Blood diamonds are diamonds mined in a war zone and sold to finance an insurgency, an invading army's war efforts, terrorism, or a warlord's activity. The term is used to highlight the negative consequences of the diamond trade in certain areas, or to label an individual diamond as having come from such an area. Diamonds mined during the 20th–21st century civil wars in Angola, Ivory Coast, Sierra Leone, Liberia, Guinea, and Guinea-Bissau have been given the label. The term conflict resource refers to analogous situations involving other natural resources. Blood diamonds can also be smuggled by organized crime syndicates so that they could be sold on the black market.
A private military company (PMC) or private military and security company (PMSC) is a private company providing armed combat or security services for financial gain. PMCs refer to their personnel as "security contractors" or "private military contractors".
Sandline International was a private military company (PMC) based in London, established in the early 1990s. It was involved in conflicts in Papua New Guinea in 1997 and had a contract with the government under then-Prime Minister Julius Chan, causing the Sandline affair. In 1998 in Sierra Leone Sandline had a contract with ousted the President, Ahmad Tejan Kabbah and in Liberia in 2003 was involved in a rebel attempt to evict the then-president Charles Taylor near the end of the civil war. Sandline ceased all operations on 16 April 2004.
Executive Outcomes is a private military company (PMC) founded in South Africa in 1989 by Eeben Barlow, a former lieutenant-colonel of the South African Defence Force. It later became part of the South African-based holding company Strategic Resource Corporation. The company was reestablished in 2020.
Simon Francis Mann is a British mercenary and former officer in the SAS. He trained to be an officer at Sandhurst and was commissioned into the Scots Guards. He later became a member of the SAS. On leaving the military, he co-founded Sandline International with fellow ex-Scots Guards Colonel Tim Spicer in 1996. Sandline operated mostly in Angola and Sierra Leone, but a contract with the government of Papua New Guinea attracted a significant amount of negative publicity in what became known as the Sandline affair.
Timothy Simon Spicer, is a former British Army officer, and former CEO of the private security company Aegis Defence Services. He served in the Falklands War and in Northern Ireland. He founded Sandline International, a private military company which closed in April 2004. He is the author of three books: An Unorthodox Soldier: Peace and War and the Sandline Affair (2000), A Dangerous Enterprise: Secret War at Sea (2021) and A Suspicion of Spies: Risk, Secrets and Shadows - the Biography of Wilfred ‘Biffy’ Dunderdale will be published on 12 September 2024.
Koidu Town is the capital and largest city of the Kono District in the Eastern Province of Sierra Leone. Its population is 128,030 based on the 2015 census. It is the fifth largest city in Sierra Leone by population, after Freetown, Kenema, Bo and Makeni. It lies approximately 280 miles east of Freetown, and about 60 miles north of Kenema.
The Sierra Leonean Civil War (1991–2002) was a civil war in Sierra Leone that began on 23 March 1991 when the Revolutionary United Front (RUF), with support from the special forces of Liberian dictator Charles Taylor's National Patriotic Front of Liberia (NPFL), intervened in Sierra Leone in an attempt to overthrow the Joseph Momoh government. The resulting civil war lasted almost 11 years, and had over 50,000, up to 70,000, casualties in total; an estimated 2.5 million people were displaced during the conflict.
The Kamajors were a group of traditional hunters from the Mende ethnic group in the south and east of Sierra Leone. The word "Kamajor" derived from Mende "kama soh", meaning traditional hunter with mystical powers, who were originally employed by local chiefs.
Lt-Col. Eeben Barlow is a veteran of the South African Defence Force and was the second-in-command of its elite special forces 32 Battalion Reconnaissance Wing. He later served in Military Intelligence as an agent handler and later as an operative and region commander in the ultra-secret Civil Cooperation Bureau (CCB), a covert division of Special Forces. He founded the private military contractor (PMC) Executive Outcomes (EO) in 1989, and was involved in providing counter-insurgency as well as peacekeeping forces in Africa and Asia. Barlow resigned from Executive Outcomes in July 1997 and the company closed its doors on 31 December 1998. Barlow is the former chairman of STTEP, but also lectures on military matters at defence colleges and universities. Some consider Eeben Barlow the grandfather of modern private military companies as the founder of Executive Outcomes. Shannon Sedgwick Davis stated in her book about an alliance to stop the atrocities of the Joseph Kony of the Lord's Resistance Army, "Eeben Barlow and the trainers, your sweat and sacrifice translated to lives saved, thank you."
The 2004 Equatorial Guinea coup d'état attempt, also known as the Wonga Coup, failed to replace President Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo with exiled opposition politician Severo Moto. Mercenaries organised by mainly British financiers were arrested in Zimbabwe on 7 March 2004 before they could carry out the plot. Prosecutors alleged that Moto was to be installed as the new president in return for preferential oil rights to corporations affiliated with those involved in the coup. The incident received international media attention after the reported involvement of Sir Mark Thatcher in funding the coup, for which he was convicted and fined in South Africa.
In the 1990s in Angola, the last decade of the Angolan Civil War (1975–2002), the Angolan government transitioned from a nominally communist state to a nominally democratic one, a move made possible by political changes abroad and military victories at home. Namibia's declaration of independence, internationally recognized on April 1, eliminated the southwestern front of combat as South African forces withdrew to the east. The MPLA abolished the one-party system in June and rejected Marxist-Leninism at the MPLA's third Congress in December, formally changing the party's name from the MPLA-PT to the MPLA. The National Assembly passed law 12/91 in May 1991, coinciding with the withdrawal of the last Cuban troops, defining Angola as a "democratic state based on the rule of law" with a multi-party system.
Al J. Venter is a South African war journalist, documentary filmmaker, and author of more than forty books who also served as an Africa and Middle East correspondent for Jane's International Defence Review. The surname is pronounced "fen-ter".
Neall Ellis is a South African military aviator and mercenary. Raised in Bulawayo, he joined the South African Air Force after a brief stint in the Rhodesian Army. As a helicopter pilot he was awarded the Honoris Crux decoration in 1983, and later attained field rank. After retiring from the SAAF he contracted for various private military corporations, including Executive Outcomes and Sandline International. During the civil war in Sierra Leone, he and his Mi-24 crew held off Revolutionary United Front (RUF) forces almost single-handedly. He also provided fire support for British troops during Operation Barras.
This is a list of countries by titanium sponge production based on USGS figures. The production figures are for titanium sponge, units are in metric tons.
Jean-Raymond BoulleCOR is a Monaco-based Mauritian businessman, the founder of four publicly traded companies with deposits of nickel, cobalt, copper, zinc, titanium and diamonds.
The Institute for Security Studies, also known as ISS or ISS Africa, described itself as follows: "an African organisation which aims to enhance human security on the continent. It does independent and authoritative research, provides expert policy analysis and advice, and delivers practical training and technical assistance." Their areas of research include transnational crimes, migration, maritime security, development, peacekeeping, peacebuilding, crime prevention, criminal justice, conflict analysis and governance. It is the largest independent research institute in Africa dealing with human security and is headquartered in Pretoria, South Africa, with offices in Kenya, Ethiopia and Senegal. In 2019, it was ranked 116th by the Global Go To Think Tanks Report and 55th among think tanks outside the United States.
Bilateral relations between Canada and Sierra Leone were first established in 1961, when Sierra Leone gained its independence. Canada is represented in Sierra Leone through its High Commission in Accra, Ghana. Sierra Leone is represented in Canada through its embassy in Washington, D.C.
Mercenaries have played a vital role in the modern history of Africa from the independent movements of the 1960s up until the 2020s. Broadly the mercenary actions can be broken into two types of related actors, which can then be examined regionally. Mercenaries have been used to both influence conflicts in order to support or attack governments friendly to various foreign governments, notably the United States, Russia, France, the United Kingdom, Belgium, and many other foreign actors. This is mainly done to maintain spheres of influence, and create friendly governments. This was most prevalent during the Cold War era, but continues to this day, notably with the Russian Wagner Group. The second group of actions are mercenaries working on behalf of large multinational corporations, helping to secure resource extraction areas. Oftentimes the support of mercenary groups to keep a leader or government in power comes at a large cost, that the government is unable to pay, who then offers the mercenary company or Private Military Company (PMC) rights to resource extraction areas such as diamond mines, oil fields or other valuable natural resource to pay for the services of the mercenary company. This has notably happened in Sierra Leone. Legislation has been adopted by the OAU as well as the IRCC, and various African governments to attempt to regulate or ban the use and creation of mercenary companies. This legislation has been mostly unsuccessful largely because world powers such as the United States and Russia continue to condone the use of mercenaries as a tool of state craft. Many modern scholars consider the use of mercenaries in Africa to be a form of neocolonialism.
The Regulation of Foreign Military Assistance Act, 1998 (FMAA) is an act of the Parliament of South Africa which prohibits mercenary activities both within South Africa and abroad, and prohibits citizens and residents from lending unauthorized foreign military assistance.
