American forces are taking over where Executive Outcomes left off, writes Al J Venter
A large force of Americans, all former serving officers with the United States army, air force and marines, has been hired to guard oil installations in the tiny, oil-rich Angolan enclave of Cabinda.
Veterans involved in the Cabinda venture work for an American company, AirScan, which has its headquarters in Titusville, Florida. Most of the oil assets are American and belong to Chevron, whose wells pump about $1,5-billion worth of oil from a succession of offshore oil concessions.
Chevron owns 39,2% of the Cabinda Gulf Oil Company (Chevron). The Angolan government (through Solangol) has 41%, while ELF owns a small percentage, as do some other European companies. It has been that way since 1955, when the first oil was shipped from Cabinda to the United States.
AirScan, which has been involved in drug- related surveillance work in the US and has been linked to government intelligence agencies, uses Cessna 337s to provide aerial surveillance on the periphery of the oil fields. These fixed-winged aircraft carry under-wing, turret-mounted, electro- optical sensors and are augmented by lightweight, surveillance radar when necessary.
This sensor package permits stand-off surveillance in the air from distances of more than 3km. The main objective is to prevent guerrilla infiltrators attached to FLEC, a Portuguese acronym for the Front for the Liberation of Cabinda from approaching the oil fields.
Other military contracts handled on behalf of the Angolan government have been awarded to Military Professional Resources Inc (MPRI), of Alexandria, Virginia, including one to train two Forcas Armadas Angolanas airborne brigades. MPRI is believed to have been asked to found a training academy for non-commissioned officers in Cabinda, though the company is not prepared to comment on any of this.
MPRI describes itself in its press handouts as a defence-oriented contractor. It employs former members of the US armed forces, preferably those with special forces experience.
In an interview with MPRI last year, Lieutenant General (Ret) Ed Soyster refused to be drawn on whether his company was interested in supplying personnel to go to Angola in a protection role. He did admit to having visited Luanda several times for that purpose at about the same time as Executive Outcomess contract was up for grabs.
MPRI was originally hired by Washington to equip and train the newly reconstituted Bosnian Army under the aegis of the Office of the US Special Representative for Military Stabilisation in the Balkans. Altogether 185 MPRI troops have been involved in that venture.
A similar project was to have been launched by MPRI in Cabinda. Finally, after some speculation that mercenaries had been hired to guard American oil interests in Africa and that in a country brutally wracked by civil war the deal, for reasons known only to the two American firms, was passed on to AirScan.
The rationale concerning the Cabinda venture among some authorities in Washington is that it does not matter if Angola again lapses into civil war. The priority is to keep the oil flowing. Even if the rest of the country burns, that objective is not difficult to achieve, the apologists say. Most of the oil fields are offshore, anyway. They are isolated and difficult to hit.
The Cabinda operation is under the command of AirScan Brigadier General (Ret) Joe Stringham who, for some years during the civil war period, ran clandestine American military operations in El Salvador.
Like MPRI, AirScans origins are vague. There are reports within the shadowy world of contemporary soldiers of fortune, that those associated with the company have been involved in running guns from Uganda to the Sudanese Peoples Liberation Army in southern Sudan. The rewards for such work are good. The lowest pay for grunts in Cabinda is $225 a day. Those involved in gun-running ventures receive a bit more. In northern Uganda, it is argued, the risks are greater.
Tours of duty are in weeks rather than months: six on and six off, either back in the US or a destination of choice, as long as the air fare is commensurate. Many of the contractors head for Sun City. No money is earned by lower-ranking AirScan personnel while on furlough.
By all accounts, AirScans relations with the Luanda government are testy.
Stringham had been made promises by the Angolans about accommodation and recreation facilities such as a swimming pool for his men, but little has been forthcoming. There is a pool at the unit base: it is filled with garbage. Just about every item required by the force is flown in, including drinking water.
Conditions within Cabinda are regarded as insecure by those who have recently been there. No AirScan member of staff can go into town without a heavily armed escort. There is no fraternising with the locals or members of the expatriate Portuguese community. Until 1975, Cabinda was a Portuguese colony, an integral part of greater Angola.
Issues in Cabinda are complicated by the fact that a section of its population has been striving for independence since the early Sixties, first from Lisbon, now from Luanda.
The FLEC guerrillas have been at the vanguard of the struggle. They have been resolute in their objective of trying to drive out the Luanda government, but are critically short of arms and equipment. They have no medical resources. In that heat, close to the equator, anyone with a gut wound is dead within hours.
Recently a FLEC guerrilla group attacked six Angolan army T/54 tanks with nothing more than RPG-7 rocket-propelled grenades and commercial explosives stolen from the oil companies and fired in flare pistols. The attackers melted into the jungle afterwards, but they took casualties.
The movement has consistently appealed to the West for help. Nothing has been forthcoming. As far as Washington is concerned, any form of military assistance to FLEC might result in the disruption of oil supplies. That is simply not on in the heady world of multi-billion-dollar oil cartels.
Until now, Cabindas rebels have received only grudging, on-off support from the neighbouring Congo (Brazzaville) which, in any event, covets the oil-rich enclave for itself. When former president Mobutu Sese Seko was still around, he gave FLEC some military assistance, but this was done more to anger Luanda than from any altruistic motive.
Were Cabinda to achieve independence, its oil reserves would make it the wealthiest country in Africa. It sits on a remarkable succession of subterranean oil fields that traverses the length of the West African coastline from Cameroon southwards and that has created such riches in Gabon to the immediate north.
Obviously, Luanda has no intention of letting go. Cabinda has become an endless source of revenue. Its financial returns, alone, keep the regime alive and its leaders living in a style to which they have become accustomed. The Angolan government has consequently reacted brutally towards any form of dissidence in the enclave. This has led to charges of human rights abuses by Amnesty International.
There is a real fear in Cabinda that Washington has a hidden agenda. The locals believe the US will eventually claim Cabinda for itself because of its oil wealth. And who can stop them if they do? asked a young man in Malongo, an oil town about 30 minutes north of the capital.
Local politicians and those in Luanda encourage the population to mistrust foreigners largely because, they say, history had proved that Europe and the US had brought nothing but trouble in the past.