|
In the wake of the Blackwater massacre, has the nature of warfare changed forever? CJ Hannon looks at how private soldiers are a necessary part of modern warfare.
Terminal 2, Dubai International Airport. While sunburnt tourists and Blackberry toting businessmen hurry past, a group of stocky American men sit impassively, waiting for their flight to be called. Dressed in drab olive shirts, khaki trousers and desert boots, they don't look like businessmen and the glum look on their faces gives away the fact they are not tourists.
No, these men are at the forefront of a billon dollar industry that is changing the way war is waged and is raising questions about the future of the modern army. The men are private soldiers; guns for hire, and they are on their way to Baghdad where they will be paid $800 a day to escort VIPs to and from the airport. It is one of the best paid and most dangerous jobs in the twilight world of private security.
That Dubai Airport is the last port of call for these men before they arrive in Iraq should be no surprise. The city is fast becoming the private soldier capital of the world and is home to an increasing number of security firms, both big and small. Even Halliburton, the US giant with tentacles in virtually every global conflict, has opened a headquarters in the city. That a company that manufactures the prisons for Guantanamo Bay is based in an Arab country illustrates the global, and amoral, nature of 21st century war.
One former military analyst, who runs a team of contractors from an office in Dubai, said it made sense to locate here. "Geographically it's perfect, it's an aviation hub to the rest of the Middle East. It's also the best place in the Middle East to decompress after a job. The contractors we use are pushed quite hard, in terms of stress - being in a place where you might get killed is very stressful and that's why they always take a few days in Dubai by the pool."
Edward, a Filipino-American who has spent three years in Iraq, spends his infrequent mini-breaks away from the conflict holed up in a hotel on Shaikh Zayed Road. "I sleep, swim and drink, and not in that order," he says. Edward believes that he and others like him are now a necessary part of modern warfare. "Who is going to do these jobs, if we don't? Look at the dirty jobs in Afghanistan or Iraq and you'll see that it's us doing them, not the US military."
While the conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq are where most of those billions of dollars are spent, contractors are doing everything from protecting oil pipelines in Colombia to gathering intelligence in Central Asia. Indeed, the world's eyes turned to a tiny oil-rich country in West Africa earlier this year when a trial took place implicating various western countries, its leaders and a former SAS operative by the name of Simon Mann.
Mann, a former Etonian, was accused of leading a mercenary army to instigate a coup d'etat against the Equatorial Guinea President, Teodoro Obiang. Mann and 69 others were arrested in Zimbabwe when their plane was checked by security at Harare Airport. They were eventually extradited to Equatorial Guinea and locked up in the notorious Black Beech prison.
Mann was sentenced to 34 years in jail in July of this year, although many expect him to be let out within the next three years. The real interest in the trial lay in the web of accusations and counter accusations with everyone from the Spanish government to the South African military being accused of giving the coup attempt tacit approval.
While the Mann debacle and subsequent trial may have made the headlines, there is another arm to the mercenary industry, one which is less visible but far more important - worth an estimated $10 billion a year.
This is a world in which private companies such as Blackwater, Aegis and Triple Canopy operate with almost impunity, according to Robert Young Pelton's Licensed to Kill and other books. After all, there have been no private contractors that have ever been convicted; they operate under a grey area as far as the law is concerned, the author argues. This is the world of those sullen men at Dubai Airport, of Edward and thousands like him.
American author Jeremy Scahill, who has written the book Blackwater on the private security industry, believes companies such as Blackwater provide a valuable service to the US government. "Contractors have provided the Bush Administration with political cover, allowing the government to deploy private forces in a war zone free of public scrutiny, with the deaths, injuries and crimes of those forces shrouded in secrecy," he writes. "The Administration and the Republican-controlled Congress in turn have shielded the contractors from accountability, oversight and legal constraints. Despite the presence of more than 100,000 private contractors on the ground in Iraq, only one has been indicted for crimes or violations."
There are signs that this is changing, but predictably the pressure is coming from an increasingly strident Iraqi government, rather than from Washington. A slew of incidents where US contractors have killed innocent Iraqis has outraged Baghdad and put pressure on the US government to act.
One of the most serious of these took place in Nisour Square in the centre of Baghdad on September 16, 2007. According to the FBI, Blackwater employees opened fire, killing 17 civilians. Local witnesses say the contractors began shooting for no reason and continued shooting at fleeing Iraqi crowds. There were also claims that two Blackwater helicopters took part in the attack. However, Blackwater maintained that its guards were under attack and responded accordingly.
The FBI found that at least 14 of the shootings were unjustified and found no evidence to support assertions by Blackwater employees that they were fired upon by Iraqi civilians. The company's licence was revoked by the Iraqi government the next day.
In the wake of the incident there have been some attempts to curb the excesses of the private security firms. According to Pelton's book, the Iraqi government wanted to press charges against some Blackwater employees involved in a shooting incident but the US state department granted them immunity from prosecution. The US Code of military justice was also changed in 2006 to exempt State Department contractors from prosecution.
So for now, the Iraqi government still has no control over the private 'armies' that patrol its streets and analysts believe the US will never allow the trial of an American citizen in Iraq. Indeed any contractor accused of misconduct has always been whisked out of the country before the Iraqi authorities can investigate.
For the Bush administration, the role of private contractors in the 'War on Terror' is vital. In the months after the September 11 attacks, Donald Rumsfeld, the then Secretary of Defense, was determined to scale down the role of the US military - first with Special Forces teams and CIA paramilitary teams and second with private contractors, according to Pelton and Bob Woodward's book Bush at War. What he did not want was tens of thousands of "boots on the ground" - a byword for large scale military units and a recipe for a Vietnam-style disaster. As Scahill writes, "Rumsfeld's trademark 'small footprint' approach ushered in one of the most significant developments in modern warfare - the widespread use of private contractors in every aspect of war, including in combat."
The idea of small mobile military teams is nothing new. During WWII, both the Germans and the Allies used teams of irregulars who could be dropped behind enemy lines to do anything from blowing up bridges to recruiting spies. The CIA has for years relied on small teams of paramilitaries to do dirty jobs that were too risky for the military to do. And it is risk and the avoidance of accountability that has driven the modern private security business.
As Scahill writes: "There are now more than 200,000 contractors in Iraq, doing jobs the US military might otherwise have to do, and might get killed doing so."
For the contractors, some of whom are earning more than $1000 a day in the world's hotspots, joining the likes of Blackwater or Aegis makes more sense than earning 10 times less, often with less protection. One US soldier, quoted in Robert Young Pelton's book Guns for Hire, painted a stark picture of the difference between the regular military and the private one. "Those Blackwater guys get all the best toys, better backup and better pay. Once I get more experience, I know where I am going."
Mercenaries throughout history
Egypt: Egyptian Pharoah Ramesses II used 11,000 mercenaries during the various battles of the time. Ramesses recruited soldiers from Libya, Syria and even Sardinia, men who became part of his personal bodyguard.
Rome: The Romans often hired mercenaries, usually because it was politically easier than hiring locals. Barbarians were usually the preferred choice, and as their name is now a byword for violence, obviously a very good one.
USA: During World War II President Roosevelt wanted to help stop Japanese advances against China without getting overtly involved. To that effect the Flying Tigers were set up, a group of American mercenary pilots whose job was to go after Japanese bombers.
The Congo: 'Mad' Mike Hoare, a former British Army captain is hired by the Congolese prime minister to fight a breakaway rebel group. Hoare's men then team up with an unlikely coalition of Belgian paratroopers, Cuban exile pilots and CIA hired mercenaries to rescue 1600 civilians from the
rebels' clutches.
Biafra: In 1969 German former KLM pilot Carl Gustaf von Rosen formed a squadron of five planes, which attacked and destroyed the Nigerian air force in the West African conflict.
|
