By Lucas Bernard
Throughout the history of conflict, there have been warriors who fight not for God and Country, but cold hard cash. From the Ten Thousand of Ancient Greece to the feared Varangian Guard of the Byzantine Empire, mercenaries march through time providing cost effective and professionalized violence. Into the modern era, all they needed was a little corporate re-brand as “Private Military Contractors.” It was an upstart South African company born out of the ruins of apartheid that set the gold standard for the contemporary PMC.
As the generation-long South African Border War was ending, the new government decided to downsize its military, specifically targeting its special forces. Eben Barlow, a decorated veteran, found himself unemployed. He decided to do what generations of soldiers without armies had done before him—start his own. Hiring former members of South African special forces and even erstwhile enemy resistance fighters of uMkhonto weSizwe and the Azanian People’s Liberation Army, Barlow dubbed his motley crew Executive Outcomes and set out to revolutionize a perennial vocation.
Putting a bunch of people together who had just been killing others for decades and giving them guns seems like a recipe for disaster. The company’s motto of “Fit In or Fuck Off” served to dispel any tension and perfectly encapsulated its ethos. Apartheid was over, and peace had left them behind. It was time to work together and make some scratch doing what they did best. Fostering a sense of pride and belonging, Executive Outcomes paid its personnel more than any national army on the African continent, $2-3k a month for ground troops and up to $7k for pilots and other special troops. Obviously, these salaries attracted more soldiers than an off-post strip club, and Executive Outcomes amassed more than 2,000 employees. Initially just providing training for various military and security forces around the continent, they soon found themselves conducting ground operations in Angola.
After years of civil war, Angola finally had a UN-administered election in 1992, where the National Union for the Total Independence of Angola (UNITA), contested the results and promptly seized the major port and oil city of Soyo to cut off funding to the Angolan government. A coalition of the Angolan government and pissed off foreign investors quickly formed to determine how to retake their country, and the choice soon became clear. Executive Outcomes was already there training Angolan troops, now it was time to lead them. $80 million and a little under a year later, 60% of the country was back in the hands of the government and UNITA was forced to the negotiation table. As part of the peace agreement, UNITA specifically demanded that all EO personnel depart the country. UN peacekeeping troops replaced them after they left, and a few months later UNITA restarted the war, which lasted until 2002.
With a business plan now firmly established, Executive Outcomes looked for another African civil war to subdue. Luckily, it was a bit of a boom era for that sort of thing. As of 1995, Sierra Leone had been in active conflict for 4 years. The Revolutionary United Front (RUF), a horde of sadists and press-ganged children, had taken over two-thirds of the country and most of its diamond fields, from which it funded butchery and destruction. With the RUF 20 km from the capital of Freetown, the Sierra Leone government hired Executive Outcomes at $1.8 million per month. In March of that year, EO arrived to do what they do best, make everybody chill the fuck out via superior firepower. With the RUF being more adept at torture and traumatizing children than warfighting, Executive Outcomes quickly showed the RUF that peace talks were more appealing than being on the wrong end of a shooting gallery. The RUF agreed to peace and elections in November of 1996. With all the hard work done, the UN once again pressured Executive Outcomes to leave and be replaced by UN peacekeepers. As of January of 1997, all EO personnel had departed the country. With that, Sierra Leone entered a golden age of peace and prosperity. Just kidding, the RUF restarted war and ran roughshod over the 17,000 UN troops that were eventually stationed there. At the tune of $1 billion a year these armed incompetents couldn’t do the job that 200 Executive Outcomes troops did for a measly $30 million per year. Just like in Angola, the conflict lasted until 2002.After years of being more successful and costing significantly less than UN intervention, Executive Outcomes was dissolved in 1998 due to ever-increasing international pressure out of concerns of their influence on African politics. Only the UN is allowed to influence African politics. However, as of 2020, Executive Outcomes has returned to the African stage once again. While they have since kept a relatively low profile, its only a matter of time before they once again show us what a bunch of fucking jabronis the UN is.
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