In 1989, as the apartheid regime in South Africa was beginning to crumble, Eeben Barlow, a former army colonel together with others ex-military personnel co-founded a private military company called Executive Outcomes that provided military and security services to government across Africa and beyond.
After leaving the South African army and unable to find alternative work, Barlow and his friends pursued private wars elsewhere. Over the last two decades, they have popped up in various corners of Africa, often as agents for coup-plotters or on one side or the other of a civil war. They have fought in Sierra Leone, Equatorial Guinea, Angola , Iraq, Afghanistan and now Nigeria.
Simon Mann, one of the co-founder of Executive Outcomes, was jailed in Equatorial Guinea over his attempts to plot a coup there. Mann, 62, was leading a team of 70 battle-toughened South African mercenaries to seize control of Equatorial Guinea in 2004, when he was captured and jailed for 34 years in Zimbabwe. He was however released in less than 18 months.
Col Barlow formed a new private military company, STTEP (Specialized Tasks, Training, Equipment and Protection), after Executive outcomes was dissolved in the year 2000.
Earlier this year reports emerged that Nigeria’s President Goodluck Jonathan had secretly recruited about 100 South African mercenaries in January to fight the Boko Haram Islamic militants who had waged lethargic terror attacks in Northern Nigeria for six years. Nigerian officials tried to cover up the mercenary involvement in the fight by saying they were only foreign contractors helping to training Nigerian forces.
The death of a former South African soldier Leon Lotz, 59, in Borno on March 9 confirmed the involvement of Apartheid-era ex-military personnel supporting the fight against Boko Haram. Pictures later surfaced on Twitter showing white men on armored vehicles rumbling along a street in what was said to be Maiduguri, the regional capital of Nigeria’s Boko Haram-hit northeast.
STTEP has managed to contain the Boko Haram insurgency in just three monthsThe success of the Nigerian army against Boko Haram in the last three months is mainly due to the support of the South Africans and Eastern Europeans who have been hired to train the troops. The Islamists are reported to have fled many of the towns they once controlled in the North, leading to the freeing of hundreds of girls and women who they were using as slaves and bush wives.
With a new president expected to take over on May 28, it is not yet clear if the incoming President Muhammadu Buhari will honor STTEP’s contract with the Nigerian government and let them finish the fight on Boko Haram. The outgoing President Jonathan hired Barlow’s company just ahead of March’s elections, when his government was facing heavy criticism for failing to tackle Boko Haram and freeing the kidnapped Chibok schoolgirls. He has promised that when Buhari takes over the Islamic group will be a spent force.
The involvement of STTEP in Nigeria has ignite a debate over whether private military companies should be used in conflicts across Africa. Their involvement brings new focus to the internationalization of the conflict in Nigeria and other parts of the continent.
Despite reservations by western power about the role of STTEP in African conflicts many governments in the region are always willing to seek their services and have strong linkages to the South African outfit.
In 2006, South Africa made it a crime for its citizens to pursue work as security staff overseas without permission from the government. This law mainly targeted the former soldiers South African soldiers who tend to be white or special forces in the apartheid-era regime. The law has however not deterred companies like STTEP from getting involved in foreign conflicts.
According to his personal blog, Col. Barlow is a strong believer of Africans, whether white or black can solve African problems. He has been quoted saying “Some like to refer to us as ‘racists’ or ‘apartheid soldiers’ with little knowledge of our organization. We are primarily white, black, and brown Africans who reside on this continent and are accepted as such by African governments.”
