Reply #32: Trouble on Oily Waters (DoD/Feith link to EG coup) [View All]

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Trouble on Oily Waters (DoD/Feith link to EG coup)


Trouble on Oily Waters
A bear market for freelance soldiers in Africa?

By Mark Hosenball and Tom Masland
Newsweek International


Oct. 4 issue - The International Peace Operations Association has a lot more clout at the Pentagon than the name might suggest. Calling itself an "association of military-service provider companies," it's the closest thing in Washington to a lobbying group for soldiers of fortune. At the outfit's annual dinner last November, the guest speaker was Theresa Whelan, deputy assistant secretary of Defense for African affairs, from the policy directorate headed by Douglas Feith, the controversial under secretary of Defense. Whelan's topic: the U.S. government's increasing use of private military contractors, especially in Africa.

That evening and its aftermath are raising awkward new questions about a botched coup attempt this year in sub-Saharan Africa's third largest oil producer. It's hard to blame anyone for wanting to see the last of Gen. Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo. He seized power in Equatorial Guinea 25 years ago by overthrowing his own uncle, the nation's first president, and today his regime ranks as one of the most corrupt and brutal in the world. Obiang has survived numerous efforts to dislodge him over the years, but the latest try, allegedly involving 90 mercenaries and a $14 million bankroll, was one for the books.

...

The Pentagon insists it had no advance knowledge of any plot against Obiang. Nevertheless, the audience at Whelan's speech included a British security consultant named Gregory Wales—now one of six defendants in a lawsuit filed by Obiang's attorneys in London against the alleged plotters. Wales gave Whelan his card after the speech, and later called to request a face-to-face chat. The meeting came in mid- to late February, according to a Defense official, who says, "Mr. Wales mentioned in passing, as part of a larger unrelated discussion of African issues, that there might be some trouble brewing in Equatorial Guinea. Specifically, he had heard from some business associates of his that wealthy citizens of the country were planning to flee in case of a crisis." The official adds that Wales's mention of Equatorial Guinea was "such a general remark about one troubled country in a troubled region, there was no reason to follow up on it, and Ms. Whelan did not."

....

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6100308/site/newsweek



Theresa Whelan
Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for African Affairs
Remarks to IPOA Dinner
19 November 2003
Washington, D.C.

What Doug asked me to speak on tonight was our experiences from a DoD perspective in using contractors in Africa in supporting US government objectives.
<snip>
In Africa, as I mentioned, we’re using contractors in a variety of ways, in both logistics and training support.
First, I’m going to focus on the logistics support. Let me start with a couple of examples. Contractors provided support in Somalia in 1992 despite a challenging lack of infrastructure. It was one of the early places that Brown and Root really sunk its teeth into the logistics support business for the US military.
Since the 1990’s, contractors have been used extensively in peace support operations in Africa to provide logistical support to African soldiers. Since those early days of supporting ECOMOG, the Economic Community of West African States monitoring group in Liberia, an operation which launched the idea of sub-regional peacekeeping in Africa, contractors have deployed to support U.S. Government operations in Sierra Leone, Ivory Coast, and again, this past summer in Liberia.
The use of contractors, in Africa, is an example of necessity driving policy. The 1990’s saw not only an up-tick in crises in Africa in the Post-Cold War environment, but also an up-tick in crises around the world. This led to our pressing for more regional based PKO operations in order to cover the wide range of crises that had to be addressed. However, those regional forces had some inherent operational weaknesses ---they couldn’t do it entirely on their own --- they needed to get Western support.
We wanted to support those operations, however, we also realized that our forces were tied down elsewhere around the globe and they might not be available for the long-term deployments we were envisioning in some places in Africa, as well as in other areas of the world.
http://www.defenselink.mil/policy/isa/africa/IPOA.htm

And speaking of those hired soldiers:

The case has caught the public's attention in both South Africa and Britain because of the involvement of some upper-crust Britons, including the alleged coup leader, Simon Mann, the heir to a brewery fortune, and his longtime friend and neighbor, Mark Thatcher, the son Margaret Thatcher, the former British prime minister. Mann was sentenced to seven years in prison for his role; Thatcher is still under investigation as an alleged financier of the plot.
<snip>
But there were no jobs, at least none suitable for former soldiers with little other job experience. The cash from the severance payments soon ran out. Most of the men started drifting away from Pomfret to take security jobs in far-off cities, returning home for only a few weeks a year.
"We're trapped here," said Lucas Kandjima, 51, a friend of Eduardo Tchimuishi's and a former 32 Battalion soldier who was home in Pomfret for a visit. "Now it's harder. The men have to go away farther and stay away longer. . . . Everybody's spread out and looking for work, and nobody has money."
Some became mercenaries. Mann, the former British Special Forces officer who allegedly organized the Equatorial Guinea coup, reportedly employed 32 Battalion veterans for an earlier venture called Executive Outcomes. The mercenary group fought in Angola, Sierra Leone and other African countries with unstable governments and valuable resources such as gold and oil.
Former members of 32 Battalion were also implicated in an attempted coup last year in Sao Tome and Principe, a tiny country off the west coast of Africa.
"The moment you're looking for ex-soldiers, Pomfret is one of the places you go," said Piet Nortje, a former 32 Battalion sergeant major who has written a history of the unit. "They're much better trained, more experienced."
more
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A48639-2004Sep24.html