Paid to Kill (2024)

Book Review from the December 2024 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Wagner Group: Inside Russia’s Mercenary Army. By Jack Margolin. Reaktion Books £15.99.

Mercenaries have existed through much of history, at least since Ancient Greek times. A well-known recent example was the US firm Blackwater, which has since undergone a number of name changes after some of its employees killed seventeen Iraqi civilians in 2007 (the killers were imprisoned, but later pardoned by Trump). The term ‘private military contractor’ is sometimes used as supposedly sounding less nasty. Here Jack Margolin recounts the history of the Wagner organisation; his work is diligently researched, though quite a lot remains unclear.

The boss of Wagner was Evgeniy Prigozhin, a thug who had spent nine years in prison for theft but later became a business-owner. After the collapse of the USSR, private military companies began to flourish, often doing the dirty work that state security services preferred to steer clear of. Wagner seems to have originated in eastern Ukraine in 2014, as pro-Russia separatists endeavoured to set up regimes not linked to Kyiv, and it may even have been created by the Russian state.

In 2015-6 Wagner soldiers fought in Syria, defending the Assad government on behalf of Russia but also making a profit from Syrian oil. Many front companies were put in place then and later, and an agreement was signed with the Syrian regime that entitled Wagner to up to a quarter of the revenue from oil extracted at sites they had ‘liberated’. Attention was then turned to Africa, fighting and making profits in Sudan and then the Central African Republic with its sizeable mineral resources. Wagner established a regional hub in Libya and in 2022 its fighters were responsible for a massacre at Moura in Mali, where at least five hundred people were killed and women and girls were raped. It is not possible to put a figure on Wagner’s income from government payments (including the Russian state) and its profiting from resource exploitation.

Wagner probably became most notorious for its part in the Russian invasion of Ukraine from 2022, though it took a few weeks for it to play any role. It was allowed to recruit from prisons, promising amnesty to those who ‘volunteered’. They had perhaps five thousand fighting in Ukraine, most of them convicts, which helped the Putin regime to avoid introducing conscription. Deserters were killed, often with a sledgehammer, which became a kind of symbol of Wagner.

But as the invasion wore on, Wagner and Prigozhin began to distrust Russia’s military leadership, a feeling that was mutual. In June 2023 it was decreed that private military companies would have to sign a contract with the Ministry of Defence. This would put Wagner and others in a subordinate role, Prigozhin refused to accept it, and a mutiny or putsch took place. A convoy of Wagner vehicles and fighters occupied the city of Rostov, in the hope that Russian army soldiers would join them. A march towards Moscow started, but this was abandoned after an intervention from Aleksandr Lukashenko, president of Belarus (though it is not clear precisely what happened). Wagner forces were evicted from Russia and moved to Belarus. Then in August a plane carrying Prigozhin and other Wagner leaders crashed north of Moscow, killing all those on board. According to Margolin, it is pretty likely, though not absolutely certain, that it was Putin who ordered Prigozhin’s assassination, just as other rivals and critical journalists have been killed.

Margolin suggests that embattled governments may well continue to make use of private military forces, as will rebels too, with the state not having an absolute monopoly on violence. But whoever does the fighting, it will be in the interest of rulers or would-be rulers of one kind and another, and it will be ordinary people who will suffer and be killed.

Paul Bennett

Fighting for Profit (2008)

Book Review from the November 2008 issue of the Socialist Standard

‘War PLC’, by Stephen Armstrong. Faber and Faber £14.99.

In a world of privatisation and globalisation, it is perhaps only to be expected that combat and security activities should also be outsourced. Private military companies are being increasingly used to guard both people and places.

Oil companies, for instance, are starting to set up their own private armies. Aramco is establishing a security force to protect oil and gas fields and pipelines in Saudi Arabia, while the Russian parliament has given permission for gas and oil companies to raise corporate armies of their own. But for the most part it is a matter of private companies that hire their employees out to corporations and governments, companies like Sandline and Blackwater. The latter has its own vast training camp in North Carolina and possesses helicopter gunships and armoured personnel carriers.

The invasion and occupation of Iraq has fuelled the growth in private military companies. In 2006 there were 100,000 private contractors (as they’re called) in Iraq, and Donald Rumsfeld regarded them as an official part of the US war machine. They have increasingly taken on combat roles, and in September last year a Blackwater convoy killed seventeen Iraqi civilians in Baghdad.

Contracting out security tasks supposedly frees up government soldiers to do more actual fighting, though the private forces are, as just seen, getting more involved in combat operations. It is also claimed that they perform a useful service because new states may not at first have properly organised armed forces of their own. They also mean big profits for their owners, partly brought about by hiring cheap labour from Latin America, including former thugs from Pinochet’s Chile. And like other companies, they are concerned about their image: one boss interviewed here says, ‘Even though it was making us lots of money at the time, we took a view of Iraq and the margins and felt it was dragging our brand down.’

If any contractor is killed or injured, the company employing them will fight tooth and nail to avoid paying compensation. The soldier’s family will find their struggle made far more difficult by the complex web of ownership: a person from country X, fighting in Y for a company based in Z but officially registered elsewhere.

Making a profit from war is perhaps the ultimate expression of the profit motive. Armstrong’s book gives a good account of these developments, though notes and/or references would have made it more useful. And the publishers have a nerve charging this much for a 250-page paperback that doesn’t even have an index.

Paul Bennett

World View: Seychelles: the strategic stakes (1998)

From the September 1998 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Seychelles comprise 115 islands and atolls scattered over the western Indian Ocean, with Malé the largest island, 1,000 miles east of the Kenyan port of Mombassa. More than 90 percent of the population of 75,000 live on Malé.

The Seychelles were seized as a French colony in 1768, but were captured by Britain in 1794 and were incorporated as a dependency of Mauritius in 1814. They became a separate colony in 1903, achieved internal self-government in 1975, and gained independence as a republic within the British Commonwealth the following year.

Unlike many other British colonies, the Seychelles never had a strong nationalist movement before independence. The first political party, the Seychelles Democratic Party (SDP), was formed by a flamboyant lawyer, James Mancham, in 1963; two years later, another lawyer, Albert René, formed the People’s United Party (PUP). Mancham campaigned for integration with Britain, whilst Rene argued for independence.The SDP was considered to be left-wing, the PUP right-wing. Both were thoroughly reformist.

By the early 1970s, Mancham was persuaded, on advice from Britain, that integration with Britain was not acceptable, as it would not be tolerated by the former British colonies in East Africa, and would cause friction within the Seychelles. Mancham therefore opted for independence, but demanded that Britain help with the formation of the Seychelles’ security forces.The United States was allowed to construct a nuclear detonation monitoring satellite station on Malé island.

In 1976 James Mancham (who was to be knighted) became President and Albert René became Prime Minister of the newly independent Republic of the Seychelles. Meanwhile Mancham had forged strong links with South Africa and René with Tanzania. Within months of Marcham’s election as president, René began plotting his overthrow.

When, at the beginning of June 1977, Mancham departed for the British Commonwealth Leaders’ Conference in London, René’s supporters, armed with AK-47 rifles and accompanied by 500 Tanzanian soldiers who had secretly entered the country, seized control of the principal government buildings, including the barracks and the police station in the capital,Victoria, on Malé. It was a walkover. By the following morning Albert René had complete control of the Seychelles.

René became president in place of Mancham. News was strictly controlled by the Ministry of Information; all residents were obliged to register their personal details with the government. President René took extreme precautions to ensure that he was not ousted from power. He initially recruited a small force of Tanzanian troops to protect the principal buildings and then later, acting on advice from his new Defence Minister, he replaced the Tanzanians with an elite detachment of North Korean guards. The Russian embassy increased its staff, of whom some were KGB and GRU officers, to about 50 “diplomats”. In 1979 René introduced a new constitution under which a People’s Progressive Front declared itself to the 23-member People’s Assembly of the Seychelles to be the sole legal party.

There have been numerous attempts to overthrow René and his government. Two plots involving French mercenaries were uncovered, in 1978 and 1979. In 1981 the infamous Mike Hoare, with a group of South African mercenaries posing as a rugby team, planned an attack on the Seychelles, but were pre-empted by the Seychelles security forces. Hoare and some of his men arrived at the airport of Malé but, after a fierce gun-battle, managed to escape back to South Africa.

In 1992, after the collapse of state capitalism in Russia, René recycled himself as a “democrat” and Sir James Mancham was allowed to return, protected by military bodyguards and, it has been alleged, members of the British SAS.

The strategic position of the Seychelles is the main reason why so many governments interfere and try to control the islands. Their value lies in their proximity to numerous trade routes in the Indian Ocean. Moreover, there are more than 80 islands with coves, harbours and mountains that have great military and naval uses. The islanders are mainly concerned with small-scale agriculture and fishing. Many of them, over the last 30 years or so, have been employed in hotels and the ever-increasing tourist industry but, at the moment, due to the recent economic problems across the Indian Ocean to the east, there has been something of a downturn in tourism in the Seychelles as elsewhere.The future is uncertain.

Peter E. Newell

Rumble in the Jungle (1997)

From the June 1997 issue of the Socialist Standard

To get some idea of the misery endured by the average Zairean under the rule of President Mobutu Sese Seko since his CIA-backed coup of 1965. one has only to look at the support that has accrued to rebel leader Laurent Kabila and the alliance of Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Zaire-Congo (ADFL) since October 1996.

As Kabila’s forces have advanced westwards in pursuit of Mobutu’s undisciplined and self-seeking Zairean army, ‘‘liberating’’ village after village and town and after town, they have left behind a misplaced relief. Hospitals and schools have actually begun to function again and there are widespread reports of refuse being collected. Kabila has promised peace and stability and to form a government consisting of members of the ADFL and those non-members who nevertheless remained hostile to Mobutu. Many, though, are prophesying a totalitarian regime styled on the Chinese model— something resembling a ‘‘mixed’’ economy with a one-party, authoritarian state.

State capitalism may well be on the agenda. Back in 1967, having met Che Guevara—and unbeknown to him dismissed by Guevara as an alcoholic and whoremonger—Kabila formed the People’s Revolution Party, whose military wing, the musingile (dwarfs) held out against Mobutu for 18 years. The dispersal of this group when Mobutu’s forces captured their base led Kabila to form a supposedly ‘‘socialist mini-state’’ in eastern Zaire, complete with collective fields, schools and health care services, all subsidised by agriculture and gold production.

The catalyst for the Guevaran-styled re-emergence of Kabila, thirty years after his hero’s death, has been the spill-over of the conflict in Rwanda into eastern Zaire. For many years the eastern borders had been settled by Tutsis, escaping the ethnic unrest in Rwanda and Burundi. In 1994, Mobutu exacerbated tensions in what was already a volatile area by making bases available to the Interahamwe and Hutu and Tutsi refugees fleeing a new wave of unrest.

All that was needed was for Kabila to galvanise the unrest and refocus the Tutsi Banyamulenga’s anger westwards, coupling it to the ongoing unrest between Mobutu and forces loyal to former prime minister Etienne Tshisekidi, which now make up a section of the ADFL.

It has been a war that has involved many players and which can still impinge upon the politics of at least another seven countries.

Angolan troops were all too ready to come to Kabila’s aid. They after all had an old score to settle, Mobutu having supported UNITA for 20 years. The rebel army also consisted of Eritreans, and deserters from Mobutu’s army and glory-seekers form Zambia and Tanzania, with support coming from Uganda. Rwanda and Washington. Mobutu found help in the form of mercenaries from France. Belgium and Serbia, and reportedly former members of the British SAS.

Many have died in the war—most notably the refugees from another conflict. For the Western powers, however—perhaps the real fire stokers on the sidelines—this is a small price to pay for the rewards that lie ahead. Which Western power elite could not be interested in Zaire? For the average profit-crazy capitalist. Zaire is a potential treasure-trove, rich in oil. gas. gold, silver, diamonds, coal, cobalt, cadmium and germanium, not to mention uranium. These are just a few of the real reasons why the West awaits a propitious resolution to the crisis in Zaire.

The US, of course, has long awaited the chance to wrest influence from the French protégé Mobutu. A chief concern for the US at the moment is Sudan to the north-east. A pro-Washington Zaire, siding with similar US allies Ethiopia. Eritrea and Uganda may well be part of a wider US game-plan to frustrate the ambitions of Sudanese islamists (time-honoured enemies) and to consolidate US interests north and south of Zaire.

Socialists eagerly await news of stability in Zaire, but with no real expectation that it will bring much improvement to the lives of average Zaireans. In a country potentially as rich as any in Africa, they will continue to live every aspect of their lives subject, as before, to the worst exigencies of a profit-driven market system, controlled by men far away who hold their destiny in a flick of a pen. This the reality of stability under capitalism—a euphemism for exploitation.

We can only hope the Zairean working class can draw parallels between the outgoing and incoming incumbents and one day realise that it is folly to put trust in leaders and their control of the forces of repression.

John Bissett

War: Methods of Offence and Defence (continued) (1940)

From the December 1940 issue of the Socialist Standard

Link to Part 2

While the Roman republic was carrying all before it the power of cavalry began to show itself, and in the latter part of the Empire it dominated the military situation as the supreme offensive weapon.

The hills and marshes of Italy were not an ideal training ground for cavalry. Like gunpowder, the new offensive weapon came from the East, originating among the Magyars and the Gauls, who developed their horsemanship on the plains of Hungary and the steppes of Russia. When these barbarians first overflowed the Roman frontiers they presented Rome with a military problem that was only solved ultimately by making these barbarians citizens of Rome and the basis of its army. But the solution was obtained slowly and occupied centuries in accomplishing.

It is an extraordinary instance of the cupidity, solidity and power of the Roman commercial class that, in spite of numerous disastrous defeats sustained by Roman arms, the wealth and influence of Rome extended and digested victors and vanquished indifferently into its predatory pursuit of riches. For the grandeur of old Rome was based upon the capacity of its privileged patrician and commercial class of merchants and financiers to contrive that all roads carrying wealth, sweated from slave and freedman, led back to Rome.

In the early years of the Roman republic, while its power was extending over Italy, the heavily armoured Roman soldier, fighting in the phalanx formation borrowed from the Greeks, was irresistible. When, however, Roman conquest spread beyond the borders of Italy the Romans came in contact with foes whose offensive equipment showed up certain weaknesses in the closely-packed phalanx.

The first shock received by the Roman military organisation was delivered by the Carthagenians.

While Rome had been conquering Italy, another State, Carthage, had risen to power in North Africa. The Carthagenian was a maritime power drawing wealth to itself through sea traffic. It was by far the wealthiest State in the Mediterranean area, and Rome and Carthage eventually came to blows because of the growing influence of Carthage and the fear this inspired in Rome that Carthage would obtain control of the narrow strait between Sicily and Italy and dominate the Mediterranean. It was a struggle between two nations whose privileged classes both drew their wealth from usury, commerce and exploitation. But whereas (in those days) the Romans fought Rome’s battles, the Carthagenians never fought theirs, relying upon the huge numbers of mercenary troops their enormous wealth enabled them to purchase.

In passing it is worth noting that there was one important difference between mercenary and native troops that the Carthagenian wars brought home so forcibly to the Roman Government that steps were taken in the course of the war to remedy it. The Roman levies were compulsory and had a tendency to melt away as the soldier-farmer learnt how his land was ruined or his farm legally and illegally taken from him by financiers while he was away on foreign service. The mercenary, however, remained as long as his pay was good, though in defeat he sometimes turned upon his paymasters. As will be shown later on the Romans got out of this difficulty by the revolutionary change of organising a volunteer army.

The first series of battles was fought on the sea the Romans being successful. They introduced a revolution into sea warfare. The old method of fighting was to ram and sink the opponent’s ship—hence the iron beak below the waterline. But the Romans were poor sailors, and to make up for this deficiency, and to take advantage of the fighting skill of their soldiers, they introduced the method of grapple and board. To effect this a narrow movable gangway with a sharp spike at the end was attached to the ship in such a way that one end could be raised into the air and dropped upon the deck of the enemy ship. The sharp spike pierced the deck and the Roman soldiers rushed down the gangway to engage the enemy in hand-to-hand fighting. Against the Carthagenians, who were expert sailors but poor soldiers, it proved very successful.

The Romans then carried the war into Sicily and Africa. Four years were spent gathering and equipping an expeditionary force to attack the city of Carthage itself, and eventually an army of twenty thousand infantry and five hundred cavalry was landed on the coast of Africa. The small size of the cavalry force shows what little reliance was placed upon cavalry by Roman tacticians.

This army was met by a mercenary Carthagenian army which had been carefully trained by Xanthippus, a Spartan in the service of Carthage. When the two armies met the numerous Carthagenian cavalry, which was stationed on the wings of the phalanx, swamped and drove from the field the small force of Roman horse, and then turned inwards on the Roman centre enveloping and almost completely annihilating it. Only two thousand escaped.

The weakness of the phalanx formation was that, if crowded in upon itself by a force striking from different sides and the rear while the front ranks were still engaged, the soldiers became too closely packed to raise their arms and use their long pikes. It was cavalry that showed up this weakness, and the battle in North Africa was the first important victory of cavalry over infantry. The Greek and Roman phalanx had always depended upon moving forward rapidly and keeping formation until they got af the enemy, but cavalry was too mobile to be reached in that way. However, the hills and marshlands of Italy were not good breeding grounds for cavalry on a large scale, and a compromise formation was later developed by the Romans to meet the new form of offensive.

After the struggle between Rome and Carthage had lasted for twenty-two years, the Romans gained a naval victory that for a time set a limit to the encroachment of Carthage. The latter suffered a further setback by the revolt of its mercenary army which was being treacherously hamstrung by its faithless paymaster. The terrible story of the ferocious crushing of this revolt is told by Flaubert in his novel, “Salambo.”

The next important phase in the struggle between Rome and Carthage for supremacy was the period of Hannibal’s march in B.C. 217 from Spain over the Pyrenees and Alps into Italy, and his conquering progress towards Rome. Again cavalry was the ruling factor in Roman defeats. Hannibal’s force, though inferior in size to the Roman armies, was immensely superior in cavalry, and Hannibal planned every battle to make the best use of this force.

Ultimately another crushing blow was delivered to the old infantry formation by cavalry when the heavy Gallic cavalry of Hannibal dealt its sledgehammer blow at the battle of Cannoe. The Roman infantry were again forced into a helpless heap and massacred by a much smaller body of horsemen. The experience of North Africa had been repeated and was to occur on a larger scale once again before the Romans recognised that the day of the heavily-armed infantry was passing and a more mobile offensive weapon had to be forged.

Hannibal’s final withdrawal from Italy was not due to defeat on the battlefield, but to blockade, guerilla and fortress warfare, and the jealousy and suspicions of the ruling groups in Carthage who eventually recalled him.

The next period of interest in this discussion is the time when the German tribes were threatening to overflow Roman frontiers. At first the Roman armies suffered overwhelming defeats. Then an army, raised and trained under a new system devised by the Roman general, Marius, was successful, and the invaders were driven off.

The new military organisation developed under Marius to meet the cavalry menace was a carefully trained volunteer paid force, with its infantry ranks spaced out in three sections grouped as a cohort (six centuries totalling 600 men). Ten of these cohorts formed a legion. The weapons of the legionary were a javelin for throwing and a short sword for close quarters, and his armour a helmet and cuirass. Thus the old armoured citizen-soldier of the phalanx with his pike was abolished and a professional army established in his place. The new legionaries were capable of building fortifications and roads and were the foundation of the system which carried Roman arms successfully all over the known world and built roads and fortifications that still remain famous. It has been asserted that the new army fought as much with the mattock and spade as with the sword. It met all the calls upon it successfully until it came up against the Magyar horse archers and finally the heavily-armed Gothic cavalry in the later days of the Empire.

The disaster that eventually rendered the Roman legionary obsolete was suffered at the battle of Adrianople where the Emperor Valens was defeated by the Goths in A.D. 378. It was the most crushing defeat since the battle of Cannoe and was brought about in a similar way. While the infantry ranks on both sides were engaged the Gothic cavalry, which had been foraging at a distance, received news that the fight was in progress, and, galloping on to the field, rode the legionaries down and forced them into a tightly-packed, helpless mass. Only a few thousand were able to escape.

This Gothic cavalry was a formidable force. With body and limbs clad in mail, and armed with a heavy lance, they were irresistible. There was also added to their equipment a heavy battle-axe which could be thrown or wielded and would penetrate Roman armour and split the Roman shield.

After Adrianople the Roman Emperor, Theodosius, commenced to enlist in his service every Teutonic chief whom he could bribe to enter his service. These war bands obeyed their immediate commanders alone. Thus order in the Roman world eventually depended upon the purchased loyalty of these Teutonic chiefs.

Henceforth for a thousand years heavy cavalry was the ruling power in war.

The limited nature of the subject under discussion prevents us from examining the internal constitution of the Roman Empire which had its share of responsibility for the poor show put up against the German hordes and also for the attempt to digest them into the Empire.

The armoured knights of mediaeval times and their part in the building up of Feudalism will be discussed in the next contribution—that is, providing bombs do not interfere with the production of it !

Gilmac.

Mercenaries (1976)

From the March 1976 issue of the Socialist Standard

If fourteen of them had not been shot for unwillingness to fight, the presence of a small number of British mercenaries in the war in Angola might well have been ignored. Their presence being made known through that episode, the result was disclaimers and threats by the government—and a study in capitalist interests being pursued.

Mercenaries are soldiers who fight for money alone, without pretending they are for good against bad. They are the “universal soldier” practically as old as war itself. In the period when feudalism was giving way to capitalism they were the nucleus of every army in Europe. The German Landsknecht and the Italian Condottieri were troops which plied for hire. With the development of the capitalist state, national armies took their place.

However, mercenaries have never disappeared. To a large extent they are produced by national armies. Speaking in the House of Commons about those who went to Angola, the Prime Minister said many of them were contacted through “lists of names of former soldiers”. Of one modern force of mercenaries, the Black and Tans recruited by the British government to serve in Ireland in 1920, a historian says:

[They were] for the most part young men who found it hard to settle down after the war, who had become used to a career of adventure and bloodshed, and who were prepared to try their luck in a new sphere for ten shillings a day and all found. They were the same type, and produced by much the same circumstances, as the Congo mercenaries of our own day.

(F. S. L. Lyons, Ireland Since the Famine, 1971)

In the 1939-45 war there were mercenaries on both sides. According to H. W. Koch in History of the Second World War (Vol. 7) there were 130,000 West Europeans, mostly Dutch, Flemings and French, in the German Waffen-SS as well as Russians and East Europeans. In The Big Lie (1955), a jingoistic account of Allied propaganda organization in the war, J B. White mentions Circassian mercenaries serving under the French in North Africa. Previously, in the Spanish Civil War, men were recruited for Franco from Morocco on the promise of pieces of land afterwards. Mercenaries have taken part in other more recent wars. Besides the Congo, they were employed in the Biafran war of 1967 and included air-pilots on both sides.

The distinction between mercenaries and soldiers in standing armies is a scanty one. Men do not enlist from patriotic or moral sentiments, but for pay and security spiced with physical excitement; in the past the Regular Army was recruited chiefly from the able-bodied unemployed. Discussing the legal position of the British mercenaries in Angola, a Times leader on 10th February said the existing law (the Foreign Enlistment Act of 1870) “makes no distinction between fighting for money and fighting for a cause”. It would make no difference if it did. The British government’s alarm was not because these adventurers were deficient in lofty motives, but because they might imply a general British partisanship. The French government disowned mercenaries in the Congo for the same reason, and threatened to withdraw citizenship from them. What is “a cause”? In this context, a capitalist interest agreeable to Our Side.

In a speech in the House of Commons the Minister for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs, David Ennals, said: “The mercenaries by their irresponsible action, are not only acting against Britain’s interests, they are bringing more suffering to the people of Angola.” (The Times, 11th February). The mercenaries deserve contempt, but not in those terms. It is Britain’s interests, and those of capitalism all over the world, that are responsible for the suffering. In the Biafran war, while similar pious sentiments were expressed, about one-fifth of the Nigerian side’s military purchases came from Britain. The officers and advisers in the Nigerian army were largely British-trained.

The position over the sale of arms to developing states is summed up in a chapter “The Merchants of Death” by Philip Windsor in The History of the Twentieth Century, Vol. 8 (1968).

At present, practically everyone sells in the Middle East; the major European arms producers—Great Britain, France, West Germany, Italy, Sweden, Switzerland and Belgium—are chipping away at the virtual American monopoly in Latin America. Great Britain, the United States, and the Soviet Union have very large markets in South-East Asia. France and Great Britain sell what they can in Africa, and France is taking over the British role in South Africa.

Nor is this a nefarious conspiracy. It is normal capitalism : the production of commodities sold at a profit because of the certainty that normal capitalism generates wars inexorably.

“Mercenary” is a disapproving word, and mercenary soldiers characteristically are turned out and despised when their job is done. In this case it was sooner instead of later. There is another lesson here. People are often convinced by the idea of a “just” war; for instance, that the Second World War had to be, because of the Germans’ totalitarianism and their persecution of the Jews. In fact anyone who set out to fight on those accounts before his government found it expedient would have been dealt with as a trouble-maker. Governments carry out the compulsions of each one’s national capitalism. The workers kill and are killed, by order—until they see the reason, and decide they will have no more of it.

Robert Barltrop

Material World: Dogs of War (2016)

The Material World column from the March 2016 issue of the Socialist Standard

The use of mercenaries in warfare has a very long history but these days an insatiable need for security has fuelled the growth of today’s private security industry. Technology allows private armies to punch above their weight. And military hardware and technology is ever cheaper, ever more available. Business is booming for a growing army of private military contractors. A common attraction about hiring mercenaries is that they can get away with things that you can’t get away with if you’re a national government. The American corporation Blackwater gained notoriety in 2007 after its hired guns killed 17 Iraqi civilians and seriously wounded 20 in Baghdad. The incident became known as the Nisour Square massacre.

A War on Want report Mercenaries Unleashed, published in February on their website, reveals that private military and security companies (PMSCs) constitute a ‘vast private industry, now worth hundreds of billions of dollars, [which] is dominated by UK companies reaping enormous profits from exploiting war, instability and conflict around the world.’ Rather than regulating these ‘dogs of war’ the UK permit the mercenaries to police themselves with voluntary codes like the 2010 International Code of Conduct for Private Security Service Providers. Many countries, including the United States and the United Kingdom, are not signatories to the 1989 United Nations Mercenary Convention banning the use of mercenaries.

Fourteen companies, like flies around shit, have head offices in Hereford, where the SAS is based. War on Want estimates around 46 companies compete for recruits from the special forces. Most mercenary companies boast of their links to elite infantry units like the Royal Marines. The report notes that ‘at the heart of the industry is a revolving door between PMSCs, military, intelligence and corporate worlds, with the interests of these sectors closely intertwined.’

Security giant G4S is the second-largest private employer on Earth with more than 625,000 employees. While some of its business is focused on routine bank, prison and airport security, G4S also plays an important role in crisis-zones right around the world. In 2008, G4S swallowed up Armorgroup, whose 9,000-strong army of guards has protected about one third of all non-military supply convoys in Iraq.

The Gulf petro-states are hiring poor people from around the world to take part in the hostilities in the Yemen civil war paid for by the wealthy Gulf States. The United Arab Emirates has hired hundreds of Colombian mercenaries to fight for it in Yemen, paying handsomely to recruit a private army of battle-hardened South American soldiers. The Colombians had entered the UAE posing as construction workers. In fact, they were soldiers for a secret American-led mercenary army being built by Erik Prince, the billionaire founder of Blackwater (re-named Xe and now Academi) and now in charge of his new company Reflex Responses, with a $529 million contract from the sheikdom according to the New York Times(15 May 2011). The Colombians’ experience fighting leftist guerrillas and drug traffickers in their home country make them attractive recruits for the UAE and they are highly prized for their training in fighting guerrillas according to a source cited by the press agency AFP in Bogota, adding ‘They want to make war an industry using Colombians as cannon fodder.’

An Australian, Mike Hindmarsh, a former senior Australian army officer, is the commander of the UAE’s Presidential Guard, an elite unit and the only Arab force to undertake full military operations in Afghanistan, where they fought alongside American troops. The Presidential Guard has been lauded for playing a key role to re-install the exiled Yemeni government of President Hadi. Nor is Hindmarsh alone. It is not known how many Australians work for the UAE military but among those, a former Australian soldier and intelligence corps officer since February 2014 has been an adviser to the Presidential Guard, a former special operations commander in the Australian army has been a specialist adviser to the Presidential Guard since January 2013 and an evaluator for the Guard was previously a warrant officer in both the Australian and British armies. Yet another former senior commander in the Australian army is now in his fifth year as a senior adviser to the Guards.

In 2015 the Swiss government banned private military firms operating from inside its borders from taking part in foreign conflicts, however, the most famous of mercenary armies, the Pontiff’s Swiss Guards, escape the prohibition that forbids recruitment of Swiss nationals for foreign armies. A similar proposal by War on Want to ban the organisation of mercenaries in the UK, and end what they call ‘the privatisation of war’, we fully expect, will die a death.

ALJO