Private security forces and African stability: The case of Executive Outcomes

Journal of Modern African Studies

Volumn 36, Issue 2, 1998, Pages 307-330

  Howe, Herbert M ^a  

^a GEORGETOWN UNIVERSITY   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 0039375560     PISSN: 0022278X     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1017/s0022278x98002778     Document Type: Article

References (86)

1. See Martin van Creveld, The Transformation of War (New York, 1991); Chester A. Crocker and Fen Osier Hampson, Managing Global Chaos (Washington, 1996); Francis Deng, et al., Sovereignty as Responsibility (Washington, 1996); Mohammed Ayoob, The Third World Security Predicament (Boulder, 1995); and Donald M. Snow, Uncivil Wars: International Security and the New Internal Conflicts (Boulder, 1996).
2. See Martin van Creveld, The Transformation of War (New York, 1991); Chester A. Crocker and Fen Osier Hampson, Managing Global Chaos (Washington, 1996); Francis Deng, et al., Sovereignty as Responsibility (Washington, 1996); Mohammed Ayoob, The Third World Security Predicament (Boulder, 1995); and Donald M. Snow, Uncivil Wars: International Security and the New Internal Conflicts (Boulder, 1996).
3. See Martin van Creveld, The Transformation of War (New York, 1991); Chester A. Crocker and Fen Osier Hampson, Managing Global Chaos (Washington, 1996); Francis Deng, et al., Sovereignty as Responsibility (Washington, 1996); Mohammed Ayoob, The Third World Security Predicament (Boulder, 1995); and Donald M. Snow, Uncivil Wars: International Security and the New Internal Conflicts (Boulder, 1996).
4. See Martin van Creveld, The Transformation of War (New York, 1991); Chester A. Crocker and Fen Osier Hampson, Managing Global Chaos (Washington, 1996); Francis Deng, et al., Sovereignty as Responsibility (Washington, 1996); Mohammed Ayoob, The Third World Security Predicament (Boulder, 1995); and Donald M. Snow, Uncivil Wars: International Security and the New Internal Conflicts (Boulder, 1996).
5. See Martin van Creveld, The Transformation of War (New York, 1991); Chester A. Crocker and Fen Osier Hampson, Managing Global Chaos (Washington, 1996); Francis Deng, et al., Sovereignty as Responsibility (Washington, 1996); Mohammed Ayoob, The Third World Security Predicament (Boulder, 1995); and Donald M. Snow, Uncivil Wars: International Security and the New Internal Conflicts (Boulder, 1996).
6. Other private security groups involved in Africa include Grey Security in South Africa, Military Professional Resources Incorporated in the US, Crofas in France, and Defence Systems Limited, Control Risks Group, Sandline, and Gurkha Security Group in Great Britain. Private security groups dislike the 'mercenary' label, since it suggests a lack of principle and criteria other than profit. EO officials emphasise that their force fights only for sovereign governments, while Tim Spicer of Sandline argues that 'We would like to conduct ourselves in the way most people would expect a First World army to conduct itself.' 'I'm no Dog of War, says former British officer held in Papua', The Daily Telegraph, 1 April 1997.
7. 'Privatising war, by the executives', The Independent, 17 September 1996.
8. Max Weber, The Theory of Social and Economic Organization, A. M. Henderson and Talcott Parsons trans. (New York, 1964), p. 154.
9. Niccolo Machiavelli, The Prince (Chicago, 1985), see ch. 12 and 13, pp. 48-57.
10. Elizabeth Rubin, 'An army of their own', Harper's, February 1997, p. 45.
11. The Plaza Group includes Heritage Oil, Diamond Works and the Branch group (Branch Energy, Branch Minerals and Branch Mining). Strategic Resources Corporation, whose flagship company is Executive Outcomes, holds significant share ownership in at least seven (apparently non-Branch) businesses. The Plaza group and SRC have numerous linkages, many of which are more informal than formal, based upon shared outlook, friendship and past dealings. EO and Branch have worked closely together in Angola and Sierra Leone. Future Sandline operations are likely to include many ex-EO soldiers, but will probably not involve a formal contract with EO.
12. Khareen Pech and David Beresford, 'Corporate dogs of war grow fat in Africa', Guardian Weekly, 26 January 1997, p. 8.
13. Information gathered by author, July 1996.
14. Pech and Beresford, 'Corporate dogs'.
15. The absence of a standing force and supply stockpile has at least two advantages: the host country (South Africa) does not feel a physical threat and EO can reduce its administrative costs.
16. Interview with Eeben Barlow, July 1996.
17. This author's own article was one example of claiming exaggerated salaries. Howe, 'South Africa's 911 Force', Armed Forces Journal International, November 1996.
18. Some observers believe that Angola also granted some concessions to Branch as additional payment for EO's services.
19. A US intelligence source believes the maximum figure for EO in Angola was about 1,000 men. Interview, August 1996. Eeben Barlow claims the top figure was 570 soldiers. Interview with Barlow, June, 1997.
20. Barlow, interview.
21. EO and the FAA did not fully defeat UNITA. The group remained active in several areas, especially along the Cuango river - a major diamond source.
22. UNITA correctly claimed that EO personnel were still assisting the FAA, months after the signing. The MPLA clearly did not trust Savimbi and wanted EO personnel to remain on call. Worried that EO's presence had prompted Savimbi's slowness in following the Lusaka timetable, President Clinton pressed President Eduardo dos Santos during a state visit to Washington in December 1995.
23. Tony Buckingham introduced EO to Angola and Sierra Leone. This coupling of economic and security power as a 'package deal' undoubtedly assisted both Branch and EO in securing their contracts. Mr Buckingham is a former Special Air Services (SAS) officer.
24. See William Reno, 'Privatizing war In Sierra Leone', Current History, May 1997, p. 228. A good study of the war is Paul Richards, Fighting For the Rainforest (Portsmouth, NH, 1996 ) .
25. See William Reno, 'Privatizing war In Sierra Leone', Current History, May 1997, p. 228. A good study of the war is Paul Richards, Fighting For the Rainforest (Portsmouth, NH, 1996 ) .
26. Interview with Laffras Luitingh, June 1996.
27. Barlow, interview. A US diplomat previously based in Sierra Leone disparages EO's democratising actions. He states that while EO initially pressed for elections when it entered in May 1995, it dropped its insistence during the military campaign. Interview, Dec. 1996.
28. EO claims that the Sierra Leonean military feared the capabilities of an EO-trained force and therefore did not offer any trainees after the first 150. EO thus turned to the Kamajors.
29. Interview with Brigadier Bert Sachse. Sources close to EO state that force levels stood at 160 through May 1995, topped at 350 in Jan.-Feb. 1996, and then declined to 80 until the contract ended in January 1997.
30. Reno, 'Privatizing', p. 229.
31. General Douglas, quoted in Rubin, 'An army', p. 48.
32. Interviews in US and Europe, 1996 and 1997.
33. Interviews in England, Sierra Leone, and Washington, DC, 1996 and 1997.
34. EO's treatment of prisoners also paid intelligence dividends. Barlow claims that UNITA and RUF prisoners had often been executed before EO's entry. 'We've been very successful in stopping this practice. A prisoner holds a lot of intelligence.' Barlow, interview. Several journalists contend, however, that EO soldiers mistreated prisoners.
35. Interview with a World Bank official, January 1997.
36. Executive Outcomes as a private company fights primarily for financial gain. EO will not commit its forces to any combat without certain guarantees. 'We are a business ...everything is cash ... Before going into a country we want three months of salary and cost.' Barlow, interview. Despite this statement, EO has reportedly supplied limited, pro bono convoy protection and security advising.
37. 'our people who are involved in Sierra Leone picked it up, reported it and then necessary action was taken in order to neutralize the coup d'etat'. 'Executive Outcomes head Eeben Barlow interviewed', South African Broadcasting Corporation, 22 Jan. 1997, in Summary of World Broadcasts, AL2825 A/8 January 24, 1997.
38. The old South African Defence Force (SADF) did have an ethic that respected the division between civilian and military authority. See Herbert Howe, 'The South African Defence Force and political reform', The Journal of Modern African Studies, 32, 1 (1994). SADF special forces stated, although didn't always practice, that counterinsurgency was 80 per cent political and only 20 per cent military and that correct relations with innocent civilians would assist the counter-insurgency.
39. Barlow, interview.
40. Despite these attractions, South African soldiers knowledgeable about EO claim that some EO soldiers dislike the reportedly harsh and sometimes arbitrary discipline. South African press reports have also featured complaints by relatives of dead EO soldiers about EO's pensions. 'Executive Outcomes. The War Business'; a 1977 Journeyman Productions documentary film features family members of dead EO soldiers complaining about the lack of EO's death benefits.
41. US State Department official, interview.
42. The Military Balance, 1996-7, pp. 242, 263.
43. Transcript of 'Dogs of War,' on 'Sixty Minutes', Columbia Broadcasting System, 1 June 1997.
44. Interviews, July 1997.
45. Interview with Paul Kamara, January 1997. EO soldiers did engage RUF outside the diamond areas, after they had secured the capital and the mines.
46. Reno, 'Privatizing', p. 227.
47. US State Department officials. These same officials state that General Salim Saleh in Uganda, President Museveni's half-brother, owns 25 per cent of Saracen Uganda (an SRC affiliate) and has interests in a Heritage oil concession.
48. Barlow and Branch interviews, June and July 1997.
49. Branch official, July 1997.
50. Like armies anywhere, African armies have traditionally disliked parallel armed forces which operate outside their nations' normal chain of command. In some countries, resentment of a newer force answerable only to the president has sparked coups, e.g. Ghana in 1966. Mercenary groups have generally angered existing militaries (Rolf Steiner's 4 Commando in Biafra was such an example).
51. Barlow, interview.
52. Luitingh, interview.
53. EO soldiers and IBiS pilots maintain that government officials, presumably involved in smuggling, restricted EO's activities following the retaking of Kono. EO reported RSLMF soldiers who had looted civilian or government property to their military commanders.
54. 'What they do not do is address the root causes of the conflicts they've been involved in. They scratch the surface. The minute [Executive Outcomes] left Sierra Leone - what they drove underground rose up when they left. 'Kayode Fayemi of the Africa Research and Information Bureau, quoted in 'Africa/Mercenaries,' Voice of America, 8 July 1997. 'A chief complaint of the coup-makers is that the government paid large sums to Executive Outcomes and other forces [the EO-assisted Kamajors], rather than improving and paying the army.' 'Sierra Leoneans resist new rulers', Washington Post, 11 June 1997.
55. Mercenaries' chief held on arms charge', Observer (London), 23 March 1997. Sandline officials believe that General Singirok deliberately okayed EO's mission in order to use the mercenaries' presence against Prime Minister Chan.
56. Parliamentary Human Rights Group, quoted in The Independent (London), 17 September 1996.
57. British freelance pilots during the Nigerian civil war deliberately avoided bombing Biafra's major airstrip, the destruction of which would have greatly hastened the war's end. See John de St. Jorre, The Brothers' War: Biafra and Nigeria (Boston, Houghton Mifflin, 1972) pp. 319-20.
58. Saracen was part of Strategic Resources Corporation, until recently. Branch reportedly now owns Saracen. Alpha-5 (which some Angolans refer to as 'Filho de EO' - 'Son of EO') and Lifeguard have close relations to EO. These companies, often including numerous EO veterans, practice corporate security. Some observers speculate that EO, and/or its above offshoots, could easily smuggle guns and minerals into or out of various countries. It faced only minimal customs or security restraints in South Africa, Angola or Sierra Leone. Interviews with US and British intelligence officials, 1996 and 1997. EO denies all such allegations.
59. Herbert Howe, 'Lessons of Liberia: ECOMOG and regional peacekeeping', International Security, Winter 1996/7.
60. Different mandates were a major difference. ECOMOG entered Liberia in 1990 as peacekeepers whereas EO clearly entered Angola and Sierra Leone as peace enforcers, i.e. as a combat (and training) unit. Even after serious attacks against it in 1990 and 1992, ECOMOG did not sustain its military offensives designed to crush Charles Taylor's National Patriotic Front of Liberia (NPFL). See Howe, 'Lessons of Liberia'.
61. Michael Schatzberg, The Dialectics of Oppression in Zaïre (Bloomington, 1988), especially pp. 52-70. For more recent information on the Zairian military, see 'Retreating Zaïrian troops spread terror, chaos', Washington Post, 14 November 1996; and 'Zaïre's army a fighting force in name only', Washington Post, 25 April 1997.
62. Michael Schatzberg, The Dialectics of Oppression in Zaïre (Bloomington, 1988), especially pp. 52-70. For more recent information on the Zairian military, see 'Retreating Zaïrian troops spread terror, chaos', Washington Post, 14 November 1996; and 'Zaïre's army a fighting force in name only', Washington Post, 25 April 1997.
63. Michael Schatzberg, The Dialectics of Oppression in Zaïre (Bloomington, 1988), especially pp. 52-70. For more recent information on the Zairian military, see 'Retreating Zaïrian troops spread terror, chaos', Washington Post, 14 November 1996; and 'Zaïre's army a fighting force in name only', Washington Post, 25 April 1997.
64. 'Mozambique does not have one plane that flies or one boat that floats.' Interview with Western military specialist, Mozambique, June 1996. In the early 1990s, Mozambique had 44 MiG-21 fighter planes.
65. Christopher Clapham, Africa and the International System (Cambridge, 1996), pp. 230-4.
66. Human Rights Watch/Africa, Easy Prey: child soldiers in Liberia (Washington DC, 1994); Mary B. Anderson, 'Humanitarian NGOs in conflict intervention', in Managing Global Chaos.
67. Human Rights Watch/Africa, Easy Prey: child soldiers in Liberia (Washington DC, 1994); Mary B. Anderson, 'Humanitarian NGOs in conflict intervention', in Managing Global Chaos.
68. EO served the purpose of South Africa in Angola by helping to defeat Savimbi's UNITA, whereas it aided Nigeria's regional policy in Sierra Leone by helping to defeat the RUF. In Sierra Leone, EO several times cooperated with Nigerian forces in anti-RUF offensives.
69. Interview, January 1997.
70. Two important caveats, however. Several African states have increased their overall military capabilities. Recent developments in central/southern Africa illustrate the tactical skills of the Rwandan army and the airlift capability of the Angolan armed forces. African states are also increasingly willing to intervene militarily against fellow African states, as shown by events in Congo-Brazzaville and the former Zaïre.
71. US Secretary of State Warren Christopher proposed the Africa Crisis Response Force (now, 'Initiative') during his October 1996 African trip. The US is presently working with Britain, France and other nations to provide training and funding for selected African militaries. The goal of the Africa Crisis Response Initiative is to build a standardised, interoperable capability within designated African militaries for a rapid peacekeeping response. US Special Forces soldiers have trained a battalion each in Senegal, Uganda and Malawi.
72. Brian Urquhart, 'For a UN volunteer military force', New York Review of Books, 10 June 1993.
73. Unlike multilateral peacekeeping or peace enforcing groups, EO has a clear chain of command, no conflicting national interests, or non-complementary sets of military equipment or doctrines. It can handpick from a pool of experienced personnel.
74. The Independent, 23 March 1997.
75. Interviews with Western intelligence official, 1996. EO disputes that the OAU meeting(s) occurred.
76. John Woods of 'Stockwatch' newsletter, quoted. Transcript, 'The Fifth Estate', 4 Feb. 1997, p. 1.
77. Elizabeth Rubin concludes her Harper's article by contending that 'Like a hawk riding the thermals, Barlow is simply capitalizing on the shifting currents ... He is accountable to no nation and no legal body. His law is the marketplace. And if the geoeconomic world order should require Barlow to adapt his services for a new kind of client, there isn't much to prevent the chameleon from once again changing colors', Rubin, 'An army', p. 55.
78. Canadian press reports in August 1997 indicated that Rakesh Saxena, who was charged by Thai officials with embezzling $88 million from a Bangkok bank in 1996, had paid Colonel Tim Spicer of Sandline $70,000 to assess the possibility of using the Kamajors in a military strike against the Sierra Leonean military government. 'Mercenaries eye Sierra Leone', Globe and Mail, 1 Aug. 1997.
79. Jakkie Cilliers and Christian Dietrich, 'Editorial comment: privatising peace enforcement', African Security Review, 5, 6 (1996), p. 2.
80. Chief R. O. A. Akinjide, 'Mercenarism and international law', Lecture delivered at the International Law Seminar, Palais des Nations, Geneva, 27 May 1995.
81. Barlow, interview.
82. US State Department official, April 1996.
83. Interview with Princeton Lyman, April 1996.
84. Interview with US Department of Defense official, November 1996. Neither UNITA nor RUF enjoyed significant international support, especially from bordering states, when EO began operations. EO would face serious difficulties against a relatively competent, politically driven, guerrilla group, such as Zaïre's Alliance of Democratic Forces for Liberation (Congo-Zaire) or Uganda's National Revolutionary Movement. A Western defence analyst wonders 'is it only a matter of time before an EO force gets trounced?' Ibid. Christopher Clapham provides a useful classification of insurgencies, Clapham, Africa, especially pp. 209-12.
85. Barlow, interview. EO can draw soldiers from other countries, but this would probably lower its combat capabilities. EO's refusal to permanently employ its soldiers means that if EO does not land frequent contracts, its soldiers may seek more permanent employment and decline subsequent EO possibilities. The burgeoning growth of corporate security companies, with their more permanent work possibilities, may further drain EO of its experienced soldiers.
86. Information gathered by author, July 1996.