SUNS  4344 Monday 14 December 1998



AFRICA: PRIVATE MILITARY COMPANIES FACE CRISIS

Johannesburg, Dec 10 (IPS/Gumisai Mutume) -- Having experienced a boom in the 1990s, private military companies are facing a crisis in Africa and may have to change tactics if they are to survive, military analysts have said.

"The shelf life of private military companies such as Executive Outcomes and Sandline International is limited," Alex Vines, researcher with the U.S.-based Human Rights Watch, said.

"In the long term, the market for private military companies may disappear and in this period of expanding global standards, arguments that attempt to eliminate mercenaries will drive buyers and sellers underground," Vines told a 'Privatisation of Security in Africa Conference' in Johannesburg on Thursday.

Executive Outcomes, which is perhaps one of the most widely-  known private military companies in the world, had just announced that it is closing shop but it did not give reasons.
The move comes ahead of new anti-mercenary legislation to be passed in South Africa next year.

Three types of private security outfits -- classic mercenary groups, private military companies and private security firms -- exist in Africa. There has been a significant growth in this sector due to
perceived insecurity, terrorism, kidnapping, random violence, increasing crime and weakening states.

"One of the clearest indicators of the failure of public security is the incidence of refugees, a criterion by which Africa emerges as by far the worst governed continent," said Christopher Clapham of the Department of International Relations at Britain's Lancaster University.

"Numerous factors associated with that buzzword of the 1990s, globalisation, have made it far harder for any state to maintain the level of control over its population which state security systems
require," he said.

Internationally, the private security market had estimated revenues of 56.6 billion U.S. dollars in 1990 and is expected to increase to 202 billion dollars by 2010.

In Africa, however, private military armies seem to be on their way out largely because of their unaccountability, their perceived ineffectiveness, the costs of employing them and their often concealed links with small mineral companies.

If they continue functioning they will most probably be restricted to states with valuable resources like oil, diamonds, gold and uranium. Angola, Congo, Nigeria and Sierra Leone fall in this category.

In Angola, oil company 'Gulf Oil' employs an American company 'Airscan' to protect its Cabinda oilfields.

"One of the most dramatic recent developments in Africa has been the emergence of Executive Outcomes and other private armies that either have a combat capability or can advice and equip militaries to fight," said Jeff Herbst of Princeton University.

Herbst said the "fundamental reality of private security forces is that doing business in the failed states of Africa is exceptionally problematic." He said one of the reasons Executive Outcomes could
operate in Sierra Leone and Angola was that its contracts were backed by diamonds.

Executive Outcomes began operations in 1989 providing training to the South African Defence Force. It has worked for the governments of Angola and Sierra Leone but is sensitive about being classified as a mercenary outfit. It claims not to possess any military equipment nor military infrastructure.

It says its total income over the past four years was 55 million U.S. dollars and claims to have refused to work for the regimes in Sudan, Nigeria and for the former Zairean dictator Mobutu Sese Seko. Of late it has not received any large contracts and has had unsuccessful stints in Uganda and Papua New Guinea.

Sandline International also has a history of involvement on the continent -- especially in Sierra Leone. It was invited to launch a counter-coup by the ousted government of President Kabbah in June of last year.

Another factor acting against private armies in Africa is that they do not have a good image across the continent. "Because of their potential for duplicity and the moral opprobrium attached tocontracting, effectively to kill in return for blood money, mercenaries and mercenarism have been viewed with suspicion," said Garth Abraham, law lecturer at South Africa's University of theitwatersrand.

He said the UN resolutions banning the recruitment, use and training of mercenaries have not effectively imposed a total ban on the mercenaries activities.

"What is clear is that the failure of international law to address the problem, has much to do with the difficulty of having to define the nature of mercenarism," said Abraham.

Until recently the world appeared willing to accept the employment of French Foreign Legions in foreign countries yet reluctant to grant the same status to other groups.

The 1972 Organisation of African Unity (OAU) Convention for the Elimination of Mercenaries in Africa does not preclude the use of mercenaries but prohibits their use to overthrow or undermine
governments or liberation movements.