A goose of geese does not drive a foreign legion. Tshombe, mercenaries, Wild Geese, book, film and life
Mercenaries participated in almost all major military campaigns: from Antiquity to the era of the Napoleonic Wars. In the 1960s, after a break of a century and a half, they again entered the scene. And since then, their role in military conflicts has only increased. Photo: ELI REED/MAGNUM PHOTOS/AGENCY.POTOGRAHER.RU
International law does not recognize them as full-fledged combatants, they are deprived of the security guarantees that prisoners of war have, and in some countries they are even outlawed. But the governments of the largest states, the leaders of transnational corporations and non-governmental organizations do not hesitate to conclude contracts with them, and in Ireland an entire museum has been created to perpetuate their glory. These people became the heroes of numerous books, from the ancient "Anabasis" of Xenophon to the modern novels of Frederick Forsyth, and they are given a considerable place in the reflections on the ideal state of such prominent social philosophers of the Middle Ages as Thomas More and Niccolò Machiavelli.
Their name is mercenaries. Condottieri, "wild geese", soldiers of fortune - at different times they were called differently, but this did not change the essence. Who are they? Common criminals, scum gathered to do dirty deeds? Or noble adventurers, "brothers by blood hot and thick", who in recent years have saved at least two African countries from bloody internecine wars?
To answer this question, we must first define the terms. Russian generals, who can't stand the very idea of a professional army, contemptuously refer to any salaried serviceman as a mercenary. Actually it is not. The definition of a mercenary was formulated in the First Additional Protocol to the Geneva Conventions of 1949 on the laws of war. A mercenary is a person who, firstly, is specially recruited to fight in an armed conflict, secondly, actually takes a direct part in hostilities, thirdly (this is the main thing), takes part in hostilities, guided mainly by the desire to obtain personal benefit and the promised material reward, significantly exceeding the reward for military personnel of the same rank, performing the same functions, who are part of the armed forces of a given country, fourthly, is not a citizen of a country located in conflict, and finally, fifthly, is not sent by a state that is not a party to the conflict to perform duties as a member of its armed forces.
Thus, a mercenary differs from a professional soldier (and also, for example, a foreign volunteer) in that, when fighting, he is guided primarily by selfish considerations. Neither the soldiers of the Foreign Legion of the French army, nor the soldiers of the Nepalese Gurkha units of the British armed forces are mercenaries. Yes, these units are not formed from citizens of those countries in whose armed forces they serve, but their salary corresponds to the salary of ordinary military personnel.
From Anabasis to Wild Geese
For many centuries, military mercenary work was considered an eminently worthy occupation. The first apology for mercenaries can be considered the "Anabasis" of the ancient commander Xenophon (first half of the 4th century BC) - the story of a ten thousandth Greek army that fought in the ranks of the army of the Persian king Cyrus the Younger. And at the end of ancient Greece, mercenary work became an extremely respected and very common profession. Greeks from the same city-states fought both in the army of Darius and in the army of Alexander.
A new take-off of mercenarism came in the Middle Ages. The Vikings were among the first to master this profession: they were happy to be hired in the personal guard of the Byzantine emperors. The famous Norwegian king Harald III was proud to take the position of head of the emperor's guard. During the 10 years of his stay in Constantinople (1035-1045), Harald participated in 18 battles, and after returning to his homeland, he fought in Europe for another 20 years. In Italy, at the end of the Middle Ages, mercenaries-condottieri, who always had a detachment of experienced soldiers at their disposal, became the main active force in the endless wars between city-states. Professionalism reached such heights there that, converging in battle, the opponents were primarily concerned with outplaying each other through skillful formation of troops, and tried their best not to harm each other. There is a known case when, as a result of a stubborn battle for many hours, only one person was killed.
In the same era, a correspondence discussion took place between Niccolò Machiavelli and Thomas More. The latter, drawing in his "Utopia" an ideal state, argued that its defense should be provided by an army of barbarian mercenaries, since the life of a citizen is too valuable. Machiavelli, whose experience of dealing with mercenaries was not only theoretical, in the famous book "The Sovereign" stated the exact opposite: mercenaries whose goal is to get money are by no means eager to sacrifice their lives on the battlefield. The founder of political realism quite cynically reasoned: a mercenary who suffers defeats is bad, but a mercenary who wins victories is much worse. For obvious reasons, he wonders: is the sovereign who hired him so strong, and if not, why not take his place? It must be admitted that the most successful of the Italian condottieri exactly followed the scenario prescribed by Machiavelli. The most striking example is the condottiere Muzio Attendolo, nicknamed Sforza (from sforzare - “to overcome by force”), a former peasant who laid the foundation for the dynasty of the Milanese dukes.
In the 15th-17th centuries, the landsknechts, independent detachments of mercenaries from different European countries, played a decisive role in European wars. The organization of the landsknecht detachments was maximally focused on ensuring efficiency. For example, for every four hundred fighters an interpreter was assigned from several European languages, and the captain, the commander of the detachment, was obliged to speak these languages himself.
In the 17th century, the famous "flights of wild geese" began - this is how detachments of Irish mercenaries called their way to continental Europe. The first such "flight" took place in 1607, and over the next three centuries, the Irish, demonstrating desperate courage, fought in every known war, and not only in the Old World. Irish mercenaries participated in the creation of several states of Chile, Peru and Mexico, four Irishmen were the closest assistants to George Washington during the War of Independence, and the other four signed the Declaration of Independence.
Finally, the well-being of entire nations was based on mass service in foreign countries. A classic example is the Swiss, who offered their swords to all the monarchs of Europe. So, in 1474, the French king Louis XI concluded an agreement with several Swiss villages. The monarch pledged to each of them, while he was alive, to pay annually 20,000 francs: for this money, the villages were supposed to, if the king wages war and requires help, supply him with armed people. The salary of each mercenary was four and a half guilders a month, and each trip to the field was paid at three times the monthly rate.
Anabasis by Xenophon
This is a classic military narrative of Antiquity - a story about the exploits of 13,000 Greek soldiers who contracted to participate in the war of the Persian king Cyrus the Younger against his brother Artaxerxes, who ruled Babylon. In the decisive battle of Kunax (401 BC), a complete victory was won: the Greek mercenaries overturned the troops of Artaxerxes. Thirsty for the death of his brother, Cyrus the Younger broke through to the tent of Artaxerxes, but was killed, and the Persian part of his army immediately surrendered. The Greeks also entered into negotiations, but were not going to give up: “The winners should not hand over their weapons,” they said. The Persians called the straightforward Greek commanders for negotiations, promising immunity, but killed them in the expectation that the mercenaries deprived of their commanders would turn into a herd. But the Greeks, at a general meeting, chose new commanders (among them was Xenophon, a student of Socrates), who led them home. Eight months took a hard journey from Babylon, along the Tigris, through the Armenian Highlands (here the Greeks saw snow for the first time), through the lands of foreign tribes, with whom they had to fight all the time, but thanks to their courage and skill, the Greeks completed an unprecedented march and reached the Black Sea.
African adventures
The widespread use of mercenarism in the pre-industrial era is primarily due to the fact that military victory, due to the relative small number of armies, largely depended on the individual training of each warrior. Everything was determined by how deftly he managed with a sling and a dart or a sword and a musket, whether he knew how to keep the system in a phalanx or a square. A trained professional warrior stood on the battlefield a dozen or even hundreds of peasant sons, driven into the feudal militia. But only the wealthiest of monarchs could afford to have a permanent professional army that would have to be fed even in peacetime. Those who were poorer had to hire landsknechts just before the war. It is clear that they received money at best as long as the hostilities lasted. And more often, the employer's funds ran out earlier, and the mercenaries could only count on victory and the capture of trophies.
The advent of the industrial age reduced mercenarism to almost nothing. The unified production of effective and at the same time easy-to-handle weapons made years of training unnecessary. It's time for the recruiting armies. If military wisdom can be taught in just three or four years, if it is possible to gather people around the country quickly (the appearance of railways played a role here), then there is no need to maintain a large army in peacetime. Instead, all the men of the country, having undergone military training, turned into reservists of the mass mobilization army. Therefore, the First and Second World Wars, where millions took part in the battles, actually did without mercenaries. And they were again in demand in the 60s of the XX century, when the decolonization of Africa began.
In countries where the colonial administrative structures collapsed, and there were no armies at all, an armed struggle for power immediately began. In this situation, a couple of hundred professional military men, familiar with guerrilla and counterguerrilla tactics, made any tribal leader or retired official of the old colonial administration who hired them president and prime minister.
In 1961, a long civil war engulfed one of the richest African states - the Congo. Almost immediately after the country's independence, the province of Katanga, famous for its diamond mines and copper mines, announced its secession. Self-proclaimed Prime Minister Moise Tshombe began to recruit his own army, the backbone of which was French and British mercenaries, and the conflict instantly fit into the context of the Cold War: the USSR declared support for the central government, which was headed by Patrice Lumumba. Tribal clashes erupted in the Congo, killing tens of thousands of civilians.
In all this bloody whirlwind, in which several tribal groups participated, UN troops, Belgian paratroopers, mercenaries played a decisive role. It was in the Congo that the stars of the most famous "soldiers of fortune" rose - the Frenchman Bob Denard and the British Michael Hoare, whose biographies can be used to write the history of the most famous 20 years of mercenary activity. And the bloodiest: following the events of the 1960s and 1970s, mercenaries began to be looked upon as bandits. No wonder Denard's team called themselves les affreux - "terrible": torture and murder were the norm in this unit. However, the cruelty of the European "soldiers of fortune" hardly overshadowed the inhumanity of other participants in the conflicts in Africa. Michael Hoare recalled with some amazement that he had witnessed how the Chombovites boiled a prisoner alive. And the constantly rebellious Simba tribe, which was supported by Cuban and Chinese instructors, was not much inferior in cruelty to their fellow countrymen.
Bob Denard
One of the biographers called him "the last pirate." A sailor in the French navy, a colonial police officer in Morocco, a professional mercenary, Denard managed to try himself in different roles. In addition to the Congo, "soldiers of fortune" under his command fought in Yemen, Gabon, Benin, Nigeria and Angola. In the late 1970s, through the efforts of Denard, the Comoros became the promised land for mercenaries. In 1978, he returned to power in the republic, which declared independence in 1975, its first president, Ahmed Abdallah, and for the next 10 years he headed the presidential guard. At this time, the Comoros turned into a real mercenary republic. Denard himself became the largest owner in the Comoros, converted to Islam and started a harem. After an unsuccessful coup attempt in 1995, Denard, evacuated to France, unexpectedly became a defendant in several criminal cases, not only in his homeland, but also in Italy. Although one of the retired French intelligence chiefs confirmed that the mercenaries almost always acted "at the request" of the French secret services, Denard received four years in prison, but did not spend a day there: during the process, the "last pirate" fell ill with Alzheimer's disease and died in 2007.
Soldiers of failure
The renaissance did not last long, and already in the late 1970s, traditional mercenarism began to decline. It all started with the trial of white mercenaries captured by government forces in Angola. The authorities of this country, seemingly choosing the "path of socialist development", supported the USSR and its satellites (in particular, Cuba). And the process had an obvious political motive - it was supposed to demonstrate that Angola had become a victim of aggression by Western intelligence services. The court was well prepared: from the interrogations of the accused and witnesses, a far from romantic picture arose of how clever recruiters tempt unemployed alcoholics with easy money. But the “tempted” did not wait for indulgence: three mercenaries were sentenced to death, and another two dozen were imprisoned for a long time.
And then it went and went. A coup attempt in the Seychelles organized by Michael Hoare ended in shameful failure in 1981. When Hoare and his commandos arrived on the islands disguised as members of a certain beer drinking club that hosts a once-a-year recreational tour, a dismantled Kalashnikov assault rifle was found in their luggage at customs. The "tourists" were surrounded, and they barely managed to escape on an Indian Air plane hijacked right there at the airport. In South Africa, where the mercenaries flew in, they were immediately arrested, and Hoar ended up in prison, after which he retired.
It turned out even more insulting with Bob Denard. In 1989, Ahmed Abdallah, his protege as President of Comoros, was killed, and he himself was evacuated by French paratroopers. In 1995, at the head of three dozen fighters, Denard landed on Comoros, where three hundred more armed people were waiting for him, who prepared a new military coup. But the President of Comoros turned to France for military assistance, a country whose tasks Denard had been carrying out for many years, and the legendary mercenary was betrayed. The paratroopers of the Foreign Legion, who fought shoulder to shoulder with Bob so many times, surrounded his group and forced him to surrender, and then quietly took him to France.
By the end of the 20th century, mercenarism in its traditional form fell into decline. What is the farcical story of the attempted coup in Equatorial Guinea in 2004 worth! The “mercenaries” who participated in it seem to have been recruited from high-society loafers: the son of the famous Iron Lady Mark Thatcher, Lord Archer and the oil trader Eli Kalil were involved in the plot, for example (although among the detainees were professionals - former South African special forces). The preparation of the conspiracy was revealed by the Zimbabwean intelligence services, the mercenaries were arrested, but they all got off with symbolic terms, and Mark Thatcher, who lived in South Africa, received a suspended sentence and was sent to London under the supervision of his mother.
Michael Hoare
Nicknamed the Mad Irishman, Michael Hoare fought in British tank units in North Africa during World War II. After retiring, he arranged safaris for tourists in South Africa. In 1961, Hoare appeared in the Congo at the head of "Commando 4", which consisted of several dozen thugs.
Pretty soon, under the blows of UN troops, he led his group to Portuguese Angola and reappeared in the Congo in 1964: Tshombe, who had become prime minister by that time, hired him to suppress the uprising of the Simba tribe, which had previously supported Lumumba.
In carrying out this task, Hoare encountered another celebrity - Che Guevara, who went to Africa to raise a world revolution. The Comandante Cubans were unable to resist Hoar's mercenaries: Che Guevara was forced to flee Africa, and several dozen captured Cubans were hanged. Hoar's commandos, along with Cuban pilots hired by the CIA, also took part in the most famous operation of the Belgian army, as a result of which several hundred white hostages captured by Simba were released in the city of Stanleyville.
Just business, nothing personal
The decline of "traditional" mercenarism was predetermined by a fundamental change in the international climate. The Cold War is over, and covert operations involving mercenaries have dropped markedly. South Africa after the collapse of the apartheid regime ceased to serve as the main employer, the most important base and source of personnel for mercenaries. The “front of work” was also sharply reduced. African states, at the very least, created national armies, special services and police, and no longer experienced an urgent need for the services of “soldiers of fortune”. And the states of the West, because of the all-conquering political correctness, began to be embarrassed of ties with mercenaries.
As a result, always drunken, weapon-laden "wild geese" were replaced by respectable gentlemen with laptops. And it was not underground recruiting centers for "soldiers of fortune" who began to take orders, but private military companies (PMCs), which provide the widest range of security services. According to experts, today more than two million people are employed in this area, and the total value of contracts exceeds $100 billion a year (that is, twice the Russian military budget).
 The end of the 60s - the beginning of the 70s of the XX century was the peak of the success of the "soldiers of fortune" and their public popularity. During this period, Frederick Forsythe wrote his famous novel "Dogs of War", where noble white warriors give the black inhabitants of the country they captured a platinum deposit. At the same time, the film Wild Geese is released, in which the famous Richard Burton (pictured) played an utterly romanticized image of the dignified Colonel Faulkner, the prototype of which is allegedly Hoare (who also acts as a consultant for the tape). As a result, despite the efforts of UN lawyers and Soviet propagandists, the mercenaries in the eyes of the townsfolk acquired the image not of bloody killers, but of noble adventurers weighed down by the burden of a white man. Photo: GETTY IMAGES/FOTOBANK.COM, EVERETT COLLECTION/RPG |
At first glance, the whole difference between representatives of such a serious business and Hoare and Denard lies only in the fact that the former are officially registered and have given an official obligation not to participate in any illegal operations. However, it is not a matter of legal formulas. In the 90s of the XX century, it suddenly became clear that legal customers represented by states, transnational corporations and international non-governmental organizations are much more profitable than candidates for dictators. And the most important element of military operations over the past 10-15 years has been the transfer of quite important public functions for outsourcing to private military companies.
The current flourishing of private military companies is driven both by the military revolution and by changes in the political and social environment. On the one hand, the technological revolution made the existence of mass mobilization armies meaningless. New means of warfare based on computer and information technologies, again, as in the pre-industrial era, brought to the fore an individual fighter - an expert in the use of modern weapons. On the other hand, the public of developed countries is extremely sensitive to the losses among the soldiers of their armies. The death of military personnel is expensive not only figuratively, but also literally: for example, the death of each American soldier costs the Pentagon at least half a million dollars: special payments (in addition to insurance) and special family benefits, including funding for medical care and education. And a mercenary, although his salary is several times higher than the salary of a soldier, costs much less. Firstly, he receives his big money not for several decades in a row, but for a short period of time. Secondly, the state does not pay for his death or injury - these risks in the form of sums insured are initially included in the cost of the contract with PMCs. And the losses of private military companies are sometimes comparable to those of the army. For example, in 2004, in the Iraqi city of Fallujah, as a result of an attack on a convoy guarded by Blackwater employees, four guards were captured by a mob, killed and burned to death.
Private military companies made themselves felt already in the mid-1990s. Retired US military personnel hired by the Military Professional Resources Corporation took part in the preparation of operations by Bosnian Muslims and Croats against Serb military formations. However, these operations still fit into the old concept of military confrontation of the Cold War era: mercenaries were invited to operate where the United States and Western European countries considered it inconvenient to participate directly. And a real demonstration of the new face and new functions of mercenaries was the operation in Sierra Leone, where an extremely bloody civil war had been going on for several years.
A group called the Revolutionary United Front fought against the government of Sierra Leone, whose militants cut off the hands of civilians to intimidate them. Government troops suffered one defeat after another, the rebels were already 30 kilometers from the capital, and the UN could not form a peacekeeping force. And then the government hired the private military company Executive Outcomes, created in South Africa mainly from former special forces soldiers, for $60 million. The company quickly formed a light infantry battalion that was equipped with armored personnel carriers, recoilless rifles and mortars and was supported by several attack helicopters. And it took this battalion just a couple of weeks to defeat the anti-government forces.
The situation in the country has stabilized so much that it was possible to hold the first elections in 10 years. Soon the contract with Executive Outcomes, concluded for nine months, expired. The multinational mining companies that financed this operation from behind the scenes thought that the job was done. And they were wrong: the civil war began again. This time, however, the UN peacekeeping forces, assembled mainly from units of African states, entered the matter. The peacekeeping operation, which cost about $500 million each year, ended in 2005 without significant results. An audit carried out by UN officials revealed the monstrous unpreparedness of the "blue helmets": they operated without armored vehicles and air support, and even almost without ammunition - each rifle had only two rounds! And soon the government of Sierra Leone again turned to a private military company, which, among other things, began to save UN peacekeepers ...
Far from angels
Notorious employees of one of the largest American private military firms - Blackwater. In 2007, they staged a shootout in the center of Baghdad, in which 17 civilians became victims. After this scandal, Blackwater changed its name to Xe Service, which allowed the Pentagon to conclude a new contract with the firm to train Iraqi troops worth half a billion dollars. Another high-profile scandal occurred with employees of the ArmourGroup company, who were guarding the American embassy in Kabul. In 2009, it turned out that they organized drunken orgies on the territory of the diplomatic mission.
Profitable business
According to experts from the American Brookings Institution, the market for PMC services is over $100 billion a year, and more than two million people are involved in their activities. Such "giants" as DynCorp and Xe Service employ tens of thousands of people. But much more common are PMCs with a staff of several hundred employees. Most PMCs are registered offshore, but, as a rule, their leaders and personnel are Americans and British. These companies are happy to accept veterans of the Gurkha units, former soldiers of the Fijian peacekeeping battalion in the Sinai, and retirees of the Philippine Marine Corps. And recently, private military companies from Serbia have been particularly successful on the market.
Changing of the guards
This story has become a textbook example of the ineffectiveness of UN peacekeeping and the effectiveness of PMCs. Experts pointed out that private military companies, firstly, do not waste time on political coordination within the framework of the Security Council and overcoming bureaucratic barriers. Secondly, unlike the governments of developing countries, whose troops participate in peacekeeping operations, they do not skimp on the maintenance and provision of their forces. And thirdly, by contracting to perform a specific military task for a certain amount, PMCs, unlike states that receive about a million dollars a year from the UN for each peacekeeping battalion, are not at all interested in delaying the operation.
But the true heyday of private military companies began after US and NATO troops entered Afghanistan and Iraq. It soon became clear that the alliance did not have enough personnel to carry out support and related operations: escorting convoys, guarding representative offices of government and international organizations, guarding all kinds of warehouses. These services were offered by mercenaries, contracts with which were no longer concluded by the governments of developing countries, but by the State Department and the US Department of Defense. The US military department even created a special department responsible for concluding contracts with private military companies.
In 2008, up to 20,000 PMC employees were already working in Iraq, while the number of military groups reached 130,000 soldiers and officers. As US troops withdraw, the Pentagon is handing over more functions to private military companies, including, for example, training Iraqi military and police personnel. Accordingly, the number of mercenaries is also growing: according to experts, by 2012 it may reach 100,000 people. The same thing is happening in Afghanistan, where companies like DynCorp and Blackwater have become essentially private armies.
The sharply increased demand for the services of mercenaries even gave rise to a shortage of personnel. To perform simple security functions, private military companies en masse began to hire local residents, which they tried not to do before. Too active recruitment of employees in Afghanistan even led to a conflict with the country's leadership. The Afghan president issued an ultimatum to stop the activities of PMCs poaching military personnel from the regular army. And the growing shortage of specialists with combat experience (there are no longer enough retirees from the United States and Great Britain) leads to completely unexpected results. According to rumors, South African special forces have been reduced by almost half due to a sharp outflow of personnel to the private sector, where salaries can reach thousands of dollars a day.
Russian specialists have also found their place in the modern mercenary market. International Charters, registered in Oregon, hired both retired American paratroopers and former Soviet special forces in the 1990s, who worked together and effectively in Liberia, where a bloody civil war broke out, the victims of which were tens of thousands of people. And this is not surprising: in the mercenary international, former opponents get along well with each other. Perhaps this is a consequence of the personnel policy of the leadership of private military companies, which, as a rule, does not care much about the past of their subordinates and who fought on which side before. In the community of modern mercenaries, both former Serbian special forces are equally highly valued (human rights activists have repeatedly criticized the British company Hart Group for hiring large groups of Serbs who fought in Bosnia and may be involved in war crimes) and their counterparts from Croatia.
Such "indiscriminateness" of private military companies can be explained simply: if you demand that a mercenary candidate have combat experience, then you can hardly make high moral demands on him. And several high-profile scandals related to the personnel of various PMCs serve as confirmation of this. Nevertheless, the demand for the services of modern mercenaries is growing. Despite the ambiguity of the experience of private military companies, it should be recognized that they are becoming an important military force not because politicians change moral guidelines, but because military technologies are rapidly changing.
For the first and last time in Russian history, those arrested under Article 359 of the Criminal Code for mercenarism were tried a month ago - instead of the 15 years they were supposed to be in prison, convicts Vadim Gusev and Yevgeny Sidorov received three years in prison, having made a deal with the investigation. And, according to rumors, they told the investigation a lot: in the near future, a dozen or two more similar processes will follow. To date, the FSB is allegedly developing about several hundred "wild geese" - this is how mercenaries are called in Europe and the United States. Most signed contracts last fall with the Hong Kong-registered Slavic Corps, a private military company (PMC) that exclusively recruited former Russian military personnel. But the fact that our mercenaries were “pinned down” for the first time does not mean that domestic “wild geese” barely got together in a flock - over the past 20 years, their reputation among professionals has become truly indisputable.
The legendary "king of mercenaries" Frenchman Bob Denard was considered the most titled "wild goose" in the world - it was he who served as the prototype of the protagonist in Frederick Forsyth's well-known novel "Dogs of War". So, Denard recognized the Russian military as the best "soldiers of fortune", and he considered their only disadvantage to be their poor command of foreign languages: "Not all of your officers speak English and French, so groups of Russian mercenaries are relatively small." For the first time, Denard encountered “soldiers of fortune” from our country in the early 80s in Africa. These were former soldiers and officers of the Soviet army, who were captured in Afghanistan and, for various reasons, did not want to return to the USSR. Denard recalled that there were then "30-40 people, no more." And 10 years later, several hundred former Soviet military personnel fought in Zaire alone, both on the side of ex-President Mobutu and in the ranks of his opponents. Moreover, by the mid-90s, our militants had already managed to occupy certain niches, pushing even Americans into them - say, nine out of ten PMC pilots who flew planes and helicopters in Africa were Soviet and Russian military personnel in the past.
Russians know how to fightbut they are better organizednot to engage
So why did they decide to start criminal prosecution only now, although there was a corresponding article in the Russian Criminal Code before? There are several versions of this, the most convincing of which sounds like this: Foreigners, who know by heart the specifics of the work of armed mercenaries, act extremely carefully - unlike our brother, who is characterized by traditional Russian gouging. This very gouging was the reason for the initiation of the first criminal case in the fall of last year. They promised the mercenaries to pay 5 thousand dollars a month - they did not pay, "squeezing" half. They promised the most modern equipment, and in Latakia they equipped them with weapons of the 1939-1943 model. Of course, among those who returned home, there were many dissatisfied. It was they who gave the first evidence against the organizers of the "Slavic Corps" - Vadim Gusev and Yevgeny Sidorov.
It must be admitted that the Syrian mission of Gusev and Sidorov ended in a complete failure - probably for the first time in the entire recent history of Russian mercenarism. Of the two thousandth contingent, in less than three months, 267 people remained in the ranks - the rest dispersed in all directions. At least half of the soldiers were bought by opponents of Bashar al-Assad, and now they guard the oil terminals controlled by the opposition. It is also noteworthy that none of ours was killed - at the beginning of this autumn, the total losses of the corps that had fled by that time amounted to about a dozen and a half wounded. A year ago, Gusev and Sidorov, having failed to competently organize their army, gathered its remnants and went to Moscow on two charters, where they were “received” by representatives of the Russian special services. The organizers were taken to Lefortovo directly from Vnukovo airport. A month ago, a trial was held - behind closed doors and with a special procedure for considering the case. The process was so classified that even the press service of the Moscow City Court was either unaware, or regularly pretended that they had never heard of the trial. And now, according to the data available to Nasha Versiya, law enforcement officers are presumably preparing to initiate several more similar criminal cases. We even know the names of several likely defendants - Kalyuzhny, Kramskoy, Kalashnikov, Demin and Chikin.
Among the Russian "wild geese"there were several generals in Africa
Apparently, our compatriots really should not have gotten involved in something they had a very, very vague idea about: the organization of combat units of mercenaries. “Based on one more than strange recruitment of personnel, it could be concluded that the people involved in this recruitment hardly know how it is done at all,” testifies Oleg Krinitsyn, head of one of the most eminent Russian PMCs RSB-Group. - Probably, when recruiting, the task was not pursued to attract truly qualified personnel. That is why among the recruited were employees dismissed due to incompetence or because of their addiction to various kinds of "doping". How different is it when the Israelis were engaged in the organization of our "wild geese"!
Not many people know that during the war between Ethiopia and Eritrea in 1998, it was our former fellow citizens who moved to the Promised Land back in Soviet times, and carried out the selection of "wild geese". And what a choice it was! Among the mercenaries were several reserve generals and two dozen colonels. The general command of the Addis Ababa troops was supervised by General Yakim Yanakov, the former head of the Barnaul Higher Military Aviation School and the first air force castle of the Volga Military District. Two other eminent pilots, Generals Dmitry Efimenko and Ivan Frolov, oversaw the actions of the Ethiopian aviation. General Anatoly Kasyanenko controlled the army units. Here are the "wild geese"! By the way, modern history does not know a single fact that the generals of the US army or any European country were retrained as mercenaries. But there were many former Russian military not only among the high command of the Ethiopian army. About a thousand military specialists, one and a half hundred pilots, fifty tactical intelligence specialists served on the side of Addis Ababa for money - the salary of a pilot was about 5 thousand dollars a month, scouts earned one and a half times more, and the average military specialist received $ 3,500.
Russian mercenaries happened to shoot at each other
The Israelis Naum Landik (in another transcription - Landis) and Boris Zeitlin, who are credited with recruiting Russians under the Ethiopian banner, supplied our specialists in Sierra Leone - in 1999, about one and a half thousand of our compatriots fought in the government forces of this country. It is noteworthy that several hundred retired officers of the Ukrainian army fought on the side of their opponents from the United Revolutionary Front. However, the former Ukrainian military worked as military experts and in government combat formations - it was in 1999 that Ukrainians from the west and east of the country had the opportunity to shoot at each other for the first time (“zapadentsy” fought shoulder to shoulder with the rebels, who were supported by the Cubans, and representatives of the Russian-speaking east found themselves on the same side with government troops and Russian military experts). And, as eyewitnesses note, they did it so enthusiastically that the UNA**-UNSO* activists even convened a “conciliation conference” in Lviv in the spring of 1999, at which Ukrainian nationalists called on the mercenaries from Nezalezhnaya, who were fighting in Sierra Leone, not to participate in direct military clashes.
However, the Russian "wild geese" also had to shoot at each other, fighting for opposite camps. In 1999, in Angola, at least 400 Russian pilots fought on the side of government forces and almost the same number on the side of UNITA rebels. Of these, at least a hundred people died. In 2000, the Security Service of Ukraine published a document showing that Russian mercenaries participated in at least 150 direct combat clashes in a year, as well as in air battles against each other. It is noteworthy that for military pilots it was no secret that they were shooting at their compatriots - in the elements of painting the fuselages of aircraft, as follows from the report of the SBU, "Russian words were used." Including, to be honest, and obscene. In 2001, the Russian Federal Aviation Service for the first and last time provided data on the number of our mercenaries fighting in African countries. Do not believe it, but only in the ranks of the Air Force of African countries at that time there were more than 10 thousand "wild geese" from Russia - pilots, navigators, flight engineers and representatives of ground services.
* On November 17, 2014, the Supreme Court of the Russian Federation recognized five Ukrainian nationalist organizations as extremist: the activities of the Right Sector, the UNA-UNSO, the UPA, the Tryzub im. Stepan Bandera" and "Brotherhood" were banned in Russia. ** Ukrainian organization "Ukrainian National Assembly - Ukrainian People's Self-Defense" (UNA - UNSO). Recognized as extremist by the decision of the Supreme Court of the Russian Federation of 11/17/2014.
I gained this experience during a one-year contract in Iraq.
I have traveled more in Iraq than anyone I have ever met, traveled everywhere from Kuwait to Iran.
I drove armored Hummers in military columns, rode around Baghdad in official white Fords without armor and unofficial toned Padzheriks in local outfit, with diplomats in armored Suburbans with helicopter escort.
Like everyone, I made mistakes and was lucky enough to write all this.
CLIENT
Learn to communicate with any client.
Some see the locals as the good guys and the US military as the center of evil.
Some will demand that you shoot every cyclist who crosses the road.
I have seen both of them.
Consider their schedule and conceit.
Don't neglect your own life.
Don't let the client convince you "it's safe. I always do this…”
If it's stupid, then it's stupid.
And again, if we interfere with the client to do his business - we are in the shit.
It's a fine line.
Don't be too conservative and get in trouble.
Yes, if the client thinks it's a good idea to go for tea to the Muslims around the back streets around midnight - sometimes you have to do it.
EQUIPMENT
A carbine, twelve magazines for it, a pistol, three magazines for it, a first aid kit, a GPS, a map and a compass, a radio with a spare battery, five hundred tanks, a dry ration, a flask, night vision devices, armor and a helmet.
It's a lot.
It's hot in this.
If this is too hard for you, sign up for a gym: our work is not for the weak.
I will always wear a helmet from now on.
If it is, it is on my head.
The guy next to me fell down with a bullet in his head, and that settled the issue for all of us.
The more comfortable and compact a helmet is, the more likely you are to wear it.
Invest in MICH (Modular Integrated Communications Helmet) or something similar.
AIMPOINT is excellent (its battery lasts half a year), EOTEC is normal (too bright: for my taste), ACOG is the best.
Remember, the reticle is 3 MOA, and we regularly shoot beyond 300 meters. Last night I had to target a mortar crew seven hundred meters away - fortunately, there was a PKM at hand.
What do I recommend?
Take ACOG, TA31F is the best investment.
Take the biggest gun.
Keep it clean and ready.
TAKE LOTS OF AMMO.
Once I needed 14 stores, I never thought that it could be so. Stock stores everywhere.
If you work in the green zone, one or two stores will be enough for you, but if you leave it, you need at least twelve.
Buy a short M4, it will save your life.
I have an 18" barrel assembly (upper), and if necessary, I attach it to the bottom of the receiver (lower receiver), replacing it with a short one.
It's like having a choice of two carbines.
I also have a Mk 12 (SPR) with a 22" barrel and a Leupold long range scope.
Ammunition…
They are not imported.
I'd be rich if I got a five every time I hear:
- "yeah, man, we have already ordered ten boxes, they will be in three days."
Or my favorite:
- "It's all right, they are waiting for you in the country of destination."
If you don't have good guns, ammo, armor and communications, just say no, as Nancy Reagan (wife of the 40th US President) used to say.
Some offices are pieces of shit and will leave you in Iraq with a broken AK and a couple of magazines, and some will pack you first class.
Personally, I prefer the above in stock, and the rest in a bank account.
If I want a backpack for three hundred bucks, I'll buy it myself.
Remember that equipment is critical.
Order the best and take good care of it.
WORKOUT
I think the most important and overlooked survival factor is training.
Every day, your team must work out behavior algorithms in a variety of situations.
At the very least, do it with dry firing.
We usually start with “what if…” and with each guy's opinion about each unforeseen accident.
And we work it out in different situations.
Come to certain basic principles - and stick to them.
Know a common goal and move towards it.
For example, if a car is ambushed, the driver switches to neutral so that the following car can push it out of the affected area.
Shoot a lot.
Keep fit.
If the office can not provide cartridges - BORN THEM.
Shoot empty.
Practice changing stores.
In my memory, three guys were shot while they were fiddling with changing magazines, standing in a column or rarely changing positions.
Lean on the butt, aiming.
Basic skills are the basis of victory.
Shoot at 800 meters and beyond.
I know that almost every fight takes place closer than 150 meters, but more than once we had to exchange fire at 800 meters or so.
Shoot as if you were still serving, and always beg for ammo.
Remember the movie We Were Soldiers?
Sam Elliot as Basil Plumney said:
- "if I need it, it will be in bulk" - referring to the weapon.
He was right.
The wounded and deserters leave him so much that in two weeks we have accumulated: RPK, AK, PKM, Mk 19, M-249, M203, M4, SVD, and M60 ...
It was fabulous...
And this led me to the following: be able to handle any weapon.
If you can't shoot it, at least read the NSD.
You never know when 5.56 will run out and you will have to take up RMB.
Be familiar with them.
Before the next business trip, we had a firing test of algorithms and training to leave the transport.
It was the best and most rewarding workout I've ever been in.
We spent a lot of simulation ammo on vehicle ambush scenarios.
We have come to the unequivocal conclusion that
LEAVING YOUR CAR IS THE MOST IMPORTANT STEP FOR SURVIVAL.
Hiding in it or behind it - just wait for a shot from an RPG that will put an end to it.
Therefore, practice and practice, although easier said than done.
When they call me for training at seven in the morning, I just growl.
But I think everyone will agree that it is better to think over and discuss your actions at the base than on the side of the car riddled with PCM.
TRANSPORT
Breakdown in Iraq is like a scene from a shitty movie.
Swimming, we know.
Check tires, oil, fuel, everything else.
And don't rape your car.
Every contractor will tell you that he is an excellent driver.
The fact that he can go fast and not crash anywhere does not mean anything.
Take extreme driving courses, or - let the guy who passed them drive.
And let him teach everyone his tricks.
Learn in the process.
Practice changing tires.
Realizing that you have piled a hundredweight of cargo on top of the spare tire is a feeling that I would not like to experience again.
Place a tow rope in EVERY car, wrap it around the rear bumper so it's ready for towing within a minute or so.
Get a good jack, it doesn't cost more than money.
Check that everyone knows where the belongings are for towing, replacement, repair.
Practice.
Always keep your travel plan handy.
We're always trying to be sneakier and smarter than anyone else.
Avoid major highways and roads used by the military, as they are prime targets.
Before leaving, take a look at the maps that the army does not use.
Ask why the intelligence officers (G2 according to the NATO hierarchical classification).
In the glove box, keep untouchables: fragmentation, smoke and gas.
Here is the rule.
DO NOT TOUCH THE PIN WHILE THE GRANATE IS IN THE SALON!
The car shakes, and the grenade falls on the road.
Little trouble.
What if it's in the salon?
Bummer.
The use of gas and smoke.
If you are swamped by the current and you have bad suspicions about the car behind you, throw smoke.
Most of the drivers will then stop or at least free up a lot of space for you.
It is effective and harmless.
Use gas with care and never in heavy flow.
Seeing a cloud catch up with you is not very fun.
Gas is a tough thing, and I used it only when it was impossible to do without it.
Fragmentation?
We all know when to take them.
I ALWAYS prefer armored vehicles over unarmoured ones.
Only common sense.
If an unarmored one falls out, we install sandbags, steel plates and spare armor plates wherever we can install them.
It's better than nothing.
Pull the polycarbonate windows from the armored cars.
As in the good old days, nothing beats the enemy like accurate, dense fire.
Think about fuel consumption.
Plan stops for refueling and meals.
Always keep a spare can, just in case.
Track the fuel level, count on it to be enough.
Attach the US flag to the visor so that no one sees it until you drive up to the checkpoint.
On the passenger side, do the same with the VS17 signal panel.
And then the warriors can fire at you even faster than the local pasties.
Take rations and water in the car.
NEVER throw food and/or candy at children.
There are many reasons, but at least it encourages them to jump out in front of the car.
Hitting a child could end your career.
It is more likely that the rear vehicle will be attacked, so put the best shooters with the biggest guns there.
The car door is not a shelter.
The car as a whole is not a shelter.
A Hummer is a car.
MEDICINE
Medical personal belongings are expensive, but they save lives.
The office where I work spent a lot of dollars on them, and it has already saved three lives.
Conduct medical training.
There is nothing to add to this.
Do it.
THINGS
Are you coming in June?
I would take four pairs of lightweight boots with me to change them often.
Fifty pairs of socks.
At least ten NON-COTTON T-shirts.
Two pairs of sunglasses.
Non-cotton T-shirts - if you wear T-shirts.
Lots of talcum powder for my feet, movie CDs, sunscreen.
(Cotton does not burn: it chars. Pilots and crews of combat vehicles wear cotton.
Polyester and nylon are "sweaty" clothing and cause severe burns in case of fire.
Fire-resistant thermal underwear has been around for several years.)
LOCATION
If you live in a trailer or cabin, find out where the nearest bunker is.
Trying to find him at four o'clock in the morning in a hurry is not an option.
Yes, everyone will run there.
The Delta guy, usually glaring at everyone, will follow the frogman in flip flops.
120mm mortars make us all very humble.
Zhrachka in my opinion there is terrible.
I sometimes pop my ration purely for a change.
If you drink coffee, take it with you.
A bag of instant coffee is worth its weight in gold there.
I wear trekking socks: they wick away sweat.
Insects bother you for one week, you don’t notice them the next.
Things to remember:
Remember that once you were all stupid little puppies.
You had 450 bucks a month and couldn't do anything without a bunch of orders.
Remember this when you are bitchy because you have 17 thousand a month, and the guys from the neighboring office - 17,500.
When your bosses demand that you shave regularly - shave: you never know when you'll be showing up in some idiotic newspaper.
Wherever you go, carry a drink with you.
This is the most valuable item.
You would be pissed if I listed everything that I exchanged with our sergeants (an analogue of our ensigns) for whiskey.
The soldiers came on a one-year business trip, or even more.
They pay in blood for every dollar, and they do stupid dangerous shit every day.
Keep this in mind when you have to stay 68 days instead of 60.
And communicate with them normally, well, at least you.
Of course, each of us is ultimately self-employed, but distinguish trade secrets from intelligence.
If you run into a zadlyana on the highway, write an e-mail to your colleagues about it.
Trust your intuition, it saves lives.
Be thick-skinned, take criticism adequately.
If something doesn't work, ask for advice.
Wear your armor and your helmet.
Always have spare batteries for your GPS.
And always carry a map and compass with you.
Know the map and check if everyone on the team knows the route.
Put an elastic band around your gun belt so it doesn't snag when you leave the car.
Take a mosquito net and a poncho lining for an urban sniper position.
If you start to trust the locals, it's time to take a day off.
Entering the fight... end it.
If you shoot at someone and he lies down, he can open fire again.
What you start, finish.
Things I'm glad I took them:
ACOG, short M4, own holster, own unloading, poncho lining, travel mat, compass, books.
Things I would like to take:
more socks, more shops, more T-shirts, more boots, M4 spares, urban camouflage kit, more movie CDs.
Take care of your sense of humor.
Stick to funny people, it's easier with them even in a shitty situation.
Although, as is commonly believed, the 20th century radically changed the methods of warfare, its goals, weapons and tactics, on the threshold of the new millennium, various kinds of firms suddenly reappeared, offering well-trained and experienced fighters to states and large international corporations at a reasonable price. This business has especially flourished in recent years in African states.
Mercenaries offer their services quite openly - on the Internet. They are ready to work in any country of the world and perform tasks of any complexity. The composition of their units is international: among them are immigrants from Western Europe and the United States, and "soldiers of fortune" from Australia, Africa and Latin America.
Mercenary firms today are getting one lucrative job after another. There are especially many clients in Africa. After all, after the end of the Cold War, neither the United States nor the former colonial powers see any reason to actively support the governments of small African states. And therefore, the legal - or not very legal - regimes of those countries where political stability is still far away, have to defend their right to power themselves. At the same time, the armies at their disposal are sometimes paid for.
This is where the idea usually arises to use the services of some "private army", as mercenaries are called.
The most famous multinational corporation is Executive Outcomes (EO). The emphatically inexpressive title can be translated from English as "effective performance". The firm was founded in 1989 in South Africa. Fame came to Executive Outcomes after operations in Angola and Sierra Leone. In the latter, the mercenaries, as they themselves claim, simply saved the legitimate government of the country.
In Sierra Leone, a civil war began in 1992, government troops suffered one defeat after another, and the rebels occupied more and more new territories. Finally, the government turned to the mercenaries for help. Executive Outcomes employees arrived on the scene of the fighting and quickly turned the tide of events.
The citizens of Sierra Leone were especially touched by the fact that under the influence of mercenaries the country's armed forces themselves were transformed. Previously, an undisciplined army terrorized and robbed the local population. Mercenaries introduced other orders. Soldiers caught drunk or accused of "unworthy" behavior were simply beaten. A few months later, the rebels fled. In early 1996, democratic elections were held, and at the end of that year, the government and the rebels signed the Peace Treaty.
However, this whole story has a flip side. As Newsweek wrote in 2002, the government of a small African country paid the firm $15 million for a successful military operation. In addition, there are suggestions that Executive Outcomes has received a stake in the trade in diamonds and other minerals in Sierra Leone.
But the problem is not only the high cost of mercenary services. According to a special UN report, among the clients of Executive Outcomes are not only the legitimate governments of African states, as the chief of Executive Outcomes Iben Barlow assures journalists. Private companies engaged, for example, in mining in the same Sierra Leone, turn to the firm for help. And perhaps Genbert Howe, an expert from Georgetown University, is right when he says that the relationship of African governments with mercenaries resembles a deal between Faust and the devil: you solve your current problems, but sacrifice sovereignty and raw materials for this. Many experts are less poetic: in their opinion, this is just the latest form of colonialism.
In 1998, the South African government passed the Foreign Military Assistance Act, which prohibits mercenaries. And on January 1, 1999, Executive Outcomes ceased to exist, at least under this brand name. However, it is known that in the summer of 1998, about 300 foreign mercenaries joined the ranks of the UNITA partisans, most of whom were former employees of the already disbanded SW.
Bringing order to the African states, the EO used powerful weapons: armored personnel carriers equipped with 30-millimeter guns, BTR-50 amphibians, four-barreled 7.62 mm and 0-A-622 machine guns, land rovers with mounted machine guns and anti-aircraft weapons, radio interception systems, Soviet helicopters Mi-24, Mi-8 and Mi-17. For the transfer of units, the EO used two Boeing-727s purchased for $550,000 from American Airlines, and Soviet MiG-23s as attack aircraft.
The level of salaries in the EO was not uniform: for example, officers received 2-13 thousand dollars a month, depending on experience and the region where they had to operate, instructors - 2.5 thousand dollars, pilots - 7 thousand. In addition, all employees were provided with insurance. The annual income of the SW, according to official figures, ranged from 25 to 40 million dollars.
Opponents of the mercenary trade also point to the fact that firms like Executive Outcomes operate, if not completely illegally, then at least in a certain legal niche, without violating the relevant laws, simply because there are simply no such laws that regulate their activities. And then, is there a limit to the omnivorousness of mercenaries - what tasks are they not ready to take on? Or does the principle apply here too, that whoever pays the money orders the music, even if this music is more like the roar of shells?
It is also debatable whether the governments themselves have the right to transfer the protection of the borders and the population of the country, i.e. in fact, part of their powers, which their voters gave them, to a private company, which, moreover, must be paid from the state budget? Why then the army and the police? Finally, ethical considerations are cited as a decisive argument against mercenaries.
However, the "soldiers of fortune" themselves are the least embarrassed by these considerations. "I'm a professional soldier. I have a job and I'm doing it," Eban Barlow, chief of Executive Outcomes, evasively answered a Newsweek correspondent's question whether he really cares who he kills.
In addition to Sierra Leone, mercenaries actively participated in hostilities in Angola. But the "soldiers of fortune" did not bring any peace and stability to this African country. Rather the opposite. Since the declaration of independence in 1975 by the former Portuguese colony, there has been a civil war there for 25 years. Mercenaries act now on the side of government forces, then on the side of the rebels. And the state plunges deeper and deeper into bloody chaos.
No one knows exactly how many lives the civil war has already claimed, but we are talking about millions of dead. The situation is complicated by difficult weather conditions: for example, at the end of last week, representatives of Western humanitarian organizations issued a warning that due to a severe drought in September, Angola will face another famine, which means that the number of victims will increase again.
And yet the opposing sides are in no hurry to lay down their arms. Who is fighting in Angola?
These are former allies who fought three decades ago for the country's independence from Portugal: the Popular Movement for the Liberation of Angola (MPLA) and the National Union for the Complete Liberation of Angola (UNITA), led by Jonas Savimbi. Both forces, having defeated the Portuguese, could not agree with each other and share power. As a result, the MPLA became the ruling party, and the opposition UNITA continued its armed struggle - this time against the MPLA government troops.
However, where does both sides get the money to wage war with each other for a quarter of a century, to invite mercenaries? Experts have no doubts: both the authorities of the country and the rebels receive funds for the conduct of hostilities from the sale of diamonds, the deposits of which were discovered on the territory of Angola. So it is not surprising that the warring parties show such interest in precisely those Angolan provinces where the diamond mines are located.
The city of Saurimo, the capital of the Angolan province of Lunda Sul, has seen better days. Rows of completely useless and no longer working street lamps stretch along wide and empty streets with chipped asphalt. And the Portuguese-style houses that line their sides are peeling off faded paint and plaster.
Against the background of this picture, a high wall stands out, on which a huge diamond sparkling with polished edges is painted. Through a narrow door in the wall, one enters a heavily guarded room with nothing but a couple of chairs. A few diamond seekers usually languish here. They are waiting to be let into the next room. There they will offer the found stones for sale to Frederick Schroomakers. Who brings him diamonds, and where they come from, the merchant does not care.
"I'm just not interested. The main thing is that they bring me diamonds. I never ask where the sellers get them. And many of them will not want to answer this question. In our business, it is not customary to ask questions. The main thing is to do your job well."
Frederick Schroomakers is about 30 years old. He is Belgian by nationality and works for Laser Company International, which operates in Angola with the permission of the country's government.
The diamond trade in Angola is a very lucrative business. After all, if, for example, buyers give only 2-3 dollars for an Australian diamond weighing one carat, then they pay 300-400 dollars for an Angolan stone of the same weight.
It is these diamonds that have become a stumbling block on the path to peace in Angola. The leader of the UNITA group, Savimbi, finds more and more excuses, and does not want to transfer the diamond provinces he holds to the central government of the country. But he is obliged to do this according to the Peace Treaty between UNITA and the government. The rebels understand that otherwise they will not be able to resist the MPLA ruling party, which has a solid financial and economic basis, for a long time.
The latter, moreover, enjoys the support of the United States and the UN Security Council. However, the West provides assistance to former Marxists guided by purely practical considerations. Developed industrial countries are showing great interest in the rich reserves of oil and other minerals in Angola.
The Angolans could not boast of their lives in socialist times either. But when the scale of capitalist entrepreneurship hit Angola, the social situation in this African country worsened even more. The minimum salary for civil servants in Angola is $24. And this is exactly the amount that an ordinary Angolan brings home every month, unless, of course, he has a job.
24 dollars. With this money in the city of Saurimo in the province of Lunda Sul, you can buy 20 kilograms of rice or 12 cans of beer. Almost all goods are brought here by plane from a thousand kilometers away from the coast, since Saurimo is a small government-held island in the middle of UNITA-controlled territories. Despite the appalling poverty, only three international humanitarian organizations operate in the province. The local Catholic Bishop Doent Eugenio Alcorzo explains it this way: "It seems to me that there are two reasons for this. Firstly, everyone thinks that the province of Lunda is rich, because there is a diamond deposit here. Although this is not entirely true. Of course, they are here, but they do not bring any benefit to ordinary people. Secondly, it seems to me that many foreign governments do not want to participate in the restoration of this region, since the province has a strategically important position, and foreign countries are afraid that they in the pursuit of some selfish interests.
The deputy governor of the province for social affairs, Raul Junior, also believes that the local population has nothing from the wealth of the region. "The money that should have been spent on the development of Lunda Sul does not end up only in the treasury of the central government. Diamonds are mined here by everyone who is not lazy: both loners and well-organized and armed UNITA detachments. As a result, chaos arises that does not allow us to use natural resources in the interests of the local population."
Although foreign observers name not only the UNITA group among the illegal diamond seekers. At least one billion US dollars worth of diamonds are transported outside the province every year. The state-owned Angolan gem trading firm, according to official figures, receives only a tenth of this gigantic amount. The rest of the money illegally ends up in approximately equal shares in UNITA accounts and in the pockets of high-ranking functionaries from the ruling MPLA, as well as generals from the government army.
In 1977, the Organization of African Unity adopted a convention in which, for the first time, an attempt was made to give a legal definition of mercenarism. However, the main document is the Additional Protocol? 1 to the Geneva Convention of 1949, also adopted in 1977.
According to article 47 of the protocol, a mercenary is any person who is recruited to take part in an armed conflict locally or abroad and who takes part in hostilities. A mercenary receives material remuneration for his service, substantially exceeding that paid to servicemen of the same rank who are members of the army of that country. The mercenary is not a citizen of a country participating in the conflict and is not sent by another country to the conflict zone to perform official functions.
The Russian Criminal Code gives the following definition of a mercenary: a person acting in order to receive material reward and who is not a citizen of a state participating in an armed conflict, and who is also not a person sent to perform official duties in a conflict zone (Article 359 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation).
In the Russian Federation, the participation of a mercenary in an armed conflict is punishable by imprisonment of up to 7 years, for the recruitment of mercenaries you can get up to 8 years, and if a person using his official position is recruiting, up to 15. True, nothing is known about such sentences yet.
The concept of a mercenary, given in the footnote to this article, is based on the definition of this concept in Additional Protocol I to the Geneva Conventions of 1949 (see International Protection of Human Rights and Freedoms. Sat. Documents. M., 1990, pp. 570 - 658).
The prohibition of mercenarism is contained in the Declaration of the UN General Assembly on the principles of international law concerning friendly relations and cooperation between states in accordance with the UN Charter of 1970: "Each state is obliged to refrain from organizing and encouraging the organization of irregular forces or armed bands, including mercenaries, to invade the territory of another state" (see International law in documents. M., 1982, p. 7). Mercenary as a phenomenon was typical even in the Middle Ages, but it has become widespread in recent years, especially during the so-called local wars. Cases of mercenarism also occur during bloody conflicts in the territory of the former Soviet Union. In this regard, the establishment of criminal responsibility for this act and attributing it to crimes against the peace and security of mankind puts in the hands of justice the criminal law means of combating mercenarism. Mercenaries should be distinguished from military advisers who do not take a direct part in hostilities and are sent to serve in a foreign army by agreement between states. Volunteers are also not mercenaries, provided they are included in the personnel of the armed forces of the belligerent side (according to the 5th Hague Convention of 1907 "On the Rights and Duties of Neutral Powers and Persons in a Land War").
According to Russian law, the subject of a crime is a person who has reached the age of 16. The subjective side is characterized by direct intent. The person is aware that he is committing criminal acts and desires this.
Although it is written in all history textbooks that an army consisting of mercenaries is worse than an army of selfless, patriotic citizens, at all times states still resorted to the services of "soldiers of fortune", "wild geese" or "dogs of war", as mercenaries are sometimes called.
It all started in ancient Greece.
A wealthy Greek slave owner of the 4th-3rd centuries BC. e. was pampered, cowardly, did not want to go into battle. Physical education for him became only fun, entertainment. At sports games, he preferred to be a spectator rather than a participant. Physical education has ceased to pay the same attention. As a result of continuous wars, the demand for mercenaries increased, their number increased. The militia army was gradually replaced by professional mercenary soldiers.
The way out of this situation was the formation of light and medium infantry from mercenaries. The Greeks already had extensive experience in serving as mercenaries of the eastern despotisms (Egypt, Persia, etc.). The contingents for this purpose were free farmers and artisans ruined by wars and debt bondage. The payment for the service gave them the opportunity to purchase weapons, equipment and food.
The next period of widespread use of military mercenaries falls on the late Middle Ages in Europe.
The traditional military organization, the feudal-knight militia, was losing effectiveness. It was impossible to organize a permanent army in the conditions of an undeveloped economy and state apparatus.
In the XIV century. the first type of mercenarism is formed, conditionally - "lower". The main feature of the lower type was the preservation of the feudal-knightly structure by the army in the presence of indefinite hiring. The first variant of this type of mercenary is the Condottieri variant. Relatively small, mostly cavalry detachments, fully provided by the condottiere, were hired by states that needed troops. The guarantee of the fulfillment of obligations was only a personal agreement with their leader, who, being independent, often pursuing his political goals, violated it, sometimes seizing state power.
A more profitable option for the employer was the so-called captain's (typical for England and France). The warlord-captain could be directly appointed by the king and was under some control. But gradually (in France) the positions of captains were taken over by the nobility, who defended separatist aspirations. This type of mercenarism often did not serve the interests of a centralized state. In addition, the revolution in military affairs required fundamental changes: first of all, an increase in the role of the infantry, and, consequently, a significant increase in the army, which the condottieri were not able to provide. During this period, a new, "higher" type of mercenarism appeared, characterized by the presence of troops built on new structural principles for temporary hire. There are two main approaches to the organization of recruitment: the Swiss "state" version and the German "contract". However, the common features of both options were mass character and a greater, than before, connection with the state.
In German mercenarism, this connection was expressed: firstly, in the financial dependence of both the commander and the troops on receipts from the treasury; secondly, in legal dependence on state power. So the recruitment required the permission of the monarch, to whom all landsknechts swore allegiance without exception, a kind of military justice also had a state origin.
In the XVI - XVII centuries. there was no alternative to mercenarism. It also fully complied with the basic requirements for the armed forces:
1) the nature and scale of wars, which grew significantly in that period;
2) the interests of the absolute monarchy at this stage, because military leaders dependent on it, usually capable of only recruiting at their own expense, but not constantly maintaining an army, as a rule, did not encroach on political power. This was also facilitated by their often ignoble or foreign origin, separation from the restless community of imperial ranks. Landsknechts served only those who paid them, having no other requirements than timely payment;
3) mercenarism, unlike the feudal militia, was fully provided with the necessary personnel, mainly knocked out by the decomposition of the traditional economic structure from the familiar environment by representatives
In the XIV-XV centuries, Italy, like Africa today, was flooded with veterans of the "great war" who remained out of work. After the end of the Hundred Years War, these were English detachments, and in the 20th century they were veterans of the Second World War, and then the wars in Korea, Vietnam, etc. (the last example is the participation of Serbian mercenaries in the war in Zaire).
As now, in those days, mercenaries tried to spare each other in battle. Machiavelli describes a case when one person died in a battle that lasted a whole day, and even then he fell from a horse. Today, mercenaries also try not to shed their blood unnecessarily. This is how the rule was born that the "dogs of war" themselves try, if possible, not to take part in hostilities, limiting themselves to the role of instructors or, in extreme cases, officers directing the actions of local soldiers on the battlefield.
Mercenaries participated in almost all major military campaigns: from Antiquity to the era of the Napoleonic Wars. In the 1960s, after a break of a century and a half, they again entered the scene. And since then, their role in military conflicts has only increased.
International law does not recognize them as full-fledged combatants, they are deprived of the security guarantees that prisoners of war have, and in some countries they are even outlawed. But the governments of the largest states, the leaders of transnational corporations and non-governmental organizations do not hesitate to conclude contracts with them, and in Ireland an entire museum has been created to perpetuate their glory. These people became the heroes of numerous books, from the ancient "Anabasis" of Xenophon to the modern novels of Frederick Forsyth, and they are given a considerable place in the reflections on the ideal state of such prominent social philosophers of the Middle Ages as Thomas More and Niccolò Machiavelli.
Their name is mercenaries. Condottieri, "wild geese", soldiers of fortune - at different times they were called differently, but this did not change the essence. Who are they? Common criminals, scum gathered to do dirty deeds? Or noble adventurers, "brothers by blood hot and thick", who in recent years have saved at least two African countries from bloody internecine wars?
To answer this question, we must first define the terms. Russian generals, who can't stand the very idea of a professional army, contemptuously refer to any salaried serviceman as a mercenary. Actually it is not. The definition of a mercenary was formulated in the First Additional Protocol to the Geneva Conventions of 1949 on the laws of war. A mercenary is a person who, firstly, is specially recruited to fight in an armed conflict, secondly, actually takes a direct part in hostilities, thirdly (this is the main thing), takes part in hostilities, guided mainly by the desire to obtain personal benefit and the promised material reward, significantly exceeding the reward for military personnel of the same rank, performing the same functions, who are part of the armed forces of a given country, fourthly, is not a citizen of a country located in conflict, and finally, fifthly, is not sent by a state that is not a party to the conflict to perform duties as a member of its armed forces.
Thus, a mercenary differs from a professional soldier (and also, for example, a foreign volunteer) in that, when fighting, he is guided primarily by selfish considerations. Neither the soldiers of the Foreign Legion of the French army, nor the soldiers of the Nepalese Gurkha units of the British armed forces are mercenaries. Yes, these units are not formed from citizens of those countries in whose armed forces they serve, but their salary corresponds to the salary of ordinary military personnel.
At Frank Camper's Mercenary School. 1985 Two-level courses at The Mercenary School, which existed from 1981 to 1986, were attended by cadets from many countries, including England, Germany, Israel, Spain, Canada, Mexico, Norway, Panama, France and Japan
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During the field trips, only synthetic raincoats served as shelter from the rains for the cadets.
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At practical classes in hand-to-hand combat: graduates had to confidently wield not only a knife and a bayonet, but also ropes, sticks and unloaded weapons
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Frank Camper tells students about the design and use of automatic weapons
From Anabasis to Wild Geese
For many centuries, military mercenary work was considered an eminently worthy occupation. The first apology for mercenaries can be considered the "Anabasis" of the ancient commander Xenophon (first half of the 4th century BC) - the story of a ten thousandth Greek army that fought in the ranks of the army of the Persian king Cyrus the Younger. And at the end of ancient Greece, mercenary work became an extremely respected and very common profession. Greeks from the same city-states fought both in the army of Darius and in the army of Alexander.A new take-off of mercenarism came in the Middle Ages. The Vikings were among the first to master this profession: they were happy to be hired in the personal guard of the Byzantine emperors. The famous Norwegian king Harald III was proud to take the position of head of the emperor's guard. During the 10 years of his stay in Constantinople (1035-1045), Harald participated in 18 battles, and after returning to his homeland, he fought in Europe for another 20 years. In Italy, at the end of the Middle Ages, mercenaries-condottieri, who always had a detachment of experienced soldiers at their disposal, became the main active force in the endless wars between city-states. Professionalism reached such heights there that, converging in battle, the opponents were primarily concerned with outplaying each other through skillful formation of troops, and tried their best not to harm each other. There is a known case when, as a result of a stubborn battle for many hours, only one person was killed.
In the same era, a correspondence discussion took place between Niccolò Machiavelli and Thomas More. The latter, drawing in his "Utopia" an ideal state, argued that its defense should be provided by an army of barbarian mercenaries, since the life of a citizen is too valuable. Machiavelli, whose experience with mercenaries was not only theoretical, in the famous book "The Sovereign" stated the exact opposite: mercenaries whose goal is to get money are by no means eager to sacrifice their lives on the battlefield. The founder of political realism quite cynically reasoned: a mercenary who suffers defeats is bad, but a mercenary who wins victories is much worse. For obvious reasons, he wonders: is the sovereign who hired him so strong, and if not, why not take his place? It must be admitted that the most successful of the Italian condottieri exactly followed the scenario prescribed by Machiavelli. The most striking example is the condottiere Muzio Attendolo, nicknamed Sforza (from sforzare - “to overcome by force”), a former peasant who laid the foundation for the dynasty of the Milanese dukes.
In the 15th-17th centuries, Landsknechts, independent detachments of mercenaries from various European countries, played a decisive role in European wars. The organization of the landsknecht detachments was maximally focused on ensuring efficiency. For example, for every four hundred fighters an interpreter was assigned from several European languages, and the captain, the commander of the detachment, was obliged to speak these languages himself.
In the 17th century, the famous “flights of the wild geese” began - this is how detachments of Irish mercenaries called their way to continental Europe. The first such "flight" took place in 1607, and over the next three centuries, the Irish, demonstrating desperate courage, fought in every known war, and not only in the Old World. Irish mercenaries participated in the creation of several states of Chile, Peru and Mexico, four Irishmen were the closest assistants to George Washington during the War of Independence, and the other four signed the Declaration of Independence.
Finally, the well-being of entire nations was based on mass service in foreign countries. A classic example is the Swiss, who offered their swords to all the monarchs of Europe. So, in 1474, the French king Louis XI concluded an agreement with several Swiss villages. The monarch pledged to each of them, while he was alive, to pay annually 20,000 francs: for this money, the villages were supposed to, if the king wages war and requires help, supply him with armed people. The salary of each mercenary was four and a half guilders a month, and each trip to the field was paid at three times the monthly rate.
Anabasis by Xenophon
This is a classic military narrative of Antiquity - a story about the exploits of 13,000 Greek soldiers who contracted to participate in the war of the Persian king Cyrus the Younger against his brother Artaxerxes, who ruled Babylon. In the decisive battle of Kunax (401 BC), a complete victory was won: the Greek mercenaries overturned the troops of Artaxerxes. Thirsty for the death of his brother, Cyrus the Younger broke through to the tent of Artaxerxes, but was killed, and the Persian part of his army immediately surrendered. The Greeks also entered into negotiations, but they were not going to give up: “The winners should not hand over their weapons,” they said. The Persians called the straightforward Greek commanders for negotiations, promising immunity, but killed them in the expectation that the mercenaries deprived of their commanders would turn into a herd. But the Greeks, at a general meeting, chose new commanders (among them was Xenophon, a student of Socrates), who led them home. Eight months took a hard journey from Babylon, along the Tigris, through the Armenian Highlands (here the Greeks saw snow for the first time), through the lands of foreign tribes, with whom they had to fight all the time, but thanks to their courage and skill, the Greeks completed an unprecedented march and reached the Black Sea.
African adventures
The widespread use of mercenarism in the pre-industrial era is primarily due to the fact that military victory, due to the relative small number of armies, largely depended on the individual training of each warrior. Everything was determined by how deftly he managed with a sling and a dart or a sword and a musket, whether he knew how to keep the system in a phalanx or a square. A trained professional warrior stood on the battlefield a dozen or even hundreds of peasant sons, driven into the feudal militia. But only the wealthiest of monarchs could afford to have a permanent professional army that would have to be fed even in peacetime. Those who were poorer had to hire landsknechts just before the war. It is clear that they received money at best as long as the hostilities lasted. And more often, the employer's funds ran out earlier, and the mercenaries could only count on victory and the capture of trophies.The advent of the industrial age reduced mercenarism to almost nothing. The unified production of effective and at the same time easy-to-handle weapons made years of training unnecessary. It's time for the recruiting armies. If military wisdom can be taught in just three or four years, if it is possible to gather people around the country quickly (the appearance of railways played a role here), then there is no need to maintain a large army in peacetime. Instead, all the men of the country, having undergone military training, turned into reservists of the mass mobilization army. Therefore, the First and Second World Wars, where millions took part in the battles, actually did without mercenaries. And they were again in demand in the 60s of the XX century, when the decolonization of Africa began.
In countries where the colonial administrative structures collapsed, and there were no armies at all, an armed struggle for power immediately began. In this situation, a couple of hundred professional military men, familiar with guerrilla and counterguerrilla tactics, made any tribal leader or retired official of the old colonial administration who hired them president and prime minister.
In 1961, a long civil war engulfed one of the richest African states - the Congo. Almost immediately after the country's independence, the province of Katanga, famous for its diamond mines and copper mines, announced its secession. Self-proclaimed Prime Minister Moise Tshombe began to recruit his own army, the backbone of which was French and British mercenaries, and the conflict instantly fit into the context of the Cold War: the USSR declared support for the central government, which was headed by Patrice Lumumba. Tribal clashes erupted in the Congo, killing tens of thousands of civilians.
In all this bloody whirlwind, in which several tribal groups participated, UN troops, Belgian paratroopers, mercenaries played a decisive role. It was in the Congo that the stars of the most famous "soldiers of fortune" rose - the Frenchman Bob Denard and the British Michael Hoare, whose biographies can be used to write the history of the most famous 20 years of mercenarism. And the bloodiest: following the events of the 1960s and 1970s, mercenaries began to be looked upon as bandits. No wonder Denard's team called themselves les affreux - "terrible": torture and murder were the norm in this unit. However, the cruelty of the European "soldiers of fortune" hardly overshadowed the inhumanity of other participants in the conflicts in Africa. Michael Hoare recalled with some amazement that he had witnessed how the Chombovites boiled a prisoner alive. And the constantly rebellious Simba tribe, which was supported by Cuban and Chinese instructors, was not much inferior in cruelty to their fellow countrymen.
Bob Denard
One of the biographers called him "the last pirate." A sailor in the French navy, a colonial police officer in Morocco, a professional mercenary, Denard managed to try himself in different roles. In addition to the Congo, "soldiers of fortune" under his command fought in Yemen, Gabon, Benin, Nigeria and Angola. In the late 1970s, through the efforts of Denard, the Comoros became the promised land for mercenaries. In 1978, he returned to power in the republic, which declared independence in 1975, its first president, Ahmed Abdallah, and for the next 10 years he headed the presidential guard. At this time, the Comoros turned into a real mercenary republic. Denard himself became the largest owner in the Comoros, converted to Islam and started a harem. After an unsuccessful coup attempt in 1995, Denard, evacuated to France, unexpectedly became a defendant in several criminal cases, not only in his homeland, but also in Italy. Although one of the retired French intelligence chiefs confirmed that the mercenaries almost always acted "at the request" of the French secret services, Denard received four years in prison, but did not spend a day there: during the process, the "last pirate" fell ill with Alzheimer's disease and died in 2007.Pictured: Bob Denard after the failed coup attempt in the Comoros, 1995
Soldiers of failure
The renaissance did not last long, and already in the late 1970s, traditional mercenarism began to decline. It all started with the trial of white mercenaries captured by government forces in Angola. The authorities of this country, seemingly choosing the "path of socialist development", supported the USSR and its satellites (in particular, Cuba). And the process had an obvious political motive - it was supposed to demonstrate that Angola had become a victim of aggression by Western intelligence agencies. The court was well prepared: from the interrogations of the accused and witnesses, a far from romantic picture arose of how clever recruiters tempt unemployed alcoholics with easy money. But the “tempted” did not wait for indulgence: three mercenaries were sentenced to death, and another two dozen were imprisoned for a long time.And then it went and went. A coup attempt in the Seychelles organized by Michael Hoare ended in shameful failure in 1981. When Hoare and his commandos arrived on the islands disguised as members of a certain beer drinking club that hosts a once-a-year recreational tour, a dismantled Kalashnikov assault rifle was found in their luggage at customs. The "tourists" were surrounded, and they barely managed to escape on an Indian Air plane hijacked right there at the airport. In South Africa, where the mercenaries flew in, they were immediately arrested, and Hoar ended up in prison, after which he retired.
It turned out even more insulting with Bob Denard. In 1989, Ahmed Abdallah, his protege as President of Comoros, was killed, and he himself was evacuated by French paratroopers. In 1995, at the head of three dozen fighters, Denard landed on Comoros, where three hundred more armed people were waiting for him, who prepared a new military coup. But President Comoros turned for military assistance to France - a country whose tasks Denard had been performing for many years, and the legendary mercenary was betrayed. The paratroopers of the Foreign Legion, who fought shoulder to shoulder with Bob so many times, surrounded his group and forced him to surrender, and then quietly took him to France.
By the end of the 20th century, mercenarism in its traditional form fell into decline. What is the farcical story of the attempted coup in Equatorial Guinea in 2004 worth! The “mercenaries” involved in it seem to have been recruited from high-society loafers: for example, the son of the famous Iron Lady Mark Thatcher, Lord Archer and the oil trader Eli Kalil were involved in the conspiracy (although there were also professionals among the detainees - former South African special forces). The preparation of the conspiracy was revealed by the Zimbabwean intelligence services, the mercenaries were arrested, but they all got off with symbolic terms, and Mark Thatcher, who lived in South Africa, received a suspended sentence and was sent to London under the supervision of his mother.
Michael Hoare
Nicknamed the Mad Irishman, Michael Hoare fought in British tank units in North Africa during World War II. After retiring, he arranged safaris for tourists in South Africa. In 1961, Hoare appeared in the Congo at the head of "Commando 4", which consisted of several dozen thugs.Pretty soon, under the blows of UN troops, he led his group to Portuguese Angola and reappeared in the Congo in 1964: Tshombe, who had become prime minister by that time, hired him to suppress the uprising of the Simba tribe, which had previously supported Lumumba.
In carrying out this task, Hoare encountered another celebrity - Che Guevara, who went to Africa to raise a world revolution. The Comandante Cubans were unable to resist Hoar's mercenaries: Che Guevara was forced to flee Africa, and several dozen captured Cubans were hanged. Hoar's commandos, along with Cuban pilots hired by the CIA, also took part in the most famous operation of the Belgian army, as a result of which several hundred white hostages captured by Simba were released in the city of Stanleyville.
Just business, nothing personal
The decline of "traditional" mercenarism was predetermined by a fundamental change in the international climate. The Cold War is over, and covert operations involving mercenaries have dropped markedly. South Africa after the collapse of the apartheid regime ceased to serve as the main employer, the most important base and source of personnel for mercenaries. The “front of work” was also sharply reduced. African states, at the very least, created national armies, special services and police, and no longer experienced an urgent need for the services of “soldiers of fortune”. And the states of the West, because of the all-conquering political correctness, began to be embarrassed of ties with mercenaries.As a result, always drunken, weapon-laden "wild geese" were replaced by respectable gentlemen with laptops. And it was not underground recruiting centers for "soldiers of fortune" who began to take orders, but private military companies (PMCs), which provide the widest range of security services. According to experts, today more than two million people are employed in this area, and the total value of contracts exceeds $100 billion a year (that is, twice the Russian military budget).
At first glance, the whole difference between representatives of such a serious business and Hoare and Denard lies only in the fact that the former are officially registered and have given an official obligation not to participate in any illegal operations. However, it is not a matter of legal formulas. In the 90s of the XX century, it suddenly became clear that legal customers represented by states, transnational corporations and international non-governmental organizations are much more profitable than candidates for dictators. And the most important element of military operations over the past 10-15 years has been the transfer of quite important public functions for outsourcing to private military companies.
The current flourishing of private military companies is driven both by the military revolution and by changes in the political and social environment. On the one hand, the technological revolution made the existence of mass mobilization armies meaningless. New means of warfare based on computer and information technologies, again, as in the pre-industrial era, brought to the fore an individual fighter - an expert in the use of modern weapons. On the other hand, the public of developed countries is extremely sensitive to the losses among the soldiers of their armies. The death of military personnel is expensive not only figuratively, but also literally: for example, the death of each American soldier costs the Pentagon at least half a million dollars: special payments (in addition to insurance) and special family benefits, including funding for medical care and education. And a mercenary, although his salary is several times higher than the salary of a soldier, costs much less. Firstly, he receives his big money not for several decades in a row, but for a short period of time. Secondly, the state does not pay for his death or injury - these risks in the form of sums insured are initially included in the cost of the contract with PMCs. And the losses of private military companies are sometimes comparable to those of the army. For example, in 2004, in the Iraqi city of Fallujah, as a result of an attack on a convoy guarded by Blackwater employees, four guards were captured by a mob, killed and burned to death.
Private military companies made themselves felt already in the mid-1990s. Retired US military personnel hired by the Military Professional Resources Corporation took part in the preparation of operations by Bosnian Muslims and Croats against Serb military formations. However, these operations still fit into the old concept of military confrontation of the Cold War era: mercenaries were invited to operate where the United States and Western European countries considered it inconvenient to participate directly. And a real demonstration of the new face and new functions of mercenaries was the operation in Sierra Leone, where an extremely bloody civil war had been going on for several years.
A group called the Revolutionary United Front fought against the government of Sierra Leone, whose militants cut off the hands of civilians to intimidate them. Government troops suffered one defeat after another, the rebels were already 30 kilometers from the capital, and the UN could not form a peacekeeping force. And then the government hired the private military company Executive Outcomes, created in South Africa mainly from former special forces soldiers, for $60 million. The company quickly formed a light infantry battalion that was equipped with armored personnel carriers, recoilless rifles and mortars and was supported by several attack helicopters. And it took this battalion just a couple of weeks to defeat the anti-government forces.
The situation in the country has stabilized so much that it was possible to hold the first elections in 10 years. Soon the contract with Executive Outcomes, concluded for nine months, expired. The multinational mining companies that financed this operation from behind the scenes thought that the job was done. And they were wrong: the civil war began again. This time, however, the UN peacekeeping forces, assembled mainly from units of African states, entered the matter. The peacekeeping operation, which cost about $500 million each year, ended in 2005 without significant results. An audit carried out by UN officials revealed the monstrous unpreparedness of the "blue helmets": they operated without armored vehicles and air support, and even with almost no ammunition - each rifle had only two rounds! And soon the government of Sierra Leone again turned to a private military company, which, among other things, began to save UN peacekeepers ...
Far from angels
Notorious employees of one of the largest American private military firms - Blackwater. In 2007, they staged a shootout in the center of Baghdad, in which 17 civilians became victims. After this scandal, Blackwater changed its name to Xe Service, which allowed the Pentagon to conclude a new contract with the firm to train Iraqi troops worth half a billion dollars. Another high-profile scandal occurred with employees of the ArmourGroup company, who were guarding the American embassy in Kabul. In 2009, it turned out that they organized drunken orgies on the territory of the diplomatic mission.Profitable business
According to experts from the American Brookings Institution, the market for PMC services is over 100 billion dollars a year, and more than two million people participate in their activities. Such "giants" as DynCorp and Xe Service employ tens of thousands of people. But much more common are PMCs with a staff of several hundred employees. Most PMCs are registered offshore, but, as a rule, their leaders and personnel are Americans and British. These companies are happy to accept veterans of the Gurkha units, former soldiers of the Fijian peacekeeping battalion in the Sinai, and retirees of the Philippine Marine Corps. And recently, private military companies from Serbia have been particularly successful on the market.
Changing of the guards
This story has become a textbook example of the ineffectiveness of UN peacekeeping and the effectiveness of PMCs. Experts pointed out that private military companies, firstly, do not waste time on political coordination within the framework of the Security Council and overcoming bureaucratic barriers. Secondly, unlike the governments of developing countries, whose troops participate in peacekeeping operations, they do not skimp on the maintenance and provision of their forces. And thirdly, by contracting to perform a specific military task for a certain amount, PMCs, unlike states that receive about a million dollars a year from the UN for each peacekeeping battalion, are not at all interested in delaying the operation.But the true heyday of private military companies began after US and NATO troops entered Afghanistan and Iraq. It soon became clear that the alliance did not have enough personnel to carry out support and related operations: escorting convoys, guarding representative offices of government and international organizations, guarding all kinds of warehouses. These services were offered by mercenaries, contracts with which were no longer concluded by the governments of developing countries, but by the State Department and the US Department of Defense. The US military department even created a special department responsible for concluding contracts with private military companies.
In 2008, up to 20,000 PMC employees were already working in Iraq, while the number of military groups reached 130,000 soldiers and officers. As US troops withdraw, the Pentagon is handing over more functions to private military companies, including, for example, training Iraqi military and police personnel. Accordingly, the number of mercenaries is also growing: according to experts, by 2012 it may reach 100,000 people. The same thing is happening in Afghanistan, where companies like DynCorp and Blackwater have become essentially private armies.
The sharply increased demand for the services of mercenaries even gave rise to a shortage of personnel. To perform simple security functions, private military companies en masse began to hire local residents, which they tried not to do before. Too active recruitment of employees in Afghanistan even led to a conflict with the country's leadership. The Afghan president issued an ultimatum to stop the activities of PMCs poaching military personnel from the regular army. And the growing shortage of specialists with combat experience (there are no longer enough retirees from the United States and Great Britain) leads to completely unexpected results. According to rumors, South African special forces have been reduced by almost half due to a sharp outflow of personnel to the private sector, where salaries can reach thousands of dollars a day.
Russian specialists have also found their place in the modern mercenary market. International Charters, registered in Oregon, hired both retired American paratroopers and former Soviet special forces in the 1990s, who worked together and effectively in Liberia, where a bloody civil war broke out, the victims of which were tens of thousands of people. And this is not surprising: in the mercenary international, former opponents get along well with each other. Perhaps this is a consequence of the personnel policy of the leadership of private military companies, which, as a rule, does not care much about the past of their subordinates and who fought on which side before. In the community of modern mercenaries, both former Serbian special forces are equally highly valued (human rights activists have repeatedly criticized the British company Hart Group for hiring large groups of Serbs who fought in Bosnia and may be involved in war crimes) and their counterparts from Croatia.
Such "indiscriminateness" of private military companies can be explained simply: if you demand that a mercenary candidate have combat experience, then you can hardly make high moral demands on him. And several high-profile scandals related to the personnel of various PMCs serve as confirmation of this. Nevertheless, the demand for the services of modern mercenaries is growing. Despite the ambiguity of the experience of private military companies, it should be recognized that they are becoming an important military force not because politicians change moral guidelines, but because military technologies are rapidly changing.
