By Patricia H. Kushlis
The late veteran Middle East correspondent John K. Cooley began the second edition of his book Unholy Wars: Afghanistan, America and International Terrorism with Machiavelli’s admonition to rulers about the inadvisability of relying on mercenaries to fight their battles for them. Here are the first two sentences from the longer quote: “Mercenaries and auxiliaries are useless and dangerous . . . for mercenaries are disunited, thirsty for power, undisciplined and disloyal; they are brave among their friends and cowards before the enemy. . .”
If Cooley were alive today (he died in 2008), I wonder what he would have said about the Arab revolts raging in the Middle East and how he would have assessed Gaddafi’s apparent heavy reliance upon sub-Saharan African and other mercenaries to suppress his own people.
Cooley’s book Libyan Sandstorm (1983) is a classic – a review by Michael Yapp published in The London Times was republished in February – just as the latest revolt in Libyan began.
I don’t profess to be a North African or a Libyan expert – but I know Europe and the eastern Mediterranean rather well. I also knew John Cooley and had the utmost respect for his painstakingly well researched reports and analysis based upon that research.
I also have that sinking feeling that too many of today's instant North Africa “experts” interviewed in the media thus far know even less about Libya than I do. That's scary. Moreover, the reverence being paid – or at least lip-service given – to the supposed invincibility of Gaddafi’s hired gun slingers makes me wonder just how familiar many of today's pundits are with Machiavelli’s centuries old warning. Or maybe they are but have discounted its relevance because Gaddafi’s ties to African mercenaries have been long and deep and he had previously used them to squash a revolt in 1996.
Gaddafi's sub-Saharan mercenary army
Various reports tell us that Gaddafi’s mercenary troops primarily come from Chad. Mali, Niger, Zimbabwe, Liberia and likely Sudan are also on the list. Reports also tell us that he pays each mercenary between 300 and 2,000 US dollars per day to do his bidding. (Please note: foreign guest workers in Libya and Gaddafi's mercenary troops are not the same.)
In an excellent Christian Science Monitor blog post on February 28, Alex Thurston argues that some of Gaddafi’s mercenaries are more loyal and better trained than others and those that comprise his elite mercenary troops are linked to him through long-standing financial and political ties.
According to Thurston, “Qaddafi’s sustained and deep involvement in African politics, especially the affairs of neighboring countries like Sudan, Chad, and Niger, have included “funding and training many fighting groups and rebel organizations in West Africa and other places.”
Thurston quotes Peter Bouckaert [of Human Rights Watch] who described the fighters from Chad as men “who were not mercenaries specifically recruited to defend Gadhafi but members of (a Chadian) rebel movement Gadhafi has been funding and training for many years who would lose that support if he fell.”
Harder "to get your own people to shoot your own people"
Thurston quotes Reed Brody also from Human Rights Watch, who argues - in opposition to Machiavelli - that Gaddafi’s mercenaries are important because “it’s hard to get your own people to shoot your own people” whereas, by implication, soldiers from somewhere else organized into well trained units and paid well for their efforts have no qualms about undertaking such odious assignments on behalf of their foreign paymaster.
Some of Gaddafi’s other mercenaries, however, are not as loyal or as well trained as the rebel group from Chad. Their ranks include men brought to Libya under false pretenses in an apparent last minute recruitment drive with no training or experience as fighters. Upon arrival they were blackmailed into joining Gaddafi loyalists and sent to the provinces to fight against the Libyan rebels. In a March 26 Christian Science Monitor article based on interviews in rebel-held Benghazi, reporter Dan Murphy observed that:
“Though there’s been much discussion of Qaddafi’s use of “foreign mercenaries” in the conflict, a lot of the fighters he’s using appear to be poor and unemployed migrants who found themselves in Libya when the uprising began.”
One described himself to Murphy as a doorman with no prior weapons experience.
Now maybe mercenaries like the former doorman who the Libyan rebel forces captured and made available to foreign journalists are simply a few untrained, unfortunates who should never have been recruited for battle in the first place and landed unwittingly at the wrong place at the wrong time while the crack Chadian mercenary troops are kept elsewhere – perhaps closer to Tripoli - there to defend the Gaddafi family perhaps even from its heretofore loyalist supporters if and when that time comes.
But this makes me wonder how significant Gaddafi’s sub-Saharan mercenary army will prove to be if and when he needs to defend himself and his praetorian guard - perhaps even or especially from those from within the inner circle who have seen the desert sun, counted the rays and decided the time has come to abandon the embattled Gaddafi ship of state.