Corporate Mercenaries

December 10th, 2007 By Ruth Tanner

From: Campaign Against the Arms Trade
In September this year, employees of US private military company Blackwater killed 17Iraqi civilians in Baghdad. In October, guards from Unity Resources Group, a security firm run by former Australian army personnel, killed two Iraqis. In the same month, guards working for UK group Erinys International opened fire on a taxi near Kirkuk, wounding three civilians. In November, an Iraqi taxi driver was shot and killed by a guard with DynCorp International, a private security company hired to protect American diplomats.

These are just the most recent accounts of human rights abuses and civilian killings by employees of Private Military and Security Companies (PMSCs) in Iraq. There have been hundreds of human rights violations by mercenary troops, yet not a single prosecution has been brought against them.

All foreign contractors were granted immunity from prosecution in Iraq by virtue of order 17 of the Coalition Provisional Authority, one of Paul Bremer’s final acts before handing over power in summer 2004. In the wake of the Blackwater massacre the Iraqi government is attempting to bring in legislation to bring contractors under the control of Iraqi law.

Recent years have seen a new evolution in privatised warfare: today’s mercenaries are not just soldiers of fortune; they are corporations. The PMSC industry comprises hundreds of companies operating in more than 50 countries worldwide and working for governments, international institutions and corporations. They provide combat support including training and intelligence provision, operational support, strategic planning and consultancy, technical assistance, post-conflict reconstruction and a wide range of security provision.

UK Involvement

These companies are making a financial killing out of war. Iraq has turned this into a multi-billion pound industry and UK firms are amongst the biggest winners. Estimates have suggested the total income for the private security sector worldwide has reached about £50 billion a year. UK companies saw their annual income grow six fold in the first year of the Iraqi occupation alone. A third of all US reconstruction money and a quarter of all UK reconstruction money has gone on PMSCs.

One UK company, Armorgroup has just won the UK government’s £20 million annual contract for security services in Afghanistan. Another UK company Aegis Defence Services, run by former Sandline International chief executive Tim Spicer of the 1998‘Arms to Africa’ scandal, has won a new contract with the Pentagon worth half a billion dollars over the next two years.

Blackwater President Gary Jackson, has made clear his intentions. He would like to develop, in his own words: ‘the largest, most professional private army in the world’. Others are more circumspect, preferring to legitimise their activities in war zones as ‘security’ and the rather Kafkaesque ‘peace building’.

However, in a conflict environment like Iraq, the distinction between security and combat breaks down. There is often no perceptible difference between regular soldiers and private support workers involved in protecting convoys or materials. PMSCs have become so much a part of war efforts that some major Western countries, like the UK and US, would now struggle to wage war without them.

This recent and very rapid expansion of PMSCs means that there is an urgent need to bring their activities under legal and democratic control. The absence of legal accountability in the country of operation makes it doubly essential that there is legislation governing PMSCs in their home country. The UK has no regulations governing the private military and security industry, despite the fact that its employees regularly operate in life-and-death situations and are currently taking over more and more functions of our own armed forces.

Rein In

Rein in The UK government demonstrated that it was aware of many of the problems posed by PMSCs when it published a Green Paper on the issue in 2002. In its response to this, the House of Commons Foreign Affairs Committee recommended that ‘private companies be expressly prohibited from direct participation in armed combat operations’. Since 2002, however, the UK government has failed to introduce legislation to take forward any of the options presented in the Green Paper.

In October, the United Nations working group on mercenaries renewed its call for the UK government to introduce legislation to regulate the private military sector and to guard against the ‘inherent dangers’ of privatising the use of violence in war zones. Corporate mercenaries have reaped huge profits from the conflict and at the expense of human rights in Iraq. The latest shootings in Iraq underline the need for the UK government to stop UK mercenaries operating in war zones. The Government must act now to bring these companies within the law.