Subcontracting
The War
By James Conachy
03 May 2004
World Socialis Website
Operating
behind a veil of state and corporate secrecy, dozens of private security
firms with intimate connections to the American political establishment
are playing a crucial role in the US occupation of Iraq. The wholesale
contracting of military work to these companies is one of the most outrageous
forms of war profiteering taking place under the auspices of the Bush
administration. Modern-day mercenaries are amassing vast fortunes assisting
the US ruling elite to establish a puppet regime in Iraq, repress the
Iraqi people and plunder the countrys resources.
Security contractors,
without uniforms or standardised identification, driving through the
streets in unmarked vehicles, manning roadblocks or stalking outside
buildings with machine-guns, have become a ubiquitous and offensive
symbol of the US occupation.
Private military
companies (PMCs) are contributing as much as 20 percent of the total
US-led occupation force. At least 35 PMCs have contracts in Iraq, employing
at least 5,000 heavily-armed foreign mercenaries and over 20,000 Iraqis
to carry out explicitly military work in some of the most dangerous
areas of the country. At least another 10,000 to 15,000 contractors
from every corner of the globe are performing vital military logistical
support roles such as driving, maintenance, training, communications
and intelligence-gathering.
Among those who
were torturing Iraqi prisoners at Abu Ghraib prison near Baghdad were
contractors employed as interrogators and translators. One is accused
of raping a young man. He has not been charged however. The mercenaries
in Iraq have complete immunity from Iraqi law under an edict issued
by the US Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA).
The market for these
corporate guns-for-hire has been created by the unprecedented military
activity undertaken by the US government over the past 13 years, and
especially since the September 11, 2001 terror attacks. The American
armed forces now have 350,000 personnel deployed overseas, with a presence
in at least 130 countries and permanent bases in 63. Iraq accounts for
135,000 of these troops.
With the US military
stretched to the limit, PMCs are being used by the Bush administration
to provide the needed military and logistical means to conduct colonial
interventions and wars of aggression. Without the services of mercenaries,
the US government would be compelled to increase the size of the US
military or to consider reviving the military draft.
An article on the
activities of PMCs in Iraq in the April 19 Washington Post commented:
Far more than in any other conflict in United States history,
the Pentagon is relying on private security companies to perform crucial
jobs once entrusted to the military. In addition to guarding innumerable
reconstruction projects, private companies are being asked to provide
security for the chief of the Coalition Provisional Authority, L. Paul
Bremer III, and other senior officials; to escort supply convoys through
hostile territory; and to defend key locations, including 15 regional
authority headquarters and even the Green Zone in downtown Baghdad,
the centre of American power in Iraq.
Vast profits are
being made. While few details have been released about the amounts involved
in specific contracts, it is estimated that of the $18.6 billion allocated
by the Bush administration for Iraqs reconstruction,
at least 25 percent will be used to pay security companies. David Claridge,
a director of a London security firm, has estimated that Iraq contracts
have boosted the annual revenue of British-based PMCs alone from $320
million to over $1.7 billion.
The American firm
Blackwater has become the best known of the PMCs for one reason: four
of its employees were ambushed, killed and had their corpses publicly
paraded through the streets of Fallujah on March 30. The secretive company
has 450 personnel in Iraq, supplying security for CPA facilities, escorting
convoys, and providing the personal bodyguard for Bremer. On April 5,
eight of its contractors defended the CPA headquarters in Najaf from
an attack by Shiite militiamen. In a joint operation with US Army helicopter
gunships, the company used two of its own helicopters to re-supply its
men with ammunition.
Many of the personnel
on Blackwaters payroll are ex-US special forces. Their services
come at a hefty price. For particularly risky operationssuch as
attempting to take a shipment of supplies through Fallujah for examplethey
are believed to charge as much as $1,500 per day. Blackwater also employs
60 Chilean ex-commandos who were trained under the Pinochet dictatorship.
Control Risks Group,
a long-established British private security concern, has 500 mainly
ex-British military personnel in Iraq, especially former members of
the elite Special Air Services (SAS). It has contracts with the British
government and a number of private companies to provide bodyguards and
building security services. The services of the British mercenaries
cost over $1,000 per day.
The amount of money
that can be made working for PMCs has led hundreds of American, British
and Australian special forces to resign in order to become mercenaries.
The British military has openly expressed concerns that it is losing
large numbers of its most highly trained personnel to private firms.
As many as 40 members of the Australian SAS, which fought in Iraq during
the invasion, have resigned to go back as security contractors. The
British firm AKE claims to be employing 13 SAS-trained Australians in
Iraq.
The British-based
Global Risk Strategies is using a far cheaper source for its 1,500-strong
private army, which is protecting CPA buildings and other high profile
facilities. The company hired over 500 Fijian soldiers and a similar
number of Nepalese, who had served in the British Armys Gurkha
regiments, and flew them into Iraq. The Fijian and Nepalese mercenaries
are paid just $1,000 per month. An unnamed PMC executive told the Economist:
Why pay for a British platoon to guard a base, when you can hire
Gurkhas at a fraction of the cost?
Last year, Global
Risk Strategies carried out a $28 million contract to organise the secure
changeover of Iraqs currency from that of the former Baath regime.
On December 1, its Fijian mercenaries were involved in a massacre in
the city of Samarra, where they indiscriminately fired on built-up areas
after a currency changeover convoy came under attack. At least 10 Iraqi
civilians were killed and numerous others wounded.
Some 500 former
ex-Gurkhas are also employed by ArmorGroup, an offshoot of the Florida-based
security firm Armor Holdings, which was named by Fortune magazine in
1999 as one of Americas 100 fastest growing companies. In Iraq,
ArmorGroup contractors protect the Baghdad headquarters and transport
depots of the US conglomerates Bechtel and the Halliburton subsidiary
KBR. The company also provides convoy protection. Internationally, it
has contracts to protect British consular buildings and staff.
An American company,
Custer Battles, has a contract to provide security at Baghdad International
Airport. It is also using the services of former Gurkhas, as well as
personnel recruited in the US. The American firm DynCorp has a $50 million
contract to train Iraqi police officers. Vinnell, a subsidiary of Northman
Grumman, has a $48 million contract to assist in the training of a new
Iraqi Army. The firm USA Environmental has teams of weapons and explosive
experts in Iraq and a $65 million contract to collect and destroy unexploded
ordinance.
The British/South
African company Erinys has the $100 million-plus annual contract to
provide security at Iraqs oil facilities and pipelines. Erinys
employs some 14,000 Iraqi security guards on wages of $150 per month,
supervised by dozens of former British and apartheid-era South African
military.
Four South African
Erinys employees were killed during in a guerilla attack in January.
It was revealed one of them was Francois Strydom, a white South African
who had fought with a pro-apartheid paramilitary in Namibia. Another
Erinys contractor who was wounded in the attack, Deon Gouws, had been
a member of the South African secret police Vlakplaas and was charged
by the South African Truth Commission for murdering an anti-apartheid
activist in 1986. A former South African judge Richard Goldstein told
the press he knew of 150 former apartheid-era security operatives working
as mercenaries in Iraq.
A number of other
PMCs are in Iraq fulfilling contracts for the CPA and private companies.
Texan firm Meyer & Associates can apparently provide liaisons
with government, diplomatic, military, local and guerilla leaders,
as well as more traditional security services. Overseas Security &
Strategic Information offers the services of highly trained and
experienced South African security personnel, managed by former American
intelligence officers with paramilitary backgrounds. Chicago-based
Triple Canopy can provide people in Iraq looking for protection with
everything from discreet travel companions to heavily armoured
high profile convoy escort. Military Professional Resources Incorporated
(MPRI) claims to have a database of 12,500 former US military and police
personnel available for hire.
The secrecy surrounding
the operations of PMCs is enabling the White House to obscure the actual
cost in terms of men and casualties it is taking to sustain the illegal
occupation of Iraq. If a private contractor is killed or injured for
whatever reason in Iraq, it is up to company to choose whether to make
the information public. Few choose to highlight their casualties. Peter
Singer, a fellow at the Brookings Institution who has written on the
operations of private security firms for over a decade, estimated in
an April 15 essay that between 30 and 50 PMC employees had been killed
in fighting, with tens more killed in accidents.
In the last week
alone, six more security contractorstwo South African, two Fijians
and two Americanhave been killed. Applying the same ratio of six
wounded to every death being suffered by the US military, Singer estimated
that at least 200 to 300 wounded contractors have not been reported.
The secrecy of PMCs
poses another, ominous possibility. The occupation of Iraq involves
a systematic campaign of murder and reprisals against growing Iraqi
resistance. Mercenaries provide the Bush administration with a supply
of hired killers to carry out the dirtiest aspects of colonial repressionfrom
torture to provocations and assassinationwhich it would prefer
the military was not directly involved in.
It is a measure
of how little support there actually is for the US presence in Iraqboth
among the Iraqi and the American peoplethat the Bush administration
is dependent on such outfits to police the occupation.