Interesting, but this is not very solid yet. I have been trying to find any information I could about Gaddafi’s supposed use of mercenaries to quell the current uprising there, and this is what I have found so far. Although this is hard to verify because there is a media block there, and Gaddafi has shut down the internet in his country.
I do know that guys like this have lots of money because of all the oil and foreign investment. There are reports of part of his military defecting because they are being ordered to attack the protestors. I don’t blame them for leaving and I wouldn’t want to bomb my own countrymen either. Which both points bring up the question of mercenaries as a possible solution for the dictator. Would Gaddafi hire thugs from outside of his country to do this dirty work?
Also, it would be easy for people to confuse the evacuations of expats and oil workers with some kind of mercenary invasion force. These PSCs are landing at airports to simple provide a secure transport for folks to get out. From what I gather, companies like SOS International will be involved in evacuations in Libya, similar to what they did in Egypt.
Finally, Libya is important to watch because it is an OPEC nation. If oil workers are being evacuated, then oil facilities could be shut down or in danger of being attacked. Not good and this will impact the oil markets. And if Saudi Arabia fires up as another domino in this string of uprising dominoes, then stand by for a major shock to the oil market. This will only get more interesting and complex as this fire continues to rage.-Matt
Edit: 02/23/2011 – Check out the comments below. I have posted some really interesting stories that have elaborated on the history of mercenary usage in the middle east, and especially Libya. I will continue to dump stories that are relevant in the comments.
U.S. struggles with little leverage to restrain Libyan government
By Mary Beth Sheridan and Scott WilsonMonday, February 21, 2011
…..Libya’s deputy ambassador to the United Nations, who broke with Gaddafi on Monday, urged the international community to impose a no-fly zone over the country to prevent mercenaries and arms from reaching the government. But no other major power echoed the call.
Link to quote here.
——————————————————————
Libya ‘uses mercenaries’ to keep order on streets as 200 die in violent clashes
20th February 2011
….Security sources suggested the leader has hired foot soldiers from neighbouring states to maintain law and order.
Marc Ginsburg, former U.S. ambassador to Morocco told CNN: ‘First and foremost he (Gaddafi) has security support from Sudan and Pakistan and his intelligence advisers have received significant intelligence support from former KGB officials who were part of the Eastern Bloc countries such as Bulgaria, Romania and Belarus.’
Link for quote here.
—————————————————————–
Gaddafi recruits “African mercenaries” to quell protests
Saturday, 19 February 2011
Libya recruited hundreds of mercenaries from Sub-Saharan Africa to help quell a popular uprising that is threatening to unseat veteran leader Muammar Gaddafi after more than 41 years in office, witness told Al Arabiya from the eastern city of Benghazi on Sunday.The witnesses said protesters in Benghazi caught some “African mercenaries” who spoke French and who admitted that they were ordered by Muammar Gaddafi’s son, Khamis Gaddafi, to fire live ammunition at demonstrators.
The witnesses, who refused to be named for security reasons, added that they saw four airplanes carrying “African mercenaries” land in Benina International Airport near the city of Benghazi, the second largest city in the country. UK-based Libyan website www.jeel-libya.net (Libya’s generation) reported earlier that a number of airplanes carrying “African mercenaries” had landed in Mitiga military airport, 11 km east of the capital Tripoli, and they were dressed in Libyan army uniform. The website added that some of those “mercenaries” were sent to hot spots in the eastern region were deployed in Tripoli.Twenty-four people were killed during anti-government protests in the eastern city of Benghazi, a medical source and a newspaper said, after Human Rights Watch reported security forces killed at least 84 people over three days, including 35 in Benghazi on Friday.Gadhafi’s regime has been cracking down on protesters demanding he step down and implement democratic reforms following similar uprisings that led to the ouster of the leaders of Egypt and Tunisia.After regime opponents used Facebook to mobilize protests, like in neighboring Egypt, the social networking website was blocked on Saturday and Internet connections were patchy, said Internet users in Tripoli and Benghazi.Arbor Networks, a US-based tracker of online traffic, said Internet services were cut overnight.
Story here.
I would have added King Ramesses and his mercenary army in ancient Egypt to this list, or even the Marine's hiring of mercenaries in Libya to destroy the Barbery pirate scourge on the 'shores of tripoli'. Other than that, the author brings up a lot of specific history of their use in the middle east. Especially Libya's history.
—————
The Dogs of War: Mercenaries in the Middle East
By Ishaan Tharoor Wednesday, Feb. 23, 2011
While the protests convulsing Bahrain and Libya this past week occurred in vastly different contexts — and will likely produce very different results — both were met with conspicuously swift crackdowns. And in both cases, reports suggest the Libyan and Bahraini regimes deployed foreign fighters and mercenaries against their own citizens, lethal clashes that left scores wounded and many dead.
Though difficult to substantiate in the current chaos, reports from eastern Libya, in particular from the city of Benghazi, claim that snipers and militiamen from sub-Saharan Africa gunned down residents on the streets. The Dubai-based al-Arabiya network says some of the guerrillas were Francophone mercenaries recruited by one of the sons of dictator Muammar Gaddafi. Qatar-based al-Jazeera detailed pamphlets circulated to mercenary recruits from Guinea and Nigeria, offering them $2,000 per day to crack down on the Libyan uprising. And, as further reports of defections from the Libyan military filter in, the cornered Gaddafi regime may turn more and more to hired guns from abroad. On television channels and Twitter, frantic rumors circulated about Gaddafi preparing for a mercenary-backed counteroffensive against his opponents.
While the violence appears to have pushed Libya to a tipping point, protests in Bahrain slackened after a week of bloody confrontations between demonstrators and the country's security forces. Sectarian tensions underlie the unrest, with the tiny island kingdom's Sunni Muslim monarchy pitted against the country's predominantly Shi'ite population. A significant segment of the state's security personnel are Sunnis brought in from countries like Syria, Iraq, Jordan and Pakistan to buttress the ruling dynasty's authority. It's a policy that Shi'ites say is symbolic of widespread institutional discrimination in Bahrain, and it played a key role in clashes earlier this month when uncompromising — and often foreign — security forces violently dispersed protesting crowds, killing at least six.
The popular outrage surrounding the use of these foreign soldiers in the crackdowns isn't surprising, but it's only in the past century that the armies of most of the world's nation-states have actually reflected the demographics of their countries. For centuries before, most militaries contained whole regiments of mercenaries and roving soldiers of fortune and were often staffed by officers from foreign lands. The term freelance — now a feature of journalistic lingo — still carries its original martial connotation from a time when companies of fighting men raised their blades in the service of the highest bidder.
Foreign warriors were valued by monarchs wary of their own restive populations and the rivalries and jealousies of local nobles. The great empires of the Middle East all boasted a rank of soldiers drawn (or abducted) from abroad. The Ottomans had the janissaries, mostly young Christians from the Caucasus and the Balkans, who converted to Islam and were reared from an early age to be the Sultan's elite household troops, often forming a powerful political class of their own in various parts of the empire. Elsewhere, the Mamluks, slave warriors from Africa to Central Asia forced into service by Arab potentates, managed to rule a large stretch of the modern Middle East from Egypt to Syria for some 300 years, repulsing the invasions of European crusaders as well as the Mongol hordes.
The most famous troupe of foreign fighters to take up arms in the Middle East was the French Foreign Legion, formed in the 19th century to be the vanguard of France's imperial adventures overseas. To this day, no outfit of mercenaries attracts the sort of admiration that the legionnaires still do, remembered as the romantic heroes of Beau Geste, a motley pan-European crew braving the wild winds and natives of the North African desert. In reality, the legionnaires, a large number of whom had criminal records, bore a fearsome reputation for violence. One recruit in the 1950s described his compatriots as "panting Dobermans, desperate to be let loose amongst a Muslim crowd which they can tear apart with the fans of their machine guns." The legionnaires were present at some of France's most traumatic defeats in Indochina and Algeria and, though they still exist, their star has dimmed with France's much diminished empire.
Meanwhile, a handful of British mercenaries in the Middle East left a far more indelible legacy, with none of the glory attached to the French Foreign Legion. The oil-rich Gulf states eagerly snapped up former British soldiers to help defend their kingdoms from the advances of socialists and other insurgents, often with London's tacit backing if not direct consent. In the 1960s, Qatar's feared chief of police was Ronald Cochrane, an ex-cop from Glasgow who assumed the name Mohammad Mahdi. Other British soldiers made their way into guerrilla campaigns from Malaya to Angola, enmeshed often in tangled proxy conflicts spawned by the Cold War. One English mercenary, a man identified by a 1972 television crew as Major Ray Barker-Scofield, described his patch of turf in a remote corner of Oman where he was fighting guerrillas on behalf of the government as "the last place in the world where an Englishman is still called a sahib" — in other words, his gig as a mercenary reminded him of the good old days of the British Empire.
But, especially in the Gulf, these mercenaries played a vital role in setting up the often repressive security states that now exist. The most notorious of these hired officials was Ian Henderson, a former colonial officer who spent years trying to stamp out Kenya's Mau Mau uprising and later became chief of Bahrain's secret police for over three decades until his retirement in 1998. For his alleged involvement in the torture of a host of leftist and Islamist dissidents, Henderson earned the sobriquet "the Butcher of Bahrain."
According to the Guardian, Henderson's successor is a Jordanian, an appointment in keeping with the ruling dynasty's habit of hiring Sunni expatriates as its protectors. Many are reportedly also Pakistanis from the troubled desert region of Baluchistan, happy to sign up with the promise of greater pay. In an earlier era, Pakistani troops trained the armies of a number of Arab states — in the 1960s, Pakistanis were the first to serve as pilots in the Royal Saudi Air Force, while thousands of Pakistani soldiers patrolled the Saudi border with Israel and Jordan. Their training and expertise, in part the legacy of British colonial rule, proved useful to regimes in the Gulf. Further west in Libya, many of the officers who ousted the country's Western-backed monarchy in 1952 received instruction in schools first set up by the British; one particularly charismatic and ambitious officer had finished his military education in Britain itself. His name was Muammar Gaddafi.
http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,205…
Comment by headjundi — Wednesday, February 23, 2011 @ 2:21 AM
Can African Mercenaries Save the Libyan Regime?
Andrew McGregor
February 23, 2011
In recent days there have been reports that the Libyan regime of
Mu'ammar al-Qaddafi has resorted to the use of foreign mercenaries to
slaughter unarmed civilians protesting over four decades of rule by
Qaddafi and his family. The Libyan government has been clear from the
start that protestors could expect a "violent" response from the regime
(al-Zahf al-Akhdar [Tripoli], February 19). Mu'ammar Qaddafi's son,
Sa'if al-Islam al-Qaddafi, warned viewers of Libyan state TV: "We will
fight to the last man and woman and bullet" (al-Sayda TV, February 20).
Khaled al-Ga'aeem, the under secretary of the Libyan Foreign Ministry,
told al-Jazeera interviewers there was no truth to the reports of
mercenaries: "I am ready – not only to resign from my post – but also
set myself on fire in the Green Square – if it is confirmed that there
were mercenaries from African states coming by planes" (al-Jazeera,
February 22). However, citing his own reports from inside the country,
the Libyan ambassador to India, Ali al-Essawi, has confirmed the use of
African mercenaries and the defection of units of Libya's military in
response to their deployment (Reuters, February 22). In New York,
defecting Libyan Deputy Ambassador Ibrahim Dabbashi called on "African
nations" to stop sending mercenaries to defend the Qaddafi regime (New
York Times, February 21).
The Libyan Origins of the Modern Jihad
Libya has turned to African fighters in the past. When a massive Italian
army arrived on the Libyan coast in 1911 with the intention of seizing
the Ottoman provinces of Tripolitania and Cyrenaica for a new Roman
Empire, they were met by a small but determined force drawn from all
quarters of the Ottoman Empire. [1]
Though Ottoman soldiers were busy with wars in the Balkans and rebellion
in Yemen, the defense of Libya became a popular cause in the army, with
volunteers from across the empire crossing through the Italian blockade
with the help of local people in neighboring Tunisia and Egypt. These
volunteers, who included Enver Bey (a leading member of the "Young
Turks") and Mustafa Kemal (the founder of modern secular Turkey after
the First World War), were largely motivated by patriotism or religion.
To the surprise of the Turkish officers and the astonishment of the
Italian generals, Libyan tribesmen suddenly began riding into the
Turkish camps to offer their services. As the call for jihad spread
south, fighters began to arrive from the Tubu tribes of Tibesti and the
Tuareg tribes of the Fezzan. The dark-skinned Tubus would later be
forced out of Libya into Chad by al-Qaddafi for being inconsistent with
Qaddafi's vision of a purely Arab nation after a member of Libya's
former royal family attempted to recruit Tubu mercenaries for use
against Qaddafi in the early 1970s. [2] The Tuareg of Libya were
ethnically "reclassified" from Berbers to Arabs.
Many fighters from the African interior had few connections with the
Ottomans, but arrived to repel the infidel invaders from a sense of
religious obligation, thus setting an example for later jihadis who
would travel to the battlegrounds of Chechnya, Afghanistan and Iraq
under a similar sense of obligation.
The Islamic Legion
Qaddafi also turned to a quasi-mercenary force to further his ambitions
in Africa in the early days of his rule. The Islamic Legion (al-Failaka
al-Islamiya) was a force of largely unwilling mercenaries recruited and
deployed by Qaddafi to further his territorial ambitions in the African
interior and advance the cause of Arab supremacy. Formed in 1972, the
Islamic Legion was drawn mostly from young men from Sahelian countries
who had migrated to Libya in search of work. Many were effectively
"press-ganged" into service with the Legion. Though the organization
worked closely with the Tajammu al-Arabi (Arab Gathering) to advance
Arab supremacy in the Sahel and Sudan, the Legion was usually dominated
by Tuareg and Zaghawa recruits despite neither group having any Arab
heritage.
The Legion was deployed in the frontlines of a series of wars with Chad
(supported by French Foreign Legion forces) in the 1980s. The Legion was
disbanded in 1987 after Libya's final defeat in these clashes, but the
ongoing depredations of Darfur's Arab Janjaweed have their origins in
the Qaddafi-backed Tajammu al-Arabi. Many of the Tuareg who launched
rebellions in Mali and Niger in the 1990s received their military
training in the Islamic Legion.
Mercenaries to the Rescue
The current employment of mercenaries to do the "dirty work" usually
assigned to Libya's paramilitary security police speaks volumes about
the regime's rapidly dwindling faith in the willingness of state
security forces to "fight to the last man" in defense of the regime.
While the evidence of such recruitment is growing through video footage
finding its way out of Libya, it is still impossible to tell in what
numbers these mercenaries have arrived. Unconfirmed reports suggest the
mercenaries arrived on a number of separate flights to both the Tripoli
and Benghazi military airports, perhaps indicating a number of different
recruitment sites (al-Arabiya, February 19; Jeel-Libya.net, February
19). The recruitment appears to have been undertaken quickly, either
without the knowledge of the intelligence agencies and security services
of their countries of origin, or with the full knowledge and approval of
their originating states. Through a combination of largesse, aggressive
diplomacy and military support (in the form of training, presidential
protection units and stockpiles of old Soviet armaments), Qaddafi
remains an influential figure in many parts of West Africa.
A number of mercenaries appear to have paid a high cost for their
intervention in the Libyan uprising. Video has emerged of a number of
slain "mercenaries" lying on the street or stretched out across a
truck's hood for display. [3]
Possible national origins for the mercenaries include:
* Chad: Chadian mercenaries have been active in the Central African
Republic for many years. There are also a large number of
anti-government Chadian guerrillas who have recently found themselves
unemployed after a peace treaty between N'djamena and Khartoum resulted
in their expulsion from bases in Darfur. Many of these gunmen refused
offers of repatriation to Chad, leaving them without work. Tensions
between Chad and Libya eased after the International Court of Justice
awarded the disputed Aouzou Strip to Chad in 1994. Since then, Chad's
President Idriss Déby has cooperated with the Libyan leader on a number
of initiatives and agreements. Déby has been away from Chad throughout
most of the Libyan crisis, following a state visit to China with
meetings in Nouakchott and Abidjan (AFP, February 21).
* French-Speaking Sub-Saharan Africa: Tunisians, Nigeriens and
Guineans are among those mercenaries who have been captured, some still
bearing identification documents.
* English-Speaking Sub-Saharan Africa: Some of the mercenaries are
reported to speak English (Radio France Internationale, February 20).
Reports from Ghana indicate Ghanaians are being offered as much as $2500
per day to defend the Qaddafi regime. Advertisements for mercenaries
have also begun to appear in Nigerian newspapers (Ghana Web, February 22).
The Libyan Army
In his televised address to the Libyan people, Mu'ammar's son, Sa'if
al-Islam al-Qaddafi, told Libyans: "The army will play a big role [in
defending the regime], it is not the army of Tunisia or Egypt. It will
support Qaddafi to the last minute" (al-Sayda (Libyan State TV),
February 20; Quryna.com, February 21).
Bereft of real threats to its territory, whose security is guaranteed
both by the strategic importance of Libya's ample oil reserves and
Mu'ammar Qaddafi's considerable (if somewhat baffling) status in the
African Union, Libya's "Guide" has been able to indulge in periodic
purges of his officer corps while keeping most elements of his armed
forces under-armed and short of ammunition. The exception to this is the
32nd Brigade, popularly known as the "Khamis Brigade" after its leader,
Khamis Abu Minyar al-Qaddafi, one of Mu'ammar Qaddafi's seven sons.
Khamis is a graduate of the Libyan Military Academy in Tripoli and
received further training in Moscow at the Frunze Military Academy and
the General Staff Academy of the Russian Armed Forces. The Brigade under
his command typically receives better arms, equipment and salaries than
the rest of the army and serves as a kind of Praetorian Guard to defend
the regime. Brigade members have been active in trying to repress the
demonstrations.
The Khamis Brigade was supplied with the British-made Bowman tactical
communications and data system in a $165 million deal with General
Dynamics UK, though the equipment has been modified through the removal
of U.S. technology in the system (Defense News, May 8, 2008). [5] The
Khamis Brigade has also taken part in joint exercises with the Algerian
military (JANA [Tripoli], December 1, 2007).
Since Libya reconciled with the UK in 2008, the latter has become a
major supplier of military gear, and even military training, though
London has now revoked arms export licenses to Libya (Guardian, February
19). Units of the Special Air Service (SAS) have been involved in
training Libyan Special Forces, unpopular duty for SAS veterans who were
involved in a deadly decades-long struggle with the Libyan-armed Irish
Republican Army (Telegraph, September 11, 2009). A December 2010 U.S.
embassy cable released by Wikileaks also shows interest from Khamis
al-Qaddafi and Sa'if al-Islam al-Qaddafi in obtaining U.S. made military
equipment, including helicopters and parts for armored vehicles. [6]
Aside from the Khamis Brigade, most of the rest of the military has
access only to obsolete Soviet-era equipment after enduring years of
sanctions. This situation is not necessarily regarded as unfavorable by
the regime, as it diminishes the chance rebel officers could mount their
own coup similar to Colonel Qaddafi's 1969 military takeover. Officers
are subject to frequent transfers to prevent them from developing
personal ties of loyalty with any one command. Though the senior ranks
of the military are dominated by the "Guide's" own Qadhadfa tribe,
rivalries within the officer corps tend to be encouraged rather than
discouraged to prevent an atmosphere of cooperation that could possibly
lead to the creation of a junta.
Another son and prominent military figure is Colonel Mutassim
al-Qaddafi. Mutassim received his training at the Cairo Military Academy
before being given command of an elite unit in the Libyan army, where he
gained a reputation for indiscipline and erratic behavior. At one point
he was forced to take refuge in Egypt after reportedly marching on his
father's residence at the Bab al-Azizya barracks in Tripoli with
detachments of his artillery. In 2002 he returned to Libya, where he was
forgiven and promoted to Colonel (Jeune Afrique, May 19, 2010). In
January 2007, Mutassim was made head of the National Security Council
(Jeune Afrique, February 7, 2009).
Yet another son, Colonel Sa'adi Mu'ammar al-Qaddafi, took to local radio
on February 19 to announce he had arrived in Benghazi to direct
operations there (apparently after the resignation of Benghazi-based
Colonel Abd al-Fatah Yunis), but little has been heard of him since (AP,
February 19). First Lieutenant Hannibal Mu'ammar al-Qaddafi is a member
of the military, but seems to play a minor role in comparison to his
brothers.
As the military's chief-of-staff and minister of defense, Major-General
Abu Bakr Yunis Jaber was, until recently, one of the most powerful men
in Libya. However, he appears to have been detained by Qaddafi after
refusing to carry out orders for brutal repression of protesters in
Libya's cities (al-Hurra, February 21). Major Abdel-Moneim al-Huni,
Libya's most recent representative to the Arab League, issued a
statement on February 22 on behalf of the "Leadership Council of the
Libyan Revolution," demanding that General Abu Bakr Yunis be released to
lead an interim government. Apparently intending to emulate the Egyptian
model, al-Huni also appealed to serving officers and troops to abandon
the regime: "You who know the honor of military service, I urge you to
uproot this regime and take over power in order to end the bloodshed and
maintain Libya's strategic interests and the unity of its land and
people." He further described the use of mercenaries as the regime
"signing its own death certificate" (Ahram Online, February 22).
Qaddafi relies heavily on two generals from his own tribe, Sayed Qaddaf
Eddam and Ahmed Qaddaf Eddam. Sayed is the military head of Cyrenaica,
which has come largely under the control of protesters, while Ahmed is
the "Guide's" point-man on Egyptian issues. Aside from Qaddafi and
General Abu Bakr, Generals Mustapha Kharoubi and Khouildi Hamidi are the
last active members of the 12-man 1969 Revolutionary Council, though
both have been reduced to performing ceremonial roles.
A Question of Loyalty
Experiments in Green Book-inspired Jamahiriyah ("popular state")
governance and unification with other Arab/African regimes may have
worked against the development of a national identity. Loyalty to the
Qaddafis also appears to be shallow; in eastern Libya the police are
reported to have helped apprehend a number of mercenaries, while senior
military officers are reported to have resigned in Benghazi and Sirte
(France24.com, February 21).
There have been many reports of low-paid conscripts and even their
officers joining the ranks of the protesters in Benghazi, Darna and
elsewhere (Telegraph, February 20). While the al-Fadhil Brigade in
Benghazi appears to have gone over to the protestors after their
headquarters was set on fire, there are reports that the al-Sibyl
Brigade continues to be loyal (al-Jazeera, February 20). Benghazi police
are reported to have defected to the protestors after witnessing the
methods of the mercenaries (AP, February 21).
Officials in Malta were surprised by two Libyan Air Force colonels who
flew their Mirage F1 warplanes from Libya's Okba Ben Nafi airbase to
Malta. The pilots said they flew low to evade radar detection and
decided to come to Malta rather than carry out orders to bomb civilians.
The Maltese military was also reported to be monitoring a Libyan warship
said to be carrying defecting Libyan officers (Times of Malta, February
21, February 22).
Conclusion
Though some Libyans might have been persuaded to desist by the regime's
warnings of disaster and promises of imminent decentralization,
organizational restructuring and the dismissal of many state officials,
the introduction of mercenaries with orders to kill in the streets of
Libya's cities seems likely to be the last straw before the collapse of
the Qaddafi regime. Mercenaries from all quarters have frequently found
work defending unpopular African regimes, but at best they have usually
only prolonged the inevitable, their very presence an indication that a
regime rules only through force rather than popular consensus,
regardless of protests to the contrary.
Ironically, it was Qaddafi himself who warned a gathering of Libyan
security officials in Tripoli in 2004 to beware of infiltration efforts
by "mercenaries, lunatics, infidels and people who pose a threat to
security" (Great Jamahiriyah TV, April 14, 2004).
Notes:
1. See GF Abbott, The Holy War in Tripoli, 1912, pp.79-80.
2. See J. Millard Burr and Robert O. Collins, Darfur: The Long Road to
Disaster, Princeton N.J., 2008, p. 84.
3. . ;
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EMwbg2Db5L4&featur….
4. .
5.
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Comment by headjundi — Wednesday, February 23, 2011 @ 4:13 AM