Background
Libya Arab Spring Rescuing Oil Workers was our given objective of evacuating British and EU oil workers who were in Libya and desperately heading for the Algerian border when timing was critical. Gaddafi loyalists were in hot pursuit of them, either to kill them or more probably take them as hostages.
Plan In Motion
Back in Algiers we were closely monitoring the situation that was developing in Libya. On 27 February, the UK mounted a military mission involving Royal Air Force (RAF) Hercules and Special Air Service (SAS) soldiers that flew into the Libyan desert and managed to evacuate 150 oil workers.
However, it was well known that a large number of foreign oil workers were still stranded in the south and west of the country.
The Ambassador immediately contacted London who agreed that we should try to mount an evacuation operation. This one would be a consular led mission as opposed to a military one and we had to move fast.
The latest intelligence we had on the oil workers was that they were heading for the Libyan town of Ghadames which lies on the Libyan/Algerian border.
It was decided that I would lead the mission and would be accompanied by Mustapha, one of our Embassy drivers who would act as interpreter, the British Defence Attache (a Colonel) and an armed Royal Military Policeman (RMP), one of the Ambassador’s close protection team.
The reason for the military presence would be their ability, using their special communications equipment, to liaise with UK military back in London for intelligence updates. I then visited the Algerian Ministry of Foreign Affairs to get their approval for the trip and to ask for accompanying security en-route.
For this mission, we had decided to drive.
Start Of Mission:
It was a considerable distance, some 1300 Kms from Algiers to our proposed base of operations in the town of In-Amenas through the Atlas mountains and snaking through the northern Sahara desert. In addition, some of the provinces we would traverse were known to have active AQIM (Al Qaeda in the Maghreb) cells.
The Algerians agreed to provide security escorts for the whole of our trip and they did a wonderful job of looking after us the whole time.