Bill Berkowitz for BuzzFlash: The Untamed and Unregulated Beast of Private Military Security Companies
US soldiers in Afghanistan were “assisted” by private security firms who serve as contractors (The U.S. Army)
August 13, 2021
By Bill Berkowitz
From Haiti to Mexico, from France to Iraq, private unregulated security firms – often with the stamp of approval of host governments – are providing security to authoritarian leaders, warlords, and arms traders. Although private military security organizations have been around for centuries, since 9/11, their use has proliferated. “Corporate mercenaries – or, more properly, private security and military companies – are increasingly taking over functions that were once carried out by states, with grave implications for human rights and democracy worldwide,” Felip Daza and Nora Miralles recently wrote in a story posted at Open Democracy, an edited version of an essay in the Transnational Institute’s State of Power 2021 report: Coercive World.
During the Trump administration, Erik Prince, the founder of the notorious Blackwater (now known as Academi) private army that wreaked havoc during the Bush-era military adventures in Iraq, proposed privatizing the war in Afghanistan. He sweetened the proposal with a pledge to mine the country’s valuable minerals. Prince, the chairman of Frontier Services Group, an aviation, logistics, and security firm, brother of former education secretary Betsy DeVos, and close friend to Steve Bannon, "briefed top Trump administration officials directly, talked up his [Afghan privatization] plan publicly on the DC circuit, and published op-eds about it. He patterned the strategy he's pitching on the historical model of the old British East India Company, which had its own army and colonized much of Britain's empire in India,” BuzzFeed’s Aaron Roston reported at the time.
“While international law prohibits the use of mercenaries in armed conflicts,” The Harvard Gazette’s Christina Pazzanese recently wrote, “many countries, including the U.S., employ security contractors to fill noncombatant roles. Others, like Russia, which deploys professional fighters in a dozen countries, including the Donbas region, Syria, Libya, and the Central African Republic, use them to bolster their own uniformed troops and cut costs.”
There is an International Code of Conduct for Private Security Service Providers, but it unclear how many companies actually abide by it.
Private military armies are nothing new. Approximately one in six participants in the Revolutionary War were contract soldiers. Published in 2010, Private Armed Forces and Global Security: A Guide to the Issues was one of the first books to provide a comprehensive survey of private military groups involved in conflicts around the world. It thoroughly covered the history of private military forces since 1300.
In the book, author Carlos Ortiz defined Private Military Companies or PMCs as “legally established international firms offering services that involve the potential to exercise force in a systematic way and by military or paramilitary means, as well as the enhancement, the transfer, the facilitation, the deterrence, or the defusing of this potential, or the knowledge required to implement it, to clients.”
Felip Daza and Nora Miralies wrote: The Observatory Shock Monitor “which tracks the impact of privatized war, argues that the corporate mercenaries stand out because of the internationalized, business-like services they provide. These companies are registered in one state but often work in another, offering their services via slick websites and a network of offices and facilities around the world. In the countries where they operate, they employ both foreign and local personnel. And the services they offer go far beyond the traditional role of mercenaries: from acting as security guards and patrolling public spaces, to military combat and operational support, to humanitarian work, clearing landmines or rescuing hostages. In short, they’re a replacement for a whole set of functions traditionally carried out by states, with access to the kind of military equipment that modern armies have at their disposal.”
From Iraq to Haiti, From France to Mexico
In The Harvard Gazette story, titled “Haiti assassination revives concerns over ‘private armies’,” Christina Pazzanese wrote: “Most of the 20-plus suspects arrested in the assassination of Haitian President Jovenel Moïse as part of an attempted coup appear to be from outside the country, with no known connection to the nation’s politics or military. Authorities believe a wealthy Haitian-American doctor contracted a “private army” of former Colombian soldiers through a Miami security firm, Counter Terrorist Unit (CTU) Security, owned by a Venezuelan-American businessman.”
Groupe DCI was active in France during widespread protests. Corporate mercenaries have been used in the War on Drugs in Colombia and Mexico. “In Cape Town, South Africa, corporate mercenaries such as Professional Protection Alternatives take on the role of police forces, patrolling wealthy neighborhoods and carrying out operations to evict people from public spaces.”
According to Felip Daza and Nora Miralies Tier 1 Group, a private security firm based in Arkansas, was responsible for training some of the Saudi killers of journalist Jamal Khashoggi.
Tim Shorrock, the author of Spies for Hire: The Secret World of Intelligence Outsourcing, stated that 70% of the US intelligence budget in 2007 was outsourced to security contractors. A year later, an investigation by The Washington Post found that 1,931 private companies were collaborating on national security, counter-terrorism and intelligence tasks from 10,000 US locations.”
With threats of cyber espionage and cyber hacking, cyber security has become another domain for private security firms. Daza and Miralies point to Hamilton Booz, RSB Group, G4S and Control Risks “as major corporate players in this field.”
The number of groups operating as private sector security and military organizations, and the extent of their activities, is extremely difficult to track, as transparency is not a highly valued concept.
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