The friend who saved the day

Lt-Gen KJ Singh (retd)

BLAISE MATUIDI, the French midfielder of African origin, always brings back memories of another Matuidi from my peacekeeping days in Angola.

As part of a United Nations Peacekeeping Mission in 1991, I was deployed at Cuito Cuanavale, where some fierce battles were fought between the government troops backed by Russia and Cuba and the rebels supported by America and South Africa.

The UN had deployed us in small multinational teams of five members, not as ‘Blue Helmets’ but ‘Blue Berets’. We were totally unarmed — with the UN flag and insignia being our only protection. Every team had one Portuguese speaker. Ours was an Argentinean marine officer named Alvarez. He spoke Portuguese reluctantly as he considered it to be a crude imitation of his mother tongue, Spanish.

Being Alvarez’s roommate, I was forced to learn Portuguese. It is here that I met Gen Bula Matuidi, who knew some words of English. Part of the rebel forces, General Matuidi had a soft spot for Goa. He had served in the Portuguese army during the Goa operations in 1961 and fondly remembered his tenure in the coastal state. Thanks to this connection, we became friends.

After my initial tenure, I got transferred to Luanda, the capital city, as Regional Chief Operations Officer. A civil war broke out in Angola after the bitterly disputed elections and rebels took control in Caxito, the neighbouring provincial capital. The UN had deployed some international aid workers there, who were facing some health problems and we were given the task of rescuing them.

In the complex web of UN logistics, we had MI-17, chartered helicopters piloted by Russians and operated by Skylink, a Canadian company. The pilots didn’t speak Portuguese and knew very few words of English. On November 10, 1992, at 1455 hours, a white UN helicopter 637-05 was descending to land at a school playground in Caxito. It was a coordinated mission with information provided to the rebels’ liaison office in Luanda. Suddenly, we heard ominous sounds of machine gun burst, splintering of glass and saw one of the pilots being hit in the arm. I was standing between the pilots, indicating to them the landing area. I shouted: “Luanda! Return Luanda!” The pilots, who were Afghanistan war veterans, held their nerve despite the undercarriage suffering graze impact of a rocket. The reserve pilot pulled the chopper out of fire, miraculously limping back to Luanda.

An enquiry by the rebel HQ confirmed that the lookout detachment had indeed fired machine gun bursts and two rockets with one making grazing contact with the undercarriage. The rebels expressed helplessness and said that, as an underground guerrilla group, they didn’t have control over all the elements.

We now had to plan another mission. However, our problem was that two colleagues from the earlier mission had dropped out and nobody wanted to volunteer. Being chief of operations, I hardly had any choice.

We hit upon a brainwave. I had spotted Gen Bula Matuidi at the rebel HQ at Luanda. We insisted that Bula accompanied us and the fact was announced on rebel radio, Cocker Nacao, for one week before our scheduled visit. On November 17, we made our way to Caxito with Bula standing between the pilots. Luckily, a Swedish Red Cross civilian had agreed to accompany us in what was being hyped as suicidal foray.  Thanks to better coordination and Bula, as anchor, the mission was uneventful and successful. We could rescue some of the sick workers, including two brave women, restoring faith in the UN system and some trust with the rebels.