If you want to take down a head of state,
if you want to take down a CEO,
if you want to take down an Elon Musk,
hiring mercenaries are a great way to do this.
When Haiti’s President Jovenel Moïse
was assassinated at his Port-Au-Prince home
during the early hours of July 7th, 2021,
local police were quick to point to
the shadowy group of hired foreign gunmen they thought responsible.
The 26 Colombians
and two Haitian Americans that comprised the hit squad
were foreign mercenaries.
It’s turning out that that really has more to do with narcotics.
It's tough to say how far the conspiracy goes,
but no one has doubted the hit’s brutal precision.
Moïse had been shot 12 times and was found on his back,
his shirt soaked with blood.
A lot of these drug cartels certainly did just arrange to murder
the president of Haiti.
In the aftermath,
18 of the Colombian mercenaries were captured and three killed.
Despite the chaos,
there’s a sense that the fallout from the assassination
in one of the world’s poorest countries
has barely begun.
This is
we’re diving into the global boom in private militias
and mercenaries for hire
and what exactly goes into planning a modern military coup.
[The Business of Crime]
The last couple of decades
have witnessed a steep rise in the number of companies
offering to finance and train private armies across the world,
prolonging unrest and underpinning regime change
from Syria to sub-Saharan Africa.
You can think of them as conflict profiteers
or entrepreneurs.
It’s important to note that few enterprising guns for hire
would identify as mercenaries these days.
Nobody in the industry ever called themselves, “I’m a mercenary.”
They hate that word.
Instead, euphemisms abound—
private military contractors, private military firms,
operational contractors, military service providers,
same shtick, different branding.
Whatever you want to call them,
between 2008 to 2010, the number of registered contractors
shot up by 67,000, a 41 percent rise.
In an increasingly privatized world,
it’s not surprising that warfare has followed suit.
And it’s hard to say exactly
how much this essentially unregulated market is worth,
though what was once a multi-million dollar profit business
is now conservatively measured in the billions.
Most mercenaries make about, I’d say, double to three times
what they made in whatever military they came from.
Mercenaries are now allowing non-state actors,
like the Fortune 500, super wealthy individuals,
to wage war for any reason they want, no matter how petty.
But how exactly do you plot a coup?
Clearly, it isn’t cheap,
though a private contractor
will set you back significantly less than a conventional standing army,
with far less pesky regulation to boot.
If you want to do something that’s morally questionable,
you hire mercenaries because they are sort of off the grid
in international legal area.
Though it isn’t as if there’s a slew of PMCs
willing to advertise their ability to help out
in a light spot of regime change,
their involvement tends to go a bit like this.
Our men are continuing to fight right now.
Our units have been activated in the south,
west, and east of Venezuela.
Take Operation Gideon.
In May 2020, the enemies of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro
plotted to overthrow him
with the help of a gung-ho, former Green Beret named Jordan Goudreau.
What were the objectives of the mission?
I believe it was to get Maduro.
The plan was to sneak into Venezuela by boat, kidnap Maduro,
and hand him over to US authorities.
But from there on, his amateurness caught up with him.
This is a tale of caution to wannabe mercenaries and wannabe clients.
Unfortunately, Goudreau was in way over his head.
His company, Silvercorp USA,
was better known for providing security at Trump rallies,
not toppling entire governments.
He was in water way beyond his depth,
and his organization got infiltrated
by Venezuelan intelligence in Colombia,
so they were always two steps ahead.
Maduro's forces were waiting for the unlucky invaders,
which included two American former soldiers.
Eight were killed in the resulting shootout,
and over 100 people were arrested as part of the plot.
This is what happens when the US puts a $15 million bounty
on the head of a state.
Among the store of weapons seized,
a Kindle e-reader and an Airsoft BB gun.
Not exactly the kind of equipment needed to oust a head of state.
When it comes to launching wildly unsuccessful coups,
Miami has serious pedigree.
Let’s put it this way,
whoever’s not in power in the Caribbean and Latin America,
very likely they have a large base in South Florida.
From the failed Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba in 1961,
through to the failed Venezuela coup
and the recent murder of Haiti’s president,
it’s a city of political exiles, dodgy schemes,
and intelligence agency interference.
South Florida is awash with millions of aspiring exiles and refugees
who want nothing more
than to see new governments in their host countries.
The security firm alleged to have
recruited Haiti’s Colombian mercenaries
even has offices near Miami International Airport
and one of Donald Trump’s golf resorts.
The line between state forces and private ones
are often uncomfortably blurred.
Certainly were veterans that spun off the Iraq War,
who were working as military contractors to various countries,
particularly in the Middle East.
In 2018, it was reported that an elite group of ex-US Navy SEALs
had been contracted by the United Arab Emirates
to run targeted assassinations in Yemen.
And they do it, in this case,
not because they want plausible deniability.
They do it because they want it done.
This is a conflict that has seen
mass civilian casualties and starvation,
plus a slew of murdered radical Islamic clerics
and politicians.
The rise of mercenary is also pegged to the decline of the laws of war.
And a very tidy profit for Spear Operations Group,
the American PMC responsible—
cash rather than ideology being the motivation for their work.
But farce is never too far away,
even in the world of supposedly efficient bloodshed.
Maybe some people simply aren’t cut out for such high-stakes pursuits.
In 2004, Mark Thatcher was at the center of
a spectacularly bungled attempted coup in Equatorial Guinea.
The wayward son of the former British prime minister
had provided financing for the plot
and was duly arrested in South Africa under its anti-mercenary laws.
Despite his protestations, Thatcher was found guilty.
and received a four-year suspended prison sentence
along with a hefty fine.
Private military companies aren’t going anywhere soon—
the business is far too lucrative and well-entrenched.
But pulling off a coup is still hardly straightforward,
no matter how much firepower is available.
And the proliferation of well-financed firms
staffed with experienced killers
has obvious consequences.
Conflict equals profit,
and the more profit, the better.
Inevitably, it’s countries like Haiti
where the effects are most keenly felt.
When the hired guns pulled the trigger on July 7th,
they added another crisis
to a country already buckling under the weight of its issues.
Goodness knows what happens
when drug cartels start to lean on private military forces, mercenaries,
tier ones to do their dirty work.
There is still no consensus on who ordered Jovenel Moïse’s murder.
But one thing seems clear—
one person’s chaos is another’s profit.