African Studies

ISSN: (Print) (Online) Journal homepage: https://www.tandfonline.com/loi/cast20

The terrorist and the mercenary: Private warriors

against Nigeria’s Boko Haram

Antonino Adamo

To cite this article: Antonino Adamo (2020): The terrorist and the mercenary: Private warriors
against Nigeria’s Boko Haram, African Studies, DOI: 10.1080/00020184.2020.1788920

To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/00020184.2020.1788920

Published online: 05 Aug 2020.

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AFRICAN STUDIES
https://doi.org/10.1080/00020184.2020.1788920

The terrorist and the mercenary: Private warriors

against Nigeria’s Boko Haram
Antonino Adamo
National Research Council of Italy (CNR); Palermo, Italy

ABSTRACT ARTICLE HISTORY

This article analyses the 2015 intervention of Specialized Tasks, Received 17 January 2018
Training, Equipment and Protection (STTEP International Ltd), Accepted 16 January 2020
a South African private military company (PMC), against Boko
KEYWORDS
Haram, the Islamic terrorist group in Nigeria. The origins of PMCs PMC; STTEP; Boko Haram;
are highlighted before an in-depth analysis of the mercenary Nigeria; mercenary; Executive
intervention against Boko Haram is performed, with an eye on Outcomes
previous major PMC interventions in sub-Saharan Africa. On the
one hand, the paper emphasises the unprecedented use of PMCs
against Islamic extremist groups but on the other reveals that
PMC interventions have not changed much. Finally, the article
assesses STTEP’s intervention in light of the current debate on
private security involving those who advocate its use and
regulation and those who question the legitimacy of PMCs as
a tool of conflict resolution.

Introduction: the origins of private security

The number of private military companies (PMCs) – that is private companies providing
a different yet related range of armed security services, from armed combat to security ser-
vices – grew steadily in the early 1990s in sub-Saharan Africa (Musah & ‘Kayode Fayemi
2000). PMCs and private security companies (PSCs) – as well as all different kinds of
private security providers (see Figure 1) – are embedded within a series of macro processes
characterising the period after the Cold War, such as the erosion of the nation-state, the so-
called ‘new wars’ (Kaldor 1999) and the spread of neoliberalism.
From a theoretical perspective, this paper assumes that private security in Africa has to
be viewed in the wider context of the nation-state crisis and the progressive loss of control
over the main features of state power, that is, the monopoly of force and the legal use of
coercion. Through history, long-term processes led to the monopoly of force – in particular
the ability to use coercion over recalcitrant social members who were brought under the
control of the state (Mann 1990). In fact, the growing capacity of the state entities to
monitor, control and ultimately monopolise the effective use of coercive means is one
of the first fundamental steps in the birth of the modern state. Differently, the conditions
that paved to way to the birth of the modern state seem to be overturned by the new wars,
asymmetric conflicts fought by a wide range of non-state armed groups such as militias,

CONTACT Antonino Adamo antonino.adamo@cnr.it

© 2020 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group, on behalf of the University of Witwatersrand
2 A. ADAMO

terrorist groups and so forth (Kaldor 1999) that has characterised warfare after the Cold
War. Boko Haram perfectly fits in this category. These anomic conflicts are often fought
in the name of identity politics, or they originate from socio-political (rising ethnic and reli-
gious tensions) cleavages. In any case, these non-state actors tend to take advantage of
the continuation of violence rather than from its end, as new wars tend to spread and
persist as each side gains in political or economic ways from violence itself rather than
from the victory (Kaldor 1999).
Given that warfare and the military tend to reflect the society to which they belong
(Morton & Barber 1973), the peculiarity of the African independent state is significant
within this analysis. Some agree on the assumption that colonialism in Africa bequeathed
a distinctively destructive legacy to its successor regimes, and that Africans must now
invent a new kind of state (Young 1994). In contrast, others believe that the sovereignty
of most African states was never much more than a convenient myth (Clapham 1996);
scholars such as Mick Moore (2001) argue that even before the World Bank imposed struc-
tural adjustment programmes in the 1980s and 1990s, sovereignty was not an absolute,
invariable and timeless attribute of the African state but rather an historical evolutionary
concept.1 In any case, the concept of sovereignty – as a result of uncompleted and/or
a failed nation-building process – is paramount and represents the wider scenario
where the private sector starts to operate, thus becoming involved in tasks previously
reserved to the public sector.
Finally, neoliberalism further shapes the conceptual scenario for the rise of private
security. Assuming that market exchange is an ethic in itself and a guide for all human
action, neoliberalism both shrinks state powers and emphasises market processes: state
interventions in the economy are minimised, while the obligations of the state to
provide for the welfare of its citizens are diminished. Becoming dominant in both
thought and practice throughout much of the world since 1970 (Harvey 2007), neoliber-
alism has resulted in an increasing reliance on market logics that has made more accep-
table the shift from the public to the private domain, even on security issues. In particular,
neoliberalism-driven globalisation has made security a marketable good thus determining
the ‘supply’ and ‘demand’ of the market for force (Leander 2005).
From an historical perspective, the end of the bipolar world – that is the Cold War
between the United States and the Soviet Union – posed the most severe challenge
to the recently established African nation-states. The lessening of perceived military
threats at the end of the Cold War has led to a strong military downsizing (Lock
1999), as well as the increasing availability of arms and military personnel, thus generat-
ing a great potential supply of different yet related military services. In terms of demand,
the end of the ‘patronage’ system (Reno 2006) and the unwillingness of superpowers
and great powers to intervene in sub-Saharan African conflicts are the two main
factors to be highlighted within this analysis. As for patronage in African politics, past
patron-client relationships among states – that is the client who has inferior military
capabilities relying on its patron for security and survival – changed following the
decrease of superpowers’ influence in Africa after the Cold War and thus determined
a dramatic loss of external legitimacy for the African states. The end of the patronage
system partly explains the second factor too, given that the downsizing of the strategic
interest, along with the failure of some United Nations (UN) peacekeeping operations in
the 1990s (for example the UN Assistance Mission for Rwanda and the UN Operation in
 AFRICAN STUDIES 3

Somalia), accounted for a redefinition of direct military involvement of Western powers

in African scenarios.
After this introduction, a short section on the rise of PMCs will underline either
the reasoning for the reliance on this tool of private security since the 1990s, or the
peculiarity of Specialized Tasks, Training, Equipment and Protection (STTEP), the
South African PMC – born from the ashes of Executive Outcomes (EO) – that intervened
against Boko Haram. Then, the paper will focus on the intervention of STTEP and its
follow-ups, after highlighting the roots of the Boko Haram insurgency. A brief descrip-
tion of the Angolan and Sierra Leonean cases will follow, with a focus on both
peculiarities and analogies with the two former interventions. These two case studies
will help to better address the current debate between opponents to and proponents
of PMCs in sub-Saharan Africa, enabling their controversial role as peacekeeper to be
assessed. Finally, some concluding remarks will further question the use of private
security worldwide, taking into account both the Nigerian context and some global
trends on security issues.

The rise of PMCs

Private security and the ‘privatisation of war’ have flourished within the context analysed
above. PMCs were a novel military development during the 1990s, mainly affecting
African countries. Indeed, mercenaries were not a novelty in Africa: they had been
widely used as tool against African independence movements – les affreux deployed
by France in the Katanga region against the Lumumba government between 1960
and 1963 is just one example (Mockler 1969). Today’s PMCs are generally corporations
and claim to offer ‘integrated security packages’ to national governments with major
internal security issues (Musah & ‘Kayode Fayemi 2000, 23). Further important aspects
to be taken into account are the connections of PMCs to Western economic oil and
gas or gem corporations, and their ability to exploit a weak international legal frame-
work, as will be set out later.
Starting from the 1990s, scholarly literature has provided a large number of in-depth
and valuable analyses of private security and PMCs in Africa and elsewhere (Adams
1999; Arnold 1999; Chatterjee 1997; Harding 1997; Howe 1998; Mandel 2001;
Mills & Stremlau 1999; Musah & ‘Kayode Fayemi 2000; O’Brien 1998; Renou 2005;
Shearer 1998a). Indeed, a number of PMC interventions (for example, Angola in 1993
and Sierra Leone in 1995) have been widely analysed in order to assess their feasibility,
legitimacy, effectiveness and compliance with international humanitarian law. As will be
discussed later, since the early interventions of PMCs, the debate is generally split
between supporters of private security, who consider PMCs to be a tool of conflict resol-
ution, and opponents, who dismiss this assumption and – at least for sub-Saharan Africa –
consider PMCs to be a ‘re-colonising force’ (Howe 1998, 318).
Recently, one of the current major crises in Africa – the rise of Boko Haram in
Nigeria – has marked a revival of PMCs. An in-depth analysis of this intervention high-
lights similarities to and differences from previous PMC interventions in sub-Saharan
Africa, in order to assess whether these interventions have changed or not. Given
that Boko Haram’s violence is notorious and a major security concern, different
conflict resolutions tools deserve to be assessed. As for the differences from previous
4 A. ADAMO

interventions, it should be noted that STTEP’s involvement is the first of a PMC

against an Islamic extremist group to be documented in Africa. The most widely
known PMC interventions in Africa have previously been targeted at rebel political
movements and guerrillas fighting for power. Examples of these earlier interventions
include the involvement of EO, which intervened against the União Nacional para a
Independência Total de Angola (UNITA) in Angola and the Revolutionary United
Front (RUF) in Sierra Leone; the UK-based Sandline International, which planned to
target the Bougainville Resistance Army in Papua New Guinea in 1997 (Dorney
1998); and the US contractor Military Professional Resources Inc., which assisted
the Croatian Army against the Army of the Republic of Serb Krajina during the
1995 ‘Operation Storm’ (Goulet 1998; Shearer 1998a; Silverstein 2000). It is worth
noting that both EO and Sandline International had close links with the Branch-
Heritage Group of mining and exploration companies and Heritage Oil & Gas, a
London-based network of international mineral and gem corporations. The private
military contractors fighting Al-Qaeda in Afghanistan as well as the employment of
Blackwater by the US government in the ‘War on Terror’ can be put forward as
more recent examples.
When assessing similarities between past and current PMC involvement in conflicts, it is
necessary to look at the security scenario wherein the 2015 intervention in Nigeria took
place. Boko Haram posed – and still poses – a serious internal security threat for
Nigeria, and PMCs able to recruit mercenaries willing to fight in the battlefield were con-
sidered to be an effective option by Nigerian officials. This was partially due to the fact that
the Nigerian military was proving to be ineffective and inadequate in halting the Boko
Haram threat, and external peacekeeping interventions were unavailable. Nigerian secur-
ity and military forces were embroiled in scandal after scandal, ranging from corruption
and desertion to human rights abuses (Varin 2015). As will be set out later, further dom-
estic issues were also at stake, thus revealing a common path towards the use of PMCs
and further similarities with previous interventions.

Figure 1. The ‘tip of the spear’ typology (Singer 2003, 93)

 AFRICAN STUDIES 5

Boko Haram insurgency in Nigeria and the move towards private security
Boko Haram’s violence is embedded in the ethnic and religious cleavages between the
oil-rich Christian south and the Islamic north of Nigeria: these cleavages are a legacy of
the colonial construction, as the separatist policy of the colonial administration cata-
lysed Nigerians’ ethnic consciousness, which has grown stronger with time (Otoghile
& Igbafe 2014, 96). More specifically, the interplay of different factors in northern
Nigeria, such as economic greed and grievance, extreme religious ideology, and pol-
itical opportunity, shape the historical context where the insurgency is taking place
(Iyekekpolo 2016, 2211).
Two milestones in the rise of Boko Haram are considered to be growing ideological
radicalisation in northern Nigeria following the 1979 Iranian revolution, as well as the
implementation of Sharia law in 12 northern states since 1999. In fact, Boko Haram only
emerged around 2002, and its attacks began in 2010 after it came back to wage a war
against the ‘infidels’ in Nigeria, after being trained abroad (Onuoha 2010, 63) and as
result of merging with other terrorist groups such as Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb.
According to Jacob Zenn, Atta Barkindo and Nicholas Heras (2013, 46), at the time Boko
Haram shifted its focus from local Salafism to international jihadism, although these com-
ponents still co-exist.
In the course of 2014 and 2015, Boko Haram’s violence brought the death toll to well
above 15 000 since the start of the insurgency. North-eastern Nigeria witnessed a new
pattern of female suicide attacks, as well as frequent abductions, the capturing of towns
and villages, and the expansion of Boko Haram’s activities beyond Nigeria’s borders to
include a more aggressive presence in Cameroon, starting in the second half of 2014,
and the targeting of Niger and Chad from February 2015 (Comolli 2015, 109). After launch-
ing attacks from the north-eastern state of Borno on Christians living in the north, the
police (June 2011) and the UN (August 2011), the group abducted 276 schoolgirls from
Chibok in April 2014, a kidnapping that quickly became notorious worldwide (Popovski
& Maiangwa 2016, 159). By early 2015, Boko Haram’s attacks (suicide bombings, mass atro-
cities and so forth) had caused thousands of deaths and the displacement of people,
indirectly affecting almost 2 million individuals, as well as leading to a declaration of a
‘state of emergency’ in the Borno region.
The insurgency revealed the complete failure of the Nigerian state to end the
conflict. Indeed, several analysts contend that the inadequacy of the Nigerian govern-
ment’s response – if not the Nigerian state structure itself, its failures and deficiencies –
is the main reason for the widespread uprising (Amao & Maiangwa 2017; Bappah 2016;
Deckard & Pieri 2017; Fasakin 2017; Onapajo & Okeke-Uzodike 2012, 24; Tonwe &
Eke 2013).
Based on this context of non-state insurgency and inadequate state response, we
can say that Nigeria has historically experienced – and still experiences – different
yet related private security involvement. Old-style mercenaries were hired during the
Biafran War (1967–1970), by both Nigerian and Biafran belligerents. Then in recent
years, a different type of private security provider emerged, namely the PSC, which
is hired to protect critical energy infrastructure, especially in light of large-scale
illegal oil tapping and pipeline sabotage, which have become increasingly salient
issues in Nigeria (Zabyelina & Kustova 2015, 532). Furthermore, private companies
6 A. ADAMO

sometimes opt for solutions within the existing national security framework: Shell and
Chevron, for example, paid the Nigerian military and police to secure their facilities in
the country (Avant 2004, 154). Government and military inadequacy, and the use of
private security can be regarded as two sides of the same coin: they are both part of
the framework of the new wars and the erosion of state power.

Origin of STTEP’s intervention

The Nigerian government first attempted to contact a PMC following the kidnapping of
the Chibok girls and the worldwide condemnation of this abduction. According to
Eeben Barlow, the chairperson of STTEP, during 2014, Eric Prince, the founder of Black-
water, travelled to Nigeria, where he met with the then-president, Goodluck Jonathan.
According to reports (Cole & Scahill 2016), he offered to destroy Boko Haram for a fee
of USD1.5 billion. That offer was rejected (Barlow 2018); in fact, STTEP was only hired at
the start of 2015, when the general election drew closer, and this was a three-month con-
tract to assist the Nigerian military in establishing a counter-insurgency ‘strike force’, more
precisely the 72 Mobile Strike Force. Barlow’s forces were incorporated into the Nigerian
Armed Forces, with Barlow himself appointed to the rank of major general (Bisbjerg
Nielsen 2016, 10).
According to Siobhán O’Grady and Elias Groll (2015), an anonymous American source
who spoke to Foreign Policy revealed that the mercenary intervention occurred when
the United States refused to provide weapons and blocked the sale of Cobra attack heli-
copters from Israel to Nigeria. The United States had long refused to provide military
equipment to Nigeria due to human rights violations, thus triggering Nigerian complaints
about the lack of resources available in the country’s fight against Boko Haram. Moreover,
the United States was sceptical about the Nigerian Armed Forces’ capabilities to properly
operate the helicopters. Renting the vehicles from South Africa was, however, a viable
option, as trained pilots were also provided.
Official Nigerian government statements denied the intervention of mercenaries: Rear
Admiral Gabriel E. Okoi, Nigeria’s chief of defence intelligence, only admitted that South
African contractors had been hired some months earlier to help train Nigerian troops.
Then, government spokesman Mike Omeri refused to confirm how many foreigners
were involved, saying only that their stay would end when local troops had become
proficient at handling the military equipment (‘Nigeria: Ongoing offensive sees results’
2015, 20507). In an interview with Voice of America, President Goodluck Jonathan said
two companies were providing ‘trainers and technicians’ from South Africa, Russia and
South Korea to help Nigerian forces, but they were not engaged in frontline combat
against Boko Haram. He did not name the firms, the nationalities, or give numbers
(Cropley & Lewis 2015).
Here, a common pattern in private security interventions can be seen, namely a client
government’s refusal to admit that external forces are being deployed in its own territory.
Similarly, PMCs do not like to publicly reveal their operations. In fact, the South Africans
conducted military operations at night; as a senior Nigerian government official stated:
they ‘really don’t want to let people know what is going on’ (Nossiter 2015). Claiming
that the external military players were mainly advisers was much less controversial both
within the country and abroad.
 AFRICAN STUDIES 7

There is another aspect of the intervention that also deserves to be highlighted, as it has
emerged elsewhere. As already seen, the Nigerian state structure and the interplay of
different factors (economic greed and grievances, ethnic and religious tensions, political
opportunity and unsuccessful state response to insurgency) account for the failure to
counter the threat from Boko Haram. Consequently, while some observers (Ewi 2015)
feared the 2015 elections were vulnerable to terrorism, President Jonathan thought of
electorally exploiting a military victory against the group: in fact, he appeared to be con-
vinced that a military success over Boko Haram would increase his chances for re-election.2

The STTEP intervention in Nigeria

Between January and March 2015, dressed in khaki and body armour, operating attack
helicopters and armoured personnel carriers with high-calibre machine guns, hundreds
of mercenaries from South Africa reportedly fought to take back towns and villages cap-
tured by Boko Haram. Initial rumours were later confirmed by several Western diplomats,
who claimed that the South Africans were playing ‘a major operational role’ and explained
that mercenaries were ‘doing the heavy lifting’ while the Nigerian Armed Forces were
claiming ‘success’ (Nossiter 2015).
Despite the Nigerian government’s denials, the engagement of STTEP soldiers in the
fighting was not denied by Barlow: ‘If you want someone to go war for you, you need
to be willing to show the way’ (Bisbjerg Nielsen 2016, 9). Mercenary operations targeted
Boko Haram encampments within the Sambisa region, a 60 000 square kilometre area
where the Chibok girls were thought to have been taken (Nossiter 2015). The initial
plan was to train a team to help free the schoolgirls. According to Barlow, this mission
later transitioned into an offensive role to halt Boko Haram’s rapid advance and create
breathing space to enable the government to hold elections (Barlow 2018; Freeman
2015). As a result, STTEP brought in a group of highly skilled, trained and experienced sol-
diers who had conducted counterinsurgency warfare on the African continent since the
1980s. STTEP also provided air capacity capable of transporting, evacuating and supplying
troops, conducting air-to-ground combat missions, and helping with intelligence gather-
ing. The mercenaries’ air power was involved in direct combat, according to the PMC’s
officials (Freeman 2015; O’Grady & Groll 2015).
Providing proper assistance to the Nigerian Armed Forces was considered to be a pri-
ority. Boko Haram’s actions instilled fear not only in the local population but also in the
military units facing the group. This resulted in numerous units being overrun and with-
drawing from the engagement areas, leaving behind valuable equipment that Boko
Haram would later use in its terror campaign (Solomon 2017, 66). The reason for this ineffi-
ciency has historical origins. Although the Nigerian military has been the recipient of
Western-style equipment (the military was originally modelled on that of Britain during
World War I and II, when it had to defend its domestic and colonial territories), its doctrines
and strategies have not been adapted to the warfare needed in to act against Boko Haram:
basically, the force is not adequately trained to carry out a counter-insurgency campaign
(Noakes 2014).
STTEP contributed a solid counterinsurgency doctrine called ‘relentless pursuit’ (also
utilised by EO), which consisted of confusing, dispersing, and putting pressure on the
enemy through small mobile attacks, forcing it to withdraw, and then relentlessly pursuing
8 A. ADAMO

it, thus exhausting it and facilitating its annihilation. The pursuit also comprised mimicking
Boko Haram’s hit-and-run tactics with non-stop assaults within the framework of ‘uncon-
ventional mobile warfare’ (Freeman 2015).
Increasing evidence of what was underway in northern Nigeria came to light through
South African sources. The confirmed presence of South African mercenaries, along with
contractors from other countries (South Korea, Ukraine and former Soviet Republics),
was revealed by a defence source from Pretoria, who stated that the foreign troops
were linked to the management of EO. The source said that several hundred foreigners
were involved in running major offensive operations, and were being paid around £270
a day in cash (‘Nigeria: Ongoing offensive sees results’ 2015, 20507). Further evidence
revealing mercenary involvement was the death by friendly fire of a white South
African mercenary, Leon Mare Lotz, during the recapture of Bama (O’Grady & Groll
2015; Solomon 2017, 67). During the 1980s, Lotz had fought for Koevoet, the South
African apartheid-era paramilitary unit charged with eradicating nationalist guerrillas
in what is now Namibia. In the words of South Africa’s then minister of law and order,
Louis le Grange, this unit acted as ‘the crowbar which prises terrorists out of the bushveld
like nails from rotten wood’ (‘Leash the dogs of war: South Africa struggles in vain to ban
soldiers of fortune’, 2015). The personal story of Lotz – who was still fighting, even in his
fifties – fits perfectly within Jeremy Harding’s (1997, 89) description of the ordinary EO
mercenary as a ‘late 20th century voortrekker’ (‘pioneer’ in Afrikaans), who ‘unlike their
forbears, […] can return every few weeks to the spouse and children and file away
their foreign bank statements’.
As for the military results of the intervention, mercenaries reportedly changed the
momentum in the military effort. The 72 Mobile Strike Force, after training, retook the
town of Mafa; the 7th Infantry Division occupied the town shortly thereafter, and the 72
Mobile Strike Force returned to Maiduguri. In conclusion, in mid-April 2015, the Nigerian
government claimed that 10 of 14 local governments had been recaptured by the Nigerian
forces in the previous three weeks (O’Grady & Groll 2015).
The impact of STTEP’s involvement was also obvious to Muhammadu Buhari’s govern-
ment. Buhari succeeded Jonathan after the latter lost the 2015 election. In fact, accord-
ing to the Turkish Anadolu News Agency (Campbell 2015), President Buhari hired
equipment and approximately 250 personnel from STTEP, despite labelling the use of
South African mercenaries as ‘shameful’ while he was still campaigning for the election
(Campbell 2015; Varin 2016). Even though the Nigerian government flatly denied the
report, the rehiring of these mercenaries was an option under consideration within
the defence ministry and the Nigerian military (Campbell 2015). Barlow himself
warned that the enemy, albeit defeated, was able to ‘regroup and continue their acts
of terror’ (Freeman 2015). Similarly, in early 1997, when the president of Sierra Leone,
Ahmed Tejan Kabbah, terminated EO’s contract, the PMC predicted that if it left the
country, the Kabbah government would fall within a hundred days. These predictions
proved to be correct, as soldiers from Sierra Leone who were sympathetic to the RUF
overthrew the democratically elected Kabbah government 95 days later (Howe 1998,
321; Percy 2007, 210).
The next section will highlight the key characteristics of private security interventions
and that these have actually not changed much in the last two decades.
 AFRICAN STUDIES 9

Two paradigmatic cases: EO in Angola and Sierra Leone

The civil war in Angola in the early 1990s can be regarded as a ‘new war’ in the meaning
advanced by Mary Kaldor (1999): it was driven by personal ambition and the prize of
winning or retaining control over the state and its resources (Hodges 2001, 18). UNITA,
starting from the east and centre of the country, controlled 80 per cent of Angola by
1993, including the Soyo oil centre that contributed 7 per cent of US oil (Shearer 1998a,
46). As a result, assisting the Forças Armadas Angolanas against UNITA, and liberating
the oil-rich areas under the latter’s control was the role of EO in the country from 1993
onwards. EO had been established in 1989 by Barlow, a former member of the South
African Defence Force’s (SADF) highly controversial Civil Cooperation Bureau. EO recruited
and deployed mainly veterans of the SADF’s special forces brigades (‘Recces’), parachute
brigade (‘Parabats’), Koevoet (the Afrikaans word for ‘crowbar’) and 32 Battalion (nick-
named ‘Buffalo Battalion’ or Os Terríveis, the Terrible Ones, in Portuguese). EO deployed
550 mercenary soldiers with the aim of improving the capability of the client’s military
forces, either by training and guarding military installations, or by providing combat
support by acting as a ‘force multiplier’ (Howe 1998, 312). Sonangol, the state-owned oil
company, signed the contracts on behalf of the Angolan government, allegedly brokering
for foreign oil firms (for instance Heritage Oil & Gas) and mineral companies such as De
Beers (Chatterjee 1997). The total cost of the operation was about USD60 million (Isenberg
1997, 6), and EO sustained 20 to 40 casualties. Private security enthusiasts often mention
EO’s results against UNITA. Indeed, UNITA’s leader, Jonas Savimbi, was convinced to sign
the 1994 Lusaka Protocol after setting the expulsion of foreign mercenaries from the
country as a condition in the Lusaka Accords. Nonetheless, the success of the Accords
was fleeting, as hostilities began again soon afterward, and lasted until 2002.
The Sierra Leone case followed a very similar pattern. In 1991, a brutal civil war broke
out in this country that features some of the world’s best diamond fields. The war led to
economic decline and the collapse of the state apparatus (Francis 1999, 324). EO assisted
the Republic of Sierra Leone Military Forces against the RUF when it was just 20 kilometres
from the capital, Freetown. EO’s plan was to: i) secure Freetown; ii) regain control of the US-
owned Sierra Rutile mine (generating revenue for the government and helping to guaran-
tee payment to EO); iii) destroy the RUF’s headquarters; and iv) clear the remaining areas
(Shearer 1998a, 49). The 21-month-long operation cost USD35 million, although it must be
borne in mind that Sierra Leone’s foreign trade was only worth USD39 million. According
to speculation, EO was paid in diamond concessions, as Branch Energy acquired the Kono
diamond concessions after EO’s entry into Sierra Leone. Even the International Monetary
Fund approved payments to EO as part of Sierra Leone’s overall budget (Shearer 1998a,
51–2). Similar to what happened in Angola, EO’s success – albeit fleeting – forced the
RUF to sign the 1996 Abidjan Peace Accord. However, 90 days later, a new military
coup plunged the country into chaos once again: the RUF attacked Freetown and com-
mitted abuses and atrocities against the civilian population that three years later culmi-
nated in Operation No Living Thing.3
The Angolan and Sierra Leone case studies have shown the interconnections between
private military force providers and mining companies. These mercenary interventions
revealed that ‘security’ and ‘stabilisation’ were only instrumental in relation to foreign
investments. As a result, the use of ‘new mercenaries’ seems to prove the ‘resource-
10 A. ADAMO

curse’ theory (Atkinson & Hamilton 2003; Streeten 1993) – that is the presence of valuable
natural resources leading to economic failure and destabilisation, rather than fostering
economic growth and development – given that these PMCs fight their battles not only
for financial gain but also for strategic minerals on behalf of a corporate establishment,
thus representing an avant-garde attempt at corporate re-colonisation.
The momentary success achieved by private security interventions leads one to con-
sider private security itself as an allegedly cost-effective option when a state has serious
threats – or even regime survival is at stake – and no way to tackle them. This will be
better shown in the following section as well. This section will also highlight issues such
as legitimacy, human rights and accountability that need to be taken into account
when it comes to assess neo-mercenary interventions.

Assessing STTEP and PMCs interventions

The end of the intervention and its follow-ups allowed an assessment of whether it was
a ‘desperate ploy to get some sort of tactical success up there in six weeks for the electoral
boost’, as an Abuja-based diplomat said to Reuters (Cropley & Lewis 2015), or effective
proof of the efficiency of PMCs in tackling intractable conflicts. As already seen, STTEP’s
intervention and previous EO efforts in sub-Saharan Africa reveal many similarities, includ-
ing in terms of results. As in previous cases, the achieved ‘success’ was fleeting: Boko
Haram terrorist attacks started again in late 2015, continuing into 2016 and until early
2020. However, STTEP also represented a peculiarity, as its intervention seemed to be
the first documented case of private security targeting an Islamic extremist group. In
Angola and Sierra Leone, UNITA and RUF were rebel movements with political aspirations,
as were the Bougainville Resistance Army and the Army of the Republic of Serb Krajina.
Individuals fighting against (or alongside, in other cases) religious movements are
mostly mercenaries or old veterans fighting independently, and they do not intervene
within the framework or an agreement with a client state.
The two EO interventions during the 1990s marked the start of the early debate on
private security. This debate hinged on different aspects, namely international law, legiti-
macy, human rights and international humanitarian law records, and accountability.
Since the early 1990s, international law has been challenged by the global market and
the rise of PMCs, due to the ambiguous definition of ‘mercenary’ provided by the 1949 UN
Protocols and the 1997 Organisation of African Unity Convention. At the national level,
South Africa made some progress through the Regulation of Foreign Military Assistance
Act (which caused EO to close officially in 1999), which was enacted in 1998 and strength-
ened in 2006 with the Prohibition of Mercenary Activity Bill. These laws explicitly prohibit
the recruitment of nationals abroad. However, it seems that EO continued to operate
under different names, and STTEP is allegedly one of these. As a result, according to the
South African government, from 1998 onwards, any mercenary deployment would be
illegal. Meanwhile, Defence Minister Nosiviwe Mapisa-Nqakula, commenting on the inter-
vention in Nigeria, said that: ‘They are mercenaries, whether they are training, skilling the
Nigerian defence force, or scouting for them. The point is they have no business to be
there’, thus revealing that those ‘relics of apartheid’ (as Jakkie Cilliers, founder of the
South African Institute for Security Studies, labels them) are still an embarrassment for
the South African government (Nossiter 2015).4
 AFRICAN STUDIES 11

In terms of legitimacy, the question is whether STTEP jeopardised the nation’s mon-
opoly on the use of force, thus undermining national security structures, or whether it
was a viable, cost-effective option in terms of the state of the Nigerian military and
Boko Haram’s threat. This has led the international community to partially ‘justify’
the STTEP intervention in Nigeria, taking into account the perceived lack of alterna-
tives and the atrocities committed by Boko Haram. In fact, the training STTEP provided
to 72 Mobile Strike Force and the military in general proved to be effective, at least in
the short term, as the results achieved in the battlefield were believed to be out of the
reach of the defence force. This investment in confidence-building exercises reflects
a common pattern in some PMC interventions. Both Military Professional Resources
Inc. in Croatia and EO in Angola undertook such exercises with the armed forces
they were assisting. Drawing on this training, the military was able to successfully
implement training and assistance, thus achieving valuable results. In contrast, when
mercenaries and contractors are perceived as competitors by local officers, tensions
are likely to emerge and increase. This was the case in Sierra Leone and Papua
New Guinea, where pay disparities and the perceived risk to military corporate inter-
ests led to a lack of confidence and widespread mistrust towards the PMCs from the
military (Shearer 1998a). The relationship between the Republic of Sierra Leone Mili-
tary Forces and EO was difficult and often suffered from these biases, while an upris-
ing within the Papua New Guinea Defence Forces on the eve of the Sandline
International intervention brought the plan to intervene against the Bougainville
Resistance Army to an end.
Further issues at stake relate to human rights and international humanitarian law
records. Generally, the opponents of PMCs highlight human rights abuses (for example
EO in Sierra Leone, Blackwater in Iraq in September 2007)5 linked to some PMC interven-
tions. In contrast, PMC proponents argue that foreign armies, the UN and African Union
multinational peacekeepers often commit these abuses too, meaning that no one can
claim immunity from committing war crimes (Brayton 2002; Brooks 2000b; Shearer 1998a).
Finally, relating to accountability, critics are concerned regarding the difficulty in
detecting whether STTEP committed crimes and abuses during the 2015 intervention in
Nigeria. There is a lack of information on this: no major crimes were reported, but it
must be kept in mind that Barlow himself provided the most comprehensive account of
the intervention. The unavailability of reliable sources of PMC interventions is quite
common, due to the lack of publicity, the controversial image of the mercenary soldiers,
and the unwillingness of the client state to reveal its reliance on private security (Renou
2005; Singer 2003). PMC advocates argue that PMCs, as ‘market forces’, have no interest
in breaking the rules and thus undermining their reputation and their business in front
of the client (Brayton 2002; Brooks 2000b; Shearer 1998a). However, previous EO interven-
tions were arguably controversial: a high number of severely injured civilians were brought
to the hospital after the EO air force flew over Freetown, foreign non-governmental organ-
isation employees reported (Chatterjee 1997). Certainly, as clearly emerges from its
website, STTEP is going to great efforts to create an image of honesty and integrity, par-
ticularly since EO co-founder Simon Mann, a British mercenary and former British Army
officer, became involved in a coup attempt in Equatorial Guinea in 2004, also known as
the ‘Wonga coup’, and was later jailed there. This incident garnered international media
attention, as Sir Mark Thatcher – son of Margaret Thatcher, the former prime minister of
12 A. ADAMO

the United Kingdom – reportedly funded the coup; he was later convicted of breaking anti-
mercenary legislation and fined in South Africa.6
In the next section, the main rationale for private security will be summarised. Further
on, a critical approach will highlight the unreliability of private security in terms of conflict
resolution.

The wider debate on private security

As seen above, the STTEP intervention in Nigeria can be framed within the current
debate on private security. Since PMCs started to operate in the African market and
elsewhere in the early 1990s, the debate on their use has ranged between opponents
(for example Howe 1998; O’Brien 1998; Vines 2000), who do not think that PMCs are
an acceptable vehicle for conflict resolution, and proponents (for example Brooks
2000a), who consider private armies ‘not as part of the problem but as part of the sol-
ution’ (Shearer 1998b, 69). More recent developments concerning private security –
such as the wide-scale deployment of Western contractors in Iraq and Afghanistan as
employees of PSCs (allegedly less controversial than PMCs), the fall in UN peacekeeping
missions, and client diversification including non-governmental organisations, aid
workers, anti-poaching groups (Clynes 2002) and so forth – have shifted the current
debate in favour of the proponents, as private security is increasingly perceived as
more acceptable. Moreover, new theories based on the ‘different market structures’7
within which PMCs work (Petersohn 2015) or the ‘opportunity structure’8 (Akcinaroglu
& Radziszewski 2012) highlight that the intervention context is the main reason for
PMCs’ behaviour, while the cessation of hostilities benefits profit-oriented PMCs likely
to act in responsible ways. As a result, the case for PMCs now relies on the following
assumptions:

. They increase the military independence of African states, which do not need to rely on
the intervention of foreign countries.
. Their codes of conduct (many PMCs autonomously apply a set of rules) would prevent
unacceptable behaviour on the battlefield.
. They are legally registered, highly dynamic, highly trained, quick and easy to deploy,
and, to some extent, cost-effective.

Starting from 2000, mainly PMC lobbyists (for example, Doug Brooks, a consultant on
private sector stability operations and the founder of the International Peace Operation
Organization consortium, now International Stability Operations Association) have advo-
cated for their use – instead of multinational soldiers – in UN/African Union/multilateral
peacekeeping missions. Efficiency, professionalism, cost-effectiveness and speed are the
main factors highlighted (Brooks 2000a).
One of the best-known initiatives relating to the use of private security in peacekeeping
missions was proposed by the International Peace Operation Organization. Bringing
together flexible, international PMCs with codes of conduct that set minimum standards
for training, this consortium offered to support the UN Organization Stabilization
Mission in the Democratic Republic of the Congo with air surveillance and humanitarian
aid to the value of USD 100 to USD 200 million in 2003, but the offer was dismissed.
 AFRICAN STUDIES 13

A Green Paper released by the British government in 2002 (Norton-Taylor 2002) also envi-
saged hiring PMCs for peacekeeping missions in order to reduce costs and political con-
straints, and avoid sending national troops. Seven options, ranging from an immediate
ban for ‘bad’ PMCs, to codes of conduct and self-regulating PMCs, were taken into
account, with an intermediate solution based on a system of licences. However, many con-
cerns within the British parliament halted the highly controversial political debate over the
use of PMCs as peacekeepers.
Indeed, multilateral peacekeeping enforced by African regional organisations (Adebajo
2004) is being used as the most viable option for conflict resolution, even though previous
and existing peacekeeping interventions have not been successful enough, due to politi-
cal ambiguity (reluctance, overlapping of conflicting national interests), a lack of economic
resources, poor coordination and an absence of peacekeeping expertise9.
Despite a growing acceptance of private security, many issues remain unresolved, and
some of the literature is still quite sceptical about its capabilities in terms of conflict res-
olution and/or peacekeeping. As a result, the case against PMCs highlights some key
points. Accountability is one of the most important. The difficulty of implementing
and enforcing checks-and-balance systems and political oversight derives from the
problem of determining to whom PMCs are accountable (Olonisakin 2000) and who
can effectively guarantee oversight (Leander 2005; Singer 2003). The client government
cannot really do this, as it needs external military support; in northern Nigeria, a sort of
‘no-go area’ controlled by Boko Haram, one may wonder whether the public authority
would be able to supervise the work of a PMC, especially in terms of checking abuses
against civilians. Similarly, it is difficult to define a legitimate client, that is the only
client that the majority of PMCs claim to be willing to support. EO tended to consider
sovereign and internationally recognised governments as legitimate, even though
there was a military junta ruling in Sierra Leone at the time of the intervention. Regarding
accountability, some observers warn of the risk of ‘adverse selection’ (Singer 2003, 221),
which is a mechanism that might bring to the market disreputable players who are
willing to do their job at a lower cost. This may lead to incomplete information,
secrecy around contracts, and reduced quality and accountability.
Neutrality and reliability is another key point. As already discussed, EO’s interventions
in Angola and Sierra Leone seemed to be part of a larger plot involving mineral corpor-
ations and prolonged the conflict: in Angola, the war ended almost ten years after EO’
intervention, while foreign interventions, war crimes and widespread violence persisted
in Sierra Leone until 2002. Moreover, the survival of the government in exchange for
the alienation of natural resources was a sort of ‘Faustian bargain’ (Pech & Hassan
1997). This looked like ‘imperialism by invitation’ (Singer 2003, 167). Within similar
contexts, one may assume that PMCs are primarily responsive not to their clients,
but rather to their stakeholders (Renou 2005, 171–3). However, it should be noted
that the fact that there was little by way of evidence regarding an alleged commod-
ity-based payment for a STTEP intervention in Nigeria does seem to point at the govern-
ment’s independence and security remaining intact despite allegations of these being
jeopardised. The reliability and effectiveness of the intervention, however, continue to
be questionable, given that Boko Haram started to attack Nigerian villages shortly
after STTEP’s involvement.
14 A. ADAMO

The myth of efficiency and cost-effectiveness is thus challenged by further evidence

from case studies. On the one hand, EO’s interventions in Angola and Sierra Leone
revealed that PMCs are more likely to intervene if the client state is a commodity-rich
country. The Nigerian case seems to validate the theory that military success is always
short-lived; indeed, the latter applies to all the cases analysed so far. Barlow maintains
that addressing root causes is not the job of PMCs or part of their contracts: they offer
a military solution to a military problem, and the rest is up to national governments or
the UN (Bisbjerg Nielsen 2016, 7–8). In order to effectively assess STTEP’s intervention, it
would be interesting to examine whether the training provided would enable the Nigerian
military to face Boko Haram in the future without external help. However, some studies of
private security (Leander 2005; Singer 2003) have revealed that the supply in the market
for private security tends to self-perpetuate, as supply creates its own demand: in particu-
lar, PMCs adjust strategies to market their product, thus shaping the understanding their
clients have of threats and how they can best respond to them. Moreover, the reliance on
private security (which often offers better salaries) drains human resources by eroding the
status of public forces: this leads to decreasing investments in public forces. Finally, the
development of a market for force increases the availability and perceived need for mili-
tary services, and undermines (rather than helps) the consolidation of public security in the
weakest African states (Leander 2005).
Finally, as PMCs are much cheaper than multinational peacekeeping, one wonders who
will ultimately pay for them (Olonisakin 2000, 233–235). If the cost is to be met by foreign
companies, it is likely that the security provided will be targeted primarily at the safety of
those companies, that is, it will be investment-oriented security, while civilians will bear
the human and material costs of war (Table 1).

Table 1. A comparison between STTEP and previous EO interventions in sub-Saharan Africa.

EO in Angola/Sierra Leone (1993/1995)
Client: National governments
Opponent: Armed groups with political aspirations
(UNITA/RUF)
Payment: Mineral concessions/ cash (the EO-Branch-
Energy network)
Results: Fleeting military/political success; re-starting
and/or prolongation of conflict
Comments: Controversial positions between those
considering PMCs to be a tool of conflict solutions
and those questioning HR records, legitimacy and
accountability. These interventions mark the start of
the current debate on private security.
versus STTEP in Nigeria (2015)
Client: National government
Opponent: Armed group with religious aspirations
(Boko Haram)
Payment: Cash (no evidence of concessions/
commodity-based payment)
Results: Fleeting military (not political) success; Boko
Haram terrorist attacks started in late 2015,
continuing in 2016.
Comments: Partial justification of the PMC intervention,
taking into account the lack of alternatives and
atrocities committed by Boko Haram. Legitimacy, HR
records and accountability still unresolved.

Conclusions
At the time of writing, 112 Chibok girls were still in the hands of Boko Haram, while 103
had been released. The number of casualties linked to Boko Haram actions started to
decline in 2016, and Abuja officials repeatedly said that Boko Haram was on the verge
of being defeated. However, intermittent ambushes and suicide bombings have contin-
ued, particularly in Maiduguri and remote areas (Campbell & Harwood 2018), while
cross-border attacks still involve neighbouring Cameroon and Niger, and the Lake Chad
 AFRICAN STUDIES 15

basin as well, even escalating in 2019 and 2020 and still posing a major constant threat for
the region. Boko Haram is not a spent force, as Nigeria’s government and military maintain.
Nevertheless, evidence suggests that the STTEP intervention achieved very little in
terms of conflict resolution, as EO did in Angola (1993) and in Sierra Leone (1995): at
best, it simply lessened the risk of a major military threat before the 2015 elections. Unfor-
tunately, this intervention has not been as well documented as the previous EO involve-
ments in Angola and Sierra Leone, which still represent two milestones in contemporary
PMC interventions.
This article has attempted to explain that the scenario of mercenary interventions has
not changed since the mid-1990s. As it has just been argued so far, state decay – deter-
mined by new wars and low-intensity conflicts (Van Creveld 1991), along with the
spread of neoliberalism – set the conditions for the growing demand and supply of secur-
ity services: the main recurring market drivers for private security. Contemporary northern
Nigeria seems to fit perfectly within this scenario: the insurgency of Boko Haram poses
a major internal threat to the Nigerian government, which has proved to be unable to
resolve matters without external support. Similarly, in the 1990s, Angola and Sierra
Leone experienced the insurgence of rebel movements eager to seize power and state
resources; in the former country, the government was not able to control its own territory,
and the state collapsed in the latter. Furthermore, the STTEP intervention has revealed that
combat-support PMCs have not changed much either since the 1990s. In fact, STTEP, as
well as all the other major companies currently operating, keep a strong corporate struc-
ture; this was the most interesting feature of early PMCs that distinguish these corporate
warriors from ‘old’ mercenaries.
A novelty in recent years has been the unprecedented use of PMCs against Islamic
extremist groups. It has been reported in the last two decades that old-style mercen-
aries continued to be active in the civil war in Sudan and the Islamic uprising in
Algeria and elsewhere: they were many religiously motivated, freelance mercenaries
fighting in the former Yugoslavia, Chechnya and Afghanistan (O’Brien 1998, 82).
More recent and yet to be confirmed news has revealed that some PMCs are willing
to hire combatants against the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, while Al-Qaeda
in the Islamic Maghreb accused the former Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi of
hiring African mercenaries during the 2011 internal uprisings. However, the 2015
STTEP intervention is the best known PMC involvement against religious movements
in sub-Saharan Africa that has been reported thus far. It has set the trend for similar
PMC interventions against Islamic insurgents. An example is the late-2019 involvement
of the Russian PMC Wagner Group in Northern Mozambique – following the August
2019 Kremlin meeting between Russian President Vladimir Putin and Mozambique’s
President Filipe Nyusi – against the insurgency of the extremist and militant Islamic
group Ahlu Sunnah Wal Jammah (Lister & Shukla 2019). A South African security
group, the Dyck Advisory Group, was also allegedly assisting the Mozambican govern-
ment (Neethling 2020).
Despite the best efforts of PMCs and their attempts to be seen as acceptable, accoun-
table, responsive and reliable, a number of issues regarding efficiency, accountability and
cost-effectiveness still remain unresolved. Of course, the closer a PMC is to the battlefield
(that is, its services comprise combat support), the more controversial it is. Similarly,
although the market for private security is still flourishing – significantly, also among
16 A. ADAMO

humanitarian organisations seeking adequate security for their operations, which has con-
tributed to the industry seemingly gradually shedding its controversial image – the
reliance on the private security option during humanitarian interventions is highly proble-
matic (Spearin 2011 and 2001).
Although the wider debate on private security deserves a different focus and is not the
goal of this work, some assumptions can be made from the in-depth analysis of the STTEP
intervention in Nigeria. First, it is very likely that PMCs will continue to be a tool for inter-
vening in conflicts where the national interests of great powers are less significant and
they are unwilling to send in their national armies. This is not the case in the Middle
East and Gulf countries – where private security is involved mainly through PSCs and con-
tractors assisting Western armies willing to guarantee strategic interests – but is the case in
most current African conflicts. Despite the promises that often appear to be made, this
kind of intervention will not entail genuine peace-making and will not end wars: the
short-lived security provided will probably be investment-oriented or serve very specific
purposes, for instance the electoral boost for President Goodluck Jonathan discussed
earlier (Varin 2015). The reason is a new neoliberalism-style security assumption: in the
market for force, security becomes a commodity, and only those who are able to pay for
it will benefit. This assumption – the national security domain becoming marketable –
seems to represent the ultimate triumph of neoliberalism. In the words of Laurence
Mazure (1996, 23), George Orwell’s phrase in 1984, that ‘war is peace’, no longer refers
to totalitarianism – but rather to neoliberalism that will defend the values of free enterprise
through PMCs worldwide.

Notes
1. Based on this view, it can be assumed that globalisation has ultimately revealed the myth of
modernisation, showing that simply assimilating European states’ prerogatives is not enough
to enforce Western-style sovereignty (Carbone 2005).
2. In the same way, 18 years earlier, Papua New Guinea’s Prime Minister Julius Chan, nearing the
end of his term in office, realised that a solution to the military crisis on the island of Bougain-
ville (the insurgency of the Bougainville Resistance Army) would give him a great chance of
political success, securing his re-election. He thus hired Sandline International, a United
Kingdom based PMC, starting what would later become known as the ‘Sandline Affair’
(Dorney 1998).
3. In January 1999, a combined rebel force made up of the Armed Forces Revolutionary Council –
a RUF-allied group of Sierra Leone soldiers who were ruling the country after the May 1996
Koroma military coup – and the RUF itself invaded the capital of Sierra Leone, Freetown, to
loot, rape and kill indiscriminately: it was the most notorious mass killing of the Sierra
Leone civil war. A Human Rights Watch report estimated that more than 7 000 people were
killed and that at least half of them were civilians. Reports from survivors describe widespread
atrocities and perverse brutality.
4. However, some observers highlight the African National Congress government’s tolerance of
EO, as this PMC did help the post-1994 South African government by employing, and then
moving to foreign countries, ex-SADF’s soldiers who could have threatened the political tran-
sition (Howe 1998, 327).
5. In September 2007, employees of Blackwater Security Consulting (since renamed Academi),
a PMC, shot at Iraqi civilians, killing 17 and injuring 20 in Nisour Square, Baghdad while
escorting a US embassy convoy. The killings outraged Iraqis and strained relations between
Iraq and the United States. Moreover, this incident also sparked US criticism of the role of
 AFRICAN STUDIES 17

private security employees operating in the field, and there has been demand for adequate
military oversight. Prosecution proved difficult in this case, as the status of Blackwater was
unclear, as was its accountability.
6. For a comprehensive report, see Roberts (2006).
7. According to this theory, which has been tested in three cases (Sierra Leone, Iraq and Afghani-
stan), different market structures explain the variance in PMC level of performance. At least
three ideal configurations exist: collaborative, competitive and rival structures. These struc-
tures influence the level of performance. PMC performance levels are expected to decrease
from the first configuration, being positive, to the last, being negative. If market competition
is present – it is claimed – PMC performance is high and positive contributions to the client’s
military operation can be expected.
8. Starting with the analysis of the impact of PMC activity on civil wars in Africa from 1990 to
2008, the ‘opportunity structure’ theory claims that while PMCs are profit-oriented entities,
the prevalent opportunities in conflicts will determine how they behave in war zones. Empiri-
cal findings in civil wars with at least 1 000 casualties show that as the level of competition
among government-hired PMCs increases, these companies are more likely to deliver
optimal services and help bring an end to violence. In the absence of competition, PMCs in
conflict zones tend to underperform in order to stay longer – thereby maximising profits.
9. Current peacekeeping bodies on the continent include the African Union’s African Stand-by
Force (Kent & Malan 2003) and the Economic Community of West African States Monitoring
Group (Aning 2000, 2004; Ero 2000; Gberie 2003). The former has been deployed within the
framework of the African Union Monitoring Mission in Sudan (2003–2007) and the African
Mission in Somalia (2007 to date). The latter was deployed in Liberia (1990–1998), Guinea
Bissau (1998) and Sierra Leone (1997–2000).

Note on contributor
Antonino Adamo is a researcher at the National Research Council of Italy (CNR). He holds a master’s
degree in international relations at the University of Bologna, Italy and a PhD in Asian and African
studies at the University of Cagliari, Italy. His main research focus is private security and PMCs in
sub-Saharan Africa and his research interests comprise conflict analysis, foreign interventions, and
regional peacekeeping in Africa. He has published extensively on private security issues in Italian
journals, as well as in a 2003 monograph.

ORCID
Antonino Adamo http://orcid.org/0000-0001-6523-4332

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