Africa awaits as mercenary outfit Executive Outcomes is reborn

摘要

Eeben Barlow, South Africa's fabled "soldier of fortune", has revived Executive Outcomes (EO), a private military contractor (PMC) that, between 1989 and its dissolution 10 years later, brought the mercenary business out of the shadows and into the limelight. Rather than operating below the radar, South Africa-based EO was a high-profile group that operated globally, but was heavily involved in Africa. In 1993, EO was tasked by Angola's state oil company Sonangol to protect oil facilities in Soyo, and was later asked by then-president Eduardo dos Santos's MPLA government to train its soldiers, a move that helped turn the tide against the forces of Jonas Savimbi's UNITA opposition movement.