Mercenaries: An African Security Dilemma

Recent investigation into the activities of Sandline International in Sierra Leone has rekindled interest in the role of private armies in African conflicts. Sensational references in newspaper articles, however, run the risk of emphasizing the military aspect of security at the expense of a holistic approach to an emergent security conundrum.This fascinating book is a critique of mercenary involvement in post-Cold War African conflicts. It seeks to achieve a greater understanding of the mercenary-instability complex by examining the links between the rise in internal conflicts and the proliferation of mercenary activities in the 1990s. The distinction in the methods adopted by Cold War mercenaries and their contemporary counterparts, the convoluted network between private armies, business interests, sustained poverty in Africa's poorest countries as well as the connection between mercenary activities and arms proliferation. In exploring solutions to the upsurge of mercenaries on the continent, the book seeks a political and legal redefinition of the term mercenaries, and calls for new international legislation.The book argues that unless there are complete solutions to the root causes of conflict in a region where poverty represents the greatest threat to democracy and development, legislation will provide only temporary, rather than permanent, mechanisms for stemming this disturbing trend.