At the beginning of the James Bond movie Tomorrow Never Dies, MI6 identifies a guy as a chemical expert who helped arrange the Tokyo subway attack and is now working for rebels in Zaire. There’s also the movie Ronin, which is about people who got “laid off” from the CIA and now work freelance. This got me thinking: do guys like that really exist? Are there actually freelance experts in high-tech military systems who go around hiring themselves out to the highest bidder, including terrorists?
I’d tell you, but then…
It seems to me that if there’s a demand for a service, somebody will fill it.
If something as apalling as child prostitution can be a money-maker for someone, it seems somewhat likely that there are people making a living as mercinaries.
There’s this guy named Smith…Hannibal Smith…if you’re in trouble, amd if you can find him, maybe you can hire…WHOOPS! Godda go, that crazy fool Murdoch is messin with my van!
http://www.fas.org/irp/world/para/executive_outcomes.htm - although they didn’t work for terrorists.
Check out this GD thread: http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=248640
It’s not necessarily high-level guys, but…
There is also, of course, Soldier of Fortune Magazine which talks about SOFs around the world (although as of late, I’ve noticed that they’ve almost exclusively covered Iraq and Afghanastan, but in the past, they had articles from all over the world). There were articles about guys helping the mujahadeen against the Soviets, if they count as terrorists. I recall past series of articles about S. African guys hiring themselves out as trainers/piots for various African nations, helping to fight rebels. These guys are more trainers/advisors than actual infantrymen I think, although there are some photos that show these guys leading the troops into battle (I think the life expectancy of a line infantry merc would be too low to make the money worthwhile).
There’s also evidence that various terrorists go around the world helping other terrorist groups (links between IRA and Colombians, Palestinians, Serbs, etc.) as trainers, just like the “legitimate” ones do.
You’re not looking for someone, are you?
Being a mercenary is big business.
Here’s a paper from somebody in the South African military in 1998 analyzing mercenary and private security companies, including a partial list:
The four Americans that were killed and dragged through the streets the other day were said to be mercenaries. They were all in their late twenties to early thirties, and were all former military.
There’s a difference between security personell and mercenaries. Security people defend people and property; they do not actively engage enemies in battle. In some cases, there is a big gray area, to be sure, but I haven’t seen any reports that the Blackwater folks were engaged in mercenary-type activities.
The Wikipideia article on mercenaries has links to modern mercenaries and their activities. Most of them are decidedly low tech.
The idea that there are a bunch of free lance chaps with high tech weaponary is dubious. Governments are normally pretty keen to hold of their own stuff. Plus it’s really expensive. Mercenaries aren’t going to buy a multi-million dollar weapons system just in case a terrorist turns up with a suitcase full of dollars and a promise not to kill them.
I would think most “mercenaries” tend to be guerilla types who are starving and join an army mostly for access to food, like in African civil wars. George Orwell fought in Spain for the socialists, wouldn’t that make him a mercenary?
Here is some info on a Japanese mercenary named Masaki Takabe, who wrote a best-selling autobiography: http://www.japantoday.com/e/?content=book&id=108
Nope. Most of the non-Spaniards who showed up to fight the Spanish Civil War were volunteers and didn’t get paid beyond what they could loot.
Check out the Blackwater web site. http://www.blackwaterusa.com/
Sure sounds like more than a group of rent a cops.
Why? Because they like to hire ex-SF guys instead of high-school dropouts? Rent-a-copping in a warzone is a significantly more challenging problem than doing so at the mall. That doesn’t mean that Blackwater is a mercenary organization. Show me some proof that they were engaged in actual military operations of any sort.
Lots of former SF guys go to work for private security firms. In the relatively safe US of A, the daily rate for a guy working a personal security detail is between $450-550 per day. In a hot zone (Iraq & Afghanistan spring to mind), it can go up to $1000 per day or more.
But it is security, not offence.
Here’s a site that CALLS the Blackwater group mercenaries.
By definition, Mercenaries are from countries that are not a party to the conflict. The Balckwater people are from the US. They are therefore not mercenaries.
Just because somebody says something doesn’t mean it’s true. Especially on a site prone to ridiculousness like Alternet. I can’t get that page to load, but I’ve got ten bucks that says there’s no proof that they were engaged in military operations, whether they call them “mercenaries” or not.
These days they’re called Private Military Companies focusing on conflict resolution…
They do exist, there’s 70 odd banged up in Zimbabwe at the moment after being caught on their way to Equatorial Guinea, where they were apparently due to help out an exiled politician with a coup…Story
Check out Bob Denard…