Colombian mercenaries: a market exploited thanks to internal conflict

The odious assassination of the President of Haiti, Jovenel Moise, In his own home, he put Colombia in the eye of this hurricane. The reason is that of the 26 alleged perpetrators of this crime, 24 are retired members of the Colombian army and two others are Americans of Haitian descent.

Authorities on the island speak of mercenaries who were trained for weeks to complete the mission to assassinate Moses. “It was a well-planned attack and they were professionals“said Haitian Ambassador to Washington, Bocchit Edmond.

But this is not the first time that we have talked about Colombian mercenaries. In fact, a few years ago it was known that there were hundreds of military nationals who went to different countries of the world to fight in foreign conflicts.

This was revealed in 2014 by a journalistic investigation of The New York Times this made visible how the United Arab Emirates sent hundreds of Colombian mercenaries to Yemen.

“Mercenaries are an attractive option for rich countries who want to participate in war, but whose citizens may not want to fight.”Sean McFate, member of the Atlantic Council and author of the book “The Modern Mercenary”, told this American media.

They say Colombian soldiers, selected from a brigade of around 1,800 Latin American soldiers training at a military base in the Emirates, were taken to Yemen. “The UAE officials prefer to recruit Colombian troops because they consider that they have more experience on the battle front, because for decades they fought the Farc, in the jungles of Colombia”, they point out.

There are also reports of these mercenaries in the Colombian media. In 2015, El País de Cali portrayed one of these cases. It was about a young man who, at the age of 20, had graduated as an army non-commissioned officer at the Inocencio Chincá de Tolemida school and had been sent as a third corporal to Cauca. He patrolled the central cordillera: in Toribío, Tacueyó, the Páramo de Santo Domingo; He was in the area where Operation Blue Fire took place to kill the guerrilla leader ‘Alfonso Cano’. At 22, he resigned from the military and months later left for Afghanistan as an entrepreneur for a private company fighting Muslim extremists..

“There are several recruitment firms that are present in Colombia. Among them are Soldado Global, ID Systems and IG Solutions. These companies contract with Academi to recruit Colombians and are responsible for completing all the necessary documentation and paying salaries. Once the military has signed with the recruiters, they are sent to Moyock, at the Academy’s training camp, where they must pass a series of tests, including the handling of long and short weapons. “stressed the medium.

Colombian journalist Daniel Coronell also wrote about these mercenaries, who, through an opinion piece in Semana, went further, splashing the country’s military institutions: “The improvised soldiers of fortune – enlisted by an international company – received lightning war training on farms and also in Colombian military installations. For this, they used official weapons or weapons seized from the guerrillas. Someone in the military is supporting the business of exporting millionaire mercenaries “, wrote.

Along with a series of photographs, the journalist showed retired officers and NCOs linked to the operation with foreign visitors to military installations in Colombia.

“The brain of the company is a renowned international cannon fodder dealer. His name is Eric Prince and he was the founder of Blackwater and XE Services, the same companies that in 2006 drove former Colombian military, police and detectives to serve as mercenaries in the Iraq war. They were offered a salary of $ 7,000, which rose to 4,000, then to 2,700 and ended at 1,000.Coronell said.

The mercenary came to train men in Colombia

Just as private companies have put their eye on the Colombian military for conflicts abroad, the country has also seen the importation of mercenaries.

This is the case of Yair Klein, an Israeli mercenary that during the second half of the 1980s he coordinated the first training sessions of the country’s paramilitary squadrons, which then engaged in horrific acts against the peasants and bloody massacres.

Before a Colombian court, he assured that his work with the paramilitaries had the direct support of the national army and other Colombian state institutions, in addition to receiving funding from someone who would later become president of the country.

“I don’t say the name because you know perfectly well who it is”Klein said in Hebrew, speaking by teleconference from Israel.

Klein’s teachings were passed on to the men of Ramón Isaza, who became one of the most powerful and at the same time the most feared men of the vigilante groups. This paramilitary group had at least five “military training” schools: ‘Águila 10’, Finca La Iglesia and La Guayabera, in Puerto Triunfo, Antioquia; and La Danta and Palos Verdes, in the district of La Danta, in Sonsón, Antioquia.

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