Mercenary Laws

(2) The requirement that mercenaries participate directly in hostilities, as required by subparagraph (b), would exclude persons acting as foreign military advisers and technicians. Most security companies, such as the Military Professional Resources Incorporated (MPRI) of the United States, exclude themselves from the definition of mercenary on this basis. With respect to U.S. citizens, a law that is part of the neutrality law makes it illegal for anyone «in the United States» to participate in a «military or maritime expedition or undertaking» conducted from the United States against a friendly country. Court rulings have ruled that the law is intended to prohibit «the use of U.S. land or waters as a base» for unauthorized military expeditions against friendly foreign powers. Attorney General Robert Kennedy said in 1961 after the Bay of Pigs attack: «There is nothing criminal about a person leaving the United States with the intention of joining an insurgent group.» As drafted, the Neutrality Act does not prohibit a U.S. mercenary from acting outside the United States unless there is evidence of a domestic act. The standard definition of a mercenary is, in simple terms, a professional soldier hired by a State or nation to fight their wars on their behalf. These «guns» are not trained, so to speak, by the conventions of patriotism, nor controlled by the customs of an army. Instead, they are motivated by personal gain.

They are essentially independent soldiers fighting a war between states just for money. Recruits from Commonwealth of Nations countries in the British Army swear allegiance to the British monarch and are obliged to operate in any unit. However, Gurkhas operate in special Gurkha units of the British Army (especially units run by the Gurkha Brigade) and the Indian Army. Although they are nationals of Nepal, a country that is not part of the Commonwealth, they still swear allegiance (to the Crown or the Constitution of India) and abide by the rules and regulations under which all British or Indian soldiers serve. [13] French Foreign Legionnaires serve in the French Foreign Legion, which is used and fights as an organized unit of the French Army. This means that as members of the armed forces of Great Britain, India and France, these soldiers are not classified as mercenaries under Articles 47.e and 47.f of the APGC77. Private violence has become a big deal and has a global impact. No one really knows how many billions of dollars are circulating in this illegal market.

All we know is that business is booming. In recent years, there have been significant mercenary activities in Yemen, Nigeria, Ukraine, Syria and Iraq. Many of these for-profit warriors outperform the local military, and some can withstand even the most elite armed forces in the United States, as the battle in Syria demonstrates. The heavy dependence of the United States on military contractors has catalyzed the international trade in mercenaries, with supply and demand diversifying and expanding in a deterrent manner. On the supply side, the United States has built up a global pool of mercenaries. Thousands of mercenaries started in Iraq or Afghanistan, and as these wars narrowed, they went in search of new conflict markets (i.e. war zones) around the world and amplified the wars there. The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have allowed the private military industry to mature, with mercenary networks and a minimum of best practices. Others are imitating the American model, and every day new private military groups are emerging from countries like Russia, Uganda, Iraq, Afghanistan and Colombia. Their services are more robust than Blackwater, offering greater combat power and a willingness to work for the highest bidder with little respect for human rights.

They are mercenaries in the truest sense of the word. If, after an ordinary trial, a captured soldier is found to be a mercenary, he can expect to be treated as a common criminal and executed. Since mercenary soldiers cannot be considered prisoners of war, they cannot expect to be repatriated at the end of the war. The best-known example after the Second World War was on 28 June 1976, when an Angolan court sentenced three Britons, an American and nine other mercenaries to death to prison terms ranging from 16 to 30 years at the end of the Luanda trial. The four mercenaries sentenced to death were shot on 10 July 1976. [4] Several countries have enacted national laws that prevent their citizens from recruiting, financing, or serving as mercenaries for foreign conflicts. In Germany, for example, it is a criminal offence for a citizen to enlist in the armed forces or a comparable armed unit in a foreign state without the consent of the Ministry of Defence. In France, it is illegal for a citizen to be recruited or to act as a combatant in the armed conflict of another nation for personal gain, to participate in hostilities or to participate in acts of violence aimed at overthrowing the governmental institutions of another State. This is not the case in the private sector.

Private military companies hide behind «proprietary knowledge» and claim that all information is a trade secret. Even employee emails are considered proprietary, no matter how trivial they are. These companies fire employees who speak to the press, and sometimes large corporations threaten the media with multi-million dollar lawsuits to cool down the free press. Government agencies do not, as evidenced by the landslide of military memories about covert operations during the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. 2The fact that this is the case has much to do with how African states have understood sovereignty and their relationship with mercenary forces over the past 40 years. Although the difficulty of establishing a definition has been widely discussed in the literature, this paper examines how the problem of definition is linked to the political problems associated with the reluctance to prohibit the use of mercenaries. As Holds Bashir explains: «It is difficult to define what a mercenary is. This is because the word has different meanings at different times. The different meanings it has acquired throughout history depend on the spirit of the times. 1 This problem still exists today. Therefore, mercenaries are mercenaries only if it is the political agenda of States to define them in this context, and this is reflected in the international treaties mentioned above. As this paper explains, these treaties do not prohibit the use of international private power.

Instead, such violence is permissible as long as it benefits the states that drafted the international treaties in the first place. This is the position of the private organizations mentioned below. While security companies, including Military Professional Resources Incorporated (MPRI), Group4 and Control Risk Group, have been branded as mercenaries by organizations opposed to private violence in state affairs,2 Governments, particularly Western governments, have resisted the use of mercenaries on these companies because their activities are understood to address legitimate state security concerns. 36The driving force behind the legislation against mercenaries comes largely from Third World countries. African States, in particular, have sought to negotiate a multilateral agreement on the use of mercenaries in armed conflicts throughout the world. This is not surprising. If we trace the history of the involvement of mercenaries in armed conflicts since the 1960s, we see that most of them have taken place on the African continent and continue to do so. Accordingly, recent comments have pointed out that it is now necessary to strengthen existing laws on all aspects of mercenary activities and to hold States more accountable for the actions of their citizens.

While the International Convention against the Recruitment, Use, Financing and Training of Mercenaries had addressed the need to prohibit the activities of individual mercenaries or groups of mercenaries, it had not blamed States for the acts of their citizens who engaged in such activities. The impact of the Convention on the Prevention of Trade in Mercenaries has therefore diminished considerably. The importance of the Convention can therefore be seen as symbolic rather than substantial. Current efforts and concerns could also focus on a phenomenon that is in fact temporary. 27Since 1989, when the Convention against the Recruitment, Use, Financing and Training of Mercenaries was signed, the United Nations General Assembly has consistently adopted resolutions on the activities of mercenaries.