Adventure stirs deep in the marrow of youth, and before they had low-cost airfares, backpacks and student discounts, most people got their first trip overseas in uniform. Things have changed.
What can well-trained adventurers do to make this world a better place and tell stories to their grandkids? In the old days, boys could ride off to the Crusades or discover a New World, and all would have been well. Men could go off and fight for a noble cause then return with glory to their beloved country. While that still happens today, it is seldom seen.
Men fall easily into a world that can lead to scandals, war crimes and, ultimately, demise.
In many cases of men who have seen extensive combat, regular life is excruciatingly boring and burdensome. Simple choices, like picking which cereal to buy, seem inane and pointless. The adrenaline filled lifestyle that came with military service and was formerly dreaded, soon becomes appealing to the soldier turned civilian. It becomes an addiction.
Mercenaries are defined by the Geneva Convention as: “Soldiers motivated to take part in the hostilities essentially by the desire for private gain and, in fact, is promised, by or on behalf of a party to the conflict, material compensation substantially in excess of that promised or paid to combatants of similar ranks and functions in the armed forces of that Party.” What that says is essentially soldiers fighting for personally gain while being paid more than if enlisted in a legitimate, national army.
Why is this a problem? Men, and some women, sign up for private military contracting companies such as Blackwater (now Academi) thinking of high paychecks, great thrills and an outlet for their need to be in combat. They get all of that, but it comes at a steep price. Mercenaries are often left without a country to call home and operate in a shady gray area that world governments refuse to acknowledge in full. Additionally, mercenaries have been known to compete with the nation’s army of whom they fight for, massacre civilians and a barrage of other unknown war crimes. These crimes are not held against them, being that they are not a legitimate, punishable army.
Because these corporations are outside the bounds of regular armies and international discipline policies, private military contractors (PMCs) easily fall to corruption. DynCorp, a U.S. based, internationally active PMC, has been accused of numerous scandals including child sex trafficking, prisoner torturing and drug circulation.
In 2009, a United States diplomatic cables leak (Cablegate) was released, via WikiLeaks, containing information about DynCorp and it’s crimes during various conflicts of the past two decades. Referred to as the “dancing boy incident,” DynCorp contractors, employed to train Afghan police, were found exchanging drugs as payment for young “dancing boys” (child prostitutes).
Both U.S. and Afghan government ambassadors attempted to “quash” the story and video evidence of the crimes, but failed as the story eventually surfaced and was published later that year in The Washington Post.
Former soldiers trudging through civilian life find the idea of becoming a mercenary starkly appealing. Being a highly lucrative business – soldiers are paid anywhere from ten to fifteen thousand dollars a month – it quickly entices soldiers and draws them in. But everything has a catch.
Theoretically, any American that becomes a mercenary can lose his or her citizenship (although no known U.S. mercenary has thus far) and the chances of being summarily executed by the side of the road if captured are high. Because mercenaries have no country to call home, no cavalry in the form of Special Forces or gunships blazing will come dashing to the rescue if they are captured or wounded. Additionally, mercenaries are not treated as lawful combatants and, therefore, are not granted the rights that normal soldiers have under the laws of the Geneva Convention. This means that mercenaries can legally be tortured, killed, captured, et cetera without repercussions from a sovereign state.
While laws have been passed restricting mercenaries, infinite loopholes remain, and mercenaries are left to run free as the real lost soldiers of our world today.
