John Lasker

COLUMBUS, Ohio, Dec 22 2005 (IPS) — Black South Africans gave them a slang term, recalls Les Switzer, naming them the “Saracens”. And when they were called in to break up a protest, he also remembers the terror they brought.

“The mere presence of a Saracen struck fear in the people,” said Switzer, a long-time journalism professor at the University of Houston in the U.S. state of Texas. “(They) were like an evil presence wandering through the township.”

Over a span of 30 years, Switzer was a U.S. expatriate, working as a journalist and teacher during South Africa’s apartheid regime.

Implemented by the white-dominated Afrikaner government, the apartheid policy strove for segregation and domination over blacks, who constituted 70 percent of the population.

After writing stints with some of South Africa’s underground papers, Switzer took a teaching position at Rhodes University in Grahamstown. Following the funeral of an anti-apartheid martyr in 1980, he says the Eastern Cape township had a short fuse, and an uprising would soon engulf it.

“The South African government, not trusting the local police, had sent in armed troops and Saracens to monitor the proceedings, and the result was a foregone conclusion,” he said.

The Saracens, says Switzer, author of “South Africa’s Alternative Press: Voices of Protest and Resistance, 1880s-1960s”, are the huge and unmistakable armoured trucks the South African government used to quell uprisings. Their official name was the “Buffel”, which is Afrikaans for Buffalo.

When he recently heard the U.S. military was implementing a heavily-armoured truck very familiar to the Saracen, he wasn’t surprised.

At this moment, the Pentagon is rushing these U.S.-made trucks into battle. There are two types. One is called the “Buffalo”, which is mostly used for bomb clearance. Then there’s the “Cougar”, which is smaller yet more versatile.

Switzer says their size “is unforgettable”. Both tower over the flat, low-to-ground Humvees. Their narrow, V-shaped hulls direct blasts detonated underneath vehicles out and away from passengers.

The company that manufactures them – Force Protection Inc. of Charleston, SC – admits the V-shaped design is indeed taken from past South African designs. They also say some of the same engineers that designed the original Buffel for the South African military are now employed by Force Protection.

“At the end of Apartheid (in the early ’90s), many of South Africa’s best engineers and scholars, and scientists left the county,” said Switzer.

Others in the U.S. are also scrutinising the military’s decision to adopt such a controversial symbol of oppression.

Stationed in Africa during the 1980s, a U.S. Special Forces veteran from the Midwest does not say when or how he first became familiar with the heavily armoured trucks. But he is well aware of the emotions they evoke.

“To the ANC (African National Congress, and its supporters), the Buffalo is a hated symbol. It is like how Jews view the swastika. South African blacks despise them,” he told IPS. He refused to give his name because he now runs a high-level state government office.

During uprisings, he says, the vehicles would be driven directly into rioting crowds. Armed soldiers would then pop out of a top hatch and fire into their countrymen, he says. ANC supporters returned fire with rocks that clanged harmlessly off the thick armour.

While their legacy seems set in stone, perhaps the vehicles can redeem themselves. By all accounts that is what the U.S. military is betting on.

Since Secretary of Defence Donald Rumsfeld told one concerned U.S. soldier, “You have to go to war with the Army you have, not the Army you want,” Force Protection has won several Pentagon contracts totaling well over a hundred million dollars.

An estimated 75 Buffalos and Cougars now roam both theatres in Iraq and Afghanistan. More are on the way. So far their records are perfect, claims Force Protection. Not a single coalition soldier has died in a Buffalo or Cougar when struck with an improvised explosive.

“The response from the field has been overwhelmingly positive,” said Jeff Child, a spokesman for Force Protection. He adds that the vehicles uncovered roughly 200 improvised explosives in and around central Iraq last winter alone.

“Two of my men in Ramadi survived an IED (improvised explosive device) attack while in the Cougar,” said Lt. Cameron Chen, part of a U.S. military ordinance removal team. “So I am a believer. All agree that it’s the safest vehicle.”

The rising popularity of the Buffalo and Cougar raises a significant question. Can two trucks turn the tide in Iraq?

One military analyst believes the Buffalo and Cougar won’t single-handedly defeat the Iraqi insurgency in the near term.

“You have to keep in mind there are 10,000 vehicles in Iraq that are subject to ambush,” said John Pike, director of GlobalSecurity.org, which focuses on worldwide military news. “I wouldn’t count on the (Buffalo and Cougar) having an immediate impact because the military doesn’t have the sufficient numbers to make a difference.”

Even if the U.S. military could deliver to Iraq large numbers of both vehicles, it may not matter how thick their armour is, he says. The insurgency will fabricate improvised explosives large enough to obliterate whatever the U.S. military throws into the fray.

“Several hundred pounds of explosives will level a small office building,” said Pike. “A thousand-pound bomb is like a hot knife through butter. IEDs of this size have blown away Abrams [tanks]. Keep in mind there’s no shortage of ammo in Iraq.”

Yet because of their prowess at destroying buried bombs in Iraqi soil – for instance, the Buffalo can be fitted with a robotic arm – these battleships on wheels could be the answer to one of the globe’s biggest problems: the forgotten landmine.

Force Protection bristled at the South African connection. In a letter responding to questions by IPS, the company wrote an that any “attempt to tie the technology” to the apartheid regime of South Africa “is as outrageous as attempting to tie Boeing commercial aircraft to the German invention of the jet engine during WWII”.