CORPORATE
MERCENARIES Part 1: Profit comes with a
price By David Isenberg
The
unfolding scandal of the abuse of prisoners at Abu
Gharib and other Iraqi prisons, and the involvement of
personnel from private companies in the jails, has cast
a new wrinkle on the subject of private military
companies.
But it is hardly the first one. Even
before the killing and desecration of the corpses of
four members of Blackwater USA in Fallujah at the end of
March, which helped trigger an offensive by US Marines
into the city, setting off the bloodiest fighting of the
war, the past several months have seen increased
attention and publicity paid to the activities and role
of private contractors in Iraq; specially those
providing security and military functions.
Much
of the coverage of these firms, generally called private
military companies (PMC) has been heated and more than a
little sensationalistic. It is almost an unwritten rule
nowadays to characterize PMC as corporate mercenaries,
despite the fact that they have almost nothing in common
with the image of mercenaries depicted in popular
culture, or the mercenaries of the last days of the
colonial era, such as "Mad" Mike Hoare and Bob Denard.
Indeed, PMC are hardly new. The history of
warfare is inextricably linked with individuals going
off to fight or provide combat services for someone
outside their community. Almost anyone can name examples
from history, Greek and Roman recruitment of hired
units, European free companies during the Hundred Years
war, Italian Condotierri, Hessians in the American
Revolution, Swiss mercenary units including the Swiss
Guard at the Vatican, which continues to this day, the
Dutch and English East India Companies, to name a few
The current PMC sector, by even the most narrow
interpretation, dates back at least 15 years to when the
then little-known South African firm, Executive
Outcomes, started gaining world attention for its
battlefield prowess against Jonas Savimbi's UNITA in
Angola.
One US Department of Defense (DoD) guide
notes:
The use of civilian contractors for
support within the US military is not new. Up to World
War II, support from the private sector was common.
The primary role of contractors was simple logistics
support, such as transportation, medical services, and
provisioning. As the Vietnam conflict unfolded, the
role of the contractor began to change. The increasing
technical complexity of military equipment and
hardware drove the Services to rely on contractors as
technical specialists, and they worked side by side
with deployed military personnel. Several factors have
driven this expanded role for contractors:
Downsizing of the military following the Gulf War.
Growing reliance on contractors to support the
latest weapons and provide lifetime support for the
systems.
DoD-sponsored move to outsource or privatize
functions to improve efficiency and free up funds for
sustainment and modernization programs.
Increased operating tempos. Today contractor
logistics support is routinely imbedded in most major
systems maintenance and support plans. Unfortunately,
military operational planners have not been able to
keep up with the growing involvement of contractors.
Another paper, prepared for a military
conference, noted:
The notion, much less the requirement, of
placing contractors on the battlefield is the
cumulative effect of reduced government spending,
force reductions/government downsizing, privatization
of duties historically performed by the military, low
retention rates - particularly in high technology
positions, reliance upon increasingly complex
technology, higher mission requirements, low military
salaries, and recruitment shortfalls all within a
booming economy and budgetary surplus projections.
It is true, however, that the PMC sector
has been undergoing a significant quantitative and
qualitative shift over the past decade. Many of the
original firms have been bought up by larger,
established contractors, thus fixing their image, at
least in the public's mind, as just another
military-industrial contractor, with all the attendant
bad press that the sector often gets, ie, scandals about
contracts awarded to Halliburton or its subsidiary
Kellog, Brown and Root.
And since the September
11, 2001 attacks there has been a notable increase in
the formation of new PMC. But it is Iraq that has
focused world attention on the role of PMC to new
heights. Though not noticed nearly as much as their
post-major combat operations, PMC were prominent during
the war itself. The services relied on civilian
contractors to run the computer systems that generated
the tactical air picture for the Combined Air Operations
Center for the war in Iraq. Other contract technicians
supported Predator unmanned aerial vehicles and the data
links they used to transmit information.
The US
Navy relied on civilian contractors to help operate the
guided missile systems on some of its ships. When the
army's technology-heavy 4th Infantry Division deployed
to Iraq in 2003, about 60 contract employees accompanied
the division to support its digital command-and-control
systems. The systems were still in development, and the
army did not have uniformed personnel trained to
maintain them.
The army depends entirely on
civilian contractors to maintain its Guardrail
surveillance aircraft. With relatively few planes packed
with specialized intelligence-gathering systems on
board, the service decided it was not cost effective to
develop its own maintenance capability.
Security, or lack thereof, in Iraq has created
an enormous demand for PMC services. At least a dime to
15 cents of every dollar spent is for security,
according to the inspector general for the Coalition
Provisional Authority.
PMC employing personnel
from several countries, such as Britain, Nepal, Chile,
Ukraine, Israel, South Africa and Fiji, are doing a wide
variety of tasks in Iraq, but the common link is
helping, in one way or another, to provide security.
Many, though not all, PMC personnel, who are
hired as independent contractors are not merely
ex-military, but former members of elite units, usually
in the special operations forces community (SOF). Why
SOF?
It is true that having a special operations
background doesn't make one invincible or an expert in
all things. But what it does mean is they are highly
professional and disciplined, and have the skills and
dedication to their mission to work under adverse
conditions. In contrast a young army soldier or Marine,
recently graduated from his or her basic training and
specialty school is just that: young and inexperienced.
They are highly dependant on their leadership to guide
and direct them through the extensive learning curve
that accompanies armed conflict. In contrast, SOF
personnel generally adhere to a higher standard without
needing extensive leadership.
It is worth noting
that many of the actual security teams operating on the
ground frequently are composed of former and retired
senior non-commissioned officers. This level of
experience contributes to a more relaxed environment,
sometimes mistaken for a lower level of competence by
conventional military commanders, that simplifies
operations. It contributes to a "no babysitting
required" operational environment. Leaders simply do not
have to spend unnecessary amounts of time ensuring basic
tasks have been performed. Weapons maintenance,
hydration, communications checks, all the little things
that when done by rule and inspection rather than as a
matter of course takes time and make for rigid
professional relationships.
Many of the civilian
contractors doing logistical and reconstruction work
have hired PMC to provide protection for their
personnel. Washington Group International, an Idaho
construction and engineering firm, for example, employs
twice as many security guards as it does other
sub-contractors, although many of them are assigned to
protect the power lines the company repairs. At one
point it had 350 employees setting up power lines around
Fallujah - and more than 700 security personnel.
Bechtel, the US engineering company with the
master contract to rebuild Iraq's shattered
infrastructure, won't let its employees move from one
worksite to the next without guards armed with assault
rifles and wearing bullet-proof vests.
Bechtel
initially hired Olive Security, which was on the ground
in Iraq early in the conflict serving British television
news crews. The contract since passed to ArmorGroup, a
larger and more established company that, among other
things, provides security for US embassies in the Middle
East and its naval base in Bahrain. There are 100
personnel from ArmorGroup to protect the 164 Bechtel
employees in the country. Security costs during
Bechtel's planned 18 months in Iraq will exceed $40
million.
Other firms that have been in the news
include:
Computer Sciences Corporation unit DynCorp
International FZ-LLC (DIFZ) has been prominent for its
hiring of police officers in the US to train police
officers in Iraq. DynCorp was awarded a one-year
contract worth up to $50 million in April 2003 from the
US State Department to support law enforcement functions
in Iraq. It is to provide up to 1,000 civilian advisors
to help the government of Iraq organize effective
civilian law enforcement, judicial and correctional
agencies. Under the contract, CSC's DynCorp
International will provide technical advisors with 10
years of domestic law enforcement, corrections and
judicial experience, including two years in specialized
areas such as police training, crime scene
investigation, border security, traffic accident
investigation, corrections and customs. It pays $75,000
to $153,600 to those it has hired on year-long
contracts.
Titan is providing translators to support both
reconstruction efforts, and as recently revealed in the
scandal over torture and inhumane treatment of Iraqi
prisoners, and military interrogation, in Iraq.
The Steele Foundation has provided protection for
construction firms. Two of its agents died in January
fighting off an attack by guerillas against a convoy.
Steele employs around 500 agents in Iraq, about
one-third Westerners and the rest Iraqis.
Some security companies have formed their own "Quick
Reaction Forces", and their own intelligence units that
produce daily intelligence briefs with grid maps of "hot
zones". One company (Blackwater) has its own
helicopters, and several have even forged diplomatic
alliances with local clans.
In Iraq, Blackwater personnel guard L Paul Bremer is
the head of the Coalition Provisional Authority, the US
occupation civilian administration, among other duties.
In August 2003, Blackwater was awarded a $21 million
no-bid contract to supply security guards and two
helicopters for Bremer.
Blackwater has also, on
at least one occasion, performed above and beyond the
call of duty or contract. In April an attack by hundreds
of Iraqi militia members on the US government's
headquarters in Najaf was repulsed not by the US
military, but by eight Blackwater commandos. Before US
reinforcements could arrive Blackwater Security
Consulting sent in its own helicopters amid an intense
firefight to resupply its commandos with ammunition and
to ferry out a wounded Marine.
The same night,
Hart Group, Control Risks and Triple Canopy were all
involved in pitched battles. The Hart position was
overrun. Abandoned by nearby coalition forces, the
firm's employees had to leave one of their comrades dead
on a rooftop on which he and four colleagues had been
fighting after their house had been captured.
One of US-based PMC Custer Battles' assignments
involves guarding Baghdad's airport, a duty it shares
with the US military.
The South African-owned
firm, Meteoric Tactical Solutions, has a $476,000
contract with the British Department for International
Development's (DFID) which involves providing bodyguards
and drivers for its most senior official in Iraq and his
small personal staff. Meteoric also landed a big
contract to train a private Iraqi security force to
guard government buildings and other important sites
formerly protected by US soldiers.
SSA Marine
was awarded a sub-contract last year for security at the
port of Umm Qasr in Iraq to Olive Security, a United
Kingdom-based company. The USAID-approved sub-contract
of six months commenced last October 15 with the arrival
of a team of 40 veterans from the Brigade of Gurkhas at
the facility.
Another British-owned company,
ArmorGroup, has an $1.54 million contract to supply 20
security guards for the Foreign Office. That figure will
rise by 50 percent in July. The firm also employs about
500 Gurkhas to guard executives with the US firms
Bechtel and Kellogg Brown & Root (KBR). KBR alone
has 24,000 employees there and flies another 500 out of
Houston every week.
In August 2003, the
Coalition Provisional Authority awarded one of the
largest security contracts - to defend oil sites and
pipelines in Iraq - to a little-known Johannesburg,
South Africa-based company called Erinys, headed by a
South African, Sean Cleary; a former senior official in
pre-independence Namibia.
Erinys is barely a
year old, and although its website names five managers
and directors, most of whom have been affiliated with
Armor Holdings, a Florida-based security company and
Defense Systems Limited, a British company which merged
with Armor in 1997, its ownership structure remains
opaque.
The award was worth some $40 million.
The Iraq contract calls for an audit of the security
requirements of each region, and the vetting, training
and hiring of the estimated 6,500 guards needed to do
the job. Erinys is thought to employ 14, 000 Iraqis as
watchmen and security guards to protect the country's
oil fields and pipelines. The Florida-based AirScan Inc
was awarded a $10 million contract for helicopter
surveillance of the pipelines.
It is fair to say
that currently there is a glut of PMC in Iraq. Last
week, the Pentagon released to Congress a list drawn up
by the Coalition Provisional Authority of 60 PMC
operating in Iraq, with an aggregate total of 20,000
personnel.
It is not easy to keep track of PMC
casualties. Coalition forces do not track civilian
contractor deaths. Rather, they leave that up to the
companies.
In an article in Salon, Peter Singer
of the Brookings Institution wrote:
From a survey of industry insiders as well
as hometown press reports that sometimes announce the
deaths, estimates are that between 30 and 50 private
military contractors have been killed in the fighting
in Iraq, with tens more killed in accidents. Assuming
the rough ratio of killed versus wounded that has held
among US troop casualties (1 to 6), this means that
upward of 200 to 300 private casualties have gone
unreported on the public ledger. That is more than the
entire 82nd Airborne Division lost in Iraq over the
past year.
But by anyone's standard it is
clearly a dangerous place to work. One measure of the
danger comes from the US Department of Labor, which
handles workers' compensation claims for deaths and
injuries among among contract employees working for the
military in war zones.
Since the start of 2003,
contractors have filed claims for 94 deaths and 1,164
injuries. For all of 2001 and 2002, by contrast,
contractors reported 10 deaths and 843 injuries. No
precise nation-by-nation breakdown is yet available, but
labor department officials said an overwhelming majority
of the cases since 2003 were from Iraq.
As of
early April, San Diego's Titan Corp has lost at least 13
employees - including four Americans - since the defense
company began providing interpreters to the US Army in
Iraq, according to published reports. Nine of the 13
killed from July through December were Iraqis, although
not all of the deaths were combat-related.
One
of the new conventional wisdoms regarding PMC is that
there is very little, if any, control or accountability
over them.
In reality, however, there is more
supervision than commonly thought. For example, the
rules of engagement are not different for security
contractors than coalition forces military personnel. In
fact, PMC personnel are often held to an even higher
standard by their employers. It is common on being hired
to be handed a complete copy of the rules of engagement
set forth by the theater commander and prepared by the
regional judge advocate general office, which the
employee has studied and signed. They are also briefed
on any changes or updates to the rules and during each
operations order and convoy brief the rules of
engagement are reviewed by the convoy leader or team
leader.
The US government does have some
mechanisms for oversight, though admittedly not enough
and not the right kind. In the US, PMC contracts worth
over $50 million entered into by the government are
meant to be reported to Congress. Companies must comply
with a set of arms sales and services rules called the
US International Traffic in Arms Regulations, and the
Pentagon can cancel a contract if it is not fulfilled.
But issues of control and accountability have
been enough of a concern that members of Congress sent a
letter, initiated by Senator Jack Reed, to Defense
Secretary Donald Rumsfeld saying that security companies
need to be properly screened and must operate within
guidelines set up by the US government.
It's
been reported that the Coalition Provisional Authority
wants to tighten controls over the increasing number of
PMC in Iraq. A draft authority document on vetting and
registering the security firms would require security
companies to list all employees working in Iraq, and to
provide copies of the contracts under which they are
working and the serial numbers of their weapons. If the
company sought to increase its weapons cache after its
initial registration, it would have to coordinate with
the Ministry of Interior, the draft states. Weapons
could be carried by employees only while "on duty" and
would be stored in an armory or "secure facility"
otherwise.
The authority now restricts the
weapons private security teams may use to small arms
with ammunition as large as 7.62mm and to some other
defensive weapons. It should be mentioned that such a
limitation in terms of weaponry runs counter to the
popular perception in the media of PMC constituting some
extraordinarily well-armed force with massive firepower.
For example, they don't have grenades or .50 caliber
machine guns, etc.
A December 31 coalition rule
spells out the circumstances under which security firms
can use deadly force, including self-defense, the
defense of people or property specified in their
contracts, and the defense of civilians.
The
proposed rule would also give PMC the right to detain
civilians and to use deadly force in defense of
themselves or their clients. "Fire only aimed shots,"
reads one proposed rule, according to a draft obtained
by the New York Times.
Also, under the new
rules, firms must have insurance cover, which many
smaller operators lack. There will also be mandatory
guidelines covering their operations, and they will need
authorization from the Iraqi interior ministry. To get
this, they will have to show a record of operating in
similar situations.
TOMORROW: Myths and
mystery
David Isenberg, a senior
analyst with the Washington-based British American
Security Information Council (BASIC), has a wide
background in arms control and national security issues.
The views expressed are his own.
(Copyright
2004 Asia Times Online Ltd. All rights reserved. Please
contact content@atimes.com for
information on our sales and syndication policies.)
