| |
Security for sale in
Afghanistan
By David Isenberg
The role of private military companies received
a significant, if little noted, boost late last year
when the Virginia-based US contractor DynCorp received a
new assignment: protecting Afghan President Hamid
Karzai. While this is undoubtedly good news for DynCorp,
the jury is still out as to how positive a development
it is for Karzai.
According to the US State
Department, in mid-November the department's Diplomatic
Security Service assumed responsibility for Karzai’s
protection from the military's Special Operations
Forces, upon which a portion of the work was contracted
to DynCorp.
DynCorp is a 56-year-old corporation
with 23,000 employees and an annual income of almost
US$2 billion, headquartered in Reston, Virginia. DynCorp
had previously assisted with the protection of Haitian
President Jean-Bertrand Aristide in the early 1990s.
Karzai, chosen as president in July, survived an
assassination attempt in Kandahar on September 5, when
Special Forces bodyguards killed a gunman who opened
fire on a presidential motorcade.
The
contracting out of Karzai's personal security has not
been without controversy.
Some people see the
awarding of the job to DynCorp as a sign of relative
disinterest in Afghanistan now that the Taliban has been
toppled. Indeed, in an effort to pressure the
administration into not losing focus on Afghan security
needs, the US Congress passed a nonbinding "sense of the
Congress" resolution that said, in part, "any United
States physical protection force provided for the
personal security of the President of Afghanistan should
be composed of United States diplomatic security, law
enforcement or military personnel, and should not
utilize private contracted personnel to provide actual
physical protection services."
Back in
September, Representatives Henry J Hyde, Republican of
Illinois, and Tom Lantos, Democrat of California, sent a
letter to the State and Defense Departments, urging them
to combine forces to protect Karzai rather than hire a
private company. "Experience with such contractors
elsewhere leads us to believe that the presence of
commercial vendors acting in this capacity would send a
different message to the Afghan people and to President
Karzai's adversaries: that we are not serious enough
about our commitment to Afghanistan to dispatch US
personnel," the lawmakers wrote.
Others wonder
why it is that the United States is providing private
bodyguard service to a democratically elected leader.
Yet another issue is the image it presents. Having
Karzai guarded by outsiders, specifically Americans,
when many already view him as merely a puppet for US
interests, will not do much to solidify his standing
within his own country.
Another concern about
DynCorp is that using it will allow the executive branch
to evade public scrutiny. A November article in the New
Republic expressed concern that "no one in government or
at DynCorp would tell me when the mission will start or
finish, confirm exactly what roles DynCorp will play, or
even reveal what the company will be paid ... As a
result, PMC [private military corporation] missions
often fly beneath the radar, garnering almost no
attention in the press or anywhere else."
In
that regard it is worth noting that in early December
the Bush administration rejected Colombia's offer to
grant war crimes immunity to US soldiers in the country
after Colombia refused to extend the protection to
private military contractors such as DynCorp.
DynCorp will be under great scrutiny as it tries
to carry out this new, high-profile assignment without
any glitches. While it has been involved in providing
military services for some years, notably in the Balkans
and Colombia, it has come under fire recently for the
actions of some of its employees. It was recently
involved in a scandal when some of its employees were
involved in a prostitution ring in Bosnia. DynCorp
personnel contracted to the United Nations police
service in Bosnia were implicated in buying and selling
prostitutes, including girls as young as 12. Some
DynCorp employees were also accused of videotaping the
rape of one of the women.
While doubts remain
about how well DynCorp will do its job in Afghanistan,
it should come as no surprise that the government turned
to a private sector group. In the aftermath of the Cold
War, with the United States trying to do more with fewer
personnel, the US government has turned to private
contractors to carry out logistical support, site
security, foreign military training and observation
missions, to name just a few. Today, at least 35 PMCs
are based in the United States.
As an October
New York Times article noted, during the Persian Gulf
war in 1991, one of every 50 people on the battlefield
was an American civilian under contract; by the time of
the peacekeeping effort in Bosnia in 1996, the figure
was one in 10. Of course, providing personal security is
not quite the same as being under mortar fire. On the
other hand Afghanistan is still dangerous enough that
nobody in their right mind would call it peaceful.
As Deborah Avant, a professor of political
science at George Washington University, has written,
"Since the end of the Cold War, this foreign market has
boomed ... The range of services purchased from US PSCs
[private security companies] by foreign governments and
private entities matches the broad range purchased by
the US government ... The fact that PSCs sell the same
services to US government that they sell abroad
(combined with the fact that the US government is a very
good customer) gives American PSCs a market incentive to
pay attention to US policy and to stay in tune with
government initiatives."
(©2003 Asia Times
Online Co, Ltd. All rights reserved. Please contact content@atimes.com
for information on our sales and syndication policies,
or to submit a letter to the editor.)
|
| |
|
|
 |
|
