Private Armies - youlikewelike

PRIVATE: ARMIES

"When the US tanks rolled into Iraq in March

2003, they brought with them the largest army
of 'private contractors' ever deployed in a war,"
according to Jeremy Scahill author of
Blackwater: The Rise of the World's Most
Powerful Mercenary Army. Blackwater USA
is one of those 'private contractors' in Iraq
today.

But just who or what controls these private armies?

Scahill estimates that approximately 630 private security companies, varying in size and role, are presently operating in Iraq. These companies have over 180,000 employees, which dwarfs the 160,000 contingent of US soldiers currently on active duty in the country.

Many of these private security employees are engaged in periphery tasks such as cooking, driving or guarding buildings, but a significant number also have combat roles, in particular protecting high value targets. The companies involved often employ mercenaries from Nepal, Fiji and Iraq itself so they can vastly undercut the price of a soldier doing the same job, and they work largely by their own contracts and rules.

Blackwater USA has maintained a high profile presence in Iraq. Its employees have protected every post-invasion US ambassador, along with numerous visiting US Congressional delegations, and have lost 30 personnel in the process.

"Iraqi officials have consistently complained about the conduct of Blackwater and other contractors, along with the legal barriers to their attempts to investigate or prosecute alleged wrongdoing," Scahill argued in a recent article in the Guardian. "Four years into the occupation, there is absolutely no effective system of oversight or accountability governing contractors and their operations."

Blackwater's employees - just like other 'private security contractors' - are also not subject to military justice and cannot be prosecuted by Iraqi courts.

"The occupation of Iraq has allowed mercenaries to reap huge profits. But the government has failed to enact laws to punish their human rights abuses, including firing on Iraqi civilians," according to John Hilary, Campaigns and Policy Director of War on Want. "How can we hope to restore peace and security in Iraq while allowing mercenary armies to operate completely outside the law? We call on the government to introduce tough legislation as a matter of urgency to ban the use of mercenaries in these conflict situations."

The use of mercenaries in conflicts such as Iraq has been termed the 'privatisation of war'.
Ann Feltham of the Campaign Against the Arms Trade (CAAT) points out that the use of private soldiers is not limited to Iraq. Private military units are also operating in Colombia, Nigeria and Sierra Leone.

"These armed forces are governed by one set of rules, whilst civilians are
governed by another," she argues. "But these groups sit in a grey area. There just
aren't any rules governing them at the moment."

She believes that one benefit for governments in using mercenary groups is that
the losses they suffer do not have to be catalogued as 'war dead'. More importantly,
perhaps, they also rarely receive attention in the media. Employees of Blackwater for
example are not perceived as being part of the armed forces and so there is less
attention and, to an extent, sympathy when its employees are killed or go missing.

"Ostensibly the private contractors are supposed to be doing periphery tasks in
Iraq but they end up fighting anyway just because of the situation. One of the problems
is that the boundaries are very fragile," says Feltham. "Certainly if they get into
trouble there is the question of who is expected to rescue them. Also, how are they
made accountable for what they do?"

One other prominent company in Iraq is British organisation Aegis Defence which secured a £145 million contract from the Pentagon in 2004 to coordinate other security companies operating in Iraq. Its current CEO, Colonel Tim Spicer, was previously in charge of Sandline UK. In 1998 Sandline was alleged to have broken an arms embargo by supplying 28 tonnes of small arms to help restore President Ahmed Kabbah's government to power following a violent coup in 1998?

Feltham explains that the UK Government initiated a consultation paper in 2002 entitled Private Military Companies: Options for Regulation, but that no firm action has followed.

"That pretty much died a death," points out Feltham. "One of the big problems was an absence of proper definitions, so nobody could really agree on the next step. CAAT, along with War on Want and Amnesty International UK, is just trying to push the issue up the agenda to get some tangible action, rather than seemingly endless consultations. We'd certainly like these companies to be registered and the individual missions licensed. Then, at least, somebody is expressly giving permission and keeping an eye on what is going on."

words: Andrew Laughlin

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