Exploitation and robbery – colonial style – is alive and well and now, more than ever
mercenary soldiers are doing the dirty work. Unaccountable and secretive,
contracted armies are the preferred method powerful western states use to
destabilize governments and secure control of natural resources. With state
complicity, soldiers for hire are uninhibited by fear of prosecution and use
what ever means necessary to undermine national liberation movements and impose
imperialist chains and the rule of Western big business.
Private
armies are being used in covert operations in every major conflict around the
world. Their numbers are amassed from demobilized national armies and often
recruited from a violent, alienated population of ex-military and police whose
job prospects are limited. The financial backers of mercenary armies are
usually from the wealthy political elite and with a tendency to ruthlessness.
The
story of Blackwater Worldwide and its rich boss, Erik Prince, is well known. It
includes torture at Abu Graib, war crimes in the Nissor Square massacre in Iraq
and videos showing their soldiers for hire on ‘turkey shoots’. A former
employee alleged that Prince "views himself as a Christian crusader tasked
with eliminating Muslims and the Islamic faith from the globe," and that
the company "encouraged and rewarded the destruction of Iraqi life."
With so much bad press the name of the company was changed to Xe.
Simon
Mann and his failed African coup
Lesser
known but equally contemptible are the intrigues of British private military
companies. We were afforded a rare glimpse when Simon Mann of the British based
mercenary company Sandline International was recently pardoned after serving 4
of a 34-year sentence in Equatorial
Guinea for his role in the failed coup
attempt of 2004. Mann admitted attempting to acquire assault rifles, grenades,
anti-tank rocket launchers and other weapons from Zimbabwe Defense Industries
en route to overthrowing Teodoro Mbasogo Obiang, the President of the oil-rich
West African country.
Mann
and his group were offered $1.8 million and lucrative oil rights by the
Spanish-based opposition leader, Severo Moto, who was to depose Obiang.
Apparently, the plan unfolded with the full knowledge of the Spanish
government. Not surprising – since Equatorial
Guinea had excluded Spain, its former colonial master,
from access to their oil. Several British establishment figures and a
right-wing coterie of businessmen like former Conservative Party official and millionaire
Jeffrey Archer and Margaret Thatcher’s son, Mark Thatcher, have been implicated
as well. Talking about Thatcher, Mann said, "He was not just an investor.
I mean he came on board completely and became a part of the management
team." He was managing what Mann described as ‘a nice, orderly, gentlemanly coup d’etat.’
(BBC Storyville, Simon Mann’s African Coup)
British
big business implicated
Also
said to be involved is oil tycoon Ely Calil who is from a rich, well-connected
family based in Nigeria.
He brokers transactions between oil companies and African governments using
discreet payments and backroom deals. Like his cohorts, Mann was born into
privilege. As befits the heir to a brewing fortune, he studied at Eton,
followed by Sandhurst, the prestigious
military academy. From there, it was a natural progression to the Scots Guards,
an army regiment associated with royalty and the upper class of British society
and then rose swiftly to the rank of SAS commander. After serving in Cyprus, Central
America, Northern Ireland,
and the Gulf, he left the military to set up the South African based company
Executive Outcomes with his associate Tony Buckingham (now a successful
executive of Heritage Oil Corporation) in the early 1990s.
Executive
Outcomes specialized in the work of protecting businesses operating in conflict
zones and earned millions in places like Angola. They recruited most of
their soldiers from disbanded apartheid-era military and police units. Eeben
Barlow, another of the company’s founders, was a commander in the 32 Battalion
and the covert Special Forces organisation called the Civil Cooperation Bureau
that was involved in beatings, bombings and assassinations. Many of the 64
mercenaries arrested with Mann in the failed Equatorial
Guinea coup were former members of the 32 Battalion of South Africa.
In
the mid-1990s Mann went on to establish another private security firm called
Sandline International, which was linked to the civil war in Sierra Leone.
His partner was controversial former Scots Guardsman Tim Spicer, who defended
soldiers under his command after they shot dead a reportedly unarmed Catholic
civilian in Northern Ireland
in 1992.
Dirty
work in Papua New Guinea
In
1997 Sandline teamed up with Executive Outcomes in Papua New Guinea in a sequence of
events that came to be known as the ‘Sandline affair’. The government of Papua New Guinea hired Sandline (who
subcontracted Executive Outcomes) to suppress the Bougainville
rebellion. Bougainville is an island rich in
copper and gold with a large mine owned by a subsidiary of Rio Tinto. Disputes
over the social, financial and environmental impact of the mine resulted in the
creation of a mass secessionist movement led by the Bougainville Revolutionary
Army, who crippled the mine in acts of sabotage that forced it to close in
1989.
By
1996 a deal was struck with Sandline to help put down the rebellion and regain
control of the mine. The money for the $46 million contract was to be acquired
from cutbacks to the education and health ministries. The contract was approved
without a vote in Parliament and was implemented without the support or
knowledge of the head of the military, Jerry Singirok. When he discovered that
44 mercenaries had arrived in the country Singirok condemned the government and
had the entire Sandline mercenary band disarmed and arrested. He accused Prime
Minister Chan of corruption, and gave him 48 hours to resign. Chan refused and
sacked Singirok and ordered him arrested instead. The police and the army faced
off against each other. News got out and disaffection with the Chan government
spread to the general population. Thousands of students, workers, youth and
soldiers participated in angry demonstrations against corruption. With large
crowds outside Parliament, Chan finally agreed to cancel the Sandline contract
and to resign.
Sandline
was closed in 2004 but Tim Spicer, along with much of the former personnel,
reappeared as Aegis Defense Services. The same year, Aegis won a $293 million
contract in Iraq,
effectively putting Spicer in charge of the second largest military force in Iraq – some
20,000 private soldiers. Soon enough
there was trouble when a ‘trophy’ video was posted on an Aegis employee website
showing its security guards randomly shooting Iraqi civilians from their
vehicle.
Alarmingly,
the trend to privatize war has increased. Licensed to kill, mercenaries are
available to the highest bidder. But, whether American, British or South
African, private armies have the same mandate wherever they are deployed; to
work directly with big business or indirectly through governments to provide
the military strength that enables big business to control the world’s natural
resources, markets and labour.
