A fine soldier

Last year, Lt Gen Opande was inducted into the International Fellows Hall of Fame of the National Defence University, Washington DC. FRANKLIN AWORI talked to the fine soldier.Lieutenant General Daniel Opande considered himself a man of steel, as most soldiers would, until he visited a camp for the internally displaced in Free Town, Sierra Leone. 

“I saw the girl and the mother and something was not just right”.

Mother and daughter’s hands had been reduced to unsightly stumps, courtesy of a mad rebel leader, Fodah Sankoh, who was fighting the government of Ahmad Tejan Kabah. For strange reasons, the former corporal and cameraman believed in chopping off the hands of real and imagined enemies, some say to prevent them from voting!

Considered one of Kenya’s best commanders, Opande was recently inducted into the International Fellows Hall of Fame of the National Defence University, Washington DC, in recognition of his peace-keeping career that had taken him to  the West African nation and the then equally war-torn Liberia, Angola and Mozambique.

Opande, who served as Kenya's Vice Chief of General Staff from 1998 to 2000, picked up the girl from the mother’s arms and held her close. Surprisingly, there was no emotion in her eyes.

“She didn't even cry… she had seen so much. I was very close to shedding tears.” 

The encounter with the Sierra Leonean girl would imbue him with the drive to do whatever it would take to restore peace in the West African country.

He had flown into Sierra Leone under UN mandate to help restore peace where law and order were, just like in the neighbouring Liberia, alien concepts.

The year was 2000 shortly after UN peacekeepers, including Kenyans had been killed and others kidnapped.

Before the deployment, Opande was part of a group that had sought to secure the release of  the kidnapped soldiers.

“I called Liberian President Charles Taylor, whom I knew well, and told him to assist in freeing the UN peace keepers because he had links with the rebels.”  (Taylor is facing trial at The Hague for crimes against humanity for supporting Sankoh’s murderous ways.) 

It was no easy task. If the relatively war-hardened India (against Pakistan) and Jordan (against Israel) had decided to withdraw their troops from the chaotic country, how far would a Kenyan General go?

Probably these were the thoughts in Opande’s mind when the then Chief of General Staff, General Daudi Tonje, dispatched him to the urgent mission in Sierra Leone. “Why he picked on me, I don't know,” recalls Opande, whose childhood career choice was engineering, but ended up in the military after his A’ levels in 1963.

In 1989, Opande was the head of the Kenyan contingent and the UN mission's second in command in Namibia where Swapo guerrillas under Sam Nujoma had finally won their motherland’s independence from Apartheid South Africa. A year later in 1990, he served for three years in Mozambique as a key negotiator between  the government and Alphonse Dhlakama’s Renamo guerrillas.

Between 1993 and 1995 he was appointed by the UN to head the Liberian UN peace-keeping troops. 

However, the Sierra Leone mission made him more anxious since it came a few years after the UN failed mission in Liberia. He was determined to avoid a repeat performance.

Opande threw himself into work as the commander of the 17,000-strong force spending sleepless nights trying to keep Sankoh’s United Revolutionary Front guerrillas and government forces, from slaughtering each other and in the process, hapless civilians.

“My body took a lot of beating,” says Opande, smiling lightly. “I was getting older and the strain of the job was taking its toll,” recalls the Lieutenant General who graduated from National Defence University in USA in 1987 with a Masters degree in National Security Strategies.  

But strain had already started showing on the commander in 1993 when Opande was diagnosed with high blood pressure as he reconciled the Renamo and Frelimo fighters in Mozambique.

“No price is too high for peace,” says the 63-year old general.

“I never slowed down even after diagnosis. I just took precautions and kept the disease on check.” 

But the price would be higher than he had reckoned. His wife, Rose, died during his assignment in Liberia in 1994. ”That was tough..... you pay such a high price for peace,” he mutters softly, completely lost in his world.

He pauses for a while as a tear drops before gaining composure.

Apparently, the images of tough-looking soldiers in battle fatigues and happy families hugging them at the airport en route or from various trouble spots belie the  trauma that peacekeepers experience: At least 33 Kenyan soldiers have died in peace keeping missions across the world since the country started active peace keeping involvement 26 years ago. And, it doesn’t happen to Kenyans only.

Lt-General Romeo Dallaire, who headed the UN Force Mission in Rwanda ended up with deep psychological problems. In his highly revealing book Shake Hands With The Devil, he gives a glimpse of the traumatic experience of peace keepers and recounts his experience. 

“ ....Four years after I had gotten home, my mind and my body decided to give in. The final straw was my trip back to Africa... the memories, the smells and the sense of evil returned with a vengeance. Within a year and a half, I was given a medical discharge from the army.... I was suffering, like so many other troops who had served with me in Rwanda, from an injury called post-traumatic stress,” writes Dallaire.

The book also sheds light on “the vile and sometimes destructive politics” at the United Nations that has in the past led to failed missions like that of Rwanda, where hundreds of thousands of Tutsis and moderate Hutus were massacred in 1994 as overwhelmed UN soldiers watched.

Lt. General Dallaire visited Opande in Sierra Leone several times, and the two discussed their traumatic experiences and challenges of their jobs.

“The anger, stress and desperation sometimes get to the soldiers, exerting a lot of pressure on their bodies,” says Opande.

So, how did he release the stress? “Sports,” he replies.

Not even rockets and artillery fire would prevent him from teeing off. Golf was the key to maintaining his sanity.

In Liberia, Opande would drive for 45 minutes through a mined rebel held territory to reach a golf course.

Sometimes he would negotiate safe passage to the golf course or just flex his muscles as the head of the UN forces.

He would sometimes tee off alone at the nine-hole course or find company in one of two other brave people.

“After a round of golf, I felt much better and functioned much more effectively,” says the handicap 16 Opande whose passion for sport started 30 years ago.

Golf or no golf, Sierra Leone was quickly becoming another Rwanda. One day, Opande got word about a massacre in a small village at the border between Sierra Leone and Guinea in an area controlled by rebels.

“The jungle village was completely cut off from the rest of the country. I thought about it and decided that I had to go there, irrespective of the danger.” 

After hours of flight in three helicopters, Opande arrived at the scene of the massacre. “The first thing that caught our eyes up in the air were birds scavenging for the dead and smoke coming from burnt houses.” 

The deaths prompted Opande to make one of the toughest decisions he had ever taken as a UN peace commander. He decided to spread thin his small force across the country to protect civilians.

His superiors in New York immediately questioned the sustainability of his move.

In a tele-conference, he replied: “Gentlemen, you have given me a job to do and to the best of my ability, I will just do that. This is my personal decision and any commander takes risks. You should support me”. 

The General’s gamble paid off and in mid 2001, elections were successfully held in Sierra Leone. He stayed on up to 2003 by which time British paratroopers had captured Sankoh and handed him to over to the UN Special Court for Sierra Leone under whose custody he died of a stroke.  

But even as he flew out, Opande feared that hostilities would easily resume if the peace was not accompanied by economic stability, political freedom and a sense of hope for the people. It had happened elsewhere after the blue-helmets left.

“Our job as soldiers is done. It is your responsibility to sustain peace,”  he told the new Sierra Leone President Ahmad Kabbah. 

Opande's rallying slogan for peace was “No more war,” a slogan used recently by a US journalists to produce a documentary on the Sierra Leone peace process that prominently features the Kenyan commander.

But as Opande was preparing to fly back home and retire from the forces, the UN again requested  — for the second time — his assistance in stabilizing a deteriorating Liberia.

“I was looking forward to retirement after 42 years in the military, but here I was, being asked to jump into another war.” 

For a man never known to shy from challenges, he thrust himself into the new role with his characteristic vigour. After two years, about 100,000 rebels were disarmed and peace returned to the country with the election of Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf, the first female president in Africa.

Did he ever fire a shot in his 20 years of peacekeeping?

“Never, even with the danger. I had my general's stick and it’s the same I used to hit a 22-year old rebel commander terrorising people on the streets of Liberia. I wanted him to feel the pain he was causing innocent people. I threw away his cap in anger to amusement of soldiers under him and told him he didn't deserve to be called a general.” 

Opande was back home early 2005, hopefully for good.

“Observers say the years spent out cost you the top job of Chief of General Staff?” I venture. Opande seems puzzled and a little rattled by the question.

“I have never spent even a minute thinking about the job...... only one person can be CGS. I have no feelings that I never reached the top”. 

“But everybody I have talked to says you were one of the best soldiers Kenya has ever had and you deserved it...” A stern look follows before he declares my question “a compliment I surely don't deserve”.

Opande was often tipped for the top job and was even considered the top contender for the CGS when General Joseph Kibwana retired in 2005. By virtue of being the longest serving Lt-General, having being promoted in 1997, many felt the top job naturally belonged to him.

The other top contenders, including the current Chief of General Staff Jeremiah Kianga were all promoted to Lt-General in 2000 or later. But Opande is categorical: “ I don't see it as a let down. I served my country and that's my happiness.” 

He served under Major General Joseph Ndolo, Generals Jackson Mulinge, Mahamoud Mohamed, Daudi Tonje and Joseph Kibwana, soldiers he describes as excellent generals.

Opande the civilian plays golf, reads biographies, travels a lot and loves  communicating with friends and acquaintances across the world on the internet.

UN contracts still come besides giving lecturers abroad.