|
'Dogs of war' brought to heel
13/03/2004 16:18 - (SA)
Johannesburg - The dogs of war, if that they be, were brought to heel fast in Equatorial Guinea and Zimbabwe.
The alleged mercenaries detained in the two African countries come, in a long internationalist tradition, from, at least, Angola, Armenia, Germany, Kazakhstan, Namibia, South Africa, Zimbabwe...
They are accused of plotting to overthrow Equatorial Guinean President Teodoro Obiang Nguema, who seized power in 1979 from his uncle, executing him later, and replace him with exiled opposition figure Severo Moto Nsa, who complains that Obiang is an "authentic cannibal" who "wants to eat my testicles".
It may be no coincidence that the tiny country in the Gulf of Guinea is Africa's third biggest oil producer.
The heyday of mercenaries in Africa came after the independence of the then Belgian Congo in 1960, which became Zaire, now the Democratic Republic of Congo, when the likes of Frenchman Bob Denard and his "affreux" -- ("the frightful ones"), Belgian "Black Jack" Schramme and Briton "Mad Mike" Hoare fought in the secessionist province of Katanga -- times of blood and guts and craziness.
Denard also took part in a succession of coups in the Comoros, in the Indian Ocean, a country he regarded as his second home after taking a Comoran wife.
After spending time in the notorious "Sante" prison in Paris, he was acquitted in 1999 of murdering a Comoran president.
Mercenaries on both sides
During the 1967-70 Biafra war, mercenaries fought on both sides.
Those flying the MiGs for the federal Nigerian government were the rejects - drunks and incompetents - of other air forces, unable to fly on instruments.
They frequently knew the mercenaries fighting for the ultimately unsuccessful secessionists, even talked to them by radio, so the watchword - usually - was "I won't kill you if you don't kill me".
But sometimes the employers demanded action: one South African shot down a clearly marked Red Cross plane flying relief supplies into Biafra, killing all aboard.
He spent his subsequent evenings drinking brandy and coke in bars, becoming more maudlin as each evening wore on, trying to justify what he had done.
The establishment in apartheid South Africa of Executive Outcomes in 1991 brought sudden order to the profession.
The crazies were no longer welcome. The company recruited battle-hardened and disciplined South Africans and Zimbabweans, blacks as well as whites. They received regular salaries, health insurance, pension plans ...
Spit-shined their boots
Those guarding VIPs pressed their uniforms and spit-shined their boots. They fought in Angola, Sierra Leone, even as far afield as Papua-New Guinea.
Media reports link at least one of the 67 men held in Zimbabwe to the London-based Sandline group, which absorbed Executive Outcomes in 1998, the year that South Africa's parliament passed a law forbidding all mercenary activity.
Said Chris Maroleng, a researcher at the respected Pretoria-based Institute for Security Studies: "For many of these groups it was simply a relocation of office."
Mercenaries arrived in Ivory Coast in September 2002 to support President Laurent Gbagbo against mutineers and former soldiers who seized half that west African country, and Gbagbo's government claimed the rebels had recruited their own mercenaries from neighbouring countries.
Two white mercenary units tried - and failed - to enter Madagascar two years ago, one to support the incumbent president, the other to back his predecessor.
British foreign minister Jack Straw once suggested that mercenaries be harnessed for peacekeeping operations -- an idea that drew scathing criticism.
"I find it breathtaking in the extreme that ... the foreign secretary should even contemplate giving such companies a veneer of respectability and suggesting that there could be circumstances when democratic countries or agencies like the UN should sub-contract peacekeeping or humanitarian intervention to such organisations," said British Labour Party MP Andrew Mackinlay.
- AFP
|
News
