Private militaries lead to trouble

When the invasion of Iraq was launched last March, a huge number
of private military contractors went into war alongside coalition
forces. These were the employees of private companies, the products
of outside agencies who have become so valuable to modern western
warfare that without them the Iraq war would have been a much more
difficult war for the United States to fight.

The invasion of Iraq and its aftermath saw the partial
privatization of war. A recent Guardian investigation reported that
private corporations are now the second biggest contributors to
coalition forces in Iraq after the Pentagon, with 10,000 private
military contractors on the ground. Civilians, alongside military
personnel, help operate and maintain some of the world’s most
dangerous and advanced weapons systems.

In the war’s aftermath, the private military sector
remains thoroughly enmeshed in the occupation of Iraq. According to
The Guardian, for every 10 servicemen there is one private
contractor. And of the estimated $87 billion going toward the Iraqi
campaign this year, at least $30 billion will be spent on contracts
to private companies.

The enormous amount of money poured into the private military
reflects both the downsizing of the U.S. military and also points
to the fact that these agencies are in a better position to provide
both training and resources. Yet there are a number of problems
with replacing soldiers with highly paid private contractors.
Private military companies are businesses. These companies are for
profit organizations whose aim is not to further the policies of
the United Nations or the United States, but to make a profit. They
are capitalist ventures and are not necessarily constricted by
issues of loyalty, national ideology or even accountability.

Similarly, these paramilitary forces bare a striking resemblance
to mercenaries ““ professional soldiers hired for service in a
foreign army. Using mercenaries is prohibited by the Geneva
conventions; it is a violation of the rules of war. But the trend
has reached a high point and no one seems willing to criticize
it.

The lure of the private sector for the growing population of
highly skilled ex-servicemen is understandable. It was reported by
The Guardian that ex-SAS men could command $1,000 a day in Iraq.
However, the private sector also recruits from official army lines.
In the same Guardian article, it is stated that a British officer
reportedly claimed that his driver was offered a fortune to move to
a “rather dodgy outfit.” And although head-hunting
occurs in virtually every industry, it is a very different ball
game, generating far more severe consequences when it is played out
among a country’s military forces.

Another disturbing aspect of this unprecedented use of private
military contractors is that off-duty civilian employees are not
subject to the same rules as their official military counterparts.
A crime committed by an off-duty American G.I. would be dealt with
according to the U.S. judicial military code, but an off-duty guard
employed by a military company would answer to the law of that
country. And in many conflict zones in which these firms are
employed, the “law” is merely an arbitrary concept.

The danger of this unequal application of law is evidenced by a
situation that arose in Sarajevo. The Guardian investigation
reported that the firm Dyncorp has been given the very lucrative
contract of training the Iraqi police force. This decision bothered
Madeleine Rees, the chief UN human rights officer in Sarajevo, who
said, “Dyncorp should never have been awarded the Iraqi
police contract.” The same company was given the contract to
train the Bosnian police force and later became implicated in an
alleged sex slavery scandal that involved the buying and selling of
young girls.

Although several accused employees were laid off, they were
never prosecuted. But the example points to the acts of criminality
that private military organizations ““ largely divorced from
the legal safeguards of the countries that employ them ““
could potentially get away with.

The phenomenal rise of the private sector has led modern warfare
into uncharted territory. They are big businesses who demand not
only vast amounts of money but a large degree of independence
““ independence that governments have been forced to
relinquish because they now command significantly smaller, more
complex national armies.

De Sybel is a third-year history and English student. E-mail
her at [email protected]. Send general comments to
[email protected].