News 24
Abidjan - South African mercenaries have landed in Ivory Coast to help the government fight rebels who hold half the territory of the world's largest cocoa producer, foreign military sources said on Wednesday.
Among the dozens of mercenaries arriving in the West African country were veterans of the disbanded Executive Outcomes, a South African group whose paid soldiers scored victories against rebel forces in Angola and Sierra Leone in the mid-1990s.
Reports that the mercenaries had arrived in Abidjan came as rebels met a government team in Togo for peace talks to end the conflict, which stems from a failed September 19 coup and left hundreds dead before a truce 12 days ago.
"The first group of 40 mercenaries came to ensure the president's security," one foreign military source told Reuters. "Another group of about 160 are expected and that looks like it could be for bigger operations."
Another source said the plan was put together by a French "godfather", but relied mostly on South African manpower and was backed by Russian-built helicopters including Mi-8s for transport and at least one Mi-24 "Hind" gunship.
At South Africa's Institute for Security Studies, analyst John Tuma said he knew 200 mercenaries had been recruited in the country for the mission to Ivory Coast.
President Laurent Gbagbo's adviser in Paris, Toussaint Alain, said he could neither confirm nor deny the arrival of mercenaries in Ivory Coast.
"We are a legitimate government and we have the right to buy arms where we like and enlist the help of who we like," he said.
Dogs of war on both sides
African mercenaries from a dozen years of savage civil wars in nearby Liberia and Sierra Leone, as well as from neighbouring Burkina Faso, are beefing up the rebel Patriotic Movement of Ivory Coast, regional security sources say.
Mercenaries have plunged into African conflicts since the independence era of the 1960s, when notorious dogs of war like Bob Denard and "Mad" Mike Hoare fought in the anarchic Congo.
Pilots, many from the former Soviet Union, fly transport and combat missions in conflicts across the continent.
But the most successful operations of recent years were mounted by Executive Outcomes, relying on both black and white soldiers who had fought for South Africa's apartheid regime.
What began as a training mission for the Angolan government in the early 1990s evolved into offensives backed by helicopters and jets, which forced Unita rebels into a position from which they never really regained their strength.
In Sierra Leone, Executive Outcomes came in to help the government after rebels struck towards the capital in 1995. Within a few months, search and destroy missions had forced the brutal Revolutionary United Front to sue for peace.
But foreign donors were unhappy about payments linked to diamond-mining deals and pushed the government to end the contract. Sierra Leone then collapsed back into fighting.
Executive Outcomes was disbanded in 1999 as the South African government moved to outlaw citizens who fought in foreign wars, but the line is blurred as to exactly when providers of security services become mercenaries.