Mercenaries: A Guide to Private Armies and Private Military Companies
... They created so fearsome a presence that they were dubbed Les Affreux ("The Dreadful Ones"). (Axelrod, A. 2014) They prided themselves as being part of the fight to prevent the fall of The Congo into a communist enclave. It is an established fact that the CIA plotted the assassination of Patrice Lumumba the newly elected Prime Minister in 1961 for fear that he would move Congo into the Soviet Bloc. ...
... It is an established fact that the CIA plotted the assassination of Patrice Lumumba the newly elected Prime Minister in 1961 for fear that he would move Congo into the Soviet Bloc. (Axelrod, A. 2014) Central to US foreign policy at the time was 'containment'. The United States was determined to prevent the spread of communism at all cost and Lumumba who was left-leaning had already received weapons and other forms of assistance from the Soviets to help in quenching the crisis in the Congo at that period. ...
... Although Tshombe's rebel mercenaries were by 1965 subdued by a 20,000-strong United Nations peacekeeping force, (Axelrod, A. 2014) the legacy of Tshombe's mercenary army was a precedent that set a standard for the use of mercenary forces throughout the region in other conflicts. Economic inducement to military interference had already been established earlier in this paper in the analysis of the first scramble. ...
... By 2009, the largest and oldest PMC in Guatemala was the Israeli owned Grupo Golán (Private Security in Guatemala: Pathway to Its Proliferation -Argueta -2012 -Bulletin of Latin American Research -Wiley Online Library n.d.). Headquartered in Boca Raton, Florida, the Grupo Golán was founded by former members of Israel's special forces, and provides both physical and information technology centred security (Axelrod 2014) ...
... 34 It is perhaps more widely known that huge numbers of soldiers from what was then British-ruled India (now both India and Pakistan, with many soldiers coming from regions of the latter) fought in Iraq, where the campaign was initially commanded from Delhi, but substantial numbers also served in the Palestine campaign and were stationed in Palestine during the Mandate period. 35 For Palestinians themselves in the wake of World War I, South Asian soldiers must have been a regular sight, especially in the neighborhood of military bases such as Sarafand, or around government buildings in Jerusalem and regional governorates; in 1922, for example, British military correspondence discusses the stationing of "2 Indian Infantry Battalions, 1 Indian Cavalry Regiment [and] 1 Indian Pack Battery" in Palestine, which could have amounted to over 4,000 men. 36 That the conditions for Indian recruits were different-presumably poorer-than those for white soldiers is, however, apparent from correspondence over leisure facilities for Indian troops. ...
In press coverage of the 1927 earthquake in Palestine, frequent mention is made of the deaths of three women at the Winter Palace Hotel in Jericho. That the three were from British-occupied India apparently rendered them unusual enough to be noted by a journalist, whose observation was reproduced around the world. This article draws on newspapers, official documents and secondary literatures on the hajj, tourism and the British Empire to consider the history of South Asian travellers to Palestine and relationships between colonialism and travel in the interwar period. One of the three women was Lady Abdul Rauf, the wife of a retired High Court judge and veteran Indian Muslim nationalist campaigner, Sir Syed Abdul Rauf. The couple had departed Bombay in April 1927 for the hajj to Mecca and Medina, but extended their trip to include Jericho. This was not unusual; the Indian Hospice in the Old City of Jerusalem attests to a long history of Indian visitors to Palestine. This paper, however, locates the ill-fated presence of Lady Abdul Rauf and her companions in the changing nature of Indian travel in the region, as religious pilgrimage to Jerusalem combined with politics and tourism, and as changing infrastructures of capitalism and colonialism shifted how Indian visitors experienced Palestine.
... However, that has not always been the case. At times, its provision has been left in the hands of private organizations as the contracting of mercenary armies by States shows through history (Axelrod 2014). 24 Today private military firms provide battlefield and battle support operations, as has been in the case of Iraq or Afghanistan. ...
This article addresses the problem that societies face for properly allocating resources to grant security to their members. It examines the methods and ways for setting and distributing these resources to obtain enough military capabilities to face threats. The problem: the choice of an allocation that optimizes social welfare is an old and constant concern for public policies. The main novelty of this article is to explore this problem from the bounded rationality of human beings, i.e. choices made under imperfect information, preferences unsupported by economic rationality or the constrained effectiveness of non-market arrangements for deciding adequately. These issues may drive to allocations that do not obtain the largest welfare.
... Di dalam pembentukan citra diri nasional, pemerintah Afrika Selatan menerapkan metode top-down dengan memfokuskan diri pada visi pengembangan industri PSMC agar dapat tetap sejalan sebagai salah satu penyokong utama dalam ekonomi negara. Perkembangan industri PSMC sekaligus penerapan regulasi badan pemerintahan di Afrika Selatan tidak mudah mengingat terjadi dinamika sekuritisasi yang volatil pada akhir 1980 dan terus berkesinambungan sampai pada penggunaan power dalam relasi antara pihak swastapemerintah (Axelrod & Dubowe, 2014). ...
This reaserach is about the 1998 RFMA Act and the establishment of a new PSMC company namely STTEPI in 2006. In 1989, South Africa experienced a period of emergency due to a major event that caused political instability in South Africa and its surroundings. The apartheid government carried out securitization to overcome these problems by establishing a security agency that took coercive actions on the security of the state and the ruling regime. After the process of transition of power, a new government was applied to the PSMC. On the other hand, in 2006 a new PSMC company was established. The research aims to answer the question how can the formation of bodies and restrictions that limit PSMC's movements, the PSMC industry continue to develop? In answering, concepts such as: (1) securitization are used to explain the emergence of the PSMC industry in South Africa; and (2) the concept of power; as well as (3) the national political image to describe the PSMC-government relationship which was analyzed using qualitative-descriptive methods from literature studies on primary sources from the government and secondary sources from scientific journal articles and news. It was found that in the application of regulations, the NCACC and PSIRA indicated that there were gaps in operating permits and having permits. There is interference from the PSMC in the government agency. This is compounded by the weaknesses of regulations which in their application are indicated to be poorly enforced. This study resulted in a conclusion that there was a complex relationship between industrial defense (PSMC) and the South African government due to major political changes and instability in regional political and security conditions that were used in omission actions in order to make losses and maximize opportunities for the country's economic interests
... The infamous French mercenary Bob Denard would succeed in toppling the regime of Comoros Islands. Colonel Hoare would go onto Seychelles in 1981 in a failed attempt to topple the regime of President Albert Rene there (Axelrod, 2013). These mercenary groups would no doubt on many occasions operate with the support of Western intelligence agencies and would therefore be directly or indirectly their agents. ...
... Jopa kokonaisia yksiköitä uudelleenorganisoitui kaupalliselta pohjalta. Esimerkiksi Alpha Group -turvallisuusyrityksen muodostivat vuonna 1991 entiset Neuvostoliiton terrorisminvastaisen Alfa-erikoisyksikön veteraanit (Axelrod 2014). Aikakauden taloudellinen, poliittinen ja yhteiskunnallinen epävakaus loi kysyntää kotimaisille turvallisuuspalveluille (Bukkvoll ja Østensen 2020, 1-2). ...
Wagner-ryhmänä tunnettu organisaatio on 2010-luvulla osallistunut Venäjän ja sen liittolaisten tukena konflikteihin muun muassa Itä-Ukrainassa, Libyassa ja Syyriassa. Siihen viitataan vaihtelevasti venäläisenä yksityisenä sotilasyrityksenä tai Venäjän asevoimien epävirallisena osana. Tässä artikkelissa tarkastelen kehityskulkua, joka on saanut Venäjän hyödyntämään kaupallisia sotilaspalveluyrityksiä ulko- ja turvallisuuspolitiikassaan. Sovellan analyysissa Deborah Avantin (2000) esittämää teoreettista mallia sotilaallisen toiminnan muutoksista. Keskeinen argumenttini on, että sotilaspalveluyritysten synty Venäjällä on reaktio ulkoisen toimintaympäristön muutoksen aiheuttamiin ongelmiin. Georgian sota vuonna 2008 ja siitä seurannut asevoimien uudistusohjelma loivat tilanteen, joissa länsimaiden sotilaallisen ulkoistamisen mallin kopiointia kannattaneet toimijat pystyivät edistämään tavoitteitaan. Venäjän patrimoniaalinen hallintomalli vaikutti kuitenkin vahvasti siihen, että lopputuloksena syntyneet organisaatiot ovat luonteeltaan erilaisia kuin länsimaiset vastineensa. Abstract in English The birth of commercial military service companies in Russia During the 2010’s the organization known as Wagner Group has supported the Russian Federation and its allies in East Ukraine, Libya and Syria, among other conflicts. Wagner is referred to as either a Russian private military company or as an unofficial part of the Russian armed forces. In this article I examine the process which has led Russia to utilize commercial military service providers as foreign and security policy tools. I employ a model of military reform proposed by Deborah Avant (2000). My central argument is that military service providers were created in Russia as a reaction to challenges posed by changes in the external security environment. The Russo-Georgian war of 2008 and the following military reform created circumstances, in which actors wishing to emulate the Western model of military outsourcing could advance their agenda. However, the patrimonial governance system of Russia had a significant impact in the resulting organizations differing substantially from their Western counterparts.
... The trend of expanding use of PMSCs has reached Southeast Asia as well. In the Philippines, the government has been using companies such as Grayworks Security in counterterrorism and domestic security efforts (Axelrod 2013). Several other companies, such as Aarhus Marine and Offshore Services, or Seahorse International Security Solutions Corp, established headquarters in the country while providing maritime security and other services in the region and beyond. ...
In this exploratory study we examine the validity of existing civil-military scholarship explanations for the path towards privatization in Southeast Asia. Despite the growing trend of the privatization of security and military functions across the globe, the rationale behind this trend is still unclear. Why states decide to take this path and out-source parts of their security apparatus. This is especially bewildering given the out-sourcing of security disrupts civil-military relations as it represents an encroachment in the state monopoly of the means of violence. Tackling this dilemma, this paper explores the type of services outsourced to the private military and security sector across countries in the South East Asia region. The analysis examines this trend in line with various demographic, economic, political, and security-related indicators. This study's results specify that the interplay between economic need and military capacities are the best predictor for the outsourcing of security functions in the region.
... While these PMSCs offer a variety of services to support national military efforts, each PMSC can be classified based on different specializations. Those include: logistics (including supply, maintenance, transportation, construction, and communication), intelligence (including cyber, surveillance, and physical), and security services (including mobile, sedentary, and tactical support)(Axelrod 2013). We used these eight PMSCs to identify past/current employees in our database. ...
Over the last few decades, private military and security companies (PMSCs) have publicly transformed from mercenaries to contractors in a process which legitimized heavy-handed use of PMSCs in military operations around the globe and fueled massive industry growth. Yet, despite their increasing importance in military affairs and foreign policy, we know next to nothing about the individual men and women who serve their country as military contractors in PMSCs. To fill this gap, this chapter provides a data-driven analysis of the individual private contractors working for major PMSCs. We provide descriptive information on the private contractor population by analyzing employee profiles and job histories for those employed by PMSCs in the last decade. We investigate a unique database of professional resumes from a leading online job search and social networking website, which consists of employees randomly sampled from eight of the major PMSCs in the industry. The analysis describes the demographics, military experience and ranking, and education backgrounds of these employees. Moreover, we contextualize our findings with prior literature and demographics on the current US active duty military personnel, military veterans, and the general adult population.
The claim that the legendary thief Ishikawa Goemon attempted to assassinate the warlord Oda Nobunaga by dripping poison down a thread into the latter’s mouth is a staple of English-language histories of the so-called ‘ninja.’ Despite its widespread circulation in popular histories of Japan, there is good reason to believe that this famous assassination attempt never actually happened. In this article, I trace the Ishikawa Goemon legend through a range of Japanese-language documentary and literary sources, attempting to find a source for the poison-thread tale. I conclude that the story is not only fiction but modern fiction, resulting from a misunderstanding of the climactic scene of a 1962 ninja movie, Shinobi no mono, as depicting an historical event. The poison-thread technique, I also suggest, is not an authentic historical technique at all but a borrowing from a 1925 novel by the mystery writer Edogawa Ranpo. The article concludes by exploring how the poison-thread story managed to circulate unchallenged for more than fifty years, and by offering some observations on the serious methodological flaws of English-language ‘ninja’ histories to date.
This article seeks to understand the changing nature of mercenarism in postcolonial sub-Saharan Africa. It argues that shifts in social norms and politico-legal discourse have influenced attitudes to mercenaries. Where there was once international censure of their use, there is now a growing acceptance thereof. In the pursuit of cost effectiveness and political expediency, the privatisation of state security functions has given rise to a new phenomenon. Private Military Companies ( pmc s) are entrusted to exercise force on behalf of or in partnership with the state and so have been accorded legitimacy. These changes will be examined in the light of Africa’s experience of mercenaries and private military contractors. It does not propose a singular trajectory of mercenarism but allows for contingency. It suggests that close attention should be paid to the historical context in which these varied forms have appeared.
This chapter examines the case of the Comoros Islands and provides another example of how a complex, in this case an island, state, while clearly perceiving federalism as an onerous burden, is yet unable to give it up. The Comorian authorities fear that controlled instability within the federation will turn into uncontrolled disintegration in an untarist context. As a result, the small island state shows how the federalist matrix, at the will of political actors (or without it), can be transformed into the glue that holds together land segments separated from each other by the sea.
"The purpose of the present paper is to emphasize the way mercenaries integrated in the world politics. It offers an overview of the historical context, highlighting short details about the early appearance of mercenary troops who, although not yet bearing that name, acted in the same way. What is more, it pursues the evolution of mercenaries from their very beginning to the contemporary era, making a short stop to the Middle Ages, and then to the pre-modern period. Furthermore, it describes the metamorphosis of mercenaries in the contemporary period, giving birth to the new ´dogs of war’ under different names. However, these transformations came with behavioural changes as well. They changed their attitude and their chaotic actions on the battlefield, fulfilling, sometimes, a different role, but for the same purpose, which labelled them as ‘new mercenaries’ from the outset. Keywords: mercenaries, world politics, condottieri, war, army, professional soldiers, Private Military Corporations. "
The history of the mercenary seems little less than the history of organized warfare itself. From the dawn of recorded history to the recent rise of Private Military Companies, mercenaries appear as a historical constant that allows scholars to make grand historical claims about the organisation of force within world history. This article cautions against this view, arguing instead that the analysis of this actor has been compromised by the failure to adequately historicise and contextualize the concept of the mercenary due to the uncritical acceptance that mercenaries are a trans-historical occurrence. Informed by a historicist contextual approach, I show how two foundational characteristics of the mercenary concept, a Westphalian understanding of ‘foreignness’ and a modern account of ‘self-interest’, were absent in the periods preceding the 18th century. I demonstrate this absence through an analysis of ‘mercenaries’ in Ancient Greece and the Middle Ages, exposing how the problematization of these actors within their own historical context displays a radical difference if compared to our contemporary understanding of the mercenary. In doing so this article raises awareness to the historical specificity of this seemingly universal concept and cautions against the uncritical backward projection of this concept into the past.
Contemporary military organizations are anything but private companies. Both military and civilian bureaucracies who do not function according to free-market principles administer them. Quite the contrary: As these bureaucracies control all economic activity in the armed forces, a planned economy system is established. Any economic analysis that ignores this fundamental problem not only leads to false conclusions, but also to irrelevant policy recommendations.
In recent years, the Russian private security and military company (PMSC) industry has evolved to serve the needs of both business clients as well as governments. Thus far, the ties between the Kremlin and the Russian PMSC industry are ambiguous and seem to vary across the different companies. What seems clear though, is that the Kremlin is experimenting with the utility of these companies and that the use of PMSCs is on the rise. Private security and military companies are neither explicitly legal nor illegal in Russia, a status that may serve Russian authorities well in situations where attribution and attention is unwanted. While the exact shape and role of the Russian PMSC industry may not be carved out fully, Russia is now home to a small, but potent, PMSC industry that can be mobilized to inflict harm on the country’s enemies.
Foreign soldiers were a major element in virtually all European armies between the early sixteenth and mid-nineteenth centuries. The extent and duration of their use clearly indicates they were far more than a temporary expedient adopted solely until states acquired the capacity to organize forces from their own inhabitants. Rather than being a hindrance to state formation, they were integral to that process. Likewise, the formation of European states and an international system based on indivisible sovereignty was not purely competitive: it also entailed cooperation. The transfer of foreign military labour is an important example of this and is central to what can be labelled the European Fiscal-Military System, which assisted the emergence of a sovereign state order and was dismantled as that order consolidated in the later nineteenth century. Wilson’s article articulates ‘foreign soldiers’ as an alternative to the problematic term ‘mercenaries’, and examines their motives, explaining how and why foreign soldiers were recruited by early modern European states.as well as assessing the scale of their employment. The article concludes that the de-legitimation of foreign military labour was connected to fashioning the modern ideals of the citizen-in-arms as part of a more general process of nationalizing war-making.
This chapter offers a brief historical preview of the regulation of the contracted violence through history, demonstrating that it is not a new phenomenon. It covers US regulatory evolution and use of private violence both domestically and internationally. Then it presents an international normative framework, completing it with a network of recent national and international initiatives. Finally, it looks at how the USA currently regulates private security contractors, by addressing Congressional, Defense Department, and State Department structures and regulations.
This chapter deconstructs both identities and common wisdom in the regulatory process. After the presentation of stakeholders in the US regulatory process, it moves onto the deconstruction of misconceptions by first considering various levels of analysis (from international to individual). Second, it contemplates multiplication of stakeholders in the regulatory process and demonstrates why all of them should be included. Third, it explains the benefits of a comprehensive multidisciplinary approach to regulatory issues, rather than addressing only one discipline at the time. Fourth, it stresses the importance of studying the regulatory process over time, not simply limiting the study to periods of high public pressure. Finally, it deals with the issue of lack of transparency and demonstrates the futility of division of public and private values.
How does the Russian use of private military and security companies affect Russian use of force and what are the implications for European and Norwegian security?
Over the past couple of decades, private military and security companies (PMSCs) have become instrumental to modern warfare. Western PMSCs have so far dominated this trend and hence, the bulk of the academic and media attention has been directed at this part of the industry. However, in recent years, PMSCs have developed in many parts of the world, including in Russia. The example set by the US in particular, and its extensive use of PMSCs in the military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, is likely to have been a source of inspiration for many other countries interested in expanding their war fighting repertoire and defence industries.
Russian private military and security companies (PMSCs) have recently caused headlines in international media. This is mainly because of the Russian PMSC Wagner’s participation in the war in Syria on the side of President Assad. However, the Russian PMSC industry is larger and more varied than it appears at first glance.
In this report, we start by analysing the historical Russian experience with the use of private force. The Russian Cossacks are of prime importance here. Today these groups are back on the private force market after being curbed during Soviet times. Apart from Cossack groups, also other types of private force providers thrive in Russia, including both private militias, such as Ramzan Kadyrov’s Terek, and the Russian PMSCs. It would be wrong to describe the Russian PMSC industry as large, but the few companies that do exist are very active. In addition to participating in combat in Donbas and Syria, they have also acted as military advisers to the governments of Sudan and the Central African Republic.
There is great variety among the Russian PMSCs. Some, first of all Wagner, are probably more mercenaries than PMSCs, while for example the RSB-group is relatively similar to Western PMSCs. Other companies are more akin to militias. In general, the Russian PMSCs seem more ready for direct combat, more ideologically motivated (some of them) and less inclined to providing logistics and other support services than most Western PMSCs.
Since President Putin already in 2012 spoke favourably about the development of PMSCs, it may seem surprising that they are still not legalized. There have been several attempts over the last few years to get such legislation through the Duma, but they have all failed. We argue that these failures can be ascribed to a combination of ideological resistance from parts of the military leadership as well as bureaucratic struggles between government agencies over the issue of control. Both the FSB, the GRU and the foreign ministry would probably want to have at least partial control over these actors if the PMSCs were to be legalised. However, as long as the divisions of power are still debated, the legislation is hard to pass. In addition, PMSCs may be considered more useful as long as they are not explicitly legal. This way, it is easier for Russian authorities to deny responsibility for Russian PMSC actions internationally.
In the final part of the report, we discuss potential consequences of the development of a Russian PMSC industry for Norwegian and European security. Here, we make a distinction between bilateral and international consequences. By bilateral consequences we mean instances where Russian PMSCs act on behalf of the Russian government in political and military conflicts with specific European countries. By international consequences we mean the presence of Russian PMSCs in conflict zones outside Europe, but where one or more European countries are involved militarily.
ResearchGate has not been able to resolve any references for this publication.