Erik Prince, the founder of
international security giant Blackwater
Worldwide, is secretly backing an effort by a
controversial South African mercenary firm to
insert itself into Somalia's bloody civil war by
protecting government leaders, training Somali
troops, and battling Islamic militants there,
according to Western and African officials.
The disclosure comes as Mr. Prince sells off his
interest in the company he built into a behemoth
with billions of dollars in American government
contracts in Iraq and Afghanistan, work that
mired him in controversy and lawsuits amid
reports of reckless behavior by his operatives,
including the deaths of civilians in Iraq. His
efforts to wade into the chaos of Somalia appears
to be Mr. Prince's latest endeavor to remain at
the center of a campaign against Islamic
radicalism in some of the world's most war
ravaged corners. Mr. Prince moved to the United Arab Emirates late last year.
According to a report by the African Union, an
organization of African states, Mr. Prince
provided initial funding for a project by Saracen
International to win contracts with Somalia's
embattled government. The Somali government has
been cornered into a small patch of Mogadishu by
the Shabab, a Somali militant group with ties to Al Qaeda.
Saracen International is a private security
company based in South Africa, with corporate
offshoots in Uganda and other countries. The
company was formed with the remnants of Executive
Outcomes, a private mercenary firm composed
largely of former South African special
operations troops that operated throughout Africa in the 1990s.
The company makes little public about its
operations and personnel, but it appears to be
run by Lafras Luitingh, a former officer in South
Africa's Civil Cooperation Bureau, an
apartheid-era internal security force notorious
for killings of opponents of the government.
With its barely functional government and a
fierce hostility to foreign armies since the
hasty American withdrawal from Mogadishu in the
early 1990s, Somalia is a country where Western
militaries have long feared to tread. This has
created an opportunity for private security
companies like Saracen to fill the security
vacuum created by years of civil war.
Saracen International has yet to formally
announce its plans in Somalia, and there appear
to be bitter disagreements within Somalia's
fractious government about whether to hire the
South African firm. Somali officials have said
that Saracen's operations - which would also
include training a anti-piracy army in the
semi-autonomous region of Puntland - are being
financed by an anonymous Middle Eastern country.
Several people with knowledge of Saracen's
operations confirmed that the country is the United Arab Emirates.
Mr. Prince could not be reached for comment.
According to a Jan. 12 confidential report by the
African Union, Mr. Prince "is at the top of the
management chain of Saracen and provided seed
money for the Saracen contract." A Western
official working in Somalia says he believes that
it was Mr. Prince who first raised the idea of
the Saracen contract with members of the
Emirates' ruling families, with whom he has a close relationship.
American officials have said little about Saracen
since news reports about the company's planned
operations in Somalia emerged last month. Philip
J. Crowley, a State Department spokesman, said in
December that the American government is
"concerned about the lack of transparency" of Saracen's funding and plans.
Mr. Prince for years has tried to spot new
business opportunities in the security world. In
2008, he sought to capitalize on the growing
piracy endemic off the Horn of Africa to win
Blackwater contracts from companies that that
frequent the shipping lanes there. He even
reconfigured a 183-foot oceanographic research
vessel into a pirate hunting ship for hire,
complete with drone aircraft and .50-caliber machine guns.
In an interview in the November Men's Journal,
Mr. Prince expressed frustration with the wave of
lawsuits filed against Blackwater, which
developed a reputation in Iraq and Afghanistan for reckless behavior.
Mr. Prince, who said that moving to Abu Dhabi
would "make it harder for the jackals to get my
money," said he intended to find business opportunities in "the energy field."
Despite all of Blackwater's legal troubles, Mr.
Prince has never been directly accused of criminal activity.
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