Mercenaries or Peacekeepers? Comparing Private Military Companies and ECOMOG in Sierra Leone

The goal of the work is to compare two conflict resolution-oriented foreign interventions in West Africa; the 1995 involvement of Executive Outcomes (EO), a South African Private Military Company (PMC), against the Revolutionary United Front (RUF) of Sierra Leone, and the intervention by the Economic Community of West African States Monitoring Group (ECOMOG, 1997-2000). A context analysis is performed, along with a mention to the origins of both PMCs and the African regional security systems, before an assessment of both interventions is provided. The paper highlights the failures experienced by EO and ECOMOG: on the one hand, it reveals that EO intervention can be hardly considered as effective, due to its controversial role in term of legitimacy, accountability, etc. but on the other it points out at the financial constraints, the lack of military professionalism and univocal political will as the main deficiencies of ECOMOG. Finally, after introducing the wider debate of African regional peacekeeping and its more recent developments, the paper arguments that regional peacekeeping is the current best option for conflict resolution in West Africa.