Eeben Barlow: Executive Outcomes is back , Ep. 71

good evening folks or good morning if you're watching us in uh an african time zone as our guest is tonight i'm jack murphy here with co-host dave park our guest today is eben barlow eben is the founder and ceo of executive outcomes uh and he was also the chairman of a company called step he is written about proselytized about um in many different ways in the press much of it not so uh positive um but he has all done us uh i think a big service in writing a couple books here this is his first one uh executive outcomes against all odds which it talks about his life um as a as a soldier in the south african defense forces and then in a covert action branch called civil cooperations bureau this is uh this is a must read in my opinion uh he has also authored composite warfare this is a book on strategy and doctrine for the practitioners out there and tonight we're going to be talking mostly about his new book the war for africa and this covers this time primarily with the the company's step um which is what we're going to get into tonight and some of the work that he did um particularly in uganda and uh and also nigeria so even thank you so much for joining us tonight thank you very much jack for having me on your show again it's always a pleasure and uh you know there's so much to talk about we're i'm going to try to focus on just a few topics um and i know it's very late where you are uh it's what like it's um so even i i think right off the bat um could you just take a few minutes to tell us kind of who you are and how you got your your uh i mean why this world of private military companies or as a mercenary as some people would use a pejorative term um how did you find yourself into this life in this line of work in a way by accident um [Music] i was born in zambia which was then known as northern rhodesia and my dad and my mum eventually moved south for many reasons primarily work reasons and i ended up in south africa went into the south african army um i'm a very proud sapper and i ended up at a unit called fiji battalion and was the second in command of their reconnaissance swing later in the ccb as you've mentioned which was a covert group of the south african special forces and then suddenly found myself without work you know but every door that closes a new one opens and um i was asked if we could help an oil company protect and recover assets in a little town in northwestern angolan and soyu which we did um that led to a contract to train the angolan army ironically an enemy we'd fought several years prior to that um which we did and i like to think the unit we trained for them was instrumental in ending that war until it got to a point that foreign interests intervened again and and the rebels were allowed to reon in full knowledge of everyone and then they went back to war but by then we left really so but that just in brief is how i ended up doing what um i doing doing what sorry i'm just my coffee i just wanted a bit closer to me um thanks very much um and that's basically the story jack that was eo was started initially the company executive outcomes to train south african special forces um and that was what was what i was doing until such time as the angolan contract came along which of course it's interesting that many people have claimed they were the founders they were this they were the directors they were lying um and i've always said it's a simple matter to check it companies house who established the company and of course that led on to follow-on work fighting the ruf and sierra leone um there's a hostage rescue effort that um your employees participated in in indonesia and again i mean this is like a 600 page book here we can't unfortunately get into all of it tonight but this is an incredible incredible memoir um also talks about his time in civil cooperations bureau a lot of terrific stuff there um to take a look at that's going to interest readers um but you you closed down executive outcomes at a certain point and your second book here it starts off with your attempt at retirement and i just had to note that you were not so good at retirement this turned out to be something that your skills just did not lend itself to you try to retire you have a very a strong interest in horses um i was wondering if you could tell us about your your initial attempt to retire and how that went for you okay well first of all um i left executive outcomes because i'd actually become totally burnt out um you know i was fighting a war on several fronts it was not only the wars in the countries we were engaged in but there was a huge war going on with the domestic media domestic and foreign intelligence services and that type of thing just eventually became a little bit much because i was hardly sleeping and i was always having to defend what we were doing for governments and it was just almost unbelievable to me that the south africans who were actually supporting rebel movements they were never discussed it was almost as though it was fine to support them and that goes from you know the pre-1994 government to the post-1994 government so there was this whole thing and it just got a bit much you know what went wrong in the company later after i left i cannot discuss but the company did close its doors in 1998 but having said that all you know the media stories that it was because of south african legislation that's all lies it's you know and again all people have to do is go to the relevant state department in south africa and they'll see that we had a licensed doctor but you know it's much better to sort of intimate that we were operating illegally what it is to actually write the damn truth which a lot of these journalists have a problem doing and so how did it go after you you tried to step away from this line of work and and enjoy your life it wasn't very successful um i tried and you know before long certain embassies came knocking on the door and said they'd like me to act as an advisor to them which i started doing and i became an advisor a trusted advisor to the angolan government um in the 2000s and to several other embassies that i didn't write about because of the fact that i still have contact with these people and then in 2009 i was approached by three guys who'd spent time in chikirubi prison and who in zimbabwe who had been part of the so-called coup attempt in equatorial guinea while they were in prison they decided to create a company which the acronym step is special tasks training equipment and protection and in 2009 they asked me if i would be their chairman which i said okay i'll do that because i you know i just couldn't sit in my home doing nothing and i would just point out that these these three gentlemen who were cooling their heels in a prison in zimbabwe at the time um one of whom was uh named in your book uh as well uh mr loki horn who uh people who watched the previous episode of ours that we did with uh shane willard who was with the south african special task force he mentions loki several times during the interview and in his book so that's just a familiar uh person that people might recognize yeah it was very interesting because i was at shane's book launch um and my late brother was task force member number two um so you know i had a sort of a loose link with the task force guys and i still know many of them so that was uh your attempt at retirement you got approached uh by these three gents to become the chairman of the company um there's a lot in this book i don't think we're gonna have time to talk about some some adventures and misadventures in uh madagascar libya sudan a few other places some other familiar names that came up in the book that i had to chuckle a little bit as i uh as i didn't know everything that those individuals were a part of until i read your book um but i'd like to first talk about uganda a little bit and in the united states um something happened here which was of course the kony 2012 documentary that was made which kind of brought a long-standing issue in uganda to the forefront and i was wondering if you could tell us how you were initially approached by uh mr warren poole and brought into this project in uganda well first of all i think you know the the production and showing of the documentary about cody i think was very very important because it made the world aware of a really bad person running around doing exactly what he wants to do but you know prior to that the lra had become a thought in the side of several governments you might have read in the book about the guatemalan misadventure that were trained by your special forces who went into on a u.n mission to sort of stop the lra and had their heads chopped off um you know and and that sort of thing was forever there everyone knew about it but no one really spoke about it um so when the the video came out on on the koni i think it was kony 2012 or something i think you just mentioned it um it was very interesting because it did make the world aware of one of the bad characters running around in in africa i was then approached by lauren poole as you might have read in the book if you're the nice young guy um and asked whether we would consider looking at training a specific unit for the ugandan army in order to actually go after kony and hunt coney and get rid of him and he's his cabal um part of the problem was that a lot of these people with coney are children um there are kids who've been kidnapped they're five six years old when they're kidnapped they're brutalized they forced to do things so you know they they already are very traumatized by what's going on and the problem then is to distinguish between the legitimate bad guys and which are the kids because larry poole and his group wanted to actually get these kids out and rehabilitate them and actually make them something in society so that was really where it all started and so then from that point how did you merge with warren's efforts and then it turned out that there was a benefactor um behind him i believe um and then making contact with the ugandan military and government and and like how did all these forces get brought together well prior to larry even approaching me um i've been in uganda working with the ugandan defense force on the development of doctrine so i knew a lot of the senior officers in the ugandan people's defence force um and i said to larry that you know regardless the ugandans have to have a buying on this and i would discuss it with them and if they were okay with it then we would be willing to assist them um i contacted several general officers of the ugandan military and they were amenable to the idea and everything started happening from there i think that's kind of an important point to to highlight because a lot of people when they think of what you do even they think about these wild off the mercenary operations but this was also with the cooperation and invitation of the ugandan government it wasn't a rogue operation [Music] well not at all um you know this is just to me the the short-sightedness which people have that write about this we cannot 10 or 12 of us as was the case with uganda go in there on our own and suddenly decide what we're going to be doing they had a professional military um how on earth can 10 people go in and dictate what an army must do you know so it's just the the idiocy of it and it really just shows the total lack of understanding not only of africa but of how armies in africa work could you talk to us a little bit about uh shannon sedgwick davis i thought she was a fascinating person in your book and the way that you and loki uh made contact with her and and just she had it struck me the passion and the and the will to try to do something positive in uganda and but even you and your men were the ones who kind of made it happen on the ground or at least began to make it happen it could never have happened without her um i mean that's the reality of it i think she is a fascinating person in that she was very passionate about what laren and then wanted to achieve and she was very focused on what she wanted us to achieve you know and she insisted on always being kept up to date it wasn't a matter of looking over our shoulders she said you know what are you going to be doing we told her this is what we're going to be doing so she was really there to she was really the fire or the spark that lit the fire in terms of encounter lra operations unfortunately um when word got out and it wasn't through us what was happening in uganda she became she was approached by your authorities and told to shut down and get rid of us and that's that was really what happened in brief i mean there's a lot there's a back story to all of that but she was really that the driving force behind everything could you just explain who this person was i mean she wasn't just some random person i mean she had a sizable organization that she was running to support these yes efforts she she works for people who deal with money she's a highly qualified educated person she's worked in dangerous areas before mainly regards to child trafficking in the far east and she's not a person who will you know buckle down to anyone demanding something unless it's it's very very serious but yes there's a big organization behind it and they were quite willing to donate their money in order to end what was happening in uganda and of course obviously with ugandan buy-in in the whole entire operation so then what's the next step from there to up crea you had to create a plan and then operationalize it in uganda yeah well as i say i i knew the ugandan generals um some of them and what was striking to me was that when i told them what i envisaged they were quite happy to go along with it and bear in mind they'd known me from the 90s already some of these generals so it wasn't a matter of they didn't know me at all the strategy was developed and as you know [Music] the the strategy is what leads to the the structure of an organization you don't design an organization and then try and build a strategy around what you have you actually have your ends and ends leads to the organizational hierarchy so speaking to the ugandans i said to them that i did not think the current way of fighting the lra or any such type of movement is relevant um world war ii sections platoons companies battalions don't work and we would like to structure differently and the chief of the army said fine go ahead and do it and prove the concept which also told me that the ugandans were very open-minded about it they were willing to debate issues they felt weren't properly carried across or that they they felt were wrong um it was really a great way in which to to build a unit and those were known as the special operations groups in fact two of them were trained and these guys did very very well in the field could you approve the concept could you talk a little bit about the the training camp that your men established and just though like what struck me was the incredibly austere conditions that these guys were working in it wasn't the typical private security contractor job where these guys are staying in hotels like they were out in the bush the entire time jack we've always believed if we train troops we live as they live um we eat what they eat we are from africa we don't we don't need a kentucky fried chicken um or a mcdonald's outlet close to us um you know if they eat rice and beans that's what we eat we need rice and beans if they live under trees and under babies we live under trees and under babies that's one way in which you get troops to understand that you are there to actually be with him that you are willing to share the tough times with them and equally that you will need to share good times with them so we had you know the guys lived they went and bought themselves pup tents eventually um you know these were small one-man tents and they lived in these tents for three four months at a stretch um and that was home we had some tents the ugandan military gave us some of them had pretty big holes in but we used what we had um because our philosophy is we use what a government gives us and obviously the tents we needed because when rains came it rains out there the area where the training was was close to the drc um sudan border pretty rough country um you know not unusual for a mamba to fall out of a tree and land on top of a tent and slither down the tent and go off on its own um certainly it was um a rough country but the guys did well even so what makes you so successful what made eo so successful in the early days and then you being able to approach these generals in uganda and and the clout that you have i mean could you have taken anybody from the ccb and and i mean there are a lot of other people that didn't achieve what you did is it your ability to organize is it your your brilliance is it your passion is it your ability to think outside the box is it the people you know like why are you so successful over the long term against so many organizations first of all dave i'm i'm successful in that sense because i have good men with me um where i'm weak there are guys that are strong and i think that's what makes a team really but going back to why was eos successful why was stepp successful it has to do with a campaign strategy there has to be a focused ends that ends has to be aligned with a national strategy um and if those two are aligned you can win and often i watch and i say this with great respect foreign forces coming to africa they don't understand the operating environment they don't understand the area of operations they don't understand the people and there's no campaign strategy so you cannot just train troops to train troops because actually then you're wasting time and money troops need to be trained for the mission and the mission is determined out of the campaign strategy so i think that's what's what's made these companies successful one of the big um mistakes that if i can be so bold to say on the american side uh as you know a former green beret myself and kind of covering these things as a journalist is we come into foreign countries and we try to create mirror images of ourselves we try to take american military doctrine and train foreign units in very different situations very different circumstances and the same tactics that american soldiers use um which of course as americans we're lucky we have f-16 fighter jets that can call in airstrikes we have all this medical support we have all these indirect fire systems we're training a indigenous military unit they don't have those things frequently so i mean i think that if i could be so bold even i think that may also be a part of it is that you guys are africans and you understand the operational environment better and you tailor the training and the campaign strategy to that specific situation rather than bringing in a big book of doctrine and it's thrown it down on the table and saying this is what we're going to use jack i think you know you touched on a very important point doctrine if you go back to doctrine it started really to to develop this doctrine after world war one and and was sort of refined in world war ii as we entered new generations of warfare and these doctrines haven't changed much um if you look at african armies we're taught doctrine by their colonial masters for want of a better word or their cold war allies and those were doctrines designed for the west to fight the east somewhere in bloody europe now you want to take that and bend it so that it suits a specific environment in africa it's not gonna work um and as you rightfully say you know these are not high-tech wars we're not calling in airstrikes with f-16s and and where we have apache gunships we're lucky if we have one mi-24 um if we have you know two or three helicopters going we're really excited because then we've got some ability to maneuver so you know you you cannot teach people maneuver warfare but they don't have the assets with which to do it right um or or teach them maneuver warfare and then sell them the crap no one else wants which is going to break down immediately and i have a i have a problem with that and even maybe on that note this would be a good point to talk about the campaign strategy you had set out for the special operations group in uganda and the difficulties that you had with that maneuver piece with the helicopters and country when you talk of a nightmare um is when you really have and we had very good ugandan troops who were very well trained very positive wanted to do something and i started noticing a problem quite early on because i was asked to deploy into the drc as a updf guy because we become part of of their structures and take over a battalion known as 31 battalion we were busy with counter lra operations the problem was that the air assets which were two or three mi eights belonged to pae and and they had subcontracted some ukrainian guys to fly them so before any airlift could take place a request had to go to the ukrainian guys who would contact um pae would then contact state department um so you had this lengthy line of communications and eventually to us it was the air assets were of more value to the enemy than what they were to the client um you know and people can criticize me for saying that but that's just the truth when we called for air support and not in terms of a strike just for a lift we were told no it's you know it's going to rain or the pilots are tired or they're servicing the aircraft and it just became a joke um you know in troops there was one um updf tune that by the time we asked for airlift had already walked on foot 600 kilometers through jungle but they can't get air support and we had to try and use an old vehicle to try and position guys when we determined you know the aim is to to basically do dummy drops on the side of the enemy and channel them to a specific direction which we we bluff them into believing and they went for a specific river crossing point in central african republic um we still couldn't get airlift capacity and and to me it was you know what are these guys being paid for are they being paid to just sit around and fly what they think are the glory flights were they too scared to fly or do they just don't want to fly and this is something i brought up with our sponsors at that time to say look this is only going to work if we control the air assets got to a point where i was told i'm not allowed on board the helicopters you know my first lift out of the drc the ugandans brought in a small helicopter to fetch me it was just myself and my medic a man called sean who was with me in the drc because the contracted helicopters paid for by the us government would not fly in to fetch us but you know this is ridiculous and that type of thing does not win you friends it builds up animosity towards you you know i'm not the enemy the ugandans aren't the enemy and unless we are actually secretly the enemy well so it was very very frustrating it did seem as you write about it in your book that the united states and the the state department and in the united states special forces were trying to stymie your efforts over there i mean eventually we got off our asses on our side and we started to try to get into uganda to deal with the lra you your guys were already there what what was this friction um why did why do you think that existed and what did they do to kind of try to push you out well i think obviously i can't answer for the us number one number two um the sending in of the hundred special forces guys um was under the previous us administration okay who suddenly got whatever they needed but we're not very keen on using these special operations groups that had been trained in fact a lot of them were redeployed to mogadishu as part of the au force over there and to us this is just unbelievable these are guys that are trained in jungle warfare you don't deploy them to mogadishu and there's a lot of very negative feedback from the ugandans concerning the u.s special forces um in uganda and then i have to tell you what really got my goat was the very misleading article that said four green berets had destroyed kony and i think are included in the book giving no credit to the ugandans who were the guys who actually did the heavy lifting but number two coney wasn't destroyed he's still out there um you know so there's and there's no friction between us and the us i'm talking soldier to soldier but when foreign interests start actually derailing operations in order to exert influence on an area i think a problem is bound to happen it's not going to win your friends ultimately you know there's a difference between how the traditional east come and do business in africa and now the traditional west do business the traditional west wants to militarize africa and it creates a huge amount of problems the traditional east are buying up africa so they they negating that influence the west thinks it has and which it is steadily losing in africa where do you think old joe coney really was and is when he was in central african republic yeah but you know the aim was to to clear them out of the drc into central africa republic there is a ugandan or there was in the time we were there an agreement between the drc central africa republic southern sudan and uganda to conduct cross-border operations um if we could have driven kony out of the drc and ultimately into southern sudan or into the hills in darfur we could have wiped them out um but it didn't work that way simply because we had to do the walking um because helicopters weren't available to to actually implement the plane that was put into place what was it like for you going out on ops with these guys i mean no no offense even but you're not a uh you know 20 year old lieutenant in the sadf anymore but you're still going out on patrol with these guys a few times out in the bush jack we have a belief that if you train troops you don't train them and send them off to go and do something on their own and you go with them and if you can't go with them don't train them um it was bloody tough um you know as you say i'm no longer a 20 year old second left in it i'm a 25 year old lieutenant now um every step i take the kid gets heavier um you know i struggled and if anyone kept those troops if anyone broke their speed it was probably me um but i like to think that we have such good relations with these guys that they they overlook my um hampering of the operational tempo but you know every morning despite these guys being heavily weighed down with equipment and ammunition they would come to me every single morning and ask if they could carry my kid from me and to me that's a sign that we've earned their trust and we've earned their respect by being willing to put in the hard yards for them eat the same what they eat live as they live and actually fight as they fight even it must have been very frustrating uh when you say that if you would have just had uh air support that you could have you know accomplished these goals and and what not how was uganda and and the military not in the position to like purchase airframes train up air crews um and develop that capability without contracting it out you have to remember dave that uganda has a very large contingent in mogadishu um that is actually one of the prime operations that they at that stage were busy with okay so in many ways the lra was a sort of a sideshow in a sense still a very important sideshow but a sideshow in in comparison with mogadishu the air assets the ugandans had were primarily deployed into mogadishu and somalia area and i also think that the contracting of airlift capability was really primarily done to support and sustain the fourth infantry division's base in southern sudan so and i think that's how the contract has ended up there but it didn't it didn't help much in terms of operational airlift right it didn't help at all and so what what operations before things before that friction got so bad that you guys were kind of forced out of the country um what sorts of operations did uh this the special operations group and some of your men are running in uganda in the surrounding countries well the first um special operations group that deployed was initially sent off to 4th infantry at nazara in southern sudan and as i write my medic and i we deployed with them so we were the only two pale faces with the ugandans in the drc and it was mainly you know locate the lra and annihilate them um a lot of ambushes were laid but again you know if if the enemy is moving at a speed through terrain that he knows and you don't know the ability to lead from your men ahead of him and to the sides of him is critically important we couldn't do that so we had to try and bluff and use vehicles to drop one vehicle didn't have vehicles um to drop guys off and those vehicles had problems you know so it became an exercise in fact i wrote to shannon to say that you know we actually cannot if we carry on like this we're just wasting money and time um and we're not in the game of wasting people's money um it just has the air assets and we'll end these guys but obviously there's only a certain amount that they could donate to the updf it ultimately then became what we got paid to do our training because that was the agreement you know let me just say that the updf through no fault of these just didn't have that air support you know it was just wasn't available because primarily they bogged down in mogadishu and and then how did the how did that finally happen that the whole um uganda mission kind of got shut down for you guys and i remember you wrote in the book about there's also a accident with a dishka machine gun and some of your guys got hurt pretty badly yeah but that that wasn't the reason for us leaving uganda um the um training was going to be done on it the guys struck the gun down cleaned it took it to the range i think it was a sunday um drew ammunition from the store in a faulty round exploded in the chamber um a couple of guys got pretty badly hurt um one or two of them said they were staying up there they seeing the end of the contract but guys who were really badly hurt were brought back to south africa i was told that there was a visit by us authorities to shannon and that certain files were taken and certain instructions were given to shut down the operation and she discussed it with us um you know and i have to also appreciate that you know she's approached by the us government she's a u.s citizen and she has to comply with whatever is told her um the end result was is that kobe is still around um with had we been able to finish what we started and had we had the air assets we could have ended this but that wasn't destined for us even with such a successful track record in in africa in different parts of africa do you know why the u.s didn't approach you or didn't try to onboard you or even ask you for training area fam you know indoctrination those sorts of things i have no idea dave it's something you know we can speculate about it but i am told i'm not exactly going to get a christmas card from the us we'll send you one that's that's a strange thing you know we don't we're not enemies of the us we we see ourselves as fighting the same enemy right um but unfortunately for some reasons we the bad guys in everything yeah which is kind of silly if you think about it because if our government was a little bit smarter about it they would use you guys as essentially proxies um to do these things to to take care of some of these bad actors out there and you know from our government's perspective if things go wrong you know what they're going to do ah well it's the south it's nothing we can do right i mean really that's that's how that would go down i i understand that um i think also part of the problem is we're not controlled by um a sponsor yeah we go to a country to work with that country's government and that country's armed forces what we do aligns with what day ends on we're not going to come in and throw our weights around and say no you can't do this or you're going to do that or we're going to withhold funding from you you know we're not in that game besides we don't have the money with which we threatened us anyway ultimately i think what is becoming a problem is a clash of domestic interests with foreign interests and governments have allowed that to happen and and when a country's domestic interests cash with the foreign interests of a superpower the country's gonna lose unless they stand up for themselves i i want to kind of shift gears a little bit to get into uh nigeria and boko haram um but before moving on just something i wanted to say about your book even is that i thought it did a terrific job at shedding light on what's considered a very dark and shadowy world and you know as well as i do all the things that are published about yourself and about private military companies that make it seem very sinister uh in your book you talk about writing out the uh the table of organization and equipment for this unit in uganda and you're writing it out on your kitchen table because your desk is such a mess and it's like you know this is just a guy trying to do something to be helpful i mean this is not the dark shadowy uh sinister thing that it's been made out to be um and i think people will be quite surprised when they read your book you know jack they they have to make it sinister because they've lied so much in the past and they have to stick with their narrative um they can't change it now and say everything we wrote previously was about the lies and we were secretly paid for it i think if anyone moves in the dark secret world with some people in the media um you know we transparent with what we do but we are only transparent with that government and that we are under contract to or working with and if there's an external sponsor we transparent with that person other than that's got nothing to do with the media besides all these people writing these stories what if they contributed toward africa let's be quite honest a big fat zero right they have lied tried to create division so discord misled and misdirected people um yet they have the final say on what's going to happen in africa and and actually have the goal to criticize african governments for calling on africans to help it's like you know are they living in a different bloody dimension or what's going on even i you know they in the press they sometimes refer to you as some sort of uh rabid dog of war but uh for my part i always found you to be a nice guy i don't believe them yeah that's the problem jack i was wondering then could you tell us about the chai box school girls and your entry into the conflict in nigeria okay well um i think everyone knows about the shibok girls who were kidnapped um from the the school they were at and taken hostage by boko haram um bakarim as you mentioned earlier is a is an internationally recognized terrorist movement that has its roots in islam um so our contract was and and we were a subcontractor to the entire endeavor was to train a hostage rescue team to rescue the shibok girls that was the initial mission time frame given to us was three months um the initial plan was we're going to select a group of guys from the nigerian army who by the way i must tell you are very nice guys they're good troops they're keen to learn and as soon as they realize they're not being bullshitted as they have been for many years by foreign trainers they are very keen to actually do their job so you know i took to those guys those nigerians we worked with but anyway we started whittling them down to get a sizeable team for a hostage rescue operation shortly after that probably about three weeks after we started there um we were asked to change the mission because seven division up at mariguri was about to be overrun by boko haram and could be suddenly changed now you know we're training guys for hostage rescue suddenly we have to train people to become a lot more offensive and in hostage rescue you're looking for a specific type of guy who's not going to just shoot whatever pops up out the bush he's going to identify and then fire now we have to change this and take these guys and say no no no wait now we're going to change the way you're going to go to war so we structured a new unit called the 72nd mobile strike force and again with very little equipment um you know the media claimed we'd arrived with tanks and fighter aircraft and helicopters all lies what we did get were n raps from south africa and we asked for south african ones because we know them and we trust them um helicopter wise we had mi 24 1 we had two civilian gazelles that had modified by our own people with 12.7 millimeter guns mounted in the doors and we had two or three um helicopters and we had a one puma and that was basically it so we structured this force rushed off to maiduguri met the commander of the division and said to him look you know we understand your situation um we understand that a lot of your guys have actually suffered at the bad end of the enemy and we need to fix this so would you allow us to develop a strategy a campaign strategy we as this mobile strike force will act as the spear of your division we will take the enemy on and your division follows behind all your units of the division and start holding the ground which the strike force has taken um and the the division commander hell of a nice guy um yeah just give you an example we used to have our meetings at two o'clock in the morning um you know so and he was busy throughout the day so it wasn't that this guy was sitting doing nothing um so we'd have our meetings and we'd discuss these things and throw around ideas and how we can best achieve things and when we started the first phase of our operation was to drive a wedge right through terrain so-called held by boko haram the division would stabilize it and hold it and then phase twos we'd move south and clear them out the south and phase three clear them out the north um unfortunately it never turned out that way because even the division commander had certain political um obstacles to overcome and i remember the moment where it broke in the media that there were south african military contractors in nigeria and i was like oh my gosh and then i started poking around a little bit and i realized you were over there and we started talking a little bit about it but um what what what was that pressure like on you and your men at that point that suddenly there was a tremendous amount of of public pressure um or should i say attention at least on what you guys were doing over there well i think you know the the the pressure started when the prime contractor and i say again we were subcontractors to this gave the story to the media the media added their own take on it and you know whether he did it for the right or the wrong reasons is irrelevant he shouldn't have done it as far as i'm concerned um but yes there was suddenly huge pressure and once again just the hypocrisy of it all everyone's shouting nigeria do something about boko haram when they do it but they do it with south africans it's it's an international disaster right in terms of media reportage and you know we we um integrate with these armies we work with so we wear their uniforms we address them by their ranks them by our ranks and there's structure to this this isn't you know some lunatic force put together that just goes and does what it wants to do um there's a huge amount of discipline in this and and very much awareness as to who's the enemy and who isn't the enemy so it's always interesting for us to sit back and you know read the rubbish that's written about us um it got so bad that the south african minister of defense wanted us arrested when we came back to south africa for daring to help the nigerians you know to me this is just once again the madness of what sometimes goes on be that as it may we finished our three-month term um but as we were nearing the end of our three months we were told that there will be a change in government and that that new government will make sure that we will no longer be in nigeria you know as i've said before we're not going to get into a pissing contest with anyone they want to come and do it let them come and do it just a pity that the seven years prior to us getting there nothing was done right you know window dressing training right i've never seen an ak blank before jack until i got to nigeria yeah so what sort of training are these guys being given and to be it said because the nigerian soldier is a bloody good soldier if he's properly trained and led right and probably the way it was being reported and spread out is almost as if you had your own french foreign legion there you know you know this whole army of mercenaries well yeah they made it seem like it was mike horn and five commando back in back in the old days right and uh and it just wasn't and i was mentioning to you before we got started even um that at the time um just as i think you guys were just in the process of leaving nigeria uh i had written an article where i quoted you and you were disputing some of the things in the press that were saying that you and your men were these sort of south african apartheid era relics these racists that just you know kind of revel in killing black people and you were very much disputing that fact um and i remember i published that article and within like maybe 12 hours the guardian had published like a full rebuttal to it it was clear that they were responding to what i had published and they were quoting these academics and these professors and they were what they were saying was because you had served as soldiers under the apartheid government in south africa back in the 1980s and early 90s they were making like none of you could ever contribute anything positive to the world that you would be forever these apartheid racists and and that that's it full stop i thought it was just incredible to see the way that they they painted all of you in that light yeah jack the interesting thing is that journalists who write that type of thing seldom leave their offices right if you really think about it the guys of eo and the guys of step we're not only south africans we're not only white we had guys from the sadf yes we had guys from the anc which was their military wing in the country we had guys from namibia we had angolans with us we had some ugandans with us now in any right-thinking person his mind think that we're going to go into nigeria and act as though we are colonizing nigeria do you think they're going to put up with that do you think they are going to allow us to harm a single nigerian [Music] right well i'm serious i asked a question do you think that the nigerians will allow 20 whites to come in there and start killing nigerians and they will hack us to death with machetes but this has to be fed to people the narrative must be driven that all the problems in africa really are caused by whites or caused by blacks you know and that no white and no black can contribute anything meaningful to this continent and it's almost this this desire of people in the media to try and suppress the people of this continent i will tell you that i will fight with a black soldier any day of the week if he's properly trained and properly led no doubt about it and sadly i cannot say that for many white soldiers i am an african i might be a bloody pale face but this is where i live this is where i've contributed to this continent and if people don't like that that's their problem not mine of all these journalists who who wrote about it how many of them came out and visited you how many of them reported from on the ground uh you know from the front line as it were well that that was challenging because i tried excuses um in the time of executive outcomes dave there was one and that was a guy called jim hooper who came out to sierra leone and spent time with us in sierra leone there were journalists that we took up to angola we were more interested in seeing how much they could drink um at night and i'm serious they sometimes had to be put in bed by the guys they were gonna come back and write rubbish about um but there was one journalist and that was him and jim wrote what he perceived happening on the ground and he and jim is critical of us when he has to be physical and we accept it um but at least he writes facts and he doesn't embroider it with innuendos and little stories that he makes right could you then talk us through some of the the battles that the 72nd mobile strike force and your guys participated in well i have to confess that i didn't partake in many battles with him i was um during phase one of what was initially the campaign strategy was to drive a wedge between the area southport controlled by barcaron and i was in the force that took a town called martha and suddenly we were told to stop there was pressure being put on the nigerians and we had to withdraw back to maiduguri at that stage i then had to leave because i was on my way to garamba national park in the drc with one of my guys um but the force went on there were several isolated ambushes they drove into and the little attacks they did um but probably the big one was um a town called balmer which was a very large book iron concentration and sort of safe zone which they took along with members of the seventh division but there were many isolated skirmishes that took place and there was also uh that unfortunate blue on blue incident with the nigerian military and not to belabor this point but i thought it was interesting you point out in your book as well that one of your men a white south african was lost but also a black uh african was lost in that in that contact really only one was focused on internationally sadly yeah no i know and there were nigerian guys wounded in the back of that vehicle as well and it's almost as though they're all glossed over you know they don't matter um which is in a way i had to laugh when the the black lives matter movement started because all of this was about a white life that had been lost and no one spoke of the the black guys that had died or the black guy that had died or the locals that are being slaughtered on a daily basis out there no one makes anything of that and when you try and stop it you are suddenly the bad guy you know there's this great hypocrisy that drains but as i said to you earlier orwell taught us in a time of universal deceit the truth is a revolutionary act and in your book i mean i think that you're incredibly candid in it about mistakes things that went wrong uh frictions even between your own men and the fallout from that particular incident that blew on blue contact was a a a veteran uh who you uh appear to greatly admire and respect he ended up leaving the company because he got blamed for that incident whether rightly or wrongly well you know i i have to ultimately be held accountable for that because i had made an assumption i was on my way to the drc um to a place called garamba national park there was going to be a link-up operation and i asked are you guys happy with how you've planned the link-up operation and they said yes and i should have questioned in more depth but i didn't um and there were many factors that led up to that problem um you know there was a lack of communication timings weren't adhered to by forces there was a host of problems the end result was that there is still a belief that there were members of the um division that purposely fired at the strikeforce entering or coming close to the division's larger area for the night it was a tank that shot out one of the mraps the the story is horrifying that you relate in the book where the t-72 tank rolls into the middle of the street and elevates its gun turret on them and they're like they're like he's yelling turn off the headlights turn off the headlights yeah jack this wasn't even in the street this is going cross country you know there are very few roads there but they saw him and they they actually switched on their lights to warn the the divisions lager area that they approaching you know so but again you know i've said it before we suffered from a lack of equipment we suffered from a lack of communications and communications with the division logger area was by a satellite phone to maidaguri and then relayed back to the divisions logger area you know you it's very difficult to work like that and for our american viewers out there um just have to dispel you from some of the ideas that you might have about military operations these guys did not have night vision goggles um they did not have high-tech radios they did not have any of the things that we would be used to using in the united states military um as even said these are very low-tech battles that are being fought out there well and even with all of our high-tech resources we still have blue on blue i mean we you know during the opening phase of the iraq war we had a uh a tank fire on on a us vehicle uh you know that they were in the same they're in the same movement they just got separated and the tank fired so even with all the high-end and high-tech stuff it's very easy to get confused in that sort of fog of war environment that is true it happens and it happens all over the world that you get these i'm not blaming the nigerians per se for what happened right what i am saying is ultimately i am accountable for that because i never questioned um so i should carry the blame for that i was the aircraft was waiting to uplift me um and if they didn't uplift me i would have to wait a week um which has a huge knock-on effect all across all the other operations and things happening there's no night vision equipment you know one of the problems we had in uganda as well we don't have thermal imaging we don't have drones we don't have air support on call um we have to make do with what there is so was it disappointing was it disappointing after the presidential elections that you had not yet completed the mission and yet steph was being asked to leave the country and and you guys of course you did the right thing you left the country you're not there to launch a coup or or anything of this nature but it must have been disappointing that the mission had not been well the completed started a bit earlier than that jack that you know the the campaign strategy which i write about in the book i know would have worked it would have cleared out the enemy um in in in the in the division operational area of operations that we were working in um we knew the contract was three months um we were initially told it is going to be extended to allow us to finish what we started um but then it became apparent that it is a political thing and remember we guests in the country we don't [Music] we don't arrive there with a division or a brigade or anything we arrive with very few people relatively speaking um we are guests in that country and if that government says you know what you have to leave or the military tells us you have to leave because it's it's becoming a there's a clash of foreign interests going on over here we'll leave you know we're not there to to as i said earlier getting to a pissing contest with anyone the government says leave we leave we're there to to do a job um if you're not allowed to finish the job the comeback on that is not on us it's on that government right we have uh some pretty big issues to get into but i'm gonna hit some viewer questions first um alex asks is there going to be an audio version of your books not at the moment that i'm aware of i don't know who will read it i i mean there's a lot of interest i think um ian asks uh if you can weigh in on the chibok girls you already talked about that uh it fell out of the news here shortly after the hashtag activism failed um were they freed what what was the ultimate fate of the schoolgirls no a lot of them are still being held captive um you know some of them were released some escaped but there were still some of those girls with bulgaria and you know obviously the way it works is a lot of them are forced into marriage and to have children yeah yeah uh there's a question right underneath that that i just happen to see it's just says from rise guard can you please tell uh even barlow that he is a great inspiration for me so i just that's nice [Music] thank you very much i one gentleman here djd uh asks what are evan's thoughts about the recent changes as the ethiopian government shifts from the tplf government that has been in power for the past 30 years and how might that affect all of africa first of all i don't have particular thoughts on ethiopia simply because it's never been an area we've really looked at um you know the the internal dynamics within the country itself are really for ethiopia to to resolve but i think part of the the very long-running tensions between ethiopia and eritrea um could become a problem as well as the dam that's being built in the nile river um i think there could be some tension developing over there but you know what we're currently seeing unfolding integra area net i cannot comment on it because i haven't really studied the oranges the origins of the problem and therefore you know i'm not qualified to talk on it and uh gerwayne just want to say thank you to you man um so there are some other um bigger things i wanted to get into but i think one of the ones one of the bigger ones that people are asking about is you and wrote on social media recently that you were reviving executive outcomes that you stepped down as the chairman of step uh several years ago and that you're reviving executive outcomes i mean after so much drama and mellow drama surrounding executive outcomes what inspired you to do this what what's going through your mind right now that you uh you decided to take this course of action well first of all our left step for reasons i write in the book um i don't know if you've completed the book yet jack but there comes a time where i say i cannot accept what's what happened and therefore you know i stepped down as as your chairman i was never a shareholder of the company so i could leave um as soon as it became known that i had left there were governments that approached me through their people yet in pretoria and and by phone to say look we understand you've left please restart executive outcomes and to me it was i didn't want to restart the company but it was really pressure from a few governments that said okay i'll do a thing um governments have long since seen through the deception and the lies and the about the executive outcomes and a lot of governments admitted it several years ago that they now and only then understood how they'd been lied to about executive outcomes um you know it's not me sitting here saying we did good in africa and residing africa that's not that's not what it's about the company did incredibly good work saved hundreds of thousands of lives and governments have now finally understood that you know all these back stories added on were just lies so they wanted the company to be re-established which is what i then do what do you do you have any plans for the types of contracts you would like to secure what what uh direction you'd like to head on are we talking about advisory work are you looking to really bring back the types of operations that you did back in the 1990s well executive outcomes um saw its mission to support assist train and mentor government forces very similar to what steph later did executive outcomes is going to do exactly what it did in the past um but there are other elements that are going to be added on to it there are there's a lot of talk right now and i believe some of the former employees of yours um are already active in mozambique and you wrote about mozambique a little bit towards the end of your book and the problems that they're having um tremendous hydrocarbon reserves found off the coast of mozambique which is no doubt going to lead all sorts of problems unfortunately is this a part of the world that you're interested in looking at right now well mozambique's a unique situation in a sense jack the first warnings were issued to them in 2016 were ignored they were warned again in 2017 the warnings were ignored and and the warnings were not specific and let me let me point that out they were very general warnings copper delgado is largely in many instances an ungoverned space you know yes there are one or two big towns um several villages but there's no governance there and that in itself creates an environment in which anger and frustration from the populace can grow the rulings issued had to do with the area being used as an infiltration group by giuliani's okay some of them were on their way to south africa um ultimately in 2018 it was 2018 i was asked to submit a document to the government of mozambique which i did and like two weeks later the russians arrived wagner into mozambique but then i was told my document was shocked around a little bit and ultimately the contract awarded to a counter poaching company you know it's just like wow okay if they want to counter poaching company to fight this i think people are going to suffer casualties then some of the guys of step went across they were recruited by the counterparty company dike advisory group which i don't have a problem with if the guys are recruited to go and do something go and do it then if they're not working what did disappoint me very much as two directors went without telling me and i just felt i cannot work in a company where the directors betray their own company and that was why i left stead insofar as mozambique is concerned no we're not going to go in there they've got people in there that's not going very well um but you know all the advice that was given was ignored to go in now is going to cost double the effort and a hell of a lot more money not because we want to charge more money to fix the problem but because the problem has escalated to a point where your means are going to be a hell of a lot more than what were required two years ago right on that note carl asks what does eben think about the future of pmcs in africa and how will the presence of chinese and russian pmcs like wagner affect the continent i think it's going to depend on government to government you know the south african government was again sort of browbeaten into formulating a law against pmcs from south africa i think if pmcs are honest with the governments if they actually do what they undertake to do i think they could have a good future but i do think we are seeing a very unlevel playing field you know russian chinese pmc is coming as do foreign western pmcs they don't bid for the contracts they're given the contracts and the money um whereas we have to go to a government and say you know what we're going to need x amount of dollars and we need it for the following reasons when foreign pmcs come in they claim they're giving all this for free but we all know nothing's for free um but the group just gets tighter and tighter on that government rather came in to mozambique i still think they overestimated their own abilities and underestimated the threat and probably thought it's a walk in the park and it didn't actually turn out like a walk in the box and the same has happened elsewhere with him um the chinese pmcs have been a lot more quiet um haven't really made themselves known although they are floating around um but there's a lot of intelligence gathering taking place on the continent but again not only from the chinese from the west as well everyone's jockeying for africa's resources and unfortunately africans are caught in the crossfire where i talk africans i'm talking broadly speaking but countries are being caught in this crossfire because these are little proxy wars going on um and the civilians are the victims of these things but pfcs if if they come in and do what they undertake to do and actually do it i think they'll have a very good future but they have to work with governments they can't as in the days of executive outcomes when we were established we working with the government but other companies are working with the rebels i mean you know that sort of defies belief right but and it still unfortunately happens do you feel as though some of these pmcs from whatever countries that are coming in and offering their services for free do you feel that basically they're just proxies for those countries you know uh moving in and and gaining more control maybe i'm very cynical yes i do believe that um i also believe that a lot of the ngos running around are really intelligence agencies um and a lot of ngos use that position to create bad feelings towards governments yeah look there's no government in africa or in the world that doesn't deserve some criticism sure with this be very honest about that but you don't come into a country so called to do your humanitarian work and then try and get the people to turn against the government i was like you know just hang on guys what are you trying to do over here right so i think yes a lot of a lot of foreign companies um or hunting foreign agendas alejandro asks speaking of ethiopia building the dam on the nile what's the over under that egypt might go to war with ethiopia uh with the river as a life source for them i really wouldn't be able to answer that i don't know um you know we've never really looked at egypt and ethiopia especially the dam i know that that dam is probably going to result in some problems but whether it's going to end up in a conflict i don't know i i can't say i'm sorry t-bar asks does even have any concepts on the ongoing conflict in libya between terrorism lna gna and the international actors it seems painfully complex which there are a couple chapters on libya and even's new book here the war for africa um that we we're probably not going to have time to really get into in depth but even please uh we'd love to hear your thoughts after i got arrested on the airport in tripoli i told the libyans they and their foreign backers deserve one another and i left and i have no interest in going back there what we are seeing is a huge fight unfolding for control of resources because of libya's oil um you know the sad part about libya is when i was in benghazi i met some people who i think in retrospect are really bad guys but they treated me incredibly well they showed me where the facility was that weapons were being moved but from by the us um into syria they told me that they were going to kill your ambassador we tried to warn your embassy over here and it appeared nothing was done um you know so libya to me is is a area that they must sort themselves out now we were there everything we were told or everything we told them they were told we're lying we don't know what we're talking about so you know and then of course being arrested was the cherry on top of the cake i was invited there um by that government and then the rest of them that's when i said you know what you deserve one another and one day when you stand in the bloody smoldering ruins of your country don't call us and then we'll consider coming back even i wanted to ask you you know you're uh very adamant that africans have to resolve african problems that there can't be foreign interlopers cannot come in and fix these things that are happening you know these local problems um but i was wondering if for the sake of my own edification and maybe some of the the americans who watch this i would really like to hear your thoughts on how you think american can be more constructive and how it engages with the african continent and the very very many different countries and languages and ethnic groups that inhabit the continent i cannot comment on on how america should um conduct itself in africa i don't think i'm suitably qualified for that but i do know that when it comes to security matters a huge amount of money has been spent and very little results have been achieved in fact and as you'll see in that book i write that members of the u.s armed forces threatened the national park which they used us all funding would be stopped to them and they would make sure of that and it's that type of bullying attitude that does not go down well you know africans in general and people will disagree with me but in general african people want to be left alone and live their lives okay but they are long in memory and short on forgiveness and things like that stick in their crew and they're not going to forget about that and it will come back one day and it might not come back in a nice way you know to me i believe that the uss private military companies into africa have just made matters worse because if i look at how much money has been spent and what the results are right there are no results on the table and i'm not being critical i'm just being honest about it you know being critical doesn't mean i'm being negative but i believe africans can solve africa's problems but we usually everyone wants to exclude us from the solution right and you know when i say africans i don't only talk of blacks or whites or whatever to me it's africans i'm a pale face but i'm an african right there's uh so much to get into but i mean i i think for the sake of brevity um we'll kind of start to wind it up there um london thank you so much for chiming in there um i wanted to do the bonus segment i'll i'll have to give us a second but i want to do the bonus segment in a few moments i'm going to ask evan or even about his uh meeting with uh the famous or notorious mike core of five commando fame in the congo um and then he was present for mr 100th birthday party um but even before we cut out on the on the main segment here is there anything you think that uh we failed to talk about anything we missed um that you really like to talk about and get out there for people jack it's so difficult because there are so many invisible wars happening and you know people aren't even aware of this but i would like to say that it's time someone really had to look at piracy because that's a bloody business model it can be ended but it appears the the world to end it is not there i also believe that some of these conflicts are business models as they allow foreign interests to expand themselves at the expense of the people who live in those areas and again i'm not being critical but allow me to ask you this why the sudden interest in niger is it because of the tardini basin that suddenly the war on terrorist transition from the middle east into niger how did that happen because that was bloody fast um so you are very cynical about a lot of things and again i'm not anti west or anti east i'm pro africa right if people want to make a difference in africa a positive difference i'm all for it i don't care who they are but if they will come in exploit and create collateral damage i'm not for that where do you think uh it has to start you does it does it start with an awareness amongst the people do the politicians have to i mean is it a result of corruption in the government uh that that allows these foreign prop these foreign powers to get so involved sometimes to the i mean often to the detriment of the to the country into the continent how do you how do you stop that influence or where does that begin in your you know opinion i think part of the problem is that many um countries really don't have a structured coherent national strategy think it all starts looking down from that and then of course some um countries utilize the intelligence services to gather intelligence on the opposition and not really fulfill their mandate which is to provide early warning actionable intelligence and predictive intelligence and then of course many governments were advised there are certain units they don't need um where i take south africa is a very good example in 1994 after the elections foreign advisors rushed in and advised the government you don't need these units you don't need those you must stay a danger and so military units that are effective in combat become politically expedient right and then when the problem starts everyone's caught napping because there's been no intelligence the units that could have done the job no longer exists right and it has a ripple effect because the populists lose confidence in the armed forces the armed forces say well we can't act because we don't have intelligence and we've been you know our teeth have been removed so it's there's a whole ripple effect but it to me it goes back to the national strategy right we had a couple people chime in i'll try to get through this real quick uh with foreign nations buying up african farmland and other resources how can it be ensured that the resources of africa ultimately benefit africa i've always said that what we see unfolding um africans need to take responsibility and be held accountable for these types of things you know there are countries to the north of south africa where the east virtually owned the countries where they own the harbors and the airports and these are strategic assets that that government should own where is it going to end i don't know how are you going to control that again i don't know because i do know that there have been ngos involved in resource extraction quietly and resource smuggling um you know and these are people that that come and put on the green net and say yeah are we here to save africa they they need to save their bank accounts that's what they're here for right right ian is asking a tongue-in-cheek joke here but maybe you actually know the answer from some of your work uh what does eben think a giraffe sells for on the open market in the u.s and is he surprised with the value i wouldn't know what a giraffe sells food alejandro says uh thank you mr barlow for your candor and openness you're a scholar and a gentleman and a soldier soldier i raised my glass to you cheers that's really fun thank you and alex asks can you please speak on the special relationship south africa has with israel also is executive outcomes looking for interns and how can we find eo online okay um again i cannot speak on the relationship between south africa and israel because i'm not a politician i'm not privy to what happens behind closed doors i hear directly um but that's about it and we're not looking for interns anywhere i have very good men from across africa but thank you very much uh and last one uh just a big piazzi he says like the wings on your hat fellow paratrooper um so even thank you so much for joining us tonight um please stay with us i'm gonna do the bonus segment in one sec um for everyone watching thank you so much for joining us live tonight um thanks for watching this afterwards wherever you caught us on on youtube or on a podcast or whatever our next episode next friday is going to be with clay huttmacher who was the commander of 160th special operations aviation regiment he's also a helicopter pilot himself um so we'll be talking to him next week and everybody please make sure you uh like share and subscribe to the video or the channel or the podcast or whatever it is um help the channel grow and there's a link down in the description to our patreon page if you're interested in supporting it yeah uh uh we missed one just uh london naji i think uh nagai or najib yeah i brought in oh do you say thank you um even where can uh we buy your new book because the first two are on amazon uh but this one is not on amazon us yet correct yeah it was only released on the 20th i think of november okay it's available at the moment only through a company known as war books um bushmore books but their web address is www.war books that's whiskey alfa romeo bravo oscar oscar kilo sierra dot co dot za we'll put a link down in the description to make it easy for people to find it um the link is in the inside cover of the book before i go through yeah so that's awesome again even thank you so much and uh we'll do the bonus segment in two seconds and thank you again everyone who joined us we'll see you next friday let's see if i can paste this i can't paste it all right okay we're out okay evan um do you need to take a two a little

Channel: The Team House

Views: 30,153

Rating: 4.9495993 out of 5

Keywords: Executive Outcomes, Eeben Barlow, STTEP, Nigeria, Uganda, Africa, PMC, South Africa

Id: stcrNWmPILs

Length: 90min 20sec (5420 seconds)

Published: Fri Dec 04 2020

Reddit Comments

[u/[deleted]]

That was a great episode