The hasty evacuation of a former Green Beret who was badly wounded during a firefight in the Democratic Republic of Congo last month, has opened a window into the latest mercenary deployment by Erik Prince, the contentious American military contractor.
The former Green Beret, Tim Kennedy, who is also known for his career in mixed martial arts and frequent appearances on Fox News, was shot several times during intense fighting in Congo’s eastern highlands, where government forces have been battling a powerful, Rwanda-backed rebel group.
An elite ex-soldier from New Zealand who previously served with his country’s Special Air Service unit was killed. Six people briefed on different aspects of the ambush and subsequent evacuation spoke to The New York Times on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the operation.
What brought both men to Congo was their employment by Mr. Prince, the founder of Blackwater Worldwide, a company notorious for a civilian massacre in Iraq. For years, Mr. Prince has sought opportunities in resource-rich countries plagued by conflict, mostly in Africa. Now his interests are expanding in Congo, where the government has hired foreign help to fend off the rebel advance in the east, while also trying to curry favor with the Trump administration.
To advance its goals, Kinshasa has turned to Mr. Prince, a prominent supporter of President Trump, giving him a central role in one of Africa’s most intractable conflicts.
Details of Mr. Prince’s operations in Congo were provided to The Times by a dozen current and former officials from the United States, Congo, Europe and other African countries, as well as U.N. officials, military contractors and some of Mr. Prince’s own employees. All spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss military casualties or confidential business arrangements.
Mr. Prince declined to comment for this article, as did a spokesman for Vectus Global, the company that leads his operations in Congo.
Mr. Prince’s growing influence in Congo comes as the Trump administration seeks a new toehold for American companies in the country’s lucrative mining industry, where China’s dominance over critical minerals like cobalt is a source of growing concern in Washington. Last December the United States and Congo signed an agreement granting preferential access to American mining interests in Congo, which many Congolese officials privately called a “peace for minerals” deal.
In late 2024, Mr. Prince signed a wide-ranging contract to provide security and mining services to President Félix Tshisekedi’s government. The contract was worth hundreds of millions of dollars over five years, although it is unclear how much has been paid out, said a former U.S. official who worked on regional diplomacy.
Since then, Mr. Prince has supplied drones and mercenaries to help Congo fight the M23, the rebel group backed by Rwanda, and has even moved into taxation. His company in Congo employs about 100 people in a drive to recoup some of the estimated $3 billion in taxes that Congo loses every year from fraud in the mining sector.
The tax effort is led by a former French Foreign Legion soldier who works from a gleaming new financial center in the capital, Kinshasa. Speaking on the condition of anonymity, an employee of Mr. Prince described plans to digitize mining records, tackle widespread fraud and curb what he called the “blatant looting” of Congolese resources by criminal syndicates that include Chinese mining companies.
Mr. Prince’s employee likened the anticorruption drive to that of Eliot Ness, the Prohibition-era law enforcement officer who aggressively went after the crime boss Al Capone’s bootlegging empire.
The employee said the tax effort is going well. But in the rugged highlands 1,000 miles to the east, where Congo’s war is being fought, Mr. Prince’s other mission has been stymied by setbacks and casualties — not for the first time, say his critics.
“Among mercenaries, especially in Africa, Prince is derided because he has zero successful missions,” said Sean McFate, a former private military contractor who is currently a fellow at The Atlantic Council.
For the past year, mercenaries employed by Mr. Prince have been based at an airfield in Kalemie, a town on the western shore of Lake Tanganyika in eastern Congo, several of the current and former officials said. Drone pilots from Colombia and Ukraine, contracted by Mr. Prince, carried out strikes against the M23, the most powerful of more than 100 armed groups operating in Congo. Last January, Mr. Prince’s forces helped the Congolese recapture the key city of Uvira.
But as fighting intensified recently in the nearby Minembwe Highlands, where remote villages nestle amid steep slopes, Mr. Prince’s employees were drawn into a vicious fight. One battle early last month led to the deaths of several Colombian contractors, according to a person briefed on the incident and a report seen by The Times.
Then on Sept. 17, a second group of mercenaries accompanying Congolese soldiers, this time including Mr. Kennedy, was caught in the deadly ambush.
What exactly happened is unclear. One person close to Mr. Prince, briefed on the incident, would only say that it was a “long ordeal,” which was exacerbated by a lack of support from Congolese forces.
When it was over, Mr. Kennedy had been shot multiple times and several others were dead, including Justin Conaglen, a former special operations soldier from New Zealand. Asked about Mr. Conaglen’s death, a spokesman for New Zealand’s foreign ministry said it was “providing support in this case” but declined to provide further information.
After the ambush, Mr. Prince’s officials began to search for air transport options to evacuate the dead and wounded, the people briefed on the incident said. Mr. Kennedy was rushed to Burundi and then South Africa for treatment at the private Milpark hospital in Johannesburg.
Mr. Kennedy has since been flown back to the United States, where he is recovering at the Walter Reed National Military Medical Center, a flagship facility that primarily treats active-duty troops, friends and officials said.
The Pentagon declined to comment, and Mr. Kennedy did not respond to questions.
Known for his dual career in the military and professional sports, Mr. Kennedy served as a Green Beret and competed in the Ultimate Fighting Championship until he retired from professional fighting in 2017. He has hosted shows for the History and Discovery channels, published an autobiography, “Scars and Stripes,” and has drawn criticism for making provocative statements about the nature of war on podcasts and TV.
Accusations last year that Mr. Kennedy had exaggerated his military awards prompted the Maryland National Guard to investigate. He publicly apologized for having “unintentionally misstated aspects of my military service.”
Mr. Conaglen took unpaid leave from the New Zealand military in March, before formally leaving the service in August, a spokesman for his country’s military said in an email.
Originally from New Zealand’s North Island, he competed in endurance sports and high-altitude mountaineering, and was part-owner of a holiday rental business in Raglan, a surfing town known for its black-sand beaches.
His remains were returned to New Zealand, where they were cremated on Oct. 1 after a memorial at a rugby club in the small town of Taipa.
Western mercenaries have long been a sensitive subject in Congo, where hundreds of European fighters joined an effort by the Katanga region to secede in the 1960s. Many Congolese also remember the C.I.A.’s role in the overthrow of their country’s first prime minister, Patrice Lumumba, who was later executed by a firing squad led by Belgian contract officers.
But Mr. Tshisekedi put aside those misgivings as the M23 began to resurge across eastern Congo in 2023. As Congo’s notoriously weak national army struggled to respond, he outsourced crucial parts of the fight to foreigners.
Romanians were tasked with defending Goma, the region’s biggest city, until they were routed in January 2025. Algerian drone pilots flew Chinese drones from Kisangani until their base was hit by a suspected Rwandan drone strike in May, current and former officials in the region said.
Those losses have left Mr. Prince as the pre-eminent military contractor in Congo — one who has embraced the language of colonialism.
In a podcast interview in 2024, he called on the United States to “put the imperial hat back on” in African countries that he said were “incapable of governing themselves.”
Asked if he was promoting a new form of colonialism, Mr. Prince replied, “Absolutely, yes.”
In interviews, Mr. Prince often plays up his tough-guy image, presenting himself as a hard-nosed pragmatist who is willing to harness the power of private military action. But in Africa, his ventures have often gone wrong.
In Libya, his mercenaries had to flee on a speedboat in 2019 after a dispute with the warlord who hired them. In Somalia, U.N. investigators accused his forces of violating an international arms embargo on Somalia in 2012.
In Congo, some fear more of the same chaos. Hiring Mr. Prince is a sign of the government’s desperation against the M23, but “it’s creating more problems than solutions,” said Zobel Behalal, author of a recent report on mercenaries in Congo. “It’s a sign that the army is very weak. And while others are making money, in the end it’s the population that suffers.”
Last month, Mr. Prince spent time promoting his new company, Vectus Air Defense Systems, which sells an anti-drone system that he says can protect oil fields, data centers and other sensitive sites. He also began negotiating with Congolese officials over a possible $200 million contract to protect the country’s air force assets, an adviser to the Congolese president said.
American officials say that Mr. Prince’s ventures in countries like Congo are entirely private and that he enjoys no U.S. government support. Still, Mr. Prince, who once donated $250,000 to a Trump campaign, uses his political connections to support his military operations. Mr. Prince’s sister, Betsy DeVos, also served as secretary of education during Mr. Trump’s first term.
Last January Mr. Prince traveled to Belgium for a meeting at the residence of the U.S. ambassador Bill White. In the meeting, Mr. Prince outlined his views on Congo to Belgium’s top Africa diplomat, Marc Pecsteen de Buytswerve, according to two European officials.
Then Mr. Prince asked for help.
His drones had been impounded at customs in the Netherlands and he needed to get them out. He also asked if Belgium would authorize the export of guns and ammunition from a Belgian manufacturer to Congo.
The State Department and Belgian foreign ministry declined to comment on the meeting, which State described as a “private diplomatic engagement.” But the answer to both of Mr. Prince’s requests, the officials said, was “No.”
Reporting was contributed by Eric Schmitt in Washington, Emanuel Stoakes in Christchurch, New Zealand, and John Eligon in Johannesburg.
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