Poacher Wars

After the Rhodesian War, Darrell Watt, hero soldier of the Rhodesian SAS and central character in A Handful of Hard Men, became the personal bodyguard to Lebanese Prime Minister Rafic Hariri. Under his protection Hariri survived, and thanks to Watt, was persuaded to buy Mushi, the enormous game conservancy on the banks of the great Kafue River with its elephant herds, many lions and some of the biggest crocodiles on the African continent. After Watt's departure, Hariri was assassinated. Today poachers have made such severe inroads into the Zambian elephant population that Darrell is left with the last big herd of about 500 elephant which he zealously guards with his 40 game guards armed with AK 47s. In the past decade he has been fighting an anti-poacher war. He has arrested and handed over to the police 600+ poachers and recovered about 400 illegal firearms. The tentacles of poaching stretch all the way back to China, as demonstrated by the recent discovery of an attempted smuggling of illegal ivory in the Chinese diplomatic bag out of Dar es Salaam. Now ill, and still holding out on his own, it is time to tell his story.