Dictionary Thesaurus Word Dynamo Quotes Reference Translator Spanish

Eeben Barlow

Lt-Col. Eeben Barlow is a former member of the apartheid-era South African Defence Force and commanded its elite special forces 32 Battalion Reconnaissance Wing. He founded the private military contractor (PMC) Executive Outcomes (EO) in 1989, and was involved in providing counter-insurgency as well as peacekeeping forces to mainly under-developed – but mineral-rich – countries in Africa and Asia.

Military background

As a child, Eeben Barlow moved from former Northern Rhodesia (Zambia) to South Africa in the mid-1960s. After matriculating in 1972, he joined the SADF. Six years later, Barlow was recruited to serve with 32 Battalion special forces in Angola in support of the UNITA rebel movement (funded by Washington and Pretoria). Subsequently, he was assigned to SADF's Directorate of Military Intelligence and then to the Armaments Corporation of South Africa (ARMSCOR).

Paramilitary

In the mid-1980s a large number of South Africans (mainly blacks) sought to escape the country by crossing into Botswana, Mozambique, Malawi or Zambia where they would be granted refuge and amnesty. The refugees were assisted in leaving South Africa by a number of different PMCs which the apartheid government regarded as armed insurgents. In response, President P. W. Botha gave Lt-Col. Barlow – who had by then joined the secretive Civil Co-operation Bureau (CCB) – the job of cutting off this escape route, which Botha said:

"threatens to harm the continuation of South Africa's ability to assert civil order and control within its own jurisdictional province."

SADF troops commanded by Barlow's CCB then engaged the PMC forces, but with only limited success.

Mercenary

In 1989, towards the end of the apartheid era, SADF special forces including 32 Battalion Recce Wing, CCB and Koevoet – which operated mainly in Namibia – began to be disbanded. Barlow saw an opportunity to form a new PMC and recruited many of these elite forces into the mercenary group Executive Outcomes (EO). Under the control of the South Africa-based Strategic Resource Corporation (SRC), Barlow described EO's role as offering:

"A variety of services to legitimate governments, including infantry training, clandestine warfare, counter-intelligence programs, reconnaissance, escape and evasion, special forces selection and training, and parachuting."

Barlow boasted that EO had 500 military advisers and over 3,000 highly trained multi-national special forces soldiers at its disposal. As well as providing services to governments Barlow also counted big transnational corporations such as De Beers, Chevron, Rio Tinto Zinc and Texaco among his clients. EO's operations extended from Angola, Botswana, Ethiopia, Namibia, Sierra Leone, Uganda, and Zambia in Africa to East Timor in Asia and West Papua in Australasia.

Executive Outcomes was closed in 1998 after the passing of the Regulation of Foreign Military Assistance Act.