Private security companies:
The mercenaries or the corsairs of the XXI Century?
26/06/2006
- Opinión
The 25 000 private security contractors presently working in Iraq
constitute, after the United States Army, the largest force of occupation well
before the British Army. These private security companies with over 420 deaths
and some 4 000 injured, according to the USA Department of Labor, also yield
the highest number of casualties with the exception of the US Army which has
already reached over 2 500 deaths and more than 18 000 injuries.
According to a report emanating from the USA Government Accountability
Office, contracts for over $ 766 million have been awarded to private security
companies in Iraq. Criticisms have been raised pointing out that, on the basis
of such contracts, unethical mercenaries are being recruited complicating the
reconstruction undertaken by the Coalition and receiving sometimes salaries up
to several thousand dollars daily. In addition, these companies are accused of
fraud and of overt confrontations with the US Army under which they should
operate.
With the globalisation of the economy, the use of force has become
another business to be privatized. The privatized military and security
industry which was estimated, in 1990, at $ 33 billion, reached in 2006 some $
100 billion and will reach probably over $ 200 billion in 2010. During the
first Gulf War, in the 1990’s, one out of every 100 soldiers was a private
contractor. A few years later, during the former Yugoslavia’s wars the rate
was one of every 50 and presently it is one out of every ten. The armed
conflicts in former Yugoslavia, Angola, Colombia and Sierra Leone, among
others, have favoured the expansion of such private companies. But it has been
the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq and the instability that followed in the post
war period in those two countries which has been the driving force in the
extension and multiplication of the private military and security industry. It
is also in those two countries where the limits of the grey zone, where these
companies operate, which very easily becomes blurred: security activities and
human rights violations are often inextricably linked.
The thousands of armed contractors operating in Iraq represent one of
the major problems in the reconstruction of the country for they carry out
their activities without any control or accountability. Their behaviour is
often similar to those of the employees of CACI and Titan working in the
prison of Abu Ghraib. These two USA private security companies have been
allegedly implicated in the 2004 human rights violations. The report of USA
General Antonio Taguba indicates that two CACI employees were directly or
indirectly implicated in the use of dogs on prisoners, forced sexual abuses
and other types of violations perpetrated on prisoners. Another report
suggests that one of the 27 employees of CACI working for the USA Army in Iraq
knew pertinently that the instructions he was giving to the soldiers
interrogating the prisoners was a form of torture. CACI sources argue that
their personnel were at all times performing under military instructions.
According to Titan their employees are translators and interpreters working
for the USA Army and they were not implicated in the tortures committed on
prisoners. The inquiries carried out to establish the implication of both of
these two companies in the crimes committed in Abu Ghraib has not prevented
the USA Government from renewing their contracts: one of some $ 15 million to
CACI under which it will provide interrogating services with a view to
obtaining information in Iraq and the other of $ 400 million to Titan to
recruit more translators.
At the time of the incidents in Abu Ghraib, the United States Government
as Occupying Power had jurisdiction in Iraq. The fact that the human rights
violations were allegedly perpetrated by employees of private security
companies, such as CACI and Titan, does not exempt the USA Government of its
obligations according to international human rights and international
humanitarian law. However, contrary to the comments made by the US authorities
to United Nations affirming that “contract personnel of the US are under the
direction of the Coalition and are subject to criminal jurisdiction in US
Federal Courts”, not one single civil employee allegedly implicated in the
abuses perpetrated in Abu Ghraib has been investigated impartially by a US
Federal Court or has been legally sanctioned.
In the presentation of the 2006 Amnesty International report in
Washington, the USA Director emphasized that United States were creating the
equivalent of Guantanamo “- a virtual rule free zone in which perpetrators are
not likely to be held accountable for breaking the law”. He said that
“business outsourcing may increase efficiency, but war outsourcing may
facilitate impunity”. He added that “illegal behavior of contractors and of
those who designed and carried out U.S. torture policies and the reluctance of
the government to bring perpetrators to justice are tarnishing the reputation
of the United States, hurting the image of American troops and contributing to
anti-American sentiment”. According to Amnesty International, out of 20 known
cases of civilians suspected of criminal acts, there has only been the
indictment of one contractor on assault charges in connection with the death
of a detainee in Afghanistan: there has not been a single prosecution of a
private military contractor in Iraq.
The International Committee of the Red Cross, in view of the growth of
these private military and security companies, has decided to examine the
activities of these non state actors and how to relate with them in a more
systematic approach, focusing on the companies operating in situations of
armed conflict or those which provide training and advice to armed forces. In
addition, the Committee maintains a dialogue with the authority which
contracts the company and with the state of origin.
Alarm has also been voiced by the Council of Europe. In view of the
growing concern in Member States in the increase and use of private security
services which in a number of states exceeds the number of police forces, in
2005 the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe adopted a
recommendation entitled “Democratic oversight of the security sector in member
states”. This recommendation underlines that “from being rather limited in
scope and action, private security services are increasingly moving into areas
which traditionally have been reserved for the public police”. It also draws
attention that “ensuring security in society through the rule of law is a
fundamental mission of public authorities”. And while recognizing that
security services may make a useful contribution “the lack of public control
over these services, the scope of their activities and the professional
conduct of their staff might well endanger the protection of human rights and
fundamental freedoms”. The recommendation also underlines that “national
regulations developed by member states on this issue vary greatly and in some
member states such regulation is non-existent”.
The mass media is increasingly interested in the activities of these
private security companies particularly those operating in Iraq. The Suisse
Romande TV disseminated, in March 2004, a program in which private contractors
are seen actively participating in direct combat. CNN, on 13 June 2006, also
devoted a program on the activities of those companies. It reproduced a video
in which someone was filming from the interior of an armed vehicle going
through the streets of Baghdad. From the vehicle a rifle is shooting at
another vehicle, a Mercedes, behind it. The impacts of the bullets hit the
Mercedes which bumps into a taxi parked on one side of the street. People come
out from the taxi but nobody from the Mercedes indicating that the persons in
that car have been injured or killed. According to CNN the persons traveling
in the armed vehicle worked for a private security company named Aegis. It is
well known to everybody that the personnel in the vehicles of those companies,
when they travel through the streets of Baghdad or any other Iraqi city, being
afraid of being attacked, shoot indiscriminately right and left to avoid any
car approaching them.
It seems that Aegis carried out an investigation about the incident but
its conclusions are confidential. A USA Army inquiry says that probably it
would not be indication of a crime having been committed. CNN tried a number
of times to interview without success the person who created Aegis, Tim
Spicer, who told the channel that he “had not the intention of responding but
that wished to inform that the contract to Aegis had been extended for a
consecutive third year”. The contract to which he referred totals some $293
million and is considered one of the most important awarded by the Pentagon to
a private security company. Tim Spicer, former Colonel of the British Scots
Guards, is the same person that survived allegations involving him in several
international scandals. In 1997, he was contracted by the Government of Papua
New Guinea in order to recapture the Island of Bougainville in the hands of
separatists. And in 1998, in Sierra Leone in a scandal of illicit arms being
exported to both parties in the conflict breaking the UN embargo, a scandal
which endangered the survival of the then British Foreign Office Secretary.
Aegis is one of the many private security companies which present
themselves as peace and security builders and which forms part of the
International Peace Operations Association (IOPA), a very active lobby in
Washington which strives to obtain respectability and legitimacy at the
international level.
The use of mercenaries has been a historical constant till almost the
end of the XX Century, when their activities were criminalized by the
international community. Parallel to that phenomenon, governments authorized,
since the XIII Century, two other forms of non state violence: the corsairs
and the merchant companies such as the East India Company or the Hudson Bay
Company. What is the difference between the private security companies and the
mercenaries? In the same way as the corsairs differentiated themselves from
the pirates because the former were authorized by the governments and the
latter not, for they only pursued their own interests, the private security
companies, by the fact of being registered and paying an annual tax to the
government, cease to be considered mercenaries. When they contract these
private military and security companies, the USA and British governments,
among others, avoid parliamentary controls and at the same time can be present
in armed conflicts where they have interests or wish to intervene deploying
private companies as auxiliaries. These companies thus constitute an element
of their foreign policy.
Some of the activities of the private military and security companies,
with President’s Bush doctrine of preventive war, constitute another weakening
factor of the collective security system established in 1945 with the adoption
of the UN Charter. This Organization, in the framework of its Human Rights
Commission which in 2006, after the adoption by the General Assembly, has
become the Human Rights Council, an organ with more prerogatives, has drawn
the attention of Member States to the activities of these private military and
security companies operating at the international level through the reports of
the Special Rapporteur or the now Working Group on Mercenaries. Reports that
unfortunately up to present have had little impact in Western countries, from
where these companies mainly operate. It is to be hoped that Member States
will soon consider seriously to what extent the use of force can be
privatized.
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- Jose L. Gomez del Prado is a member of the United Nations Working Group on
Mercenaries
https://www.alainet.org/es/node/115723?language=es
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