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Private armies are making a killing Mercenaries thrive while democracy dies

A private security contractor in Afghanistan (Matt Moyer/Getty Images)

A private security contractor in Afghanistan (Matt Moyer/Getty Images)


April 11, 2023   7 mins

Last week, Russia claimed to have seized control of the city of Bakhmut after an eight-month battle with Ukrainian forces — the longest and bloodiest fight of the war so far. The assault, however, wasn’t led by the Russian Armed Forces, but by a private army that has been fighting alongside regular Russian troops since the invasion: the infamous Wagner Group.

The Wagner Group has always been cloaked in mystery. In the first days of the war, reports emphasised the secretive nature of its military operations, including a plot to assassinate Zelenskyy and his cabinet. Until recently, it was unclear whether a company registered under the name “Wagner” even existed.

That all changed in September 2022, when Yevgeny Prigozhin, a close ally of Putin, published a statement claiming that he founded the group in 2014 to “protect the Russians” when “the genocide of the Russian population of Donbas began”. Then, in January this year, he decided to make it official, registering Wagner as a business and opening its “PMC Wagner Center” headquarters in St Petersburg. He didn’t make any secret of its activities: as the company’s name, which also appears on the group’s logo, makes clear, the Wagner Group is a PMC: a private military company, also known as a mercenary group. The Russian government was forced to acknowledge its existence. The Wagner Group’s clandestine status was officially discarded.

In many ways, Wagner’s emergence from the shadows symbolises the changing nature of modern warfare, in which the traditional Clausewitzian paradigm — based on a clear distinction between public and private, friend and enemy, civil and military, combatant and non-combatant — has given way to a much messier reality, in which state armies now regularly fight alongside private and/or corporate paramilitary and mercenary groups. Today’s conflicts, even when violent in nature, often occur in a “grey zone” below the threshold of conventional military action; adversarial states increasingly confront each other through proxies or surrogates — including private armies — rather than through their own armed forces. And this is not just a Russian issue: the increasingly central role of private military and security companies (PMSCs) in modern warfare is a global phenomenon.

Private armies have existed for centuries. In recent decades, the use of mercenaries was particularly widespread during the Cold War, especially in Africa, in the context of decolonisation and the ensuing civil wars. In particular, they were widely used between the Sixties and early Eighties by the West to prevent colonies attaining independence or to destabilise or overthrow newly independent governments, such as in the Democratic Republic of Congo, the Republic of Benin and the Republic of Seychelles.

At the time, there was virtually no international legal framework regarding mercenarism. It was only in 1977 that the Geneva Conventions incorporated an international legal definition of it. A mercenary, it held, is any person who is recruited to fight in an armed conflict, who actively takes a direct part in the hostilities, and who is neither a national of a party to the conflict nor a resident of territory controlled by one. It was a very narrow definition — but one which, at the behest of the newly independent nations, was specifically tailored to address the use of mercenaries by the West against the post-colonial governments.

This led to the appointment, in 1987, of a Special Rapporteur on the use of mercenaries; and then, in 1989, to the International Convention against the Recruitment, Use, Financing and Training of Mercenaries, which entered into force in 2001 and added language specifying that mercenaries were people undermining legitimate governments — another clause that implicitly reflected the concerns of post-colonial countries. To this day, the Convention — which essentially copies the wording of the 1977 definition — represents the international legal definition of mercenarism.

As a result, during the Nineties, there was a significant rise in the number of private military and security companies, who sought to distance their activities from the legal definition of mercenarism by presenting themselves as official business entities offering “legitimate” security and defence services allegedly distinguished from that of rogue mercenary groups. And, by and large, they did so successfully. In that decade alone, PMSCs reportedly trained the militaries of 42 nations and took part in more than 700 conflicts.

There was a broader backdrop to this growth, too. The growing influence of the neoliberal logic of economic rationalisation and deregulation during the Nineties also pushed states to privatise and outsource many government functions and services — including warfare. Security came to be perceived as a commodity, a service like any other that could be sold and bought in the marketplace. This was also part of a broader push towards the transfer of national prerogatives to suprastate or, as in this case, non-state actors as a way to shift the decision-making process away from democratic institutions. This trend was compounded by the global downsizing of national military forces, which also expanded the recruiting pool for PMSCs.

Even though PMSCs started out by mainly selling their services to developing countries and so-called failed states facing political crises, by the mid-Nineties Western governments, particularly the US, started to use them as well. By contracting them to support, train and equip the military and security forces of friendly governments — most notably in former Yugoslavia — Western powers were able to promote their interests and foreign policy agendas, while avoiding becoming embroiled in unpopular conflicts, and even circumventing national or international constraints on troop deployment. By the end of the decade, NGOs (such as Oxfam) and even the United Nations had also come to rely heavily on PMSCs for their own security and even for peacekeeping missions.

In this sense, PMSCs did not replace the role of states as much as integrate into them. In some cases, they even bolstered state military power, by allowing governments to engage in forms of warfare that they might otherwise have been prevented from undertaking for fear of provoking a conventional military response by more powerful states, while also escaping public scrutiny. The Wagner Group’s activities in several African and the Middle Eastern countries — such as Syria, Libya, the Central African Republic and Mali — are a good illustration, insofar as they granted Moscow a degree of plausible deniability concerning its foreign interventions and the alleged human rights abuses committed by Wagner.

Over the years, various efforts have been made to regulate this new phenomenon at the international level, eventually leading to the establishment of a UN Working Group on the use of mercenaries in 2005. But these bodies have, by and large, failed. Today, the sector remains largely unregulated and operates in a de facto legal vacuum. PMSCs can’t be considered soldiers or supporting militias under international humanitarian law, since they are not part of the army or in the chain of command — but nor can they usually be considered to be mercenaries under the narrow legal definition adopted by the UN. In the current conflict in Ukraine, for instance, the Wagner Group can’t be considered a mercenary group by legal standards for the simple fact that its members are nationals of one of the parties to the conflict.

These private military companies remain largely unaccountable, characterised by a “fundamental lack of transparency around, and oversight over [their operations]”, as the UN Working Group noted in 2021. Indeed, it suggested that this is sometimes “done precisely with the ominous objective of providing ‘plausible deniability’ of direct involvement in a conflict”. Greater regulation would be welcome, of course, but it wouldn’t change the fact that corporate armies intrinsically undermine democratic accountability — arguably one of the reasons that makes them attractive to states in the first place.

More fundamentally, what we are dealing with here is the legalisation and normalisation of mercenarism. The only real difference between traditional guns-for-hire and PMSCs is that the latter are often legally constituted businesses with corporate organisational structures. This lends them legitimacy and, theoretically, makes the monitoring of their actions and prosecution easier. But ultimately they remain, to all intents and purposes, “new modalities of mercenaries”, as even the UN General Assembly argued some years back.

Crucially, the UN report acknowledges that the private security and military industry is a global and growing phenomenon. While today’s focus is on Wagner, the real mercenary boom occurred during the US-led military interventions in Afghanistan and Iraq. In both cases, the US relied heavily on PMSCs such as DynCorp and Blackwater (now known as Constellis). Indeed, at points, the number of contractors on the ground actually outnumbered American troops. By 2006, there were estimated to be at least 100,000 PMSC employees in Iraq working directly for the US Department of Defense.

And like Wagner today, these were involved in several human rights abuses in the country. Blackwater, for example, the most high-profile PMSC in Iraq, was involved in the massacre of 17 Iraqi civilians in 2007 (which led to the conviction of four Blackwater employees), while other PMSCs were involved in the Iraq Abu Ghraib prison scandal (though none faced prosecution) and were alleged to have participated in the CIA’s “extraordinary rendition” programme — the kidnapping and forced removal of individuals to places known to torture. Despite these obvious failures, by the summer of 2020, the US had more than 20,000 contractor personnel in Afghanistan — roughly twice the number of American troops. Before that, in 2017, Erik Prince, founder of Blackwater, had proposed to fully privatise the war effort there.

What could possibly inspire such chutzpah? Well, although the Iraqi and Afghan conflicts are generally considered to have been a strategic blunder for the US, not to mention a humanitarian tragedy, they were a boon for the PMSC sector: up until 2016, the US State Department spent $196 billion on PMSC contracts for the Iraq war, and $108 billion for the Afghan war. And business hasn’t slowed: in 2022, the PMSC sector — whose largest businesses are now American or British — was valued at $260 billion and is projected to reach a value of around $450 billion by 2030. The largest PMSC in the world, UK-based G4S, alone employs more than 500,000 people and is present in more than 90 countries.

Should we be surprised? Ultimately, the growth of the PMSC sector is just another example of how economic transformations in recent decades have blurred the boundary between the public and private-corporate sphere to the point of making it indistinguishable. The result has been the rise of a state-corporate Leviathan which has gobbled up every sector of the economy — healthcare, banks, energy, tech — and has now taken over the field of warfare as well, at the expense of democratic control and oversight. This applies to Russia just as much as it applies to Western countries. If the conflict in Ukraine has taught us anything, it’s that war today is a bigger business than it’s ever been. No wonder peace — in Ukraine or elsewhere — seems constantly out of reach.


Thomas Fazi is an UnHerd columnist and translator. His latest book is The Covid Consensus, co-authored with Toby Green.

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Matt Hindman
Matt Hindman
1 year ago

This reminds me of an interview I saw several years ago with Neall Ellis, a renowned gunship pilot and well known mercenary. He made an interesting point that this article makes me think of. If you are a small country and you need some extra trained and equipped security forces, hire old fashioned mercenary companies instead of PMCs with deep ties to their nation states. Many of these modern PMCs are not independent at all. Instead they are extensions of their home government and receive support like logistics and airbases from their countries’ military and government. Mercenary companies are usually paid directly by the government they are working for and are subject to direct oversight from the government.
Many of these modern PMCs are offered to assist small African countries for “free” by their home governments. Just remember “there ain’t no such thing as a free lunch” and that favor often comes with a steep price tag. The Wagner Group is only one of the most well known ones. America and China have both been playing the same game and many other countries are as well. Fazi has it backwards. This is not the rise of nonstate actors. These are state affiliated actors pretending to be something else.

Last edited 1 year ago by Matt Hindman
Peter D
Peter D
1 year ago
Reply to  Matt Hindman

I’ve noticed that Thomas Fazi gets a few things backwards. Admittedly it is in vogue to say colonialism is bad when in fact is was European sponsored modernism of a large chunk of the developing world. Foolish people will chime in saying that the people never asked to be brought up to speed with Europe with many beneficial technologies and they would be right. But then again, not a single Westerner was ever asked if they were ok with countless millions of migrants and refugees being brought in. Now they are bullied into accepting it or being branded a racist.
One other bit of purposely forgotten tidbit of information never gets brought up. That is that many countries, especially in Africa actually invited the Europeans in because they brought not just improvements, but also peace and security to a continent that was rife with infighting.
What is being done in Africa today with a lot of these PMC’s is worse because they don’t do anything to improve the lives of ordinary Africans unlike the colonial powers.

Nell Clover
Nell Clover
1 year ago
Reply to  Peter D

About as many Europeans were asked about being “brought up to speed” as those native to foreign lands. The future arrives whether we like it or not. Countless millions of ordinary Europeans were forced off their land, forced down mines, forced into factories and forced – often under threat of capital punishment – to emigrate.

When we have arguments about colonialism we tend to forget it was largely a change of elites. The incumbent elites were no more peaceful shepherds of their people than the incoming imperialists. Indeed, the largest part of the British Empire was won from another occupying empire.

The British Empire ended not in the sunlit uplands of freedom but in a new kind of international organisation with a new cast of elites calling the shots. For ordinary people everywhere, just another future dawned that they didn’t have much say in.

And where now? The future of Net Zero, CBDC, CEI and ESG isn’t influenced by ordinary people (whether these are good things or bad) but by a very select and small elite working in organisations such as Open Society and WEF. Sure, the Open Society and WEF might be of the West and I am Western, but in what way am I responsible for what they do?

Last edited 1 year ago by Nell Clover
CHARLES STANHOPE
CHARLES STANHOPE
1 year ago
Reply to  Nell Clover

“often under threat of capital punishment – to emigrate.”

Surely you mean as an ALTERNATIVE to capital punishment? ie: Transportation, sometimes for life.

jane baker
jane baker
1 year ago

Scottish shepherds,weavers,crofters,whole villages forced out of their homes. Their houses and barns set on fire as they stood outside bewildered. Then forced at the point of bayonets down to the beach. The point forcibly made,get on a ship to America or Canada or die of exposure. That happened to one of my ancestral families. They went to Nova Scotia,best thing ever happened to em I reckon, ultimately. I always say the best thing about Scotland is the road out of it.

Last edited 1 year ago by jane baker
CHARLES STANHOPE
CHARLES STANHOPE
1 year ago
Reply to  jane baker

The “clearances “ were mainly the work of Scotch landlords seeking to maximise their investment. What’s wrong with that?

William Edward Henry Appleby
William Edward Henry Appleby
1 year ago
Reply to  jane baker

That may well be true, but when they arrived in Nova Scotia did the government there welcome them or put them on a boat to some “friendly” African country, after keeping them locked up for 18 months before turning down their application to settle?

CHARLES STANHOPE
CHARLES STANHOPE
1 year ago

Given the name NS I would imagine they welcomed them?
After wasn’t it previously called Arcadia and full of Frogs who had to be deported to Louisiana? and thus the word ‘Cajun’ or something like that?

Last edited 1 year ago by CHARLES STANHOPE
William Edward Henry Appleby
William Edward Henry Appleby
1 year ago

There was no government to welcome them. We just stole it from the French, who had stolen it in turn from the Mikmaks.

CHARLES STANHOPE
CHARLES STANHOPE
1 year ago

“‘Twas ever thus”.

Last edited 1 year ago by CHARLES STANHOPE
William Edward Henry Appleby
William Edward Henry Appleby
1 year ago

Yes, I suppose so.

William Edward Henry Appleby
William Edward Henry Appleby
1 year ago

Yes, I suppose so.

CHARLES STANHOPE
CHARLES STANHOPE
1 year ago

“‘Twas ever thus”.

Last edited 1 year ago by CHARLES STANHOPE
William Edward Henry Appleby
William Edward Henry Appleby
1 year ago

There was no government to welcome them. We just stole it from the French, who had stolen it in turn from the Mikmaks.

CHARLES STANHOPE
CHARLES STANHOPE
1 year ago

Given the name NS I would imagine they welcomed them?
After wasn’t it previously called Arcadia and full of Frogs who had to be deported to Louisiana? and thus the word ‘Cajun’ or something like that?

Last edited 1 year ago by CHARLES STANHOPE
CHARLES STANHOPE
CHARLES STANHOPE
1 year ago
Reply to  jane baker

The “clearances “ were mainly the work of Scotch landlords seeking to maximise their investment. What’s wrong with that?

William Edward Henry Appleby
William Edward Henry Appleby
1 year ago
Reply to  jane baker

That may well be true, but when they arrived in Nova Scotia did the government there welcome them or put them on a boat to some “friendly” African country, after keeping them locked up for 18 months before turning down their application to settle?

jane baker
jane baker
1 year ago

Scottish shepherds,weavers,crofters,whole villages forced out of their homes. Their houses and barns set on fire as they stood outside bewildered. Then forced at the point of bayonets down to the beach. The point forcibly made,get on a ship to America or Canada or die of exposure. That happened to one of my ancestral families. They went to Nova Scotia,best thing ever happened to em I reckon, ultimately. I always say the best thing about Scotland is the road out of it.

Last edited 1 year ago by jane baker
Warren Trees
Warren Trees
1 year ago
Reply to  Nell Clover

Indeed. Great concept you have identified here. We are all under the influence of the new colonialism.

Julian Farrows
Julian Farrows
1 year ago
Reply to  Nell Clover

Also, much of British colonialism in Africa was about ending slavery.

jane baker
jane baker
1 year ago
Reply to  Julian Farrows

And getting mineral resources for free but we have them Jesus in exchange.

Clare Knight
Clare Knight
1 year ago
Reply to  jane baker

I presume you mean that wasn’t a good exchange.

CHARLES STANHOPE
CHARLES STANHOPE
1 year ago
Reply to  Clare Knight

Blasphemer!

CHARLES STANHOPE
CHARLES STANHOPE
1 year ago
Reply to  Clare Knight

Blasphemer!

Charles Hedges
Charles Hedges
1 year ago
Reply to  jane baker

One needs railways, mechanical and electrical equipment, trains, power stations, docks, roads, lorries, ships and trained staff which are a product of schools, to export the minerals. It is almost as if people believe minerals and oil somehow magically leave the ground and end up in the West.
In Mozambique during Civil war Tiny Rowland payed mercenaries to protect his railway which provided only security for much of the population.
Oil has seeped out of the ground in the Middle East and been used for millennia but it was not until The West developed modern water well drilling rigs adapted them to oil production was crude oil abstracted from the ground. Why did the Sumerians not invent the steam locomotive, petrol engine and the oil rig?Pitch seeped out of the ground and was used to water proof boats but noone thought of investigating the source.

Clare Knight
Clare Knight
1 year ago
Reply to  jane baker

I presume you mean that wasn’t a good exchange.

Charles Hedges
Charles Hedges
1 year ago
Reply to  jane baker

One needs railways, mechanical and electrical equipment, trains, power stations, docks, roads, lorries, ships and trained staff which are a product of schools, to export the minerals. It is almost as if people believe minerals and oil somehow magically leave the ground and end up in the West.
In Mozambique during Civil war Tiny Rowland payed mercenaries to protect his railway which provided only security for much of the population.
Oil has seeped out of the ground in the Middle East and been used for millennia but it was not until The West developed modern water well drilling rigs adapted them to oil production was crude oil abstracted from the ground. Why did the Sumerians not invent the steam locomotive, petrol engine and the oil rig?Pitch seeped out of the ground and was used to water proof boats but noone thought of investigating the source.

jane baker
jane baker
1 year ago
Reply to  Julian Farrows

And getting mineral resources for free but we have them Jesus in exchange.

CHARLES STANHOPE
CHARLES STANHOPE
1 year ago
Reply to  Nell Clover

“often under threat of capital punishment – to emigrate.”

Surely you mean as an ALTERNATIVE to capital punishment? ie: Transportation, sometimes for life.

Warren Trees
Warren Trees
1 year ago
Reply to  Nell Clover

Indeed. Great concept you have identified here. We are all under the influence of the new colonialism.

Julian Farrows
Julian Farrows
1 year ago
Reply to  Nell Clover

Also, much of British colonialism in Africa was about ending slavery.

William Edward Henry Appleby
William Edward Henry Appleby
1 year ago
Reply to  Peter D

I was never happy with the Romans coming over here and building their straight roads and bath-houses. I mean, what did they ever do for us?

Nicky Samengo-Turner
Nicky Samengo-Turner
1 year ago

.. and Africa still cant manage even that!

Nicky Samengo-Turner
Nicky Samengo-Turner
1 year ago

.. and Africa still cant manage even that!

Nell Clover
Nell Clover
1 year ago
Reply to  Peter D

About as many Europeans were asked about being “brought up to speed” as those native to foreign lands. The future arrives whether we like it or not. Countless millions of ordinary Europeans were forced off their land, forced down mines, forced into factories and forced – often under threat of capital punishment – to emigrate.

When we have arguments about colonialism we tend to forget it was largely a change of elites. The incumbent elites were no more peaceful shepherds of their people than the incoming imperialists. Indeed, the largest part of the British Empire was won from another occupying empire.

The British Empire ended not in the sunlit uplands of freedom but in a new kind of international organisation with a new cast of elites calling the shots. For ordinary people everywhere, just another future dawned that they didn’t have much say in.

And where now? The future of Net Zero, CBDC, CEI and ESG isn’t influenced by ordinary people (whether these are good things or bad) but by a very select and small elite working in organisations such as Open Society and WEF. Sure, the Open Society and WEF might be of the West and I am Western, but in what way am I responsible for what they do?

Last edited 1 year ago by Nell Clover
William Edward Henry Appleby
William Edward Henry Appleby
1 year ago
Reply to  Peter D

I was never happy with the Romans coming over here and building their straight roads and bath-houses. I mean, what did they ever do for us?

Peter D
Peter D
1 year ago
Reply to  Matt Hindman

I’ve noticed that Thomas Fazi gets a few things backwards. Admittedly it is in vogue to say colonialism is bad when in fact is was European sponsored modernism of a large chunk of the developing world. Foolish people will chime in saying that the people never asked to be brought up to speed with Europe with many beneficial technologies and they would be right. But then again, not a single Westerner was ever asked if they were ok with countless millions of migrants and refugees being brought in. Now they are bullied into accepting it or being branded a racist.
One other bit of purposely forgotten tidbit of information never gets brought up. That is that many countries, especially in Africa actually invited the Europeans in because they brought not just improvements, but also peace and security to a continent that was rife with infighting.
What is being done in Africa today with a lot of these PMC’s is worse because they don’t do anything to improve the lives of ordinary Africans unlike the colonial powers.

Matt Hindman
Matt Hindman
1 year ago

This reminds me of an interview I saw several years ago with Neall Ellis, a renowned gunship pilot and well known mercenary. He made an interesting point that this article makes me think of. If you are a small country and you need some extra trained and equipped security forces, hire old fashioned mercenary companies instead of PMCs with deep ties to their nation states. Many of these modern PMCs are not independent at all. Instead they are extensions of their home government and receive support like logistics and airbases from their countries’ military and government. Mercenary companies are usually paid directly by the government they are working for and are subject to direct oversight from the government.
Many of these modern PMCs are offered to assist small African countries for “free” by their home governments. Just remember “there ain’t no such thing as a free lunch” and that favor often comes with a steep price tag. The Wagner Group is only one of the most well known ones. America and China have both been playing the same game and many other countries are as well. Fazi has it backwards. This is not the rise of nonstate actors. These are state affiliated actors pretending to be something else.

Last edited 1 year ago by Matt Hindman
Michael Walsh
Michael Walsh
1 year ago

Another factor: with the US military forced by the governing class to serve as their laboratory for bizarre social-science experiments, it becomes necessary to farm out the grim stuff to professionals.

Warren Trees
Warren Trees
1 year ago
Reply to  Michael Walsh

Lest they experience the trauma of a run in their nylons.

jane baker
jane baker
1 year ago
Reply to  Michael Walsh

Even Bidens controllers are scared of those American Moms. A White House lawn encampment of them could stop the Ukraine war. That’s why even they dare not send “boots on the ground” but luckily there is ukranians to sacrifice as no one cares,and now we’re getting a bit low on ukranians Duda is offering Poles,as a sacrifice to Molech,but will they coco. I always thought Poles were quite smart with a bit of independent spirit to them

Last edited 1 year ago by jane baker
R Cope
R Cope
1 year ago
Reply to  Michael Walsh

Depends what you mean by professional. Not all PMCs are the same. Some are superb with ex SF operators. Others in Iraq were recruiting doormen from nightclubs in Glasgow and Liverpool.

Nicky Samengo-Turner
Nicky Samengo-Turner
1 year ago
Reply to  R Cope

Never a truer word spaketh..The Americans even worse. Not unlike the ” pleece” in nu britn, experienced former Officers, Warrant Officers, Sergeants and soldiers plus that ‘ command and control” hirearchy and orders system is crucial, and not only ex Sergeants or other ranks…

Nicky Samengo-Turner
Nicky Samengo-Turner
1 year ago
Reply to  R Cope

Never a truer word spaketh..The Americans even worse. Not unlike the ” pleece” in nu britn, experienced former Officers, Warrant Officers, Sergeants and soldiers plus that ‘ command and control” hirearchy and orders system is crucial, and not only ex Sergeants or other ranks…

Betsy Arehart
Betsy Arehart
1 year ago
Reply to  Michael Walsh

You are almost as snarky as our Michael Walsh of The Daily Wire here in U.S.

Last edited 1 year ago by Betsy Arehart
Warren Trees
Warren Trees
1 year ago
Reply to  Michael Walsh

Lest they experience the trauma of a run in their nylons.

jane baker
jane baker
1 year ago
Reply to  Michael Walsh

Even Bidens controllers are scared of those American Moms. A White House lawn encampment of them could stop the Ukraine war. That’s why even they dare not send “boots on the ground” but luckily there is ukranians to sacrifice as no one cares,and now we’re getting a bit low on ukranians Duda is offering Poles,as a sacrifice to Molech,but will they coco. I always thought Poles were quite smart with a bit of independent spirit to them

Last edited 1 year ago by jane baker
R Cope
R Cope
1 year ago
Reply to  Michael Walsh

Depends what you mean by professional. Not all PMCs are the same. Some are superb with ex SF operators. Others in Iraq were recruiting doormen from nightclubs in Glasgow and Liverpool.

Betsy Arehart
Betsy Arehart
1 year ago
Reply to  Michael Walsh

You are almost as snarky as our Michael Walsh of The Daily Wire here in U.S.

Last edited 1 year ago by Betsy Arehart
Michael Walsh
Michael Walsh
1 year ago

Another factor: with the US military forced by the governing class to serve as their laboratory for bizarre social-science experiments, it becomes necessary to farm out the grim stuff to professionals.

Perry de Havilland
Perry de Havilland
1 year ago

Meh, PMCs are just armed QUANGOs & really just a different way of delivering a government ‘service’. They no more change the fundamentally nature of what a military does than privatising a municipal refuse collection system or a railway.

R Cope
R Cope
1 year ago

Indeed. In Iraq and Afghanistan they didn’t replace the militaries, they augmented them. There were never enough military people to guard every installation, that’s where the PMCs made their steady income.

R Cope
R Cope
1 year ago

Indeed. In Iraq and Afghanistan they didn’t replace the militaries, they augmented them. There were never enough military people to guard every installation, that’s where the PMCs made their steady income.

Perry de Havilland
Perry de Havilland
1 year ago

Meh, PMCs are just armed QUANGOs & really just a different way of delivering a government ‘service’. They no more change the fundamentally nature of what a military does than privatising a municipal refuse collection system or a railway.

Michael McElwee
Michael McElwee
1 year ago

In Flaubert’s Solommbo the nature of the mercenary is revealed in the same way Mr Fazi reveals it: A great blessing but only so long as one can pay the bill. There is a broader point here, but exactly how to put it, I’m not so sure.

Michael McElwee
Michael McElwee
1 year ago

In Flaubert’s Solommbo the nature of the mercenary is revealed in the same way Mr Fazi reveals it: A great blessing but only so long as one can pay the bill. There is a broader point here, but exactly how to put it, I’m not so sure.

Arthur G
Arthur G
1 year ago

If a PMC works only for one Gov’t, then they are no more mercenaries than are professional volunteer soldiers. They’re just another arm of the state.

Arthur G
Arthur G
1 year ago

If a PMC works only for one Gov’t, then they are no more mercenaries than are professional volunteer soldiers. They’re just another arm of the state.

CHARLES STANHOPE
CHARLES STANHOPE
1 year ago

‘Cowboys’ one and all!

A. B.
A. B.
1 year ago

You’ve never met a cowboy.

CHARLES STANHOPE
CHARLES STANHOPE
1 year ago
Reply to  A. B.

It’s a ‘figure of speech’.

However I also presume all those original so called ‘cowboys’ are all dead? Far too many MALBORO cigarettes I presume?

CHARLES STANHOPE
CHARLES STANHOPE
1 year ago
Reply to  A. B.

It’s a ‘figure of speech’.

However I also presume all those original so called ‘cowboys’ are all dead? Far too many MALBORO cigarettes I presume?

A. B.
A. B.
1 year ago

You’ve never met a cowboy.

CHARLES STANHOPE
CHARLES STANHOPE
1 year ago

‘Cowboys’ one and all!

Andrew Holmes
Andrew Holmes
1 year ago

I suspect that Mr Fazi doesn’t choose the headline. Nevertheless, what does hiring a private entity to provide a benefit have to do with death to democracy? Surely the point is to deliver a service to the citizens most efficiently, not to employ the greatest number in government service.

Andrew Holmes
Andrew Holmes
1 year ago

I suspect that Mr Fazi doesn’t choose the headline. Nevertheless, what does hiring a private entity to provide a benefit have to do with death to democracy? Surely the point is to deliver a service to the citizens most efficiently, not to employ the greatest number in government service.

Reginald Duquesnoy
Reginald Duquesnoy
1 year ago

Shadow warriors for enemy combatants, or freedom fighters? A bit of collateral damage, asymmetric warfare…The Americans do have a way with words!

Christopher Chantrill
Christopher Chantrill
1 year ago

I suspect that Clausewitz’s ideas were strongly influenced by the post Thirty Years War culture of Never Again.
But I am encouraged that international bureaucrats and Special Rapporteurs are on the job. I think we can be confident that the whole problem should be solved by the middle of the next century.

R Cope
R Cope
1 year ago

Clausewitz was influenced by his time. Since we no longer array ourselves in neat lines and fire muskets, it might be time to find another military theorist to quote. The focus on kinetic activity is too black and white for the modern battlefield, especially in COIN ops

David Lindsay
David Lindsay
1 year ago

On this, on Margaret Thatcher, and on Buddhism, my comments have been taken down. I pay for this.

Nicky Samengo-Turner
Nicky Samengo-Turner
1 year ago

Whilst the media ignore the wars that these people are fighting all over the African continent, against Islamic insurgents, here in nu britn no such insurgents are needed: their conservative party fifth column just provides them with the ” islamophobic” trojan horse and not a shot needs to be fired….. Scotland is half way there, but of course, we are not allowed to publicly state that as the Essex gollywog police will sent 3 car loads of cuntstables to arrest us for hate crime.

Ian Johnston
Ian Johnston
1 year ago

The total collapse of state capacity in the armaments industry of the West is another manifestation of the neoliberalisation of everything.
As is the inability to enforce sanctions, where private companies have effectively bought themselves hyper-secrecy through law via the corruption of politicians.

David Lindsay
David Lindsay
1 year ago

Colonel Abdoulaye Maiga, the Interim Prime Minister of Mali in the military junta that came to power in May 2021, has expelled all non-governmental organisations that were funded or supported by France. France has never stopped having an empire in Africa, where it fights wars that more than give the lie to lazy jokes about lack of military prowess, and where it maintains two effectively interchangeable currencies across a total of 14 countries with a combined population of 193 million and a combined GDP of $283 billion. A lot of French blood and treasure goes into all of this, yet France recently ended all development aid to Mali three months after it had withdrawn the forces that had spent nine years fighting a major Islamist insurgency that was very much ongoing. In response, Mali has kicked out the French and French-backed NGOs. What is going on?

France asserts that Mali has brought in the Wagner Group, disguised as Russian military instructors. There is every reason to believe that. The voting figures at the United Nations over Ukraine have awoken a sleepy “international community” to the breadth and depth of continuing Russian ties to the old anti-imperial struggles that had often been supported by the Soviet Union. Throughout this century, China will also continue to benefit from that legacy of goodwill. Wagner Group arms and ammunition, up to and including four Mil Mi-17 helicopters, have certainly arrived in Mali. A base has clearly been built near the airport of the capital, Bamako, a city of 2.8 million. The Group has also taken over the former French bases at Gossi, Kidal, Tessalit and Timbuktu. Numbering 400 across the country, those instructors would have to be delivering an awful lot of instruction. Not all of them are Russians. Clashes with jihadists have already killed at least one of them as a matter of official record, although they in turn have already killed at least 200 jihadists.

Africa has been Wagner country for quite some time. The Group provided bodyguards to several candidates in the 2018 Presidential Election in Madagascar, even including the winner who had been favoured by China and the United States, thereby guaranteeing the Russian takeover of Kraoma, Madagascar’s national chromite producer. The Wagner Group had also been guarding the chrome mines themselves. Its involvement in Mozambique has been extensive. Its participation in the never-ending Libyan Civil War remains so. Ignore anyone who tells you that that war is over. More than anywhere else, however, the Wagner Group’s African operations have been, and continue to be, in the Central African Republic. Again, that is in the French sphere of influence, although the Group originally went in there, in 2018, to fill the security vacuum that had been left by the French military withdrawal, in 2016, following the loss of three quarters of the country’s territory to rebel control. By all accounts, it is guarding the diamond mines in regime-controlled and rebel-controlled areas alike, as it also takes a great interest in the diamonds, gold, uranium, and thus government of Sudan. There has lately been an operation to take down cryptocurrencies, not that I am any fan of those, after the adoption of Bitcoin as legal tender in the CAR had posed a threat to the CFA franc, itself pegged to the euro and so on. The CAR is a front line in the Great Game as it is being played in the present age. There are anything up to 2000 Wagner Group personnel there, if not more, and it has a firm grip on a number of government institutions, including the General Staff, such that it supervises or directly commands most of the units of the Armed Forces, including at least one EU-trained battalion. Known as Black Russians, hundreds of Centrafricans, former rebels who surrendered, are now fighting for the Wagner Group in Ukraine, or are awaiting deployment there from Russia.

A key figure in the Wagner Group, Yevgeny Prigozhin, has claimed to a Finnish newspaper that 20 or so Finns were fighting in a British battalion, commanded by a former United States Marine Corps general. There are not many former United States Marine Corps generals, so which one do we think that it is, and why? It is rubbish, of course. But just as you can bet your life that there are British and American Nazis fighting on the other side, you can bet your life that there are British and American pure mercenaries in the Wagner Group. We have no interest in whether that or the Azov Battallion won, just so long as it did not bother us, which it would have no cause to do unless we had been foolish enough to have backed its enemy. Yet on a cross-party basis, Britain is indeed engaged in such folly.

Last edited 1 year ago by David Lindsay
Nicky Samengo-Turner
Nicky Samengo-Turner
1 year ago
Reply to  David Lindsay

And there was I thinking all along that the Wagner group was headed up by the Wagner singing chappie off the ” Pop Idol” TV prog.

Nicky Samengo-Turner
Nicky Samengo-Turner
1 year ago
Reply to  David Lindsay

And there was I thinking all along that the Wagner group was headed up by the Wagner singing chappie off the ” Pop Idol” TV prog.

David Lindsay
David Lindsay
1 year ago

Colonel Abdoulaye Maiga, the Interim Prime Minister of Mali in the military junta that came to power in May 2021, has expelled all non-governmental organisations that were funded or supported by France. France has never stopped having an empire in Africa, where it fights wars that more than give the lie to lazy jokes about lack of military prowess, and where it maintains two effectively interchangeable currencies across a total of 14 countries with a combined population of 193 million and a combined GDP of $283 billion. A lot of French blood and treasure goes into all of this, yet France recently ended all development aid to Mali three months after it had withdrawn the forces that had spent nine years fighting a major Islamist insurgency that was very much ongoing. In response, Mali has kicked out the French and French-backed NGOs. What is going on?

France asserts that Mali has brought in the Wagner Group, disguised as Russian military instructors. There is every reason to believe that. The voting figures at the United Nations over Ukraine have awoken a sleepy “international community” to the breadth and depth of continuing Russian ties to the old anti-imperial struggles that had often been supported by the Soviet Union. Throughout this century, China will also continue to benefit from that legacy of goodwill. Wagner Group arms and ammunition, up to and including four Mil Mi-17 helicopters, have certainly arrived in Mali. A base has clearly been built near the airport of the capital, Bamako, a city of 2.8 million. The Group has also taken over the former French bases at Gossi, Kidal, Tessalit and Timbuktu. Numbering 400 across the country, those instructors would have to be delivering an awful lot of instruction. Not all of them are Russians. Clashes with jihadists have already killed at least one of them as a matter of official record, although they in turn have already killed at least 200 jihadists.

Africa has been Wagner country for quite some time. The Group provided bodyguards to several candidates in the 2018 Presidential Election in Madagascar, even including the winner who had been favoured by China and the United States, thereby guaranteeing the Russian takeover of Kraoma, Madagascar’s national chromite producer. The Wagner Group had also been guarding the chrome mines themselves. Its involvement in Mozambique has been extensive. Its participation in the never-ending Libyan Civil War remains so. Ignore anyone who tells you that that war is over. More than anywhere else, however, the Wagner Group’s African operations have been, and continue to be, in the Central African Republic. Again, that is in the French sphere of influence, although the Group originally went in there, in 2018, to fill the security vacuum that had been left by the French military withdrawal, in 2016, following the loss of three quarters of the country’s territory to rebel control. By all accounts, it is guarding the diamond mines in regime-controlled and rebel-controlled areas alike, as it also takes a great interest in the diamonds, gold, uranium, and thus government of Sudan. There has lately been an operation to take down cryptocurrencies, not that I am any fan of those, after the adoption of Bitcoin as legal tender in the CAR had posed a threat to the CFA franc, itself pegged to the euro and so on. The CAR is a front line in the Great Game as it is being played in the present age. There are anything up to 2000 Wagner Group personnel there, if not more, and it has a firm grip on a number of government institutions, including the General Staff, such that it supervises or directly commands most of the units of the Armed Forces, including at least one EU-trained battalion. Known as Black Russians, hundreds of Centrafricans, former rebels who surrendered, are now fighting for the Wagner Group in Ukraine, or are awaiting deployment there from Russia.

A key figure in the Wagner Group, Yevgeny Prigozhin, has claimed to a Finnish newspaper that 20 or so Finns were fighting in a British battalion, commanded by a former United States Marine Corps general. There are not many former United States Marine Corps generals, so which one do we think that it is, and why? It is rubbish, of course. But just as you can bet your life that there are British and American Nazis fighting on the other side, you can bet your life that there are British and American pure mercenaries in the Wagner Group. We have no interest in whether that or the Azov Battallion won, just so long as it did not bother us, which it would have no cause to do unless we had been foolish enough to have backed its enemy. Yet on a cross-party basis, Britain is indeed engaged in such folly.

Last edited 1 year ago by David Lindsay