By Max Watts
On March 5, ABC's Lateline interviewed Lieutenant Colonel Tim Spicer, OBE, British army retired. Colonel Spicer was not quite shown, because he insisted on remaining an anonymous shadow.
Spicer is now the chief executive officer of Sandline International. Sandline has contracted Executive Outcomes, a company based in Pretoria. Both are acting for the respectable government of Papua New Guinea. Their contract? To retrain the PNG army. Particularly on Bougainville.
The PNG army has been trained since 1975 by the Australian army, and — for several years — also by elite US special forces. But this has not sufficed to win the war against the Bougainvilleans.
Colonel Spicer thinks that he, Sandline International and Executive Outcomes will be able to make the "Defence Force" capable of achieving its missions.
Colonel Spicer cannot discuss, because of business confidentiality, what these missions might be. Asked whether they are being paid to "take out" — murder — the Bougainville leadership, he at first does not answer, then says: "No. We are only trainers."
He insists: "We all are disciplined, and we always observe the laws of armed conflict".
Colonel Spicer did not explain why he wanted to remain faceless. He volunteered little about his past. We knew that he had been in the British army, in Northern Ireland. He was not asked how he had observed the laws of armed conflict there.
Nor did anyone ask Colonel Spicer if he had heard of General Yamashita. In 1945 General Yamashita commanded Japanese forces in the Philippines. Some Japanese soldiers committed atrocities.
Japan lost the war. Yamashita was indicted as a war criminal. His defence included the uncontested statement that by the time these war crimes had occurred, he no longer had effective control of the soldiers involved. Yamashita was found guilty for not preventing the atrocities and was hung. This judgment has become a precedent for the laws of armed conflict.
On September 4, 1992, two British soldiers of the 1st Battalion Scots Guards, James Fisher and Mark Wright, shot an unarmed Catholic teenager, Peter McBride, in the back, in New Lodge, Belfast.
Normally there is little fuss about such an Irish death, but in this case there was an investigation, and after two years the two soldiers were tried and found guilty of murder by a British court.
The soldiers' commanding officer disapproved. He argued that the two soldiers had acted in accordance with the law, with the rules of engagement and with their military training. Shooting McBride in the back — so the commander, Lt Col Tim S. Spicer, OBE — said, "was the correct course of action".
Colonel Spicer, was not as unlucky as General Yamashita. No-one seems to have considered him responsible for this action of his soldiers. And of course the Yamashita decision is irrelevant is Belfast; Great Britain has not yet lost the war in Ireland.
Colonel Spicer eventually went on to become CEO of Sandline International, now on contract to the government of Papua New Guinea. He says they will not murder for money. Only train others to do so.