The new mercenaries

The use of the private sector to provide security is spreading like an oil slick across the world. Especially in the so-called ‘risk’ countries that are relatively numerous in Africa and the Caribbean, but which are also present in the Pacific, such as Papua New Guinea. What is more, in certain cases the dividing line between their ‘defensive’ and ‘offensive’ role is becoming increasingly blurred. An international convention to regulate the sector is currently being prepared.

Georges-Henri Bricet des Vallons, researcher at France’s Institut Choiseul  and author of Irak, terre mercenaire (Iraq : land of mercenaries), stresses the need to first of all distinguish between private companies that provide security for expatriates, and those to which a government decides to contract out a part of its military activities, usually those carried out abroad. You can count the number of these ‘genuine’ PMCs (private military companies) on the fingers of one hand, believes this French expert: “Very few of them are able to act across the full operational spectrum in the same way as the top 3 Anglo-Saxon companies, namely Blackwater/Xe, Dyncorp and Aegis.” These, with others, were the ones that replaced the US Armed Forces in terms of numbers and most of their duties at the time of the Iraq war, an “unprecedented transformation” in the conduct of war, adds the French expert.

The same trend can also be detected in Europe, although to a lesser degree. While France remains reluctant to externalise its military operations, Spain, which by no means has the status of a European military power, has very pragmatically decided to turn to the private sector to combat the piracy threat, explains Georges-Henri Bricet des Vallons. Furthermore: “Germany is also at present discreetly employing the services of Assgaard Security to train the backbone of a future Somali Army on behalf of the transitional government”

Should we be concerned at the emergence of this new kind of mercenary? Mr Bricet des Vallons stresses that today no private company admits to the role of combatant, even if some of them at times cross the red line, insofar as “the crude reality of war often explodes the dividing line between the defensive and the offensive.”

UN concerns

Current events in Libya or the Ivory Coast have placed the mercenary issue very much on the agenda. Meeting in Geneva on 8 April, the UN Working Group on the use of mercenaries said it was particularly concerned at the latest security developments, especially in the Ivory Coast. Working Group President José Luis Gomez del Prado affirmed that “the issue of mercenaries remains. They are used as a means of preventing people from exercising their rights to self-determination.” He called on the Member States to ratify the 1989 Convention against the recruitment, use, financing and training of mercenaries. The Working Group also discussed the plan for an international convention on private security companies. A further meeting took place in Geneva at the end of May in an attempt to create a regulatory framework on this issue. For their part, about 60 security companies signed a code of conduct in Geneva on 9 November 2010.

Marie-Martine Buckens