“There is no doubt that the role of private protectors and armies has grown as conventional war has given way in much of the world to irregular, internal conflict. Africa is a case in point, as this study points out, where more than thirty wars have been fought since 1970, most of them ‘intra-state’ in origin. The glut of trained military personnel and equipment unleashed by the collapse of the Soviet Union and also of apartheid South Africa has provided vast new resources for embroilment in such activity”
