North Africa has long been a haven for Islamic extremists. It’s chock full of violence, feuding fractional governments, and natural resources. This a perfect climate for American and European Private Military Companies (PMCs) that want to strike gold.

Erik Prince, the founder of the PMC Blackwater USA (BW, Xe, and now Academi), is leaning forward in the region with the help of Chinese investors. This has got to have a lot of his religious conservative fan boys scratching their heads in disbelief, “The damn Chinese Erik?!”, they’ll say.

Not many business friendly places in the world left for Erik, considering his recent US government colonoscopy over BW, and a lot of bottom feeders suing over anything at the chance to grab a bit of his billionaire fortune. I personally don’t have an issue with Erik and his current business enterprises, he’s always had a good reputation in the SEAL community.  If there’s anything I would be critical of, it would be the latter part of his tenure as CEO of Blackwater which I’ll get to in a bit.

Note: We call these people strap hangers in the Military.