Eeben Barlow

Lt-Col. Eeben Barlow is a former member of the apartheid-era South African Defence Force and was the second-in-command of its elite special forces 32 Battalion Reconnaissance Wing. He later served in Military Intelligence as an agent handler and later as an operative and region commander in the ultra-secret Civil Cooperation Bureau (CCB), a covert division of Special Forces. He founded the private military contractor (PMC) Executive Outcomes (EO) in 1989, and was involved in providing counter-insurgency as well as peacekeeping forces to mainly underdeveloped—but mineral-rich—countries in Africa and Asia. Barlow left Executive Outcomes in mid-1997 and the company closed its doors on 31 December 1998. Barlow is currently an independent consultant but also lectures on military matters at defence colleges and universities.