Mercenaries have had a bad name for centuries. Therefore, I have been surprised recently to have soldiers of fortune described as the best hope for averting chaos in certain Third World situations and thereby saving the lives of innocent people in ways that troops from the United Nations or from regional alliances seemingly can't.
Attention right now is focused on the battle for Iraq. But after it is over, a problem will remain in such African countries as the Congo and in Latin America, where guerrillas operating like bandits and bushwhackers are killing, raping and vandalizing people in rural areas in the absence of adequate military protection.
Before your gorge rises at the thought of mercenaries, let me provide an explanation from a man who is writing a dissertation on the subject at the University of Pittsburgh's Graduate School of Public and International Affairs. Doug Brooks is capitalizing on his experience as president of International Peace Operations Association, a consortium of 36 private peacekeeping organizations based in Alexandria, Va.
Utilizing veterans, such as former Green Beret soldiers, the IPOA includes not only fighting units but also those performing other peacekeeping functions such as removing land mines, water purification in war-torn zones and protecting oil pipelines.
Brooks has lectured twice in Pittsburgh in recent months -- at an event co-sponsored by Amnesty International and the Cotton Tree Association (ex-Sierra Leoneans working to revitalize their war-torn native land) and another time before the United Nations Association of Pittsburgh.
Brooks uses as a textbook case the long civil war over the diamond fields in the West African country of Sierra Leone that began in 1991. Chaos ensued until the government in 1995 hired for $35 million Executive Outcomes, a private force of 350 South Africans, white and black, to quell the rebels. Well trained, ready to fight, the mercenary force in a few weeks with only one combat fatality brought peace so that an election could be held. The winner, Ahmad Kabbah, in January 1997 naively dismissed Executive Outcomes. Three months later, the rebels rose up again, overthrew Kabbah and sacked the capital of Freetown.
This time, West Africa's regional military alliance, ECOMOG, sent in soldiers, mostly Nigerians, sometimes wreaking as much havoc as the rebels. Later, the United Nations dispatched troops (Indians, Jordanians, Zambians, Kenyans). Seesaw fighting continued until the British sent in 8,000 troops, including Gurkhas from Nepal. President Kabbah was reinstated, with stability reinforced by the Gurkhas.
In all, Brooks points out, it has taken nearly 17,000 troops to accomplish what a private army of 350 did earlier in the decade.
Brooks argues that, yes, peacekeeping can work, but getting well-trained, well-led people to do it is something else. Objections to the private company idea come from several sources. Many want such chores left in the hands of the United Nations. But because the Great Powers never wanted to establish a U.N. army under Chapter 5 of the U.N. Charter, every peacekeeping operation requires rounding up troops from "donor" countries, some excellent, others not.
Many objectors resent the implication that Third World soldiers can't do the job. Brooks says this overlooks the role played in Sierra Leone by South African blacks under disciplined leadership as well as the historic record of the Gurkhas with the British Army.
For Brooks, it's a question of training, equipment and leadership, elements often missing in cobbled-together U.N. contingents. Besides, the U.N. forces ostensibly are recruited for peacekeeping after the conflict is over; not to fight to end it, a reason countries are increasingly reluctant to "donate" troops.
Currently, Brooks's association is seeking a contract with the United Nations, under its Chapter 7 peacekeeping provisions, to send a private force into the Congo.
The cost is estimated at $100 million to $200 million, as against a projected $1 billion annually for a U.N. effort.
Brooks points out that much attention has been paid to Iraq, which has been losing 2,000 children per month because of economic conditions. Yet in Congo, 2,000 people are dying of starvation every day because war lords and armed gangs are chasing them off their farms.
Sending in a ready-to-fight private force with rapid police reaction, aerial surveillance, and humanitarian rescue capabilities could bring stability and save lives. And because mercenary companies want future contracts with the United Nations, Brooks maintains that they are especially diligent about maintaining discipline to keep their own soldiers from perpetrating human rights abuses.
What about the long haul -- that is, what happens after the mercenary force goes home? Brooks said that one of the tasks a private force can accomplish, if it is paid to stay long enough, is to train local police and militia forces to safeguard the peace.
What about training people from those countries themselves to do the task? Brooks shakes his head, pointing to the continuing furor over the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Co-operation (formerly the School for the Americas) at Fort Benning, Ga., arousing peace activists because many of its Latin American graduates have been leaders in bloody campaigns against rural opposition groups of various kinds.
Brooks, with degrees from the University of Indiana and Baylor, worked for the Institute of International Education before receiving an academic fellowship at the African Institute of International Affairs in Johannesburg. While in Africa, he took trips to Sierra Leone where he, a fan of the United Nations, was shocked at seeing what had happened there, becoming intrigued by what a small private force had accomplished.
He came back to the United States and helped set up the IPOA. After deciding to base his Ph.D. dissertation on the private peace operations, Brooks chose Pitt because of its Matthew B. Ridgway Center for International Security Studies.
I personally am a supporter of the United Nations and collective security arrangements. But I am intrigued by Brooks's ideas for filling a gap where the Great Powers, U.N.-gathered troops, and regional military alliances can't or won't work. Don't they seem a better alternative than seeing thousands of innocent people die unprotected, as we've witnessed in Sierra Leone, Congo and Rwanda?
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