Send In The Mercenaries

By Frederick Forsyth

The West, that generic word for the developed, rich and self-indulgent nations of northwestern Europe and North America, finds itself in a quandary. It is a quandary composed of three factors.

The first is that thanks to the very communications technology we have developed and now command, we are all able to slump in our armchairs and, via the television, view a real-life horror show every night. This is no Hollywood special effect; this is raw, red reality. We see the massacres, the savage mutilations, the torched villages, the wailing babies, the shot and shell wounds. We see the blood, hear the screams.

In Glorious Color

A hundred years ago our grandfathers wouldn't have known of the genocides of Rwanda and Burundi, the pogroms of Kosovo and Chechnya, the ethnic cleansing of Bosnia and East Timor. Even if news had filtered through, it would have come three weeks late and without pictures. Our relatives would have tut-tutted and turned to see what J.P. Morgan was buying. Now we get it all, in glorious color, no detail spared, often in "real time" right between the cocktail cabinet and the Lalique vase.

Second, we have a conscience. We hate what we see. Every instinct cries out; something must be done. When the disaster is natural -- the famines of Ethiopia and south Sudan, the floods of Mozambique, the earthquakes of Turkey -- we delve deep, we write checks, we donate. We see the C-5 Galaxies lifting off crammed with tents, food, blankets, medicines; we watch the aid teams bring succor and relief. We feel better; we did something, we contributed.

But when the warlords are at work in the hellholes of the world, when the psychopaths, sadists and tyrants are at their business, we know that our blankets and morphine jabs will never reach their destinations. We know something should be done to end the barbarism but also know it will take brute force. We look to the United Nations, the supposed peacekeeper. To no avail.

You cannot keep the peace until you have first restored it -- the Bosnia fiasco is a timely reminder. But that means combat, and though U.N. troops may defend themselves they are not mandated to aggressive fighting.

So what about our own forces? Don't we have divisions of the best-trained, best-equipped forces ever seen? Don't we have marines, airbornes, paras, commandos, Green Berets and the SAS? Don't our gunships have more firepower than one of Admiral "Bull" Halsey's battle cruisers? Couldn't we "take out" the murderous sociopath and his lethal rabble, restore law, order, peace and security with a single regiment? It is here we run into our third problem. We have become quite terrified of taking casualties ourselves.

An American ambassador in Europe told dinner guests a couple of years ago that his country could no longer emotionally, psychologically or politically accept body bags coming home in double figures. By the start of the Kosovo war, just 15 months ago, that number had been reduced to zero. So we tried to fight a war from 15,000 feet. That taught us the limits of stand-alone air power. We couldn't stop or slow the pogroms, so we creamed the capital city of the guilty nation until after 74 days a fat Russian stepped in, slapped down his protege Slobodan Milosevic, and procured a chaotic form of peace. We managed to kill 14 times more Serb civilians than uniformed soldiers and zero secret-police killers. But we avoided casualties and called it a victory.

The utter horror of taking casualties has not extended to Britain and France, but is subscribed to by the rest of Europe. As for any kind of involvement in a lethal hellhole in Central or South America, Africa or Asia, simply on humanitarian grounds -- forget it. We might use our own troops to extricate our own citizens, or even to protect a massive national economic or strategic facility, but that is about it. We watch the charnel house of Sierra Leone with horror but impunity. Then into the frame, to politically correct cries of "Yuck," steps the professional mercenary.

There is nothing strange or new about this paid warrior. From Sparta and Athens, through ancient Rome and the Middle Ages, via the condottiere of Renaissance Italy to the 19th century, the soldier-for-hire graced a perfectly honorable profession. True patriotism only surfaced about 250 years ago, and both Britain and America have been helping friendly governments with officers and men on secondment to this day. Let's also not forget our ex-soldiers who earn nice retirement nest eggs by serving abroad as "training specialists" on a nudge-nudge-wink-wink basis.

Two professional mercenary outfits were called in to end the previous round of bleeding horror in Sierra Leone. One of these, since closed down, rejoiced in its delightfully euphemistic name, Executive Outcomes; it was South African-led. The other, Sandline, which prefers the title "private military company," is mainly British and headed by Col. Tim Spicer, formerly of the Scots Guards.

When, a year or so ago, these groups defeated the drug-crazed and limb-amputating rebels and arrested and handed over to justice the psychopathic leader Foday Sankoh, the Caucasian soldiers became heroes, lionized by a grateful population. Now the diplomats have released Mr. Sankoh, he is back as homicidal as ever and the bloodbath has resumed. So to whom are we doing favors by being so queasy? The hapless peasants of Sierra Leone? Hardly.

There used to be a British TV quiz show whose host coined the phrase: "Folks, it's make-your-mind-up time." We in the West can watch the spiralling horrors while telling the wife: "Honey, it's awful, it's appalling, so turn to the even worse 'Jerry Springer Show,' for we can do nothing." Or we can use our own national forces as the world's moral gendarme and realize some of them may come back dead. Or we can admit that, like Rome and Florence, we have become plump and squeamish with wealth.

'Wretched of the Earth'

In which case we may, if we insist on trying to help those Franz Fanon called "the wretched of the earth," simply admit that we have no choice but to equip and fund, at arm's length, a bunch of professional volunteer soldiers drawn from many nations who are prepared to fight where we are not.

For the mercenary is a simplistic fellow. Not for him the strutting parades of West Point, the medals on the steps of the White House or perhaps a place at Arlington. He simply says: "Pay me my wage and I'll kill the bastards for you."

And if he dies, they will bury him quickly and quietly in the red soil of Africa and we will never know. Quite so.

Mr. Forsyth, a novelist, is author of "The Dogs of War." His most recent novel is "The Phantom of Manhattan" (St. Martins Press, 1999).