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S. Africa strains to keep lid on mercenaries
Good pay from foreign conflicts lures ex-soldiers
By Laurie Goering
Tribune foreign correspondent
Published March 18, 2004
JOHANNESBURG --
Under the former apartheid government, Carl Alberts, a combat
helicopter pilot, was awarded South Africa's highest military honor for
his service battling guerrillas in Angola. Last month, the 49-year-old
retired pilot was arrested by South Africa for fighting rebels in Ivory
Coast, this time as a mercenary for Ivory Coast's government.
A
decade after the end of apartheid and cessation of South Africa's
numerous border wars, the country has some of the best-trained soldiers
in the world. The problem is many of them are working for the highest
bidder, in conflict zones from Iraq to Sierra Leone.
"We don't like
the idea that South Africa has become a cesspool of mercenaries,"
Nkosozana Dlamini-Zuma, South Africa's foreign affairs minister, said
last week after more than 20 alleged South African mercenaries were
arrested in Zimbabwe and Equatorial Guinea as part of an apparent coup
plot against Equatorial Guinea.
Despite legislation to curb
mercenaries, South Africa remains one of the biggest providers of paid
fighters on the international market, particularly for conflicts in
Africa.
"For anyone looking for talent, this is the place to
come," said John Stremlau, head of international relations at the
University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg. "There are a lot of
thugs around but not many pros. South Africa is one-stop
shopping--capable, well-trained bodies with management skills and
satellite phones."
Soldiers for hire
South Africa, long
known for its military prowess and arms manufacturing, made an
international name for itself as a mercenary supplier in the mid-1990s,
as hundreds of mainly Afrikaner soldiers quit the military rather than
work for the postapartheid government with its affirmative-action
policies. Other soldiers, black and white, soon learned that they could
make as much money in a day fighting abroad for profit as they could in
a month of regular service.
Many were recruited by Eeben
Barlow, the former commander of South Africa's famous 32 Buffalo
Battalion, a special forces espionage unit that served in Angola during
the apartheid years. His company, Executive Outcomes, soon went to work
in conflict zones from Angola to Sierra Leone, training government
fighters, protecting mining and oil facilities and providing other
military and security services.
"We are selling the business of
surviving," Barlow told a South African reporter. The end of the Cold
War, he noted, had left a power vacuum across Africa and "I identified
a niche in the market."
Since then, former South African
soldiers--and some on leave from active duty--have served in conflicts
from Papua New Guinea to Congo. At least 1,000 are working in Iraq,
some guarding oil facilities near Basra. One South African, working for
Erinys Iraq, which identifies itself as a security firm, was killed in
a January car bombing in Baghdad, and five others were injured.
Increasingly, multinational corporations, as well as troubled
governments, hire mercenaries. Fighters are sometimes paid in oil and
diamond concessions as well as in cash, analysts say. The men arrested
in Equatorial Guinea, a tiny nation with vast oil reserves, had
reportedly been offered such concessions for their work in ousting the
government of President Teodoro Obiang Ngeuma Mbasogo.
"There's
a whole movement away from this romanticized image of the snake-eating
loner who heads into the continent to destabilize things," said Chris
Maroleng, a researcher at the Institute for Security Studies in
Pretoria. "Now these guys are seen as front parties for multinational
businesses" interested in security or protecting mineral rights.
Even coups "are not carried out for the sake of coups," Maroleng said.
"Normally they have an underlying bottom line, an economic interest."
Restrictions not enforced
Embarrassed by its reputation for supplying mercenaries, South Africa
in 1998 passed the Regulation of Foreign Military Assistance Act, which
forbids citizens from participating in armed conflicts or providing
security, training or logistical support for coups or other military
activities without government approval.
Enforcing the law,
however, has been tough. Retired pilot Alberts, the first mercenary
prosecuted under the law, was fined less than $3,000 for his offense,
an amount equivalent to a day or two of pay, Maroleng said. The only
other man prosecuted, for military recruiting in Ivory Coast, was fined
$14,000.
Executive Outcomes and other mercenary supply
companies officially have closed their doors in South Africa, but
analysts say many recruit quietly in South Africa by word of mouth.
Guns remain widely available in South Africa, and the nation's land
borders are porous and flanked by private airstrips.
Prosecution of mercenaries also is hampered by strong civil liberties
protections in postapartheid South Africa, which keep the government
from carrying out effective surveillance, experts say. And the
distinction between providing security services, which is legal, and
mercenaries, which is not, can be a fine one.
As a result, in
South Africa "you've got ample supply, a lot of demand and low enough
enforcement to get under the radar and do business," Witwatersrand
University's Stremlau said.
A 1997 United Nations report on
mercenaries suggests that getting control of the problem may be nearly
impossible as long as Africa is beset by conflicts and saddled with
governments unable to maintain order. Hiring mercenaries, the UN says,
can improve military skill in a conflict, conceal the mastermind behind
an event and allow participants to avoid risking their own personnel
for what it calls "comparatively low cost."
South Africa "is
trying to do the right thing," Stremlau said, but "it's a hard thing to
do, and right now these guys are clearly not under control yet."
Copyright © 2004, Chicago Tribune
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