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11In 1975 John Banks and Dave Tomkins established a company known as SecurityAdvisory Services (which also used the acronym ‘SAS’) to assist a CIA-financedinsurrection in post-colonial Angola. President Agostino Neto’s MPLA (PopularMovement for the Liberation of Angola) government was threatened by the FNLA(National Front for the Liberation of Angola) led by Holden Roberto and UNITA(National Union for the Total Independence of Angola) led by Jonas Savimbi. 36 Theoperation involved over 100 British and Americans, some of whom were competentsoldiers, although others were little more than murderers. After three months of poorlyorganised operations, many of the mercenaries fled to the Congo while others werecaptured. Following an MPLA show trial, thirteen captured mercenaries were judgedto have forfeited the protection of the Geneva Conventions and were convicted of warcrimes. 37 Four of the men were executed, including Costas Georgiou who used thenom de guerre ‘Colonel Callan’. 38The definition of mercenaries was also blurred in the 1960s and 1970s by themovement of officially contracted military personnel between governments. Britishofficers and soldiers ‘seconded on loan service’ from their regiments served theSultan of Oman and other Middle Eastern rulers alongside mercenaries on privatecontracts. Troops from Soviet client nations such as Cuba operated as ‘advisers’ inAfrica. Unsurprisingly, these men were described as ‘mercenaries’ by their opponentsin conflicts in Somalia/Ethiopia (1977–78) and Eritrea (1977–81). The allied forcesdeployed to support South Vietnam were also described as ‘mercenaries’ by theircritics. 39 The Rhodesian armed forces recruited mercenaries, including dozens ofAustralians, during the counter-insurgency war (1964–79). The Rhodesians offered36 See Mockler, The New Mercenaries; J Banks, The Wages of War: The Life of a Modern Mercenary, LeoCooper, London, 1978; C Dempster and D Tomkins, Firepower, Corgi, London, 1978; J Stockwell, InSearch of Enemies: A CIA Story, Futura Publications, London, 1979; S Hougan, Spooks: The PrivateUse of Secret Agents, W H Allen, London, 1979; and J Bloch and P Fitzgerald, British Intelligence andCovert Action, Brandon, Kerry, Republic of Ireland, 1984.37 Dempster and Tomkins, Firepower; E Kwakwa, The International Law of Armed Conflict: Personaland Material Fields of Application, Kluwer Academic Publishers, Dordrecht, 1992, pp. 114–16.38 See Mockler, The New Mercenaries; Dempster and Tomkins, Firepower; W Burchett and D Roebuck,The Whores of War: Mercenaries Today, Penguin Books, Harmondsworth, Middlesex, 1977; andF Forsyth, The Dogs of War, Corgi Books, London, 1974.39 See R Blackburn, Mercenaries and Lyndon Johnson’s ‘More Flags’: The Hiring of Korean, Filipinoand Thai Soldiers in the Vietnam War, McFarland and Co., Jefferson, North Carolina, 1994; and M TKlare, War Without End: American Planning for the Next Vietnams, Alfred A Knopf, New York, 1972.