Executive Outcomes

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Executive Outcomes (EO), a private military contractor (PMC), was founded in apartheid South Africa by Lt-Col. Eeben Barlow in 1989. Controlled by the South Africa-based Strategic Resource Corporation (SRC), EO's role was described by Barlow as offering:

"A variety of services to legitimate governments, including infantry training, clandestine warfare, counter-intelligence programs, reconnaisance, escape and evasion, special forces selection and training, and parachuting."

Contents

1 Formation
2 Mission
3 Phoenix
4 Key personnel
5 External links
6 See also

Formation

In 1989, towards the end of the apartheid era, SADF special forces from Barlow's elite 32 Battalion Reconnaisance Wing, from the shadowy Civil Co-operation Bureau (CCB) and Koevoet, were being disbanded. EO was initially formed from these disbanded special forces and within a short period could boast having 500 military advisers and over 3000 highly-trained military personnel at its disposal.

Mission

As well as providing services to governments, EO also counted transnational corporations such as De Beers, Chevron, Rio Tinto Zinc and Texaco among its clients. EO's field of operations extended from Angola, Botswana, Ethiopia, Namibia, Sierra Leone, Uganda and Zambia in Africa to East Timor in Asia and West Papua in Australasia.

Phoenix

When South Africa introduced an anti-mercenary law in 1999, Executive Outcomes was reported to have been dissolved. However, a South African firm by the same name merged in February 2000 with Minotaur Information Systems to form a new company called Cosmos, offering:

"personnel skills audits to corporates, governments and parastatals".

Other reports suggest that Executive Outcomes in fact evolved to become the PMC [Northbridge Services Group]which is said to have links with Aegis Defence Services, the successor to the former PMC Sandline International.

Key personnel

Apart from Eeben Barlow, key EO personnel included Tony Buckingham, Michael Grunberg, and Simon Mann. Heir to the Watney brewing empire, Simon Mann was arrested with sixty-six other suspected mercenaries and sentenced to 7 years in the maximum security Chikurubi Prison outside Harare, Zimbabwe in September 2004 for attempting to order and export military equipment from Zimbabwe. It was alleged that these arms were intended to be used in a coup in Equatorial Guinea.

Mark Thatcher, the son of former British prime minister Margaret Thatcher, was arrested in South Africa for involvement in the same coup attempt and, in 2005, was convicted of violating South Africa's mercenary ban. Thatcher was fined $500,000 and given a four-year suspended prison sentence.

Executive Outcomes

Formation

Mission

Phoenix

Key personnel

External links

See also