Mercenaries Moving Into the Mainstream

March 7, 2002 -- 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.

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Perfect Work Environment

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.

It was Rwanda where the U.N. once considered hiring mercenaries. In the wake of the genocide, when the killers were hiding among refugees in eastern Zaire. Kofi Annan, who was then the man in charge of U.N. peacekeeping operations, wanted to disarm the fighters so that humanitarian assistance could flow to the civilians.

Click here to learn mercenary lingo.

The rules of engagement enabled much of the violence in Rwanda to unfold, and mercenaries with the same rules of engagement would have been placed in a similar situation. But a mercenary force deployed with broad international agreement operating outside of U.N. rules might have brought about a different set of results.

The U.N. has traditionally been against the use of mercenaries. A U.N. convention against mercenaries — adopted by the General Assembly in 1989 — is gathering dust because not enough member states have ratified it.

Indeed, international thinking on mercenaries appears to be headed in the other direction.

Britain's foreign secretary recently presented a consultation paper suggesting they might be able to do a better, more cost-effective job than forces aligned with the United Nations.

"A strong and reputable private military sector might have a role in enabling the U.N. to respond more rapidly and effectively to crises," said Jack Straw.

Sandline's commercial adviser, Michael Grunberg, called the potential use of PMCs, "clearly a viable option."

British Prime Minister Tony Blair agreed, with some qualifications. "I think what the foreign secretary is saying, rather, is that the use of mercenaries has to come within some proper system of regulation.

"Up until now that has not been the case and that is why it is important that we make sure there are proper rules in the use of mercenaries," Blair said last month.

However, Labour parliamentarian Andrew Mackinlay called the proposals "repugnant" while Conservative Foreign Affairs spokesman Michael Ancram said his party supported the use of mercenaries "so long as they are properly accredited."

A Changed Image

One reason for the change in attitude is that the mercenary business has changed as well.

There are few characters left like "Black" Jacques Schramme and "Mad" Mike Hoare, mercenaries held responsible for a series of coups across Africa in the 1960s and 1970s.

Instead, most mercenaries today work for organizations that identify themselves as PMCs, or Private Military Corporations, with appropriately conservative, corporate names like DynCorp, MPRI and Control Risks Group.

Instead of coming off as unshaven and unscrupulous, they dress in suits and ties and strive for a disciplined, organized appearance like owners and employees of any registered business — albeit one staffed by former military personnel with years of active duty behind them.

The PMCs offer insurance and benefits for their employees, and operate under contract from corporations and governments, providing services from protection to training.

While combat troops have yet to be privatized, much of the rest of the military sector is already there, experts said.

Virginia-based MPRI had a role in the $1.3 billion military aid package "Plan Colombia," by performing a review of Colombia's military for the U.S. government.

In 1998, DynCorp, one of the U.S. government's top contractors, provided contract police officers for its part in the international mission to verify the withdrawal of Serb forces from Kosovo.

"Soldiers on peacekeeping missions in Bosnia joke that they're only missing one patch, the one that says 'sponsored by Brown & Root,'" said Larry Taulbee, a professor of political science at Emory University in Atlanta.

Brown & Root is the U.S. military's primary contractor for support in the Balkans. Between 1995 and 2000, it reaped more than $2 billion in federal contracts to support U.S. troops on peacekeeping missions.

Continuing Worries

Although mercenaries' new image may help allay some concerns about using them, they still face many objections.

One of the most frequently raised concerns is that the personnel of private militaries could be less disciplined and less accountable.

But the British Foreign Office's consultation paper says that in Africa, private companies often have greater respect for human rights than government forces do.

Others said they might also be easier to license and control if they were brought into the mainstream.

Kevin O'Brien, a military affairs expert for the Rand Corporation in Cambridge, England, said PMCs might reasonably argue that they trade on their reputation if they allow embarrassments to happen. "You ruin your brand," he said.

The amount of discipline depends on the individual organization, said Taulbee. "Those things happen even if you got regular soldiers," he said.

Another issue is loyalty. The idea of employing mercenaries looks like it "severs something really fundamental" between citizens and their duties to the state, Taulbee said.

However, he said the loyalty of the actual companies themselves would probably be hard to compromise. "With a $2 billion contract you think you're going to go out and look somewhere else?" he said.

However, some countries would need to resolve laws which, in some cases, make it illegal for their citizens with military training to serve as soldiers of fortune.

O'Brien says there are also concerns some mercenary businesses may not be transparent enough. Others, evoking the plot of the seminal fiction book on mercenaries, The Dogs of War, fear they may have too many links to natural resource companies.

The Dogs of War is about an industrialist who hires a group of mercenaries to take over an African country, finding it cheaper than paying for its mineral resources.

Another worry is that the PMCs will allow governments to create covert proxy rule in other nations.

Measured Support

However, those defending the idea of using PMCs or mercenaries have been careful not to propose a complete privatization of the military.

Sandline, a London-based PMC, suggested in a statement that "in the absence of participation in U.N. forces by countries such as the U.K. and U.S., perhaps the U.N. should consider a more radical solution — continuing to accept the offers of help from other nations but supplementing this by contracting with private military companies."

One of Sandline's most prominent operations was in the late 1990s when the Papua New Guinea government hired it to provide troops, training and military hardware to defeat secessionist guerrillas who had fought the local military for years on the copper-rich island of Bougainville.

Sandline was to receive a slice of the profits from the copper mine on Bougainville, which had been shut down during the years of conflict.

The plan turned sour, however, when key elements of the military, angered that mercenaries were brought into the conflict without their knowledge, rebelled and seized control of the parliament building. Sandline was forced to abandon the operation.

It is unlikely that advocates of the use of mercenary forces would tout Sandline's experience in New Guinea as a success. But as low-intensity conflicts proliferate and draw new commitments for United Nations peacekeepers, it is clear that nations reluctant to suffer casualties will continue to look for alternatives to sending their own country's troops.