BACK	ARMS: Mercenaries Are Big Business

From Peru to Papua New Guinea, and from Sudan to Sierra Leone, former soldiers are being recruited by high-powered business firms to train, organise, advise, and even carry out military operations for profit, according to the report.

''Mercenaries are back, and they are clearly not going away,'' according to the report, which concludes that the international community should consider ways to regulate their work and operations rather than engage in a vain quest to outlaw them altogether.

The report 'Soldiers of Fortune Ltd', is published by the Washington-based Center for Defense Information (CDI), which historically has been critical of high US defence budgets. It urges the creation of an international register for mercenary firms similar to the U.N. Register of Conventional Arms.

Mercenary firms should also be required as a condition for operating outside their home base to abide by relevant human rights treaties, including the Geneva Protocols, the rules of war, and international humanitarian law, according to the report's author, David Isenberg.

In addition, he urged the United Nations to reconsider its decision not to use private firms for peacekeeping missions, particularly in an era when countries are reluctant to contribute troops of their own. ''There may be an economic incentive for the UN to revisit the issue,'' Isenburg said.

He also noted that the cost-effectiveness of the South African-based Executive Outcomes firm in bringing the Angolan rebel group Unita to the peace table was far greater than that of the peacekeeping mission sent there by the world body.

The Angolan government's contract with EO came to 60 million dollars, compared with the million-dollar-a-day cost of the two- year UN operation in the southern African nation, according to the report.

The report, which profiles three of the largest international mercenary firms, notes that these companies have become ''increasingly corporate'' in recent years. ''Instead of organising clandestinely, they now operate out of office suites, have putlic affairs staffs and web sites, and offer marketing literature.''

The re-emergence of mercenaries, according to Isenberg, has been driven by sharp cuts in military forces around the world, post-Cold War increases in the number of internal conflicts in much of the Third World, the reluctance of industrialised nations to intervene in global hotspots, and the ''general trend towards privatisation.''

''Despite moral considerations, privatisation generally saves money whether the objective is to provide health care, education, or ... peace enforcement,'' the report says.

Isenberg sees four types of mercenaries active in the world today. The first, and more traditional type, include foreign soldiers whose primary motivations are profit or adventure, such as the Serbian recruits who recently participated on the side of the late president, Mobutu Sese Seko, in the former Zaire.

A second type are small military groups that work for a host government to maintain security in a specific region. Yet another group consists of transnational organisations motivated by ideology or religious faith, such as former Afghan mujahadin fighting in Bosnia, Tajikistan, and Algeria.

The fourth and most recent type, as well as the subject of CDI's study, are mercenary ''firms with internal structures similar to those of business corporations.''

There have been efforts to outlaw mercenaries. In 1977, a revision to the Geneva Convention stripped mercenaries of combatant and prisoner-of-war-status, while the Organisation of African Unity (OAU) adopted the Convention for the Elimination of Mercenaries in Africa.

In 1989, the UN General Assembly adopted the International Convention against the Recruitment, Use, Financing and Training of Mercenaries. It obliges states to extradite or prosecute any mercenaries found on their territory.

To enter into force, however, 22 countries must ratify it. So far, only 14 have done so, including Angola and Zaire, both of which have hired mercenaries in the past few years, according to the report.

The three companies profiled by the report have gained the most headlines in recent years and are typical of the new breed.

The most notorious, Executive Outcomes (EO), maintains a database of more than 2,000 contract soldiers, mostly from South Africa. Founded in 1989, it contracted its major deal, worth 30 million dollars, in 1992 with two oil companies, Gulf Chevron and Sonangol, to protect their oil facilities in Angola.

The only firm with its own air force, EO has since been hired by the governments of Angola and Sierra Leone for training and combat services in exchange for a total of at least 80 million dollars plus undisclosed mining concessions, according to the report.

With 32 of its own subsidiaries working in areas ranging from computer software to adult education, EO is part of a vast business empire, including mining interests in several African countries, and is reported to be expanding its operations to the Gulf and East Asia.

London- and Bahamas-based Sandline International, formerly known as Plaza 107 Ltd., is also part of a multinational conglomerate with close ties to mining interests, says it accepts only recognised governments as clients. Its best-known operation to date was an attempt to quell a nine-year secessionist insurgancy in Bougainville, Papua New Guinea, for which it charged 36 million dollars.

Military Professional Resources Inc. (MPRI), a Virginia-based firm, is dominated by retired senior officers of the US armed forces and works closely with the US government. It has been most active in the former Yugoslavia where it has trained the armies of both Croatia and Bosnia under contracts worth tens of millions of dollars. (END/IPS/jl/97)