Springtime for Mercenaries
4th May 2024
Mercenaries are, of course, nothing new. Wars tend to beguile adventurers and some of them are going to be foreigners attracted to the possibility of financial reward, if not ideology. Iraq and Afghanistan had plenty of guns for hire, providing technical services or working as protective security details. In my time in Iraq, I recall seeing Americans, South Africans, Chileans, and Nepalese (Gurkhas) serving in such capacities. According to the Russians, there are over three thousand foreign mercenaries serving with the Ukrainians, with particularly large contingents from the United States, France, and Canada. On the Russian side in the Ukraine War, we’ve seen evidence of African, Syrian, and Cuban mercenaries.
And while the white mercenaries of Africa are legendary, or notorious, the case should be made that they were outnumbered by African and other mercenaries. Rwandan soldiers on missions in the Congo and Central African Republic essentially behaved as rapacious mercenaries, looking to benefit financially from the conflict. And there were few supporters of African and Arab mercenaries, of men with guns for hire, as assiduous as the late Libyan dictator Muammar al-Qaddafi. The consequences of Qaddafi-funded mercenary forces such as the Islamic Legion and the Volcano Army would reverberate for decades, helping to stoke the genocidal war in Sudan’s Darfur region.