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Simon Mann answers the request for a call within fifteen minutes.
He likes to talk about the role of mercenaries in the fight against the radical Islamic terror that is spreading in some African countries.
But he is not sure whether it is a good idea to do it with a journalist named Putsch: "After all, I tried a coup once," he writes on WhatsApp, "did not work out so well."
In March 2004, the former British officer and his 69 men were arrested on a stopover in Zimbabwe when weapons were being loaded for a coup in Equatorial Guinea. As early as the 1990s, Mann had fought as a leading employee of mercenary companies in Angola and Sierra Leone. Since the arrest, the counselor, who spent five years in Zimbabwean and Equatorial Guinean prisons, has definitely become one of the best-known mercenaries on the continent.
And these days he sees opportunities for new business.
Mann, 67, is a representative of the international military company STTEP (Specialized Tasks, Training, Equipment and Protection), which is hoping for an order in Mozambique.
The local government has already engaged various mercenary troops in the fight against the terrorist group Ahlu Sunna wal Jamaa (ASWJ), but even these were unable to prevent the brutal attack on the gas-producing city of Palma at the end of March.
Numerous families had to flee due to the attack on Palma
Source: AP
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The contracts with the companies involved expired a few weeks ago and were not renewed - under pressure from the USA, which started a training program for the army in March.
At the same time, however, the government in Maputo is looking for new strategies.
And quite a few private security experts take part in the talks.
That doesn't include Mann, he's currently in Sierra Leone.
Other business in agriculture, as he says, “nothing military”.
But he is well connected to Mozambique and believes private security and military corporations (PMC), as mercenary firms more elegantly call themselves, will continue to play an important role in the defense of African governments.
"I propose a concept in which seconded officers and non-commissioned officers from a friendly regular army - or external contractors with experience in asymmetrical warfare - are firmly integrated into local armies such as those in Mozambique," says Mann.
"You then build a strike brigade (editor's note: units that can be deployed quickly if necessary) with a ratio of six local soldiers for each external."
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The foreign fighters would not limit themselves to training, but would instead fight actively.
There was a similar model in Oman in the 1970s, when the army, with the help of British mercenaries, managed to put down an uprising.
The practice of the 1990s, when, for example, the company Executive Outcomes in Angola provided entire armies from personnel to equipment and determined the strategy, is outdated, says Mann.
But he considers it inappropriate to demonize his entire profession for this reason.
"Of course foreigners can be integrated into armies," he says.
“The French also have the Foreign Legion and the British are bringing en masse soldiers from the Commonwealth to their troops.
Nobody has a problem with that. "
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But the position of the United Nations is clear.
“The diverse, opaque and profitable market for private fighting and combat support services threatens human rights, the protection of the civilian population and peace and stability in general,” says the current report of the UN working group “Mercenary”.
In addition to human rights violations, the involvement of such actors "often led to an exacerbation and prolongation of conflicts", and the population's right to self-determination was undermined.
Mercenaries would continue to "seriously endanger" international peace and security.
There have been strict laws for decades.
At least on paper.
A UN convention against mercenaryism was adopted as early as 1989, but only 36 countries worldwide ratified it.
A similar convention of the African Union also turns out to be toothless.
Only officially banned
Countries like Mozambique admit the use of mercenary companies only very vaguely, after all it also signals the weakness of their own army.
In Nigeria, the government stubbornly denies, although leaked government documents in 2015 proved the recruitment of mercenaries in the fight against Boko Haram.
Most of the fighters deployed came from South Africa, where many former soldiers who had experience in the bush wars of southern Africa during apartheid hired themselves as freelancers.
Mind you, there are laws in the country that provide long prison terms for mercenaries, so some South Africans hired by British PMCs were unable to fight in Afghanistan as intended.
But that doesn't really put you off either.
Investigations are rare, and when they do, military corporations get away with manageable fines.
The dirty craft is also officially banned in Russia.
From there, however, the “Wagner Group” under the leadership of the Putin-affiliated oligarch Yevgeny Prigozhin increasingly asserts Kremlin interests in Africa.
According to a UN report, the Russian military helped Wagner fighters in Libya with logistics deliveries.
In the Central African Republic, the Wagner group provided the presidential guard and guarded diamond mines.
And in Mozambique, not long after the uprising began in the north of the country three years ago, the first contract was signed with the Russian mercenaries.
However, after considerable losses, the company withdrew.
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Willem Els from the South African think tank Institute for Security Studies (ISS) advocates a differentiated assessment of the use of mercenary troops. It is a broad term. He is not an advocate for private military companies, but in Mozambique the recently deployed mercenary group Dyck Advisory Group (DAG) has proven to be more effective than the soldiers of Mozambique. "The attack in Palma would have been far worse without the DAG - and it might even have been prevented if the group had been adequately equipped," believes Els.
DAG had rejected allegations of the human rights organization Amnesty International in DIE WELT, according to which civilians were fired "indiscriminately".
Without the efforts of his people there would have been significantly more deaths, said DAG boss Lionel Dyck: "With the evacuation of hundreds of civilians, we have shown that we are not the bad guys here."
In both Mozambique and in 2015 in Nigeria, the USA pushed for an end to cooperation with mercenary companies.
ISS analyst Els can only understand this to a limited extent, since the companies involved have made remarkable progress in both cases.
Of course, it is crucial that mercenaries are also held accountable for misconduct in accordance with the Geneva Conventions on War Crimes.
But the US attitude in Africa was tantamount to a “double standard”.
After all, the British and Americans worked with private military companies in Iraq, and numerous South Africans were deployed, says Els.
Will Endley, for example.
The 58-year-old made headlines a few years ago when he narrowly escaped the death penalty in South Sudan for allegedly supporting rebels.
In the meantime he is offering his services again as a consultant.
Foreign security experts are needed
“The uprisings that Mozambique, Nigeria and countries in the Sahel have to fight against are not just classic African bush wars,” he says. "The radical Islam of IS and al-Qaeda has now reached Africa, so these countries need advisers with experience in the Middle East." the propaganda category.
Endley is not so sure: "The attacks in Mozambique were very well coordinated, experts were at work." Accordingly, the fight against terrorists requires knowledge of the mindset and methods of asymmetrical warfare between parties that are very different in terms of weapons technology, organization and strategy).
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But this is missing in many African armies.
In his opinion, the importance of foreign security experts for training, equipment and advice will increase.
Simon Mann also assumes this and hopes, unsurprisingly, that the particularly structurally weak countries in the Sahel zone will also follow his proposal for the strictly structured establishment of foreign legions.
In view of the limited resources of the countries concerned, he calls for increased military aid for this purpose. "Thats expensive. But if the development in these countries is ignored, we are heading for absolute chaos and state collapse. ”And then the costs for the West are much higher.