"Analysts like Peter Singer, author of Corporate Warriors: The Rise of the Privatized Military Industry and a fellow at the Brookings Institution, a liberal think tank in Washington, D.C., say that the news took them by surprise. " It's like a blast from the past, like I took a leap back into the time-machine to the late '90s," said Singer. "To be honest, though, I am doubtful that the folks awarding the contract had any sense of Spicer's spicier history."
But not everyone agrees with this assessment of Spicer's work. In Sierra Leone, Spicer's efforts have been heralded by the private military industry as the "work of angels." In 1998, Sandline was contracted to sell 30 tons of arms to the forces of Ahmad Tejan Kabbah, the former leader of Sierra Leone, in contravention of a UN arms embargo but in apparent cooperation with Craig Murray, a junior staffer at the British Foreign Office.
Doug Brooks, the president of International Peace Operations Association (IPOA), a non-profit advocacy group for private military companies including Sandline, says the company's assistance in Sierra Leone saved the lives of thousands of civilians. "Sandline was remarkably effective," Brooks said. "Their goal of restoring the democratically elected government was achieved. They maintained a low profile but played a critical role in the success."
Nonetheless, Sandline's Sierra Leone project provoked a furor and multiple government investigations in Britain when it was discovered that the contract violated the United Nations embargo on providing arms to either side in the military conflict. Spicer maintains that he was unaware that the scheme was illegal and the government eventually agreed to draw up new rules on arms trafficking and the conduct of private military companies in Britain.
Spicer's work in Papua New Guinea, another public relations fiasco, was not even a military success. The eastern half of the South Pacific island of New Guinea, Papua New Guinea (PNG), was a British and German colony and then an Australian protectorate until 1975. That year, both PNG and the outlying island of Bougainville, some 500 miles northeast of the capital, Port Moresby, declared independence. PNG quickly took over Bougainville, where an Australian company, CRA (now part of Rio Tinto, the world's largest mining company), had begun to mine copper in 1972.
In 1989, local landowners shut down the Bougainville copper mine to protest the environmental destruction it caused and to demand independence. In February 1997, the PNG government, which had received about 44 percent of its revenue from the mine, paid Sandline International $36 million to rout the Bougainvilleans.
The very next month, PNG Prime Minister Julius Chan sacked the military commander, Brigadier General Jerry Singarok, for denouncing the contract with Sandline and arguing that the money would be better spent on his own troops, who were desperately underpaid and ill-equipped. Riots ensued after soldiers loyal to Singarok led protests that included at least 2,000 civilians. The soldiers arrested and deported a number of the Sandline contractors.
Less than a month later, dressed in crumpled jeans, Spicer was led into a Papua New Guinea court. His suitcase, bulging with $400,000 in cash, was produced as evidence of his contract with the disgraced government. At the hearings, Spicer revealed that one aspect of the project (code-named "Operation Oyster") was to wage a psychological campaign against the Bougainvilleans with the help of Russian style attack helicopters (see Give War a Chance: the Life and Times of Tim Spicer for more on Sandline).
Spicer's lawyers worked overtime to get the charges reduced and eventually dismissed but Chan was forced to resign from his job."
But not everyone agrees with this assessment of Spicer's work. In Sierra Leone, Spicer's efforts have been heralded by the private military industry as the "work of angels." In 1998, Sandline was contracted to sell 30 tons of arms to the forces of Ahmad Tejan Kabbah, the former leader of Sierra Leone, in contravention of a UN arms embargo but in apparent cooperation with Craig Murray, a junior staffer at the British Foreign Office.
Doug Brooks, the president of International Peace Operations Association (IPOA), a non-profit advocacy group for private military companies including Sandline, says the company's assistance in Sierra Leone saved the lives of thousands of civilians. "Sandline was remarkably effective," Brooks said. "Their goal of restoring the democratically elected government was achieved. They maintained a low profile but played a critical role in the success."
Nonetheless, Sandline's Sierra Leone project provoked a furor and multiple government investigations in Britain when it was discovered that the contract violated the United Nations embargo on providing arms to either side in the military conflict. Spicer maintains that he was unaware that the scheme was illegal and the government eventually agreed to draw up new rules on arms trafficking and the conduct of private military companies in Britain.
Spicer's work in Papua New Guinea, another public relations fiasco, was not even a military success. The eastern half of the South Pacific island of New Guinea, Papua New Guinea (PNG), was a British and German colony and then an Australian protectorate until 1975. That year, both PNG and the outlying island of Bougainville, some 500 miles northeast of the capital, Port Moresby, declared independence. PNG quickly took over Bougainville, where an Australian company, CRA (now part of Rio Tinto, the world's largest mining company), had begun to mine copper in 1972.
In 1989, local landowners shut down the Bougainville copper mine to protest the environmental destruction it caused and to demand independence. In February 1997, the PNG government, which had received about 44 percent of its revenue from the mine, paid Sandline International $36 million to rout the Bougainvilleans.
The very next month, PNG Prime Minister Julius Chan sacked the military commander, Brigadier General Jerry Singarok, for denouncing the contract with Sandline and arguing that the money would be better spent on his own troops, who were desperately underpaid and ill-equipped. Riots ensued after soldiers loyal to Singarok led protests that included at least 2,000 civilians. The soldiers arrested and deported a number of the Sandline contractors.
Less than a month later, dressed in crumpled jeans, Spicer was led into a Papua New Guinea court. His suitcase, bulging with $400,000 in cash, was produced as evidence of his contract with the disgraced government. At the hearings, Spicer revealed that one aspect of the project (code-named "Operation Oyster") was to wage a psychological campaign against the Bougainvilleans with the help of Russian style attack helicopters (see Give War a Chance: the Life and Times of Tim Spicer for more on Sandline).
Spicer's lawyers worked overtime to get the charges reduced and eventually dismissed but Chan was forced to resign from his job."
This is the background of Tim. Aegis is not just in Iraq, but does business in many other countries. The following has been borrowed from this site.
"In March this year a group of mercenaries was arrested in Zimbabwe, allegedly attempting to buy arms to oust the dictator of Equatorial Guinea, Teodoro Obiam Nguema. The accused gave a different story, claiming they were en route to the Eastern Congo, to provide "security" for diamond mines.
Behind this botched enterprise is Simon Mann, a British ex-SAS officer who helped set up the notorious Executive Outcomes, which - until it was outlawed by South Africa in 1999 - was behind several takeovers of mineral-rich areas in West Africa. A close associate of Mann's at the time was Tony Buckingham, another Briton whose company Branch Energy set up Diamondworks. This used the services of Sandline, another much-criticised armed band which Mann set up with fellow ex-SAS officer, Colonel Tim Spicer.
Now Spicer has secured an extremely lucrative contract to supply "security" to US companies in Iraq. It's not the first such contract: according to the Observer newspaper (June 5th 2004), last summer the British Department for International Development (DFID itself signed a deal with Meteoric Tactical Solutions (MTS) to safeguard its own staff in the conflict-ravaged country. Two of MTS's owners were among those arrested in Zimbabwe three months ago, accused of the attempted coup against Nguema."
"People cannot tell the difference between the mercenaries and soldiers because they all wore the same uniform, had the same weapons, spoke the same language and came from the same place."
-- Agim Hasku
Behind this botched enterprise is Simon Mann, a British ex-SAS officer who helped set up the notorious Executive Outcomes, which - until it was outlawed by South Africa in 1999 - was behind several takeovers of mineral-rich areas in West Africa. A close associate of Mann's at the time was Tony Buckingham, another Briton whose company Branch Energy set up Diamondworks. This used the services of Sandline, another much-criticised armed band which Mann set up with fellow ex-SAS officer, Colonel Tim Spicer.
Now Spicer has secured an extremely lucrative contract to supply "security" to US companies in Iraq. It's not the first such contract: according to the Observer newspaper (June 5th 2004), last summer the British Department for International Development (DFID itself signed a deal with Meteoric Tactical Solutions (MTS) to safeguard its own staff in the conflict-ravaged country. Two of MTS's owners were among those arrested in Zimbabwe three months ago, accused of the attempted coup against Nguema."
Please do your part to speak out against the use of mercenaries, not only in Iraq, but worldwide. The last thing that we should have to worry about is private corporate armies with no allegiance, no true country, and no real accountability. It is disturbing that we hear reports of "security contractors" working traffic for VIPs and firing upon cars with families in them for failure to come to a complete stop or reports of mercenaries firing into civilians, using them as target practice.
"People cannot tell the difference between the mercenaries and soldiers because they all wore the same uniform, had the same weapons, spoke the same language and came from the same place."
-- Agim Hasku
1 comment:
You might want to take a look at the book "The Sandline Affair" by Sean Dorney (an Australian journalist with extensive PNG experience).
There's a lot of detail about the initial contacts between Spicer and the PNG government, the sometime-bizarre ways in which the money was gotten, and so on.
A small quibble -- for better or worse, Bougainville was already part of PNG (and had been part of the Territory of Papua New Guinea before independence). It's certainly true that the Bougainvilleans pressed for independence (at least many of them did) but in effect what PNG did was to say, "no, you're still with us."
None of this takes away from your main points about Spicer and his gang.
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