Soldiers for Sale

 

Photo source: The New Arab
By Naveed Qazi | Editor, Globe Upfront

Mercenaries change warfare in profound ways because they commercialise it, and Colombian veterans have become especially sought after for their perceived value and combat experience. Their reputation stems from years of fighting the FARC insurgency, which honed small‑unit tactics, jungle warfare and counterinsurgency skills that foreign employers prize. Many retire early with meagre pensions and limited job prospects, making contractual work abroad enticing; as The Guardian reported, recruiters describe Colombian veterans as ‘battle‑hardened, disciplined and relatively inexpensive compared to Western contractors’, which helps explain their prominence in global conflict markets. The Middle East has become particularly lucrative, with deployments across Yemen, Libya, Iraq, Afghanistan and the United Arab Emirates, where wealthy governments and elites are willing to pay for foreign manpower without the domestic political cost attached to deploying their own troops, a dynamic highlighted by The Washington Post in its coverage of outsourced warfare.

It was in 2015 that The New York Times revealed hundreds of Colombian mercenaries had been contracted by the UAE to fight Houthi rebels in Yemen, reporting monthly pay bands of roughly $2,000 to $3,000, with $1,000 bonuses for those sent to the toughest missions, and occasional offers up to $7,000 alongside promises of fast‑tracked residency benefits for families, a package designed to undercut Western private military firms while attracting experienced Latin American recruits. The reports explained that the UAE first relied on a private American company connected to Erik Prince, the founder of Blackwater, to set up a force of foreign mercenaries. As the war in Yemen grew more intense, however, the Emirati authorities took over the programme themselves. This change showed that Abu Dhabi wanted to keep tighter control and assume responsibility directly, even while continuing to use foreign soldiers. Colombian journalists later traced the recruitment chains back home: El Tiempo and its magazine Don Juan documented the role of ID Systems Ltd and Global Enterprises, firms led by former Colombian special operations officers, with Don Juan’s Nathalia Hernandez living for nearly a year in Abu Dhabi with one recruit to chronicle how contracts, training and deployment unfolded in practice.

Blackwater’s early links to Latin American recruitment were widely covered during the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, and Colombian outlets reported that many recruits were retirees or men under investigation for rights abuses. Don Juan’s reporting described some as ‘responsible for false positives’, a Colombian term for extrajudicial killings staged as combat deaths, while Semana added that the government remained conspicuously silent after those revelations, underscoring the sensitivity around veteran accountability and foreign contracting. Colombian guns for hire were also reported in Libya’s 2011 civil war, with Semana citing deaths both in Yemen’s Taiz and during raids on Gaddafi compounds, a reminder that these deployments were not merely static security roles but involved direct exposure to combat risk. 

Beyond battlefields, Colombian veterans were recruited for more menial but still hazardous tasks: guarding oil pipelines, protecting high‑rise infrastructure, and private security jobs in Iraq from 2006 onward, with Semana’s investigation into a Blackwater‑owned Bogota outfit finding that promised $7,000 monthly pay was reduced to roughly $1,000 upon arrival, leaving men locked into six‑month contracts at US bases around Baghdad, a pattern of exploitation that echoed broader concerns about opaque contracting and wage theft.

The economics that drive this market are stark. As The New York Times noted, UAE‑backed salaries could be eight times higher than Colombian pensions, pulling veterans into a globalised labour market for violence where cost, experience and deniability trump formal military hierarchies. The ‘conflict market’ logic in the Middle East also rests on political acceptability: hiring foreigners is less taboo than in Latin America, and it allows governments to outsource both capability and blame, a point The Washington Post made when describing how states can ‘disown’ contractors if missions go wrong, firing or prosecuting them without the reputational and legal consequences associated with disciplining their own troops. This outsourcing creates a moral dilemma at scale: mercenaries are valued because they are expendable, yet they operate amid weak accountability, blurred chains of command and the fog of proxy warfare, conditions that invite abuse and complicate international humanitarian law.

The human story beneath the market is equally important. Transition programmes for Colombian soldiers frequently falter as years of war leave psychological trauma and erode civilian employability, with El Pais reporting how veterans feel identity loss and social ostracism, facing precarious jobs and pensions that fail to support a dignified life. That mix of trauma, low pay and limited opportunities makes foreign contracting both tempting and risky: men may gain short‑term income but accumulate further scars and legal vulnerability, and their families absorb the consequences of long absences and uncertain protections. The Guardian’s coverage of private warfare highlighted how these dynamics are not isolated to Colombia but part of a wider commodification of military labour that stretches from Latin America to Eastern Europe and Africa, creating a class of transnational soldiers whose rights and liabilities are poorly defined.

A comparative lens shows why Colombians became the backbone of certain Gulf programmes but were not the only Latin Americans recruited. The New York Times reported that Emirati recruiters drew from Colombia, Panama, El Salvador and Chile, citing language compatibility, lower costs and prior US‑aligned training as advantages, with Salvadoran and Chilean veterans bringing conventional army experience and Panamanian recruits adding policing and canal security backgrounds. Colombians stood out for counterinsurgency expertise against FARC, which translated into small‑unit operations, perimeter security and urban clearing—skills the UAE sought for Yemen’s most demanding missions, as Times reporters described. Meanwhile, Chileans often commanded respect for their professionalisation and training standards, shaped by decades of US cooperation, a point noted by The Washington Post when profiling Latin American contractors in US‑linked theatres. 

Salvadorans, many with civil war legacies and later gang‑violence policing experience, were channelled into static site protection and convoy roles, according to Latin American security correspondents cited by El Tiempo. Panamanians, typically recruited for protective services, were favoured for guard‑force roles in rear areas where Spanish‑speaking teams could be organised under English‑speaking supervisors, a pattern reported across multiple New York Times and regional features.

Yet across these nationalities, the risk‑reward balance looked similar: high‑risk deployments offered life‑changing pay and benefits that were rarely matched at home, but oversight was limited and grievance mechanisms weak. Semana’s exposé of wage underpayment in Bogota mapped onto anecdotal reports from Salvadoran and Chilean recruits about contract bait‑and‑switch tactics, while El Pais chronicled the psychological wear that repeated deployments inflict on families regardless of nationality. The Guardian’s analysis of private military companies noted that contractors from different Latin American countries were sometimes stacked into tiered pay scales, with Western teams commanding premium rates and Latin Americans placed below them, an inequity that mirrored broader north‑south labour divides and fed resentment inside mixed units.

Strategically, the use of Colombian and other Latin American mercenaries tells us something unsettling about how states manage war today. The Washington Post argued that outsourcing hard missions to foreign veterans allows governments to avoid domestic casualties and legislative scrutiny, while still projecting force abroad; it is a political technology as much as a military one. The New York Times showed that the UAE’s move to internalise the programme after its initial private phase reflected a calculation about control and secrecy rather than rejection of mercenaries themselves, a hybrid model that marries state command with private recruitment networks to maintain plausible deniability. For Colombia, meanwhile, the steady outflow of veterans into private warfare highlights structural weaknesses in support systems and accountability: Don Juan and El Tiempo reported official silence in the face of allegations that men implicated in past abuses were being rehired into foreign combat, a gap that risks exporting unresolved domestic traumas into new theatres.

In the end, Colombian mercenaries have become a defining feature of the modern war economy because they sit at the crossroads of supply and demand: a surplus of experienced soldiers at home and a global appetite for cost‑effective combat capability abroad. As The New York Times and The Guardian documented, their presence in Yemen, Libya, Iraq and Afghanistan shows how conflict has been commercialised and how states engineer deniability by contracting violence. The promises of high salaries and expedited residency contrast with frequent exploitation, psychological strain and legal uncertainty, while comparative cases from Chile, El Salvador and Panama reveal a layered marketplace in which Latin American veterans shoulder risks without commensurate protections. The Washington Post’s warning stands: when governments can disown mercenaries, accountability decays, and the moral lines between state warfare and private enterprise blur—a trend that will persist so long as the economics and politics of outsourced war make it attractive.