[1] He later served in Military Intelligence as an agent handler and later as an operative and region commander in the ultra-secret Civil Cooperation Bureau (CCB), a covert division of Special Forces.
He founded the private military contractor (PMC) Executive Outcomes (EO) in 1989, and was involved in providing counter-insurgency as well as peacekeeping forces in Africa and Asia.
[7][8] Shannon Sedgwick Davis stated in her book about an alliance to stop the atrocities of the Joseph Kony of the Lord's Resistance Army (the first group of persons indicted by International Criminal Court), "Eeben Barlow and the trainers, your sweat and sacrifice translated to lives saved, thank you.
Many of these refugees received military training in the USSR and its satellite states for the purpose of using force to overthrow the white South African apartheid government.
He was also contracted to establish and train a covert group for the De Beers diamond company in Botswana Debswana with the aim of infiltrating and penetrating the illegal diamond-buying and smuggling syndicates.
Due to this contract, Executive Outcomes became a target for a campaign led mainly by South Africa’s Military Intelligence Division, the Department of Foreign Affairs and the media.
Shortly thereafter, Executive Outcomes was awarded the contract to assist the Angolan Armed Forces (FAA) with training, strategic and tactical advice in an effort to end the war with UNITA.
[5] In 2014, former President Goodluck Jonathan of Nigeria hired STTEP to provide training and tactics to the Nigerian Army for fighting the Boko Harem terrorist organization.