# Security-for-Minerals A recurring contract form: **a government that cannot secure its own territory pays for force with the resource revenue that force is supposed to make collectible.** It runs from Katanga in 1960 to the Congo in 2026, and it is the missing spine underneath most of [[Conflict Minerals Hub]]. > [!warning] State the form precisely, because the popular version is wrong > What recurs reliably is **resource *revenue* pledged against security costs** — tax advances, revenue shares, a percentage of collections. What recurs much less reliably, and is the single most over-stated claim in this literature, is **direct transfer of mineral concessions as fee.** > > Katanga 1960 was a tax advance to a state, not a payment to mercenaries. [[Executive Outcomes]] in Sierra Leone was promised **50% of the tax revenue from a rutile mine** — which never reopened, so EO was never paid. [[Vectus Global]] in Haiti takes **20% of revenue increases**. The Wagner case in the [[Central African Republic]] is the clearest genuine concession-for-security instance on record, and even there the quid pro quo is **inferred from sequencing, not documented**. > > "Paid in diamonds" is the field's most durable un-nailed-down claim. See [[Branch Energy]]. ## The lineage **1960–67 — Katanga.** [[Union Minière du Haut-Katanga]] advanced [[Moïse Tshombe]] **1,250 million Belgian francs** against taxes owed to Kinshasa, financing the state that in turn paid a gendarmerie stiffened by European mercenaries. That is the foundational transaction. But the second phase is routinely misdescribed: **[[5 Commando]] was raised in July 1964 by the *central* Congolese government**, with Tshombe as prime minister, funded from the treasury and supported with CIA aircraft, boats and Cuban-exile crews. No mining company appears in the sourcing. See [[Katanga Secession]]. **1993–99 — [[Executive Outcomes]].** Angola: a contract with the government reportedly worth over $40 million a year, partly financed by the state oil company, fighting UNITA — whose own war chest was diamonds. Sierra Leone: $2 million a month, Kono retaken within a month, and a payment structure that assigned half of a mine's future tax revenue to the contractor. **The mine never reopened and $19.5 million went unpaid.** That failure is the form's defining instability. **1996–2004 — [[Sandline International]].** Papua New Guinea is the cleanest mining link anywhere in the lineage, and it inverts the usual structure: the government's plan was to **buy the Panguna copper mine itself** and reopen it once the military operation had restored control. The contractor was not to be paid in the mine; the mine was the war aim and the intended fiscal payoff. **2017–2026 — [[Wagner Group]].** The Central African Republic is where concession-for-security is best documented, because the US Treasury designated the entities: **[[Midas Ressources]]** holding preferential rights to the Ndassima gold mine valued at over $1 billion, and **[[Diamville]]** moving gold and diamonds to the UAE and Europe. In [[Sudan]] the leaked contracts are stronger still — [[Meroe Gold]] paying a military-intelligence-controlled security firm $100,000 a month, with the presidency waiving the government's standard 30% stake. Note carefully: **that Sudanese chain runs to the army, not the RSF.** **2024–2026 — [[Vectus Global]].** [[Erik Prince]]'s firm, contracted by the Congolese *finance ministry* — not defence — to improve mineral tax collection and reduce smuggling. The Haitian version of the same contract makes the model explicit: secure the territory, then build and operate the tax and customs apparatus, and take a cut of the increase. By January 2026 Vectus contractors were reported alongside Congolese special forces in South Kivu. ## Why states enter these deals The Africa Policy Research Institute's framing is the most useful: persistent security threats, infrastructure deficits, funding shortages, and — decisively — arrangements **"typically free from political conditionalities."** A resource-for-security deal is available when an IMF programme is not. Three playbooks now run concurrently on the continent: **Russia's PMC model, America's deal-oriented approach, and China's infrastructure-for-resources model.** The [[US-DRC Strategic Partnership Agreement]] is the American version at state level; the UAE is running a parallel track in the same country, with a majority stake in the Bisie tin mine and gold-supply agreements. ## Why they fail The literature converges on three failure modes. **1. Regime survival is bought at the cost of state capacity.** The contractor supplants the fiscal and coercive apparatus rather than building it. When the contract ends, nothing has been institutionalised. **2. Payment is contingent on the very security being sold.** Sierra Rutile never reopened, so Executive Outcomes was never paid. This is not a detail; it is structural. The contractor's fee depends on an outcome the contractor cannot guarantee, which pushes it toward taking equity or concessions instead — which is how the concession story gets started even where it isn't documented. **3. Sovereignty erosion.** Documented most heavily for Wagner, and now argued against the US-DRC agreement's consensus-veto structure and its commitment to amend Congolese law within twelve months. ## The corrective from the scholarship Peer Schouten's *Roadblock Politics* is the strongest challenge to the whole frame, and it fits the newest case uncomfortably well. Mapping over a thousand roadblocks across the DRC and CAR, Schouten argues armed actors do not principally fight over deposits — **control of chokepoints on transport infrastructure yields more reliable revenue than volatile mineral markets.** Which means: what looks like security-for-minerals is often **security-for-logistics-rents**. And Vectus's actual product in both the DRC and Haiti is customs and tax collection — chokepoint capture, not mining. The most modern instance of the form may be evidence that the form was always about the chokepoint. Sean McFate's *The Modern Mercenary* supplies the other half: the **"mediated state"** in a "market for force," where governments unable to monopolise violence subcontract it, producing overlapping non-territorial authorities. That is the frame that makes these six cases one phenomenon rather than six anecdotes. ## See also [[Executive Outcomes]] · [[Sandline International]] · [[Vectus Global]] · [[Branch Energy]] · [[Wagner Group]] · [[Erik Prince]] · [[US-DRC Strategic Partnership Agreement]] · [[Conflict Resources Atlas]] · [[Conflict Minerals Hub]]