Mercenaries in the Middle East: Erik Prince, R2, and the UAE’s foreign-manned QRF Battalion

Erik Prince, the controversial former head of the PMC formerly known as Blackwater. Image courtesy of the New York Times.

There is something of a tradition in the Middle East of employing mercenary soldiers to assist in the protection of one’s internal borders and the prosecution of internal struggles. From Oman’s askaris and contract officers, to the Frenchmen and Englishmen hired by Imam Muhammad al-Badr in the Yemen Civil War, to the more bland but long-lasting assistance provided by Vinnell Arabia to Saudi Arabia’s National Guard, mercenary soldiers have been a time-honored part of defense cachets.

However, these interventions or training programs are typically discreet, and do what they can to avoid courting controversy. This, the United Arab Emirates entirely failed to do when they signed on the infamous Erik Prince, founder of Blackwater, to form, train, and advise an 800-man battalion that would serve as a quick-reaction and counter-terror task force.

While newspapers in the modern day are quick to jump on any surfacing of the world’s second-oldest profession (witness the feeding frenzy when Executive Outcomes’ leadership and men resurfaced in Nigeria curbstomping Boko Haram), hiring Prince was a particularly bad move from a PR standpoint. As the founder of Blackwater, Prince and his contractors became the face of the private military industry. It was not a positive visage. Blackwater’s trigger-happy contractors and Prince’s refusal to accept any blame for his men’s misdoings, such as the shootings of multiple civilians in Nisour Square, led to a condemnation of contractors. Just as the less-corporate mercenaries had been damned after the atrocities committed by Costas “Colonel Callan” Georgiou in Angola in 1976, the private military industry had its wings clipped.

Or at least it did in Iraq and Afghanistan. Leaving Blackwater, Mister Prince went to the United Arab Emirates, where he promptly dove back into the mercenary world. According to the New York Times, he used “South African mercenaries to fight Somali pirates”—an incredible teamup between Prince and several combat commanders of the legendary Executive Outcomes who put down rebel groups in Angola and Sierra Leone. These men, under Colonel Roelf van Heerden, trained the Puntland Maritime Security Force and served as Prince’s field commanders for the Somalia contract.

Apparently, the UAE took notice, because Prince was given the role of supervising the recruitment and training of an 800-man quick-reaction force that would operate within the UAE’s borders. Unlike most mercenary deals, which are shrouded in understandable secrecy, we actually have a copy of the contract signed between the R2 company and the UAE. The contract stipulates that all men recruited have prior military experience, with at least two years downrange, and provides for the “security support group” (the legalese name for the QRF battalion) a parallel command staff of “advisors” for each important member of the battalion staff: the officers in charge of personnel, intelligence, operations, logistics, and even for the battalion Sergeant Major. While foreign troops (predominately Colombians) manning the battalion, this seems almost to be a failsafe for the battalion’s American, French, and South African instructors to take the helm if necessary—and it did apparently become necessary.

For as of the New York Times’ article, instruction and deployment readiness of the battalion was behind schedule, and the instructors and advisors soon found themselves having to take direct command. Perhaps remembering his experience subcontracting to them in Somalia, or simply remembering the folklore and legend of the mercenary world, Prince recruited a platoon’s worth of men from Executive Outcomes to provide a backbone for the battalion.

The contract likewise lays out the battalion’s missions: security operations, stability and support operations, defense of key infrastructure, cordon and search missions, and “other duties as assigned by the Client.” In short, the battalion seems to be intended as the UAE’s ace in the hole should things turn sour. Even with some discontent among the Colombians, the brain trust of foreign professionals helming this venture is one to be reckoned with.

There has been little word of the battalion’s operations since the news broke in 2011. With the relative lack of unrest within the Emirates, odds are simply that means it has been operating as a garrison force, or perhaps that it’s keeping a lower profile than at its inception, or it wound up being disbanded. Either way, Prince remains in the UAE—but whether to enjoy an early retirement or continue his favorite past time of Army-building remains anyone’s guess.

Praise Assad If You Believe

Syria’s Bashar al-Assad, inheritor of one of the most pervasive cults of personality in the modern world. Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.

In a way, the Cult of Assad that pervades Syria today is almost like a fairy in a child’s story—it only exists so long as all involved parties continue to believe in it, or at least go through paying the lip service it is due. That assertion in Lisa Wedeen’s Ambiguities of Domination is perhaps one of the most bizarre things I have read about a Middle Eastern government.

It’s almost like the value of money—once upon a time currency was backed up by gold, you could exchange dollars for their equivalent value in precious metals. Now, however, the sole thing backing up the system is belief: belief that the dollar still holds intrinsic value even if that value exists solely in the minds of the users of currency themselves. Much like money, the Assad cult exists only so long as the people of Syria are willing to work within it and uphold it.

The thing is, according to Wedeen, everyone in Syria knows the cult is a sham. Everyone from the archetypal man in the street to the members of the mukhabarat is aware of the fact that Bashar and Hafiz before him were not the awe-inspiring mythological figures that the propaganda makes them out to be. Unfortunately, the problem is that anyone who deviates from the system is immediately dealt with—be that an arrest, a disappearance, or worse. Much like with the value of the American dollar, someone can easily cry out and declare the backing of the Cult of Assad to be non-existent, and that person will soon receive a visit from their friendly neighborhood secret police. The cult is a sham, but the people on both sides of its perpetuation have no choice but to continue to uphold it.

There seems to be little way out of this vicious cycle short of the route taken by the Syrian rebels opposing Assad’s regime. The mukhabarat are too thoroughly entrenched, both in everyday life and on the online venues for organizing opposition, for peaceful action to have any lasting effect. The so-called moderate rebels are now losing ground, but ISIS has been hammering Assad’s forces. It remains to be seen how long the citizens of Syria continue to play into the Cult of Assad.

Image Source

Monarchies in the Middle East: Legitimacy Holds Fast

King Abdullah and members of the Saudi Royal Family, from the Associated Press.

With the advent of the Arab Spring, the Gulf State monarchies (as well as Jordan) escaped relatively unscathed. The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia in particular had moved fast to tamp down on any potential stirrings against its regime, Jordan’s protesters never gained quite enough force to topple their government, and the UAE remained the same sleekly cosmopolitan bastion of commerce that it always had. The question, of course, was begged—why?

The answer lies in two places, but the first and foremost is the rentierism that kept the gulf state monarchies rich and empowered. With the money flowing from the oil profits, these monarchies were able to keep themselves secure and in power from the get-go ensuring that they could establish seriously powerful coercive apparatuses behind the scenes and well-trained and equipped armies to boot, as well as invest (to a degree) in their countries’ infrastructures and well-being of their citizens: enough, in short, to keep the masses happy and content. In non-rentier states wracked by the Arab Spring, Libya and Syria in particular, the government simply did not have the money to ensure that they had the capabilities to ensure the protestors were put down. Syria’s mukhabarat were dependent on citizens informing on one another, of stopping problems before they had even started. Gaddafi had completely gutted his security forces so they could never pose a threat to him—and indeed, some wound up going over to the rebels. Without this rentier power base they had little chance of rapidly building up their security forces or simply having ensured the effectiveness of their own.

Jordan’s King Abdullah in military regalia, courtesy of the Telegraph.

The second route is legitimacy. Rather than bread and circuses, a monarchical leader relies on the exceptionalism of kings to ensure their stay in power. This was Jordan’s primary means of ensuring King Abdullah’s holding fast, since it lacked the rentier economy of the Gulf. As seen above, the King is presented as a powerful, intense man, one who will not stoop to any powers that might dare to attack his people and country. The full title of his land is the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan, emphasizing his lineage that can be traced back to the Prophet. And why would any good citizen want to topple a ruler who has the blood of Muhammad himself flowing in his veins?

A King is far more impressive and imposing a figure than a mere President or Prime Minister. Whether it be the blood of Muhammad with Abdullah or tracing their lineage back to the founder of their nation as with the labyrinthine House of Saud, royalty in the Middle East occupies a peculiarly imposing space within the minds of its citizens. When Jordanian protesters chanted slogans disrespectful of King Abdullah, it was almost unthinkable. In Saudi Arabia or the UAE, to criticize the House of Saud, the President or the Emirs is entirely unheard of. In Oman, where Qaboos remains supreme, it is explicitly forbidden and harshly punishable by law.

When the factors of a strong economic base (typically rentier, but sometimes not as evinced with Jordan) combine with the legitimacy of a Middle Eastern royal, it makes it that much more difficult for the people of that nation to overcome the psychological stumbling blocks of economic complacency and attacking someone who is, simply put, more special than they are. And that is why the monarchies were able to dodge the Arab Spring.

Image Sources

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/middleeast/jordan/11395565/King-Abdullah-of-Jordan-in-60-seconds.html

http://www.cleveland.com/world/index.ssf/2010/11/saudi_arabias_king_abdullah_to.html

Mercenaries in the Middle East: Who is the Sultan of Muscat and Oman?

Sultan Said bin Taimur of Muscat and Oman, and his Commander, Colonel David Smiley of the British Army. Image courtesy of the Telegraph’s obituary of Col Smiley.

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Who is the Sultan of Muscat and Oman?

Is he a yes-man or a no-man?

Is he noblest, like the Roman?

Or abominable, like the snowman?

Is he a pro- or anti- status quo man?

So went a piece of newspaper doggerel discussing the ruler of the Sultanate in question: Said bin Taimur, a man of antiquated views dealing with an internal rebellion made up of those with even more antiquated views. For if the Sultan, as wisecracking mercenary officer P.S. Allfree described it, was of the medieval period, his adversaries had scarce advanced from the mores of the Prophet Muhammad.

The Imamate of Yemen were the adversaries in question, the “terrible three” of Ghalib and Talib bin Ali and Suleiman bin Himayer, men who despised the Sultan’s connections with the British government and (relatively speaking) modern views. But what really galled them was the Sultan’s overrunning their land to ensure continued oil exploration, a violation of the Treat of Seeb which guaranteed autonomy to the Oman Imamatet. They began a low-intensity conflict, emplacing mines along Oman’s scattered roads, conducting hit and run attacks against the Sultan’s thinly spread armed forces.

Bin Taimur knew the center could not hold, not as it was. His “army” such as it was were merely his own tribesmen levied en mass, no match for the embittered, blooded combatants of the Imam. Indeed, an expedition known as the Muscat and Oman Field Force had been practically torn to shreds by the Imamate’s fighters and sympathetic villagers after its sole attack had been repulsed. Foreign soldiers were the answer. To fill his ranks, he embarked on a recruiting drive among the people of Pakistan’s Baluchistan region, and soon the Baluchis outnumbered Omanis in the Sultan’s Armed Forces. For his officers, he turned to his defense allies, the British government, and recruited “contract officers” to train and command his men, veterans of the British Army proper and more esoteric (and semi-mercenary outfits) such as the Trucial Oman Scouts.

Mercenary officers escort Sayyid Shihab bin Faisal in an inspection of the troops. Colonel David Smiley is in the peaked cap, Military Secretary Pat Waterfield is to the right of Col Smiley. Image courtesy of the M.G. Dennison collection on jepeterson.net.

These contract officers, men like P.S. Allfree, Colin Maxwell, and especially the modern-day proconsul Brigadier Pat Waterfield, basically ran the Sultan’s Armed Forces. There was little “regimental” soldiering in those early days: officers wore what they chose, whether it was the beret and cap-badge of their old regiments or a flowing keffeyah in the tradition of Jordan’s own Glubb Pasha or the Trucial Oman Scouts. The sole concern was whether the men could hack in Oman’s inhospitable climate and conditions, and whether they could make soldiers out of the Baluchis recruited by the Sultan.

This they proceeded to do, and it wasn’t long before fighting patrols were being sent out against the Imam’s fighters. Surprised by the sudden ferocity of the mercenary-helmed SAF, the Imam and his followers promptly retreated up the Jebel Akhdar mountain, and atop this redoubt they stayed, decisively repelling any assault leveled against them.

For a time, that was. For by 1958 the Sultan had a new source of officers coming in, ones a bit more straight-laced than his somewhat free-wheeling contract officers. These men were “seconded” from the British Army—that is to say they were merely loaned out to the Sultan, and retained their rank, pay, and employment by the British Army rather than holding rank, receiving pay, and having their commission be a part of the Sultan’s Armed Forces. There was, as P.S. Allfree somewhat glumly noted, a bit of friction between the mercenary officers and the seconded soldiers, due to the former being a bit cliqueish and having a know-it-all attitude and the latter sneering at the mere mercenaries they were expected to work with.

The commander of these seconded officers, and indeed now the SAF as a whole, however, was determined to work past these. Colonel David Smiley was a veteran of conventional and unconventional warfare alike and Allfree glowingly described him as the perfect mix of “guerilla pugnacity and Guards punctilio” that the SAF so desperately needed to rally against the Imam’s stronghold. Establishing a strong working relationship with the top mercenary officer Colin Maxwell (whose role he had usurped), and soothing the ego of the aloof Waterfield, Smiley soon managed to overcome the initial antagonism between the two groups, and soon seconded and contract officers alike were working hand-in-glove.

The assault on Jebel Akhdar could not have been pulled off solely by the SAF’s soldiers, for even with their training the Baluchis were not up to British standards. Instead no less than two squadrons of the SAS itself, supported by Ferret armored cars and conventional infantry from nearby Aden, as well as two squadrons of the picturesque Trucial Oman Scouts, were in 1959 dispatched to support Colonel Smiley.

The battle was, to be somewhat coarse, a curbstomp. Against the SAS main effort the Imamate’s fighters stood no chance. The Imam and his two loyal allies fled into exile, the Sultan’s reign was unassailable, and the seconded officers, as well as the British regulars who had supported the whole adventure, packed up shop and went home, leaving the mercenaries to get on with the business of building an Army from the ground up.

Of course, the whole house of cards came tumbling down when Qaboos executed his coup d’etat. But that’s another story in and of itself…

Image Sources:

http://www.jepeterson.net/dennison_collection.html

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/obituaries/4210129/Colonel-David-Smiley.html

Literary Sources

Arabian Assignment by Col. David Smiley

Warlords of Oman by P. S. Allfree

Rentierism and Regimes

Derricks at work in a Saudi Arabia Oilfield

Though rentierism is one of the more unfortunately common political phenomenons in the Middle East, it doesn’t necessarily come into being in a vacuum. The “resource curse” is not itself a byproduct of the resources themselves, but rather the political environment they’re discovered in. An authoritarian and oppressive government (or even a simply authoritarian one) is not likely to change its ways merely because of a blessing of riches, indeed it’s more likely to use them to bolster its position of power.

Take, for example, Saudi Arabia. Even before the vast reserves of oil that have kept the economy of that wealthy kingdom a-flowing, the marriage of Muhammad ibn Saud’s power and Muhammad ibn Abd al-Wahhabbi’s religious philosophy manifested themselves in a regime that very tightly controlled its people and its populace. Having taken Wahhabism as the cornerstone of the regime, it’s hard to envision an outside influence that could change that course of power.

Saudi oil is not consumed as frantically on the peninsula as it is by the rest of the world; accordingly the Saudi government does whatever it can to ensure foreign patrons and clients purchase the lion’s share of it, because that’s where the money is coming from. Though they have plenty of reason to care about investing in their nation’s infrastructure (the better it is, the more product they can produce and export which in turn means more money comes in), they have little reason to want to invest in the nation’s people. The authoritarian government is not reliant on a writ from and support of the people to keep them in power, and when the metaphorical natives get restless, they can simply write a check to keep them complacent and happy. When this is combined with the authoritarian character of the Wahhabi-influenced government, it’s easy to see just why rentier capitalism is so ideal for Saudi Arabia, and other Middle Eastern states.

Democratizing the Middle East

In her article, Lisa Anderson discusses just why democracy, that most hallowed of modern political institutions, has yet to take root in the Middle East. Multiple factors such as the proliferation of rentier states, the natural resources of the region, and so on and so forth are all discussed, but one particular factor is glossed over, or at the very least not discussed in-depth.

This would be the sad colonial legacy of the Middle East. Much like its continental sister to the West in Africa (particularly Sub-Saharan), the Middle East’s states are products of an extremely heavy-handed and overbearing colonial power. Compare, for example, Yemen and the Congo (which is allegedly democratic and a republic, though Joseph Kabila’s adversaries might beg to differ). In both cases, the boundaries of these states were arbitrarily drawn, one by British colonial administrators, the other by King Leopold of Belgium, and were drawn with no regard for the native peoples already inhabiting the area. The Congo is a patchwork of a multitude of tribes from the Bakongo to the Baluba, the Yemen has no less, from the Zaydi to the Bakil. Both states were reliant on heavily centralized authority, which fell apart after the colonial administrators left. In Yemen’s case, this led to the fragmentation into North and South Yemen, and the Civil War in North Yemen, in the Congo, the Katanga Secession and Simba Rebellion ensued.

Today both states are lurching along, mostly supported by outside benefactors. They do not have a monopoly of force inside their borders. The Congo has been reliant, for some time, on foreign troops, from the infamous mercenaries of the 1960s in the Congo to more recent interventions with the UN, to say nothing of the various rebel groups infesting its East. In the Yemen, the security forces have seemingly all but melted away before the advance of the Houthi rebels (who now for all intents and purposes are, with their recent capture of the capital, the reigning body), and back during the North Yemen Civil War, a significant amount of mercenary soldiers were imported by the Imam el-Badr to bolster his Royalist forces against the Republicans.

A lack of a monopoly of force ensures that the national government cannot police itself; arbitrary boundaries mean that the populace is far more loyal to their border-spanning tribes rather than the national government which could unify the tribes had they not been split like they were. Without these unifying factors, the factors for “democratization” are not present in the qualities they need to be, and the people will remain uninvested in their government…at least, uninvested to the degree that needs to be for democracy to form.