Mercenaries Moving Into the Mainstream

March 7 -- The mercenary has never been a popular figure.

From the barbarians in the ranks of the Roman military, to the European expatriates who wreaked havoc across post-colonial Africa, the mercenary generally has been identified as a combination of violence and filthy lucre.

The soldier-for-hire, it has long been said, is someone whose work does little more than bring death and misery upon others, and whose motivations are no nobler than money.

It's ironic then, that as nations struggle with the transition from the binary tensions of the Cold War to a globe wracked by small, isolated conflicts, some argue that mercenaries are exactly what the world needs.

Click here to learn mercenary lingo.

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Of the dozens of wars in the world today, the majority are "low-intensity conflicts," characterized by chaotic organization, sporadic fighting, and political — rather than military — objectives.

They are often more complicated than the wars the world has previously seen — but because they are so small, a focused application of force has, in some instances, resolved the problem.

The United Nations' peacekeeping forces could be called upon for such deployments, but red tape and differing priorities for member nations has diluted such forces in the past.

In 1995, South African mercenary outfit, Executive Outcomes, was called in to help the Sierra Leone government end the civil war and restore its rule. But after helping return the country to peace, the mercenaries were replaced with a U.N.-sponsored West African coalition of troops who subsequently lost control of the security situation in the country.

The deployment of the Nigerian-led West African force came about as a result, in part, of Western nations being unwilling to provide forces to the region in the wake of problematic experiences in places such as Somalia.

It became an example of wealthy governments, averse to casualties but unwilling to give up the cause of peacekeeping, cajoling poorer countries and their sometimes poorly trained soldiers to work in dangerous places.

U.N. peacekeepers went on to face failures in Bosnia and Rwanda.

During the Bosnian war in 1995, Serb forces invaded the U.N.-declared safe haven of Srebrenica and lightly armed peacekeepers were essentially powerless to prevent the slaughter of 7,500 Muslim men and boys.

In 1993, U.N. peacekeepers arrived in Rwanda to monitor a cease-fire between the Hutu-led government and Tutsi opposition, but failed to stop the genocide that claimed 800,000 lives a year later.