View the pdf - Australian Army

18mercenaries was arrested by Zimbabwean authorities while preparing to overthrow thegovernment of Equatorial Guinea. Their leader, former British SAS officer Simon Mann,was sentenced to thirty-four years in prison before receiving a presidential pardon inNovember 2009. 67 Mann claimed that his operation had the tacit support of a rangeof foreign governments (including the United Kingdom) but none came to his aidfollowing his arrest. 68The next phases of the Global War on Terror (under whatever name it will beknown) are likely to see ongoing counterinsurgency and counter-terrorism operationsfor many years. The recent drawdown in Iraq has meant that the huge demand for PMCservices, known as the ‘Iraq bubble’, has all but burst. The global financial crisis hasalso led to reductions in spending on PMC services. The PMC industry is respondingto these changes by investigating potential new markets including Afghanistan, peaceoperations, international humanitarian operations and domestic security operationsaround the world.Reasons for expansionThere are seven primary reasons for the growth of the PMC industry since the endof the Cold War and its exponential expansion during the GWOT. The first of these islinked to the decline in standing military forces during the post-Cold War drawdown ofthe 1990s. Post-Apartheid South Africa also discharged many troops, adding to the largenumbers of trained men available for corporate recruitment. The GWOT has not led toa major expansion in national armed forces. Instead, relatively small existing nationalarmed forces are being called on to complete more and longer tours of combat duty.Supplementation by reserve forces is occurring, but is limited by the difficulty ofdeploying Reservists for long periods away from their normal employment. PMC offertrained personnel who can address this shortfall.Second, modern military forces are increasingly adopting the business terminologyand practices of the corporate world. The privatisation of war is arguably the logical67 H Siddique and G Tremlett, ‘Simon Mann pardoned over role in Equatorial Guinea coup plot’,The Guardian, 2 November 2009, accessed 5 January 2010.68 See A Roberts, The Wonga Coup: The British mercenary plot to seize billions in Africa, ProfileBooks, 2006; ‘Mann sentenced in E Guinea plot’, BBC News, accessed 5 January 2010.