The Modern Mercenary: Private Armies and What They Mean for World Order (23 page)

Bancroft’s advisers include a retired general from the British marines and a former French soldier who commanded a group of foreign fighters during Côte d’Ivoire’s civil war in 2003 and did a stint in the presidential guard of the Comoros Islands. Michael C. Stock, the American head of Bancroft, strongly objects to the term
mercenary
and instead describes Bancroft as an NGO, although it is unclear whether traditional NGOs would recognize Bancroft as such.
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Another firm, with backing from Prince, is raising a small army for the United Arab Emirates city of Abu Dhabi. Reflex Responses (R2) is based in the Middle East and boasts that it can provide anything from static armed guards to nuclear security, with “the right people for the right solution at a fair price.” Reminiscent of Florence’s hiring of Hawkwood, the city paid the firm $529 million to raise an eight-hundred-member battalion of foreign troops to conduct special operations missions inside and outside the country (e.g., Iran), defend oil pipelines and skyscrapers from terrorist attacks, and put down internal revolts.
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The firm’s labor pool is international, with former soldiers from the United States, Europe, Latin America, and South African, but no Muslims, since they might not be willing to kill fellow Muslims. Prince is the first major private military mogul to part
ways with the United States, but other individuals and companies will likely follow as US markets dry up, and when they do, they, too, will seek new clients or face bankruptcy.

Over the past twenty years, PMC activity in Somalia has steadily increased on land and sea. Every year, new and unknown PMCs materialize, such as Tacforce International and Specialist Marine Services. Oil companies also hire them. Africa Oil, a Canadian company, hired Pathfinder Corporation to protect its operations in Puntland, and Genel Energy, an Anglo-Turkish company, contracted Olive Group in Somaliland, which has experience protecting oil companies in Iraq.

There are so many maritime PMCs operating in the Gulf of Aden that they have formed their own trade association to look after their industry’s interests, like the medieval “confederated
condottieri
.” The Security Association for the Maritime Industry (SAMI) estimates that there are more than 180 private security firms hailing from 35 different countries operating in the northwest Indian ocean. Of these, 117 are British, 39 American, 16 South African, and the rest from various EU and British Commonwealth states and also Russia. Steven Jones, maritime director of SAMI, estimates that 36 percent of vessels transiting pirate waters in the Indian Ocean carry guards and maintain a 100 percent success rate at repelling attacks.
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Other experts estimate that there are at least 2,700 armed contractors on ships, eighteen floating armories are operating in the Gulf of Aden, and forty private armed patrol boats are operating in the Indian Ocean. The most sophisticated of these private navies, Typhon, is outfitting three large boats in Singapore, each with a crew of twenty and capable of carrying forty private marines, a helicopter, and drones.
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Even governments are entering the market. The Netherlands, France, Spain, Belgium, and Italy all offer shipping companies the opportunity to hire their troops for security in pirate waters. These “vessel protection detachments” are available to ships registered in each nation or to companies significantly controlled by their citizens. For example, the Netherlands has outlawed the use of PMCs on ships that fly the Dutch flag but will offer its own troops some €400,000 per voyage, half of which must be borne by the ship owner. However, this is five to ten times more expensive than free-market PMCs, and many Dutch ship owners have opted to break the law and hire PMCs.
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Owing to this market reality, many European governments have reluctantly agreed to legalize or at least tolerate armed guards. One way or another, the counterpiracy fight is becoming a private one.

In terms of “the good, the bad, and the ugly,” there is much less to examine than in the Liberia case, because the Somalia market for force is fluid and dynamic. Its market actors are smaller and unsophisticated compared with DynCorp’s complex multiyear and multimillion-dollar program. In some ways,
this mirrors the past; military enterprisers such as Wallenstein ran huge corporate endeavors while many of the mercenaries of the Middle Ages were fleeting bands of opportunists.

Regarding the “good,” private navies are efficient and effective. As Steven Jones puts it, “The benefits are very simple—private security has been able to provide a cost effective and robust form of protection and deterrent to protect seafarers and vessels from pirate attack.”
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From 2008 to 2011, piracy off the Somali coast was the scourge of the commercial shipping industry. However, by 2012, pirate attacks dramatically decreased by about 70 percent, partly because of this industry, and nine out of ten failed attacks by pirates on merchant ships were repelled by maritime PMCs. As the UN notes, this decline in piracy “can largely be attributed to the increasing use of private maritime security companies.”
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Furthermore, the utility of private military force is high, making PMCs an attractive option to all neomedieval actors. Firms such as Hart Security acted as both traditional mercenary and military enterpriser, competing in the marketplace of force against pirates to establish their client’s authority. It is unlikely that Puntland could have afforded its own standing military, making Hart’s “rental navy” a high-value proposition. From an international trade perspective, Typhon’s armed guards save shipping lines money on insurance premiums, while military enterpriser Nordic Risk Management helped make Berbera more secure, Somaliland’s economic lifeline to the outside world. It is possible that these actions increased commerce and exceeded the cost of the PMCs’ fees, demonstrating the value of security as commodity.

By 2012, the utility of private force proved so attractive that the International Maritime Organization, the UN’s agency for maritime safety, issued guidance on the use of PMCs on ships in pirate waters. The document addresses maritime PMC certification and requirements; management, vetting, and training standards; deployment considerations; and use of force guidance.
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This astonishing measure bends long-standing Admiralty Law, based on Westphalian sovereignty, and brings it into the neomedieval twenty-first century. Indeed, it could serve as the pilot for updating the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea and customary international law.

Even the US Navy recognizes the value of private maritime force. Rear Admiral (retired) Terence McKnight, the first commander of Combined Task Force 151, the multinational flotilla specifically dedicated to combating Somali piracy, identified the limits of state naval forces and referred to “security teams-privateers” as an option. Vice Admiral Bill Gortney, commander of the US Fifth Fleet, advises that “companies don’t think twice about using security guards to protect their valuable facilities ashore. Protecting valuable ships and their crews at sea is no different.” Admiral Mark Fitzgerald, commander of all naval forces in Europe and Africa, agrees. Regarding pirate waters, he says
“the area is enormous” and that the Navy simply cannot guarantee commercial ships protection against pirates, nor should they. He recommends that ships have armed guards on board: “there’s got to be security on these ships and the [private] security detachments that are on some of the large commercial ships have been very effective.” Others have argued that privateering would be an ideal vehicle for legal and operational coordination between public and private actors in dealing with piracy.
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Perhaps the challenge posed by pirates may give rise to a new age of privateers: for-profit armed ships that are contracted through a “letter of marque” to seek and destroy the client’s enemies. This ancient custom was common until the nineteenth century, when the Westphalian order was on the rise, and was abolished by states with the 1856 Paris Declaration Respecting Maritime Law. However, the United States was never a signatory to this treaty, and Article 1, section 8, of the US Constitution authorizes letters of marque. This could quickly resolve the pirate problem worldwide, although it would unleash the market for force on the high seas.

Yet the “good” of private military force may be overshadowed by the “bad.” The concept of arming commercial vessels has not been a comfortable fit for many, particularly those who cleave to the Westphalian notion that only states should legitimately wield force. Standards and accountability on the use of deadly force by armed civilians remains a concern, risking relationships between flags and vessels. Other worries exist, too. Who is supplying the guards? What is the quality of their training? How is accountability maintained? The answers to these and other questions remain unknown, since private navies, like their land-based cousins, are opaque and secretive—a situation made worse by the fact that they operate in the middle of the ocean.

Aware of these problems, SAMI has supported standards to assess the performance of its members. It is informing the International Organization for Standardization’s (ISO) 28007: 2012 criteria, which provide guidelines for using armed contractors on ships and certify PMCs that abide by these recommended practices. This ISO process forms the potential beginnings of a regulatory scheme for maritime PMCs, and firms such as Port2Port Maritime Security are certified. SAMI is also helping to develop the “100 Series Rules for the Use of Force,” which codifies the concept of self-defense and establishes rules of engagement that allow guards to take “necessary and proportionate actions to save people and vessels.” However, like the ISOA’s voluntary principles for land-based PMCs, monitoring and enforcing this self-imposed regime remains a challenge.

There is also an “ugly” side to this free market for force. Like the
condottieri
, underemployed PMCs often turn predatory, as SomCan did when it seized fishing trawlers for ransom and seldom handed over revenue to its employer. Other
observers worry that PMCs such as Saracen and R2 could easily become a law unto themselves, introducing more armed groups into an already war-ravaged region. Finally, what happens to locally trained and equipped private soldiers when foreign PMCs leave? As with so many aspects of the private military industry, the answer is unknown.

Somalia is not alone with pirates and privateers; piracy in the Gulf of Guinea now rivals that in the Gulf of Aden and the Malacca Straits. In 2012, the International Maritime Bureau indicated that there were fifty-eight incidents in the Gulf of Guinea, including ten hijackings, and 207 crew members taken hostage. National navies have proven ineffectual at containing this problem, which is why private ship owners hire PMCs, expanding the market for force. So far, PMCs have been restricted to land and sea forces, but it is conceivable—perhaps probable—that PMCs will use armed drones in the future, making private air forces in addition to private navies and armies.

All of the above does not mean that Somalia is lawless; a neomedieval durable disorder pervades much of the country, as Somali warlords and armed groups impose order in their own, albeit brutal, manner. Al-Shabaab controls much of southern and central Somalia, including some of Mogadishu, and its influence extends across the Somali borders into neighboring Ethiopia and Kenya. In this area, carved out of the “sovereign” territory of existing states, al-Shabaab maintains the monopoly of force and provides some political goods to the people under its own extreme version of sharia. With the exception of Mogadishu, much of this area is peaceful.

Al-Shabaab also provides governance. In 2008, it began to reach out to the public in a series of town visits that the International Crisis Group describes as “well choreographed, with clerics addressing public rallies and holding talks with local clan elders.”
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They also have handed out food and money to the poor, provided criminal justice through mobile sharia courts, and attempted to settle local disputes. Even Human Rights Watch concedes that “in many areas, al-Shabaab rule has brought relative peace and order that contrasts dramatically with the chaos in Mogadishu.”
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Horn of Africa expert Andre Le Sage has identified four separate systems of justice in Somalia following its descent into chaos in 1991: the centralized formal judiciary structures created through international peace processes; the traditional, clan-based system known as
xeer
; sharia courts in urban areas, particularly Mogadishu; and civil society and private sector initiatives, including those established by warlords. What makes them essentially neomedieval is that they
coexist as “multiple, overlapping and often contradictory sources of law” yet do not descend into anarchy.
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For two decades, Somalia has confounded the United Nations and other world powers that continue to look for a Westphalian government to talk to when none exists. A better solution would be to embrace the neomedievalism of the region and work with the various overlapping authorities and allegiances to achieve security, stability, and development.

Longtime Somalia expert Ken Menkhaus recommends establishing it as a “mediated state” and work directly with the ruling elite class rather than ruling institutions. In other words, deal with Somalia as a feudal state rather than a Westphalian one. This different approach to foreign policy in fragile states stems from the Middle Ages, when, as Menkhaus explains, “ambitious monarchs with limited power were forced to manipulate, maneuver, and make deals with local rivals to extend their authority.” Those rivals often “mediated” authority as over-powerful purveyors of royal authority, as “private” subjects exercising “public” jurisdiction, or as members of supranational bodies such as the church. This created a situation in medieval France akin to that in neomedieval Somalia: “a nation characterized by parcellized and overlapping jurisdictions, multiple legal codes, and a plethora of internal tariffs and taxes.”
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