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What is Executive Outcomes?

Executive Outcomes belongs to a new breed of company known as 'Active Private Military Service Providers' or 'Active Private Military Companies'. These firms occupy a special niche in the 'security spectrum'. At one end, this spectrum includes basic security providers and ranges through to 'passive' military advisers and 'active' service providers such as EXO.

Category	Description	Examples
Active Private Military Company / Combat Support	Company personnel deploy in offensive and defensive combat roles alongside client forces.	Executive Outcomes (South Africa) & Sandline International (UK)
Passive Private Military Company	Provides military and tactical advice, weapons training and technical assistance	Sandline International, Executive Outcomes, Defence Systems Ltd. (London), Vinnel (USA), MPRI (USA), NFD (South Africa), Betac (USA), Strategic Applications International SAIC (USA)
Weapons procurement and advice	Equipment delivery, protection of humanitarian operations (logistics) DynCorp (USA), Lifeguard (UK and South Africa), DSL, Brown & Root (USA), Ibis Air (UK), Capricorn Systems (UK and South Africa)	Sandline International, Levden (Israel), Executive Outcomes Security Services
	Guarding of personnel & commercial property in hostile areas	Lifeguard, DSL, Saracen (South Africa), NFD
Political and Security Risk Analysis	Assess political, economic risks of countries for foreign investors	Control Risks Group (UK), DSL, Sandline International, Kroll (USA), Economist Intelligence Unit (UK)

Active military companies may provide training or equipment to increase the force capability of a client government's armed forces. If this support fails to give the client the strategic or operational edge required to suppress the military advance of insurgent groups, APMC's are capable of deploying their own troops directly into combat zones. Contracts are governed by the strict understanding that employees of the private company remain at all times subject to the operational chain of command of government armed forces. The ability to deploy offensively is EXO's greatest commercial and tactical asset according to Nic van den Berg, since it allows the company "to elevate the scale of the conflict to a level which [insurgent or rebel groups] are unable to compete with".

Beyond hearsay and speculation very little is known about the history of EXO or the corporate and commercial links which the company fostered during its nine years of service. According to its own promotional literature, Executive Outcomes was established in 1989 as a wholly owned and registered South African company. The company's founder, Luther Eben (Eeben) Barlow, was a former Lieutenant Colonel with South African military intelligence and one-time member of the apartheid regime's Civil Cooperation Bureau. Under Barlow's stewardship, EXO began life as one of the many front companies established by the SADF to provide intelligence, counter intelligence and counter espionage training to South African defence personnel.

EXO absorbed a number of ex-SADF operatives following the exposure and demobilisation of many covert apartheid units from the early 1990's onwards. Although the company did not employ South African citizens exclusively (as claimed in their promotional literature), a majority of personnel were drawn from elite forces such as 32 Battallion, Koevoet, and various special forces regiments within the SADF. Potential employees were recruited chiefly by word-of-mouth and remained on company register awaiting operational deployment. At their peak, EXO boasted "between four and five thousand cv's on file".

The company's operational policy reflects the obvious sensitivity which management felt toward public perceptions of their activities. It states that EXO will not work for the highest bidder. Other considerations came into play when negotiating contracts. In a presentation delivered at a private conference in Johannesburg, EXO emphasised that they would work only for internationally recognised governments with palatable human rights records; they would not become involved with embargoed regimes, terrorist organisations, crime syndicates or drug cartels, nor would they fight in religious or ethnic conflicts or support governments which posed a security threat to the Republic of South Africa. Executive Outcomes was, they claimed, committed to providing an independent, apolitical and well-trained peace enforcement unit, perfectly adapted to operational environments in Africa.

However, EXO was not the independent force it claimed to be. Indeed, the company shared close ties with mining and exploration companies including Branch Energy, Diamond Works and Heritage Oil & Gas. While these links are routinely denied by all parties, Nic van den Berg has since acknowledged the existence of "a business relationship between these [security and mining] companies even though they were not necessarily registered or formalised in that sense". While often exaggerated in the press, it appears that EXO may have formed the security spearhead for mining companies seeking to acquire mineral concessions through the forcible creation of a stable climate for investment. As David Shearer observes, this is "high risk, high return strategy…[which] provides access to potentially valuable areas otherwise out of bounds to companies lacking a comparable security element". EXO's operations in Angola, Papua New Guinea and Sierra Leone do indeed suggest a link between low-intensity conflict, military companies and strategic minerals.