Executive Outcomes

Executive Outcomes The starting point is Executive Outcomes (EO) (now defunct but not before morphing into Sandline International and then ending up as Aegis Defence Services, with a few stopovers inbetween). EO was one of the first of the Private Military Contractors, set up around 1989, after it became clear that Apartheid South Africa was all washed up. The man credited with creating EO is Eeban Barlow. In addition to Barlow, the other major players in EO/Sandline were Simon Mann (currently languishing in a Zimbabwean jail having been arrested for participating in an alleged coup in Equatorial Guinea in exchange for oil concessions after the coup was over[8]), Tim Spicer, Michael Grunberg, Tony Buckingham and Nic van der Berg, who later took over from Barlow as head of EO. The military network was controlled by shadowy holding companies, called Plaza 107 in the UK (controlled by Grunberg) and the Strategic Resources Corporation in South Africa. EO was registered in the UK in September 1993 by Simon Mann, a former troop commander in 22 SAS specializing in intelligence and South African director of Ibis Air, and Tony Buckingham, an SAS veteran and chief executive of Heritage Oil and Gas. The Heritage Oil and Gas board of directors includes former Liberal Party leader David Steel, and Andrew Gifford of GJW Government Relations, an influential parliamentary lobbyist. The company, originally British, now registered in the Bahamas, is associated with a Canadian oil corporation, Ranger Oil. Both companies had drilling interests in Angola, a country that since the mid 1970s was torn by civil war between the Marxist MPLA government and UNITA rebels who were covertly assisted by the South African special forces. Most of EO's approximately one thousand soldiers (70 per cent of whom are black) are veterans of South Africa's four elite apartheid-era counterinsurgency special forces: 32 'Buffalo' Battalion; the Reconnaissance Commandos ('Reccies'); the Parachute Brigade ('Parabats'); and the paramilitary 'Koevoet' ('Crowbar'). Their assignment was the destabilization of the apartheid regime's southern African enemies. The 32 Battalion, comprised mainly of Portuguese-speaking Angolans, became South Africa's most highly decorated combat unit since the Second World War. Eeben Barlow, the director of EO until July this year, was second-in-command of the 32 Battalion. He chose the paladin, the chessboard knight once featured in the old television series Have Gun, Will Travel, as the company logo when he set up EO in 1989. EO's first known major operation was Angola in 1993 where it traded on its 32 Battalion experience defending oil drilling sites and ironically being hired by the Angolan government to fight UNITA, the force Barlow had been working with to destroy the MPLA government during the Apartheid era. In reality, the oil drilling site it recovered from UNITA in Angola at Soyo, was in fact owned by Heritage Oil (which in turn has shares owned by Toxic Bob Friedland's Branch Energy) and at the time, EO was also part-owned by Branch Energy. Heritage Oil has operations in Angola, Congo-Brazaville, DR Congo, Oman, and Uganda. Executive Outcomes was involved in Sierra Leone, Angola, Kenya, Uganda, Sudan, Malawi, Mozambique, South Africa and Canada. Angola seems to be where EO head Barlow met former SAS officer [Tony] Buckingham, now believed to have ultimate control over EO and the complex web of some 80 companies involved in businesses ranging from landmine removal to water purification. Buckingham was representing Heritage Oil at the time of their meeting and had requested that Barlow recruit soldiers to recapture Heritage's assets in Soyo that had been taken by UNITA during the renewed conflict of the Second Civil War. The success of EO's special forces operation in Soyo had inspired the Angolan government to hire EO to direct frontline operations against UNITA. Payments for EO's services were made substantially in partial ownership in Branch Energy, were then transferred through a subsidiary, Carson Gold, and were finally exchanged for shares in DiamondWorks. Capture of vital diamond mining territory was part of the subtext of EO's operations in Angola. Also involved in EO's Angolan 'adventures' was Simon Mann, an ex-Royal Scots Guards officer and troop commander with the 'elite' British Special Air Services (SAS). Mann, together with Tony Buckingham, another prominent player in the private army business, awarded Eeben Barlow, the founder of EO, his first contract in Angola. Led by Lafras Luitingh, a former 5 Reconnaissance Regiment officer, and like Barlow, also an ex-Civil Cooperation Bureau operative, less than 100 EO fighters seized the town in three months and handed it back to the Angolan government. They got huge rewards, including a US$30 million mining contract. Eeban Barlow Barlow, joined the SADF in 1974 and went to become a commander of South Africa's notorious 32 Battalion's

Reconnaissance (Recce) Wing where he 'assisted' the anti-MPLA UNITA, (the Union for the Total Independence of Angola) guerrilla army. Later, Barlow went on to become a high-ranking employee of the South African Civil Cooperation Bureau (CCB) formed in the last years of the Apartheid regime. Barlow it seems, was based in London during the 1980s and it was his job to disseminate disinformation about the ANC but one can speculate on what other activities he and the other CCB operatives got up to whilst stationed in Europe including their involvement in the assassination of the ANC representative in France, Dulcie September in 1987. The CCB was definately involved in assassinations elsewhere, including the assassination of Anton Lubowski, a leading member of Namibia's SWAPO (South West African Peoples' Organisation) in 1989. The manufacture and distribution of drugs, involvement with the so-called Third Force, utilised to destabilise South Africa during the pre-1994 election period. Dr Wouter Basson (so-called Dr. Death) was also part of the CCB operation and behind a CBW programme code-named Project Coast. The activities of EO, the clients it served, and the global transnational corporate elite that included the DeBeers diamond cartel, Texaco and Gulf-Chevron reveals the role of mercenary groups like EO, especially in Africa. Much of its income came from 'doing deals', that is, getting lucrative mining concessions as payment for providing protection or overthrowing governments that 'got in the way' of doing business such as those conducted in Sierra Leone, Angola and DR Congo. And here the connections between EO and companies such as Diamondworks, becomes important, for the close association between EO and the diamond and gold concessions reveals that EO not only got paid cash for supplying mercenary forces but also obtained lucrative mining concessions as well. In Sierra Leone, Branch Energy had a 60% stake in Branch Energy Sierra Leone, the government had 30% while a local businessman/investor held a small stake of 10%. The same pattern was repeated in Angola and in Uganda. Branch Energy's African assets were mainly concentrated in countries where civil wars and rebellions were raging, so was it just pure luck or coincidence that these countries were selected? In fact the selection appears to have been guided by very defined criteria: the potentials in minerals (diamonds, gold and oil), a bankrupt national economy and armed rebellion threatening the ruling strongman. Aside from the fact that the UN outlawed the practice, mercenary outfits are 'free agents' not covered by Geneva Conventions or indeed aside from countries like South Africa who have outlawed the practice, are not regulated by the leading exporters of war, the US and the UK. The American government has also been using these private companies and others, more discreet, for secret activities, as the Abu Ghraib prison torture scandal revealed recently. Intelligence agencies subcontract their activities, notably for interrogations. Not only are these private soldiers not subject to military discipline or prosecution, but their companies are paid, or see their contracts renewed, on a pro rata basis, according to how much information is obtained. This would appear to have pushed some contractors to extract fantastical confessions from prisoners through torture. But perhaps the most disturbing aspect of the drive to privatise war is the fact that our political elite is busy producing rationales for it. Hence British foreign secretary Jack Straw had this to say on the subject, [a] reputable private military sector might have a role in enabling the UN to respond more rapidly and effectively to crises. This followed the Sierra Leone affair, where the UK government had hired Sandline to smuggle weapons into the country in contravention of an UN arms embargo. Clearly Straw's statement (following the publication of a Green Paper that called for the hiring of PMCs to do the work of government) was part of the drive to circumvent all the 'inconvenient' laws that prohibit governments from acting without due process or being accountable to public oversight. Straw's forward to the Green Paper went on to say, Today's world is a far cry from the 1960s when private military activity usually meant mercenaries of the rather unsavoury kind involved in post-colonial or neo-colonial conflicts. Unsavoury seems an odd choice of word especially in the light of the subsequent events in Abu Ghraib and the involvement of CACI, the US PMC in the torture of Iraqi prisoners, for surely the point of privatising state activities is primarily to avoid taking responsibility for one's actions. The smokescreen being used by the likes of despicable individuals like Straw who seeks to justify privatising such activities under the guise circumventing 'bureaucracy', is the height of cynicism. It reveals that far from being the advocates of freedom and democracy, our rulers feel that they can write their own rules in this dog-eat-dog world that they have created.

But unlike the US government who have already made it quite plain that PMCs are above the law, If accepted by Prime Minister Ayad Allawi, it would put the highly visible U.S. foreign contractors into a special legal category, not subject to military justice and beyond the reach of Iraq's justice system. Two U.S. contract employees at Abu Ghraib prison who were accused in a Pentagon report of participating in illegal abuse of Iraqi prisoners have not been charged with any crimes in Iraq or the United States. Estimates of the total number of foreigners working here from Americans to South Africans to Chileans have ranged from 20,000 to 30,000. The British government hides its actions, embarrassed perhaps that its activities expose its hypocritical position? But this is nothing new for the Blair government whose activities ever since coming to power in 1997 have been exemplified by an endless trail of broken promises and lies about its true intentions as it attempts to resurrect the empire. So the fact that it rewards the dregs of its former colonial empire's military occupiers with crumbs off the US table should come as no surprise.

http://www.sonoran-sunsets.com/ex.html When the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency hosted it's one-day symposium on the privatization of national security functions in sub-Saharan Africa, the guest list included five representatives of Sandline/Executive Outcomes, Eeben Barlow, Michael Grunberg, Col. Bernie McCabe (USA-ret.), Tim Spicer, and Nic Van Den Bergh. The British targeted the special forces capabilities of the famed South African Defence Force 32 Battalion, which worked with Savimbi in Angola to hold the large Cuban troop presence there at bay. With its disbanding, elements went into the Executive Outcomes hiring hall data base, for potential service for the mining cartels, and others were used for the countergang teams that conducted the blind massacres in the early 1990's. In both cases, the deployments signaled that there was a faction of the Afrikaner elite, putting itself, like General Smuts, at the service of the Empire. In a recent interview, Van den Bergh, spokesman for EO, poured out derision for the United States, lying that it was the U.S. who had replaced one dictator for another in Zaire, a blatant falsehood which covers for Britain's central role in the Great Lakes genocide. Executive Outcomes' famous contracts in Angola and Sierre Leone were coordinated by SAS veteran Tony Buckingham with EO's Eeben Barlow. Buckingham had been set up with a pocket oil company, Heritage Oil and Gas in Oman, a traditional British Intelligence/SAS staging point. George Bush's intelligence shadow, Theodore Shackley, worked closely with the British and the Lord Cayzer freight/shipping empire apparatus out of Oman. Shackley supervised Dutchman John Deuss's oil smuggling to South Africa, which was supplied in large part from Oman. Sitting on the board of Heritage was Privy Council member David Steel. Steel spent his teenage years at the Prince of Wales school in colonial Nairobi, Kenya-in the middle of the so-called Mau Mau rebellion--where his father was head of the Church of Scotland. Much of EO's armament came from former East Bloc suppliers. EO head Eeben Barlow, stationed in Europe in the mid-1980's for the Civil Cooperation Bureau, maintained contact with East Bloc intelligence services. Given South Africa's sale of the G5 into the Iran/Iraq weapons bazaar, which was jointly supervised by Bush and Thatcher, and the KGB and STASI, such a procurement channel should be of no surprise. The Soviet Union was also a prominent supplier of oil to South Africa, under the watchfull eye of the notoriously British influenced Africa Institute in Moscow. The East German STASI officer for black market and covert weapons sales, Schalck-Golodkowski, preferred to do much of his weapons dealing via South Africa. His point man for this, Dieter Uhlig, coordinated closely with the Empire's Lonrho concern, as the January 1986 protocol of Uhlig's meeting win London with Lonrho's executives, in the possession of EIR, documents. Defense Systems Ltd protected several Lonrho plantation operations in Mozambique, in one case using their Gurkha subsidiary.

In both Angola and Sierre Leone, diamonds and DeBeers were the name of the game. EO's armaments and officers were the core, with the addition of some local soldiers, which moved rebel groups out of dimaond areas. DeBeers runs in London the 4,000 employee strong Central Selling Organization (CSO) which maintains the global monopoly structure of the diamond business. It runs one of the most sophisticated intelligence organizations in the world, using the full gamut of tools of the trade, dummy front companies, covert spying capabilities, private intelligence firms, etc. Executive Outcomes's contracts, nominally with the respective governments, and, in part underwritten by International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Bank arrangements in the finances of the target countries, were paid off with diamond concessions to a Buckingham front company, Branch Energy. Although not formally DeBeers, Branch operates within the contractual domain of the CSO, like many other socalled independent diamond operations. Later, Buckingham took the Sierre Leone and Angola Branch diamond concessions onto the Vancouver stock exchange, as DiamondWorks, for purposes of stock puffing and probable money laundering. Robert Friedland, a former convicted LSD trafficker from his hippie days, set up DiamondWorks for Buckingham. And, yes, in the course of events, some South African ex-special forces people got to risk their lives, and pick up a fat paycheck too. It is most likely that EO, basically a several man office with a computer data base, will operate in the shadow of such London SAS firms like Defence Systems Limited (DSL), which has been insidiously digging itself into every disintegrating region and nation of the world--like a maggots into rotting flesh. The more serious question than EO per se, is just how much of the Afrikaner establishment has signed on board to the British game of decimating Africa, it's nations and population, and recolonising with WWF style game preserves and mining domains, heavily protected by private security, as zones of stability in the midst of Terra Incognita of death and conflict. This question goes equally for the ANC and Nelson Mandela. Numerous reports point to the South African government tolerating opportunistically the foreign combat deployments of Executive Outcomes. Although the government is currently drafting legislation against mercenary deployments by South Africans, it will probably only mean that the cartels must train "natives" to do the dirty work http://american_almanac.tripod.com/execout.htm
Executive Outcomes
A private company recognizes the new needs of the time.
The white-dominated apartheid government states Rhodesia and South Africa have long been considered a last refuge for white mercenaries. In its ongoing struggle against the "black danger" employed these countries is not only a considerable number of foreigners in their special forces, but also repeatedly supported anticommunist groups in other African countries like the Congo or Angola. Moreover, by the embargo had been in South Africa developed a flourishing arms industry, sought to export markets and in the special forces were also constantly trained soldiers who controlled the necessary know how of guerilla warfare, the bush war and related intelligence activities shiny. But then came 1980 and then Rhodesia in 1994, assumed power in South Africa of Nelson Mandela's ANC. In South Africa alone could not be simply dismissed out of consideration for internal peace, the white soldiers, also can be assumed with good reason that these specialists do not even Mandela could do without entirely. But the margin was close and the future prospects were anything but rosy. Since Luther Eeben Barlow appeared on the stage. He was a member of the legendary 32nd in South Africa "Buffalo" Battalion. This to fight in Angola established elite unit was indeed led by white South African officers, however, the men were mainly recruited among the locals in Angola. In Angola, the battalion fought as an ally of the pro-UNITA against the Marxist MPLA and its Cuban allies. Barlow had recognized the signs of the times early on and as a connoisseur of African problems in 1989, the military consulting company "Executive Outcomes" (in German as: "run commands" set). He

himself said of his idea: "War and anarchy will reign in Africa because it has been exploited by people making promises. The Cold War left a huge vacuum and I identified a niche in the market - we are selling the business of surviving." Initially, the historical development of Barlow seemed to be ahead too quickly, because the business went bad. That changed when the former SAS officer Tony Buckingham approached the company. Buckingham Vetrate a British oil production, but had the concessions for large oil fields in Angola, but this could not be exploited because of the civil war. Buckingham commissioned end of 1992, Executive Outcomes in cleaning the assisted areas of the rebel forces and to secure the future. That the South African mercenaries were to fight here against their former brothers in arms by UNITA, played after the end of the Cold War no longer relevant. On the contrary, it was probably more of an advantage, because the mercenaries knew their opponents, their weaknesses and the terrain. In some hard fighting succeeded Executive Outcomes then the region around Soyas by the rebels to conquer and secure the oil production.

The official government in Angola, whose troops were not to have been able, by the success of the action was so impressed that they alleged the company offered 45 million U.S. dollars annually for his services. Barlow took like, but do not take without first coming to South Africa's leaders, Nelson Mandela's ANC's permission to do so. Firstly, the ANC felt obligated to Angola, as he had trained there in his time fighting forces, secondly, Barlow led a very interesting argument put forward that he would occupy mainly the forces that might otherwise be dangerous to the ANC. One should think here of the popular since time immemorial method to get rid of unwanted groups with the help of Fremdendienstes too. Thus Herodotus tells a similar tale of Polycrates of Samos, and 1605, the Scottish government sent 150 men of a particularly turbulent clans in the Netherlands in order to "die as everyone there." A similar, perhaps even Mandela went through my head. With the help of Executive Outcomes succeeded the Angolan government to gain ground back. Of course, the soldiers were no longer the spectacular success as once in the Congo. Even with a few thousand men today can not be a country the size of Angola captured and saved. Their task was to secure the oil fields and mines to get foreign currency into the country and to train government troops. That it was not always understood by themselves and also give Executive Outcomes had to losses. This was especially annoying, because sometimes people in South Africa were recruited with the promise to provide security services only in Angola and then suddenly found again in the bush war. Thus, the case of Mrs. Judith Bezuidenhout became known to the mother of Neil Bezuidenhout a former member of the South African Special Forces. Neil had gone for Executive Outcomes in Angola to guard oil fields there, and then had been reported missing. In the experiments elucidate the fate of her son was Judith Bezuidenhout, the employees of Executive Outcomes not very cooperative as she explained in an interview with the newspaper "THE NEW AMERICAN." Finally, she received a message from a nurse from London who had previously worked in Angola, that her son was alive and working as a prisoner of war by UNITA in the diamond mine. Barlow had to be about such things do not worry. After the success of its operations in Angola were brilliant. Executive Outcomes was soon involved in a number of countries and offered dozens of sub-partners and a widening array of services, from military advice about air transportation and mining, to all civilian technical questions. Be accepted as payment for mineral rights and production concessions, which are then passed on to companies associated with Executive Outcomes. Barlow's difficulties had demanded a different kind in 1995 to Bill Clinton Angola, terminate the contract with Executive Outcomes, as the Americans wanted to stop in the ongoing peace negotiations, the matter is not entirely by UNITA. Without protest drew Executive Outcomes a few months later withdrew from Angola. But the business practices had changed enormously since the time of Condottieri old school like Mad Mike Hoare and Bob Denard. Good people simply switched to other companies to protect the oil fields in Cabinda, mines, or the Airport of Luanda. Others flew directly to Sierra Leone in order to also ensure there for the necessities order to ensure that the mines of the country finally back to work. Meanwhile, Executive Outcomes or its subsidiaries in almost every sub-Saharan African country is operating on one or the other way. However, only rarely directly involved in military conflicts. Barlow's empire has grown tremendously. The majority of his soldiers are black, the heavy equipment often comes from the overflowing arsenal of the former Soviet bloc, including some pilots who fly the Antonov-vans, MI17 and Mi24 helicopters or the MiG jets. Since in South Africa against the increase, the talk of a new conquest of Africa by the Boers, one thinks there to have laws to restrict the activities of mercenary companies. But this can be the new trend probably not stop. Supposed to have already offered several African countries

Barlow and his company a new home. The Bush administration has the interests of big corporations more sympathetic. Savimbi is dead, and therefore the considerations of UNITA have been omitted. The most striking thing about this march of the mercenary companies is the lack of interest on which he joins in the media. When you think of the uproar it has caused the use of some mercenaries in the Congo in the sixties and in Angola in the seventies, it is remarkable at the time still. No protests of the Organization of African States, not excommunication by the UN, no outcry from human rights organizations, no scandalous reports in the press. This is certainly partly due to the ubiquitous capital interests. All African countries need for oil and minerals and also a modicum of security, which the United Nations clearly can not afford. It was noted in this regard already, not exactly cheap that the use of Executive Outcomes in Angola, only a fraction of the UN troops in the same land cost, in contrast, however, led to significantly better results. The media is to look at these activities on the one hand clearly uncomfortable, but hardly anyone has the other an acceptable alternative, given the chaotic conditions in many African countries. So Kofi Annan has already conceded: "When we needed experienced soldiers, to separate combatants from refugees in the Rwandan refugee camps in Goma, I also took into account the possibility to hire a private company. But the world is probably not yet ready to to privatize peace. " Probably this world is really not ready, but the big international corporations have already begun. And as in the so-called first world, the willingness of soldiers disappears, or even send conscripts - the basis of any democratic armed forces - in the conflict regions of the developing world seems to be here at least willing to let it happen and to do so as you know none of it.

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