Mercenaries: The Scourge of the Third World FROM THE PUBLISHER
Mercenaries have been employed as auxiliaries in war since earliest times but in the post-1945 world they have operated, almost exclusively, in weak third-world countries. From Colombia to the Congo, Angola to Papua New Guinea, Cambodia to Nicaragua, they have appeared: training the drug cartel armies, assisting rebellions or civil wars, acting as the agents of the major powers. In the Congo crisis (1960-65) they earned an especially unsavoury reputation for greed, brutality and racialism; it is a reputation that has stuck to the mercenary and on the whole justly. During the 1990s a new phenomenon has emerged in the form of the mercenary corporations such as Executive Outcomes or Sandline. These corporations offer a range of military expertise and weaponry, have the covert support of governments in the countries from which they come and are rapidly becoming a power to themselves, ultimately far more dangerous than the individual freebooters of the past.
FROM THE CRITICS
Booknews
The 1998 restoration of President Kabbah in Sierra Leone with the aid of a British company exemplifies a new trend in the use of mercenaries. The author of several books on the third world reveals how the deployment of freelance soldiers-of-fortune in the Congo, Angola, and elsewhere has given way to even more dangerous corporate mercenaries who are outsourced by military security advisory companies claiming to work for legitimate governments. One hopeful note is included: the appended articles of the UN International Convention Against the Recruitment, Use, Financing, and Training of Mercenaries (1989). Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)
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