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23 out of the Empire and Into the Cold War Post MERCENARIES, PMCS AND AFRICA Out of the Empire and into the Cold War Post-colonial Africa was the major theatre for mercenary activity in the twentieth century. This experience was the basis for the modern contempt of mercenaries and for the bulk of legislation on the subject – as well as a fair bit of popular culture (like Frederick Forsyth’s The Dogs of War, or the 1978 film Wild Geese). The very first use of mercenaries in post-war Africa was in the 1950s, when Harry Oppenheimer of De Beers employed Sir Percy Stilltoe to conduct anti-smuggling operations in Sierra Leone – all designed to enforce De Beers’ monopoly over the gemstones.1 The first prominent display of mercenary activity was in the Congo, starting with the Katangese secession attempt in 1961, reaching a highpoint in 1964 with the uprising in the eastern Congo, and petering out with a failed coup in 1967.2 In 1961, Moise Tshombe of Katanga, with the support of the Belgian mining company Union Miniére, recruited mercenaries from South Africa and Belgium in an effort to create an effective military for the rebel province. This produced a force of about 200 mercenaries,3 who became known as Les Affreux, or ‘The Dreadful Ones.’4 As Jane’s contributor Al Venter has written, These first groups of privateers were a recalcitrant, ill-disciplined bunch of ruffians. Racist almost to a man, some believed that having been chosen, as one of them phrased it, ‘to protect Africans from themselves’, that they had license to do as they pleased. Another spate of killings followed…5 There, right at the start of the independence era, was ample reason to believe that mercenaries were vicious, racist, and directly linked to the agents of neo-colonial exploitation. These mercenaries were ousted from the country by forces belonging to 1 O’Brien, K.A. “Private Military Companies and African Security 1990 – 1998” in Musah, A-F, & Fayemi, J.K. Mercenaries: An African Security Dilemma, Pluto Press, London & Sterling, Virginia, 2000, p. 46 2 Meigs, C. The Great Design, Little, Brown and Company, Boston & Toronto, 1964, p. 7 3 Musah, A-F, & Fayemi, J.K. Op. Cit. p. 265 4 Lanning, M.L. Op. Cit. p. 154 5 Venter, A.J. Op. Cit. p. 205 23 the newly formed United Nations (which opposed the break-up of the Congo).6 The UN troops first outfought the mercenaries and then offered them free flights out of the country, which they all accepted.7 It would take until January 1963 for Katanga’s hopes of independence to be finally extinguished, and for Moise Tshombe to flee into exile in Spain, but the province’s hired army was gone by 1962. Tshombe, however, had returned in 1964 to serve as Prime Minister, after he was pardoned by Joseph Mobutu (later Mobutu Sese-Seko) and then asked to form a government. The country’s security situation was dire; the rebellion in the eastern Congo “surpassed anything the Congo had experienced before.”8 In response, the Prime Minister repeated his Katangese tactics and recruited mercenaries, including three who would become quite famous – Bob Denard, Mike Hoare9 and Jean Schramme.’10 The hired soldiers were better disciplined and technically much more proficient than the rebels, so they enjoyed military success. At one stage, in November 1964, they fought alongside American and Belgian troops to rescue European prisoners (who were being horribly abused) from Stanleyville – but that was far from their only operation, although it received the overwhelming majority of media attention. Before the Stanleyville Raid they had made substantial advances into rebel territory from the South, and after it they would fight on until December 1965.11 In fact, from April to November 1965, Che Guevara fought with the rebels, who also received Cuban aid. The famous revolutionary was extremely critical of the rebels in 6 Moore, D. “From Conrad to Kabila: The Congo and 'Our' Consciousness” Review of African Political Economy, London, December 1999, Vol. 26, Issue 82, p. 529 7 Venter, A.J. Op. Cit. p. 205 8 Meredith, M. Op. Cit. p. 114 9 Mike Hoare had in fact been in the Congo in 1961, as part of a unit called the Fourth Commando, which reportedly fought UN forces and rescued Belgians from rebel forces. See Lanning, M.L. Op. Cit. pp. 154 - 155 10 Musah, A-F, & Fayemi, J.K. Op. Cit. p. 265 These authors, however, make two mistakes in their table of mercenary activity in the Congo. First, a petty error, they describe all the mercenaries in the Congo as belonging to the Fifth Commando, whereas there was also a Sixth Commando led by Bob Denard. Second, they describe the mercenaries’ objective as “To fight patriotic nationalist forces, led by PM Patrice Lumumba” and the outcome as “Nationalists defeated, Lumumba assassinated, neo-colonialism established.” This is all very clearly marked as occurring in 1964 – 1965. Lumumba, however, was assassinated on the 17th of January 1961. His political opponents, the Belgians and the Americans have all been implicated in the murder, but no mercenaries, and his assassination cannot possibly be described as the outcome of events three to four years after his death. 11 Venter, A.J. Op. Cit. p. 209 24 his diary, recording their indiscipline, disinclination to train or fight and depredations on the local population; he concluded that they lacked ‘revolutionary seriousness’.12 These were the achievements of the mercenaries: the rescue of hostages and something approaching victory over the rebels. They also had their failings. First, they were certainly brutal – reportedly, “Anybody even suspected of having been involved with the rebels was ‘taken out’.”13 Second, they may have been disciplined, but not enough to refrain from looting; veterans report raiding banks in captured towns, as well as plundering goods and flying them back to South Africa.14 Third, some of them eventually turned on the state. In 1967, Jean Schramme attempted a coup, and managed to capture the town of Bukavu. He got no further, however, and although his forces managed to hold off the government, and some rebel forces, for four months, they did so without pay or the prospect of victory, and eventually fled into Rwanda.15 Another important scene of mercenary activity that same year was Nigeria. The Biafran attempt to secede from the federation brought war. This drew classical mercenaries like Ralph Steiner, formerly of the Wehrmacht and the French Foreign Legion, who commanded a force of about 50 mercenaries on the Biafran side.16 There were also hired combatants on the Nigerian side, notably those flying bomber aircraft.17 More unusual were the pilots hired by private parties, especially churches, for “the largest privately organised relief operation in history,”18 to ameliorate the humanitarian catastrophe in Biafra. These pilots can hardly be called mercenaries, although they served in a war zone and were well paid – although contracting to fly in those conditions, where bombers stalked the airfields and pilots were shot down, would probably qualify a modern firm for the PMC label. Almost a decade later, there would be another prominent display of mercenarism, this time in Angola. When Portugal decided to grant Angola independence in 1975, there 12 Meredith, M. Op. Cit. p. 204 13 Ibid. p. 209 14 Lanning, M.L. Op. Cit. p. 160 15 Venter, A.J. Op. Cit. p. 209 16 Ibid. p. 280 17 Ibid. p. 286 18 Meredith, M. Op. Cit. p. 204 25 were three major parties in the country: UNITA under Jonas Savimbi, the FNLA under Holden Roberto and the MPLA under Agostinho Neto. Independence was scheduled for November 1975. Fighting broke out between the three groups in January 1975; by July the MPLA, with Cuban advisers and Russian weapons controlled Luanda.19 The Eastern-bloc involvement drew in the Western-bloc, and the FNLA and UNITA gained a rising amount of support.20 South Africa, in the hopes of blocking what it viewed as communist expansion into Southern Africa, and to win favour from the Americans, agreed to an invasion from South Africa – which, interestingly, was to be camouflaged as a mercenary operation. South African forces had reached Luanda when massive Cuban reinforcements forced it to retreat. American support to the anti-communist forces was strictly covert. Their only response to the Cuban presence, therefore, was to help the FNLA recruit mercenaries.21 These were recruited first in France and Portugal, then America and Britain. In fact, a company called Security Advisory Services (not a very subtle attempt to purloin some SAS lustre) was established to perform this task.22 It was the remnants of this force that went on trial in Luanda in 1976, prompting the Diplock Report and confirming the common view of mercenaries as the lowest of the low. This was superpower realpolitik reduced to its most farcical. Henry Kissinger’s cold war calculus said the anti-Marxist forces needed support, and so they received generous funds. These were used to recruit a force that was helpless in the face of Cuban armour, many of whose members were not soldiers, that spent money like water, and whose commander executed several of its own members.23 That was the disastrous and useless mercenary incursion into Angola. These were the really noticeable, classical mercenary operations that underpinned the standard narrative of dogs of war running riot through Africa in the 1960s and ‘70s.24 There were others too, of course. Ian Smith’s government in Rhodesia recruited 19 They also enjoyed the support of Katangese soldiers-in-exile. 20 Garrick, U. “The shrinking of foreign news” Foreign Affairs, New York, March/April 1997, Vol.
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