Mercenaries in the Congo and Biafra, 1960-1970: Africa’s weapon of choice?

Stephen Rookes and Walter Bruyère-Ostells

Small Wars and Insurgencies, 2022, vol. 33, issue 1-2, 112-129

Abstract: Often maligned by academics and international organisations alike, mercenaries are perceived as being a contributory factor to the worsening of conflict and as a threat to democracy. This chapter demonstrates that this reputation is not wholly deserved, and that in certain cases mercenaries have made a valuable contribution to creating stability in highly unstable contexts. Also, this chapter questions certain interpretations relating to the role and identity of mercenaries. Far from being cold-blooded avaricious killers, we show that there is a range of different reasons why someone becomes a mercenary and argue that the aforementioned categorisation has been used as a political tool.

Date: 2022
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DOI: 10.1080/09592318.2021.1957535

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