The commissioning of mercenary companies, otherwise known today as private military security companies (PMSCs), to enhance military and political capabilities as well as to ensure economic stability for state and non-state actors is well known in the subfield of conflict studies. The conflict studies sub-discipline of civil wars is also well researched with numerous studies that address the four common variables of civil war scholarship: (1) onset, (2) intensity, (3) duration and (4) termination. However, there are few studies that address civil war duration, natural resources, and PMSCs (foreign intervention). The goal of this paper is to identify how PMSCs may affect civil war duration in developing African states with resource wealth. This paper finds that PMSCs can increase the duration of a civil war because of the services provided and the promise of future extraction rights (FER) for natural resources as payment for the commission of the PMSCs by the state government. This paper will primarily build off the research design of Ross' "How Do Natural Resources Influence Civil War? Evidence from Thirteen Cases," in which he develops nine testable hypotheses about the variables that link natural resources and civil war by using the qualitative case study research method. Ross' research identifies four additional variables after conducting his analysis, and this paper will build off one of these unanticipated variables, the variable affecting civil war duration. The civil war duration variable, which is the promise of future extraction rights (FER) for natural resources as payment to fund military action in support of the state government, will be examined in this paper with one more additional mechanism not addressed by Ross and others in the civil war natural resource subfield, the involvement of PMSCs and their potential influence on the duration of a civil war. The two civil war case studies for consideration are the Angolan Civil War (1975-2002) and the Sierra Leone Civil War (1991-2000). Executive Outcomes (EO) and Sandline International are the two PMSCs that participated in Angola's and Sierra Leone's civil wars. There are four broad insights from this study: (1) the duration of civil wars in resource-wealthy states is prolonged due to the interests of multiple actors in exploiting said resources; (2) during the period studied, mining and investment firms have a significant interest in ensuring that their mining concessions are secure in conflict zones, and more importantly, the state is prohibited from achieving effective governance; (3) these two cases are unique in that EO could shape the PMSC market for ten years before international and regional state reaction to the significant resource exploitation and violence to the general population; and (4) PMSCs had to modify their business model from an offensive role to a more logistical support role as international and regional organizations recognized the exploitative nature of PMSCs and mining companies. This monograph concludes with five recommendations. The recommendations are: (1) the exclusive focus on the agents of action, the PMSCs, is insufficient and counterproductive to reducing civil war in resource wealthy states; (2) strengthen the central state government to develop and manage both the natural resource extraction process and the exportation process; (3) conduct security force assistance operations by the international community to establish a reliable and responsive legitimate military capable of securing the ungoverned spaces and natural resource sites; (4) empower the tribal leaders to engage with the central government on a recurrent basis to develop mutually supportive initiatives to defend, protect, and build access to rural mining/well sites; and (5) encourage states to reduce and screen foreign investment firms with significant interest in natural resource extraction activities more carefully.

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