Operation Lock

“Anything approaching the change that came over his features I have never seen before, and hope never to see again. Oh, I wasn't touched. I was fascinated. It was as though a veil had been rent. I saw on that ivory face the expression of sombre pride, of ruthless power, of craven terror--of an intense and hopeless despair. Did he live his life again in every detail of desire, temptation, and surrender during that supreme moment of complete knowledge? He cried in a whisper at some image, at some vision--he cried out twice, a cry that was no more than a breath:

"The horror! The horror!” 

― Joseph Conrad, 

Heart of Darkness

"I've seen horrors... horrors that you've seen. But you have no right to call me a murderer. You have a right to kill me. You have a right to do that... but you have no right to judge me. It's impossible for words to describe what is necessary to those who do not know what horror means. Horror... Horror has a face... and you must make a friend of horror. Horror and moral terror are your friends. If they are not, then they are enemies to be feared. They are truly enemies! I remember when I was with Special Forces... seems a thousand centuries ago. We went into a camp to inoculate some children. We left the camp after we had inoculated the children for polio, and this old man came running after us and he was crying. He couldn't see. We went back there, and they had come and hacked off every inoculated arm. There they were in a pile. A pile of little arms. And I remember... I... I... I cried, I wept like some grandmother. I wanted to tear my teeth out; I didn't know what I wanted to do! And I want to remember it. I never want to forget it... I never want to forget. And then I realized... like I was shot... like I was shot with a diamond... a diamond bullet right through my forehead. And I thought, my God... the genius of that! The genius! The will to do that! Perfect, genuine, complete, crystalline, pure. And then I realized they were stronger than we, because they could stand that these were not monsters, these were men... trained cadres. These men who fought with their hearts, who had families, who had children, who were filled with love... but they had the strength... the strength... to do that. If I had ten divisions of those men, our troubles here would be over very quickly. You have to have men who are moral... and at the same time who are able to utilize their primordial instincts to kill without feeling... without passion... without judgment... without judgment! Because it's judgment that defeats us. "

- Col. Walter E. Kurtz

Apocalypse Now

"We train young men to drop fire on people, but their commanders won't allow them to write "fuck" on their airplanes because it's obscene..."

- Mistah Kurtz

(He dead)

WWF's 'Operation Lock'

In 1988, Prince Bernhard of the Netherlands, a co-founder of the WWF with Prince Philip, established a special hit squad within the WWF under the name of "Operation Lock," officially charged with stopping the poaching of elephants and rhinos in South Africa's national parks. Operation Lock hired Kilo Alpha Services (KAS), the private security firm led by Lt. Col. Ian Crooke. Crooke was a commander of the 23rd SAS Regiment, a part-time unit composed of reserve officers and soldiers frequently employed in SAS private security firms. His brother Alastair, the British vice consul in Pakistan, helped oversee the arming of the Afghan mujahideen.

Operation Lock is the secret behind the fratricidal warfare in South Africa between the African National Congress (ANC) and the Inkatha, which killed 10,000 people between 1990-95. KAS supervised the commando training of Zulu followers of Chief Mangosuthu Buthelezi's Inkatha, who were employed as game wardens and guards in several South African national parks. It also undertook the training of opposing Xhosa tribal followers of Nelson Mandela's ANC, in different parks. Beginning in 1989, these commando teams began what has since been referred to as "third force" killings: the slaughter of ANC and the rival Zulu cadre in such a way as to implicate each other.

In August 1991, Zimbabwean Minister for National Security Sydney Sekerayami accused KAS of "being a cover for the destabilization of southern Africa." In 1993, his government's investigations determined that the 1992 Boipatong anti-Zulu massacre was carried out by the "Crowbar squad," a Namibian anti-poaching unit created and trained by KAS.