Some recent events, ending in court cases, have thrown light on the little-known topic of mercenaries in the Pacific region, and on the implications of the proliferation of private military companies (PMCs) in general:
- In Bougainville, Papua New Guinea, four remaining Fijian ex-soldiers supplied by the aptly named Fijian PMC Ronin surrendered to the authorities. They had been training a private army for pyramid-scheme conman and self-proclaimed “King of Papala”, Noah Musingku, until a deadly raid by a rival armed group, the Bougainville Freedom Fighters, late last year. One Fijian mercenary remains on the run. Musingku promised them F$1 million each which he could never have paid – and he certainly couldn’t afford the F$35 million he reportedly offered to Fiji’s army chief Voreqe Bainimarama before the coup. More info and analysis in a previous post.
- In Lebanon, an Australian and a New Zealander, both ex-SAS, are in prison, after they were hired by Lebanese-Canadian Melissa Hawach to help her regain custody of her children – allegedly by kidnapping them.
Context
A major PMC, DynCorp, has just received a $10 million contract to provide services to African peacekeepers in Somalia. It could be a new model of peacekeeping – the US provides cash, private companies supply the logistics, and poor countries the boots on the ground. Many analysts and bloggers prefer to concentrate on the positive potential of PMCs – their deployments could be more efficient, politically palatable, and militarily more effective than using a traditional army. But there is another side, suggested by the above stories.
Mercenaires won’t only be hired by respectable state militaries or international organizations, nor will their use be restricted to peacekeeping or humanitarian operations, as the PR suggests. Individual mercenaries will be hired by rich and powerful individuals and small groups, often on the wrong side of the law, and especially in countries where the law means little. Whether that’s a shady warlord or a caring mother is beside the point – the proliferation of PMCs levels the playing field. It changes the balance of power, and not in favour of the state.
Dangers
That has potentially bad implications for global security, and particularly in the Pacific with all the Fijian contractors in Iraq (and places like Bougainville). Here is an excellent Vanity Fair piece on mercenary mogul Tim Spicer. It’s a fascinating and often unpleasant story. It’s relevant to the Bougainville case because Spicer – now working in Iraq – was in charge of the mercenary group hired by the PNG government to suppress the Bougainville rebellion. Predictably, their plan owed nothing to counter-insurgency thinking and would have relied entirely on airborne bombing and raids against villages – it could have been a bloodbath, had the PNG military, offended at the multi-million dollar contract, not mutinied and sent the mercenaries straight home. The high pay of mercenaries invites resentment from regular soldiers and locals alike, and their tactics usually, well, lack subtlety.
The dangerous trend, though, is withdrawal from Iraq. Mercenaries make up the second largest foreign force in Iraq, and they will be going home along with US and British forces sometime in the near future. What happens then for many of the contractors, especially from poorer countries like Fiji? Prices will drop, and some of those mercenaries will want to create their own work, and start their own groups. What then for the Fijians, and what will the effect be on the various flashpoints around the Pacific and the world when that happens?
Interesting post Phil. Another potential danger about using private military companies is that they may have an interest in prolonging conflict (to maintain a revenue stream) rather than ending it. A historical parallel is Renaissance Italy, with the proliferation of condotierii (mercenary generals/entrepreneurs contracting to princes, popes and republics) who tended to fight ritualized battles with an emphasis on avoiding loss of life and hardship.
Left by The strategist on March 11th, 2007