush. Their shoulder-slung Milkor 5.56-mm semiautomatic rifles were of South African origin, as were the lightweight 60-mm commando mortars and multishot barrel-loaded grenade launchers hidden farther back in their 4×4. Two Shmel RPO-A infantry rocket tubes rounded out their arsenal of heavy weapons, the “Bumblebee” variants designed to fire fuel-air explosive warheads.

A Russian military specialty used to devastating effect during their Chechen campaigns, man-portable thermobaric hardware cannot be purchased cheaply on the black market.

The job’s sponsors had been anything but close fisted.

Although some members of the band had equipped their mortar tubes with reticulated, microprocessor-controlled electronic sights, most felt the attachments were burdensome and off-balancing to their aim. Kirdi and Kulani bushmen from northern Cameroon, they had been raised with the bow and arrow as rural Americans might be with the hunting rifle. Where seasonal drought defeats cultivation of food crops, live game is a vital source of protein, and the need to kill or go hungry does more to perfect one’s weaponry skills than gun sport. For these men, the ability to acquire a target was basic to their survival, and they were masters at calculating range and determining projectile trajectories.

Five hundred feet ahead of them, the dirt track plunged eastward into a thick, shaded grove of mixed okoumé and bubinga, where a smaller group chopped at the tree trunks with axes, perspiration glistening on their muscled brown arms, their blades snarling in epiphytic vines that coiled up and up around the bark into the leafy green crowns.