Armed entrepreneurs: private military companies in Iraq.

Kwok, James

Pejoratively labeled the "whores of war" or the "soldiers of fortune," personnel from private military companies (PMCs) have been receiving undue negative media attention because their duties seem so similar to mercenaries of the old-fashioned variety.

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However, the typical PMC employee is not a direct descendant of the mercenary of the past. PMC employees do not work for multiple employers at once and are not officially assigned to direct combat situations. While a Hessian of the US Revolutionary War was solely a foot soldier, a modern PMC employee is capable of police training, personal protection, and support for weapons systems like bombers and helicopters. For example, many of the PMC employees in Iraq previously served in national militaries, often in special forces such as the Navy SEALs.

This new breed of military contracting has played a major role in shaping security in Iraq, offering logistical support and supply transportation to coalition forces as well as retraining programs for the Iraqi army. However, PMCs have consistently received negative press. Their allegedly close involvement in the Abu Ghraib torture scandal has increased suspicion, especially from the US military, of the reliability of contractors. Other critics blame the soaring costs of the Iraq War on the US government's contracting of PMCs. But, on the contrary, PMCs are critical--their security and logistical support services are needed now more than ever. However, past PMC profligacy in trouble spots such as Angola and Sierra Leone has shown the necessity for the Iraqi and US governments to impose new regulations on PMC behavior to ensure that they remain a positive and productive force in Iraq.

PMCs to the Rescue

The PMC presence in Iraq provides an effective stopgap measure for the problem of overstretched conventional military forces. The issue of the necessary level of troop numbers in Iraq has been an ongoing debate since the start of the occupation. In a 2003 press conference, US General John Abizaid of Central Command explained to reporters that "the number of troops--boots per square inch--is not the issue." However, other military personnel--particularly ex-military officials--have repeatedly recommended that the United States increase its troop numbers in Iraq. The shortage of troops is a confluence of several different factors. While America's War on Terror has directed substantial military manpower to Iraq and Afghanistan, the US military also has to fulfill peacekeeping duties in the Balkans and play a supporting role for the South Koreans along the demilitarized zone. Charles Pena, Director of Defense Policy at the Cato Institute, said in an interview with Voice of America that having fewer resources and less manpower devoted to Iraq has caused military forces to be rotated and redeployed, straining the troops. He adds that "there are many troubling and worrisome signs that [American defense policy] may be doing real damage to the United States Army," such as discouraging potential recruits who are wary of a lengthy tour of duty. Numbers prove the same point: for the fiscal year leading up to May 2005, the Army fell short of its recruitment goals by about 25 percent. While the size of the US Army contingent currently operating in Iraq is large, roughly 130,000 to 150,000 troops, the Army has recently been beset by difficulties, particularly in policing cities and providing rapid reaction to rebel attacks. The strain has thus caused a dearth of force strength and underscored the need for more manpower and alternative resources.

Private military companies such as Blackwater Inc. and DynCorp provide the logistical support and retraining programs necessary to alleviate the strain on US and Coalition military forces in combat matters and law enforcement. For example, Meteoric Tactical Solutions, a South African PMC, won multiple contracts from the Coalition to train a private Iraqi security group to guard buildings that had previously been guarded by US soldiers in early 2004. This allowed the US military to allocate soldiers to more active and possibly combat-heavy duties. PMC contractors are also employed as technical experts to support US B-2 bombers and combat helicopters, which require teams of qualified operators on the ground and in the air. Translation and supply transport are two other key services that PMCs provide to coalition forces, which rely on long supply lines branching out of Iraq and sometimes even the Middle East.

Many PMCs bring considerable professional military experience to the task of security. For example, Blackwater Inc. was founded by a former Navy SEAL. DynCorp was founded in 1946 by a group of US combat veterans seeking to profit from the military contracts they had gained during the Second World War. The experience of these personnel makes prices for their services much higher than for a regular soldier; some PMC contractors command prices of nearly US$1,000 a day. However, their specialized skills are needed to compensate for the manpower that a strained military cannot provide for foreign nationals in Iraq.

Finally, and perhaps most importantly, PMCs are crucial because the US military limits the protection it offers to the many contractors and officials currently working on the reconstruction of Iraq. The US military is not obligated to provide security to US government civilian agencies and contractors associated with the reconstruction of Iraq, although it does provide security to US government employees and contractors that directly support or follow combat troops. In the absence of military security, PMC services have also become essential to many government agencies and reconstruction corporations.

Problems with PMC Personnel in Iraq

Although these benefits are quite clear, the deployment of PMCs has caused a number of both short and long-term problems. In the short-term, the presence of military contractors, who are considered civilians rather than official combatants may lead to increased collateral damage. In 2004, four employees from Blackwater Inc., a prominent PMC, were killed and mutilated by an angry mob in Fallujah. The killings set off a firefight in the area that lasted for more than a month and led to US Marine involvement. In only one night of April 2003, Hart Group, Control Risks, and Triple Canopy were all simultaneously involved in heated battles with Iraqi insurgents in and around the city of Kut, causing multiple casualties. To help reduce the heavy involvement of PMCs in active combat with the Iraqi insurgents, from April 2003 to June 2004, the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) took measures to regulate PMC personnel involved in conflict. It imposed certain measures such as encouraging PMC personnel to get insured, controlling the kinds of weaponry they could carry, and instituting a careful background examination of personnel before they entered Iraq to ensure their mental and physical competency.

The need for greater regulation of PMCs underscores the problems of PMC accountability in Iraq. First, there is legal accountability--how can these personnel be regulated under some form of international or national law? Second, how is it possible to regulate the force that these personnel employ?

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PMCs and their employees currently operating in Iraq have recently come under fire for acting as if they were executives in their own state. Indeed, in some circumstances, they probably are not beholden to anyone. In his book Contract Warriors, Fred Rosen cites one incident in which contractors decided to set up their own roadblocks within Iraq, effectively acting as if they had control. The Observer published an article in April 2005 revealing that it had found a newsletter sent to employees of Blackwater Security, declaring that "Actually, it is 'fun' to shoot some people." The letter elaborated: "it is fun, meaning satisfying" to shoot terrorists. While it is not immediately certain that Blackwater employees have shot people for fun, it reveals a side of PMCs that could be dangerous if left unchecked.

The aforementioned events were preludes to a larger problem that was thrown into sharp relief by the Abu Ghraib prison scandal. In April 2004 images of naked Iraqi inmates at the Abu Ghraib prison were released to the media, leading to the removal of 17 soldiers and officers from duty. Less publicized was the fact that Titan and CACI--PMCs assisting in the interrogation--also played a substantial role in the scandal. A 53-page internal report issued by US Major General Antonio Taguba alleged that four civilian contractors serving with the 205th Military Intelligence Brigade were involved in unacceptable treatment of Iraqi prisoners. According to the report, a contractor, Steven Stephanowicz, tried "setting conditions" for military police for the treatment of Iraqi inmates, "which were neither authorized [nor] in accordance with applicable regulations/policy ... He clearly knew his instructions equated to physical abuse." Taguba's report concluded, among other things, that "US civilian contract personnel (Titan Corporation, CACI, etc) ... wandered about with too much unsupervised free access in the detainee area." The report even suggested that the presence of these civilian contractors "may have contributed to the difficulties in the accountability process and with detecting escapes." The difficulty in PMCs' collaboration with the military is not so much their inherently questionable behavior as the fact that PMCs, in contrast to the military itself, lack regulations governing and reducing behavior both on and off the battlefield.

In the case of PMC involvement in Iraq, holding employees of PMCs accountable for their actions proved difficult for the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) because of CPA Order 17, which stipulated that "contractors [including PMCs] shall be immune from the Iraqi legal process with respect to acts performed by them pursuant to the terms and conditions of a contract or any sub-contract thereto." Since the termination of the CPA, Iraqi efforts to keep a closer watch on PMCs have proved difficult. In May 2005, erstwhile Deputy Interior Minister Adnan Asadi sent a letter to PMCs operating in Iraq, warning the companies that if they continued to disobey local laws, "the cancellation [of PMC licenses] will be circulated to all state offices, with the aim of shunning any dealing with [PMCs]." However, such threats have often been disregarded; the Washington Post reported in September 2005 that Iraqi citizen Ali Ismail was shot at by PMCs while in traffic. It therefore seems clear that it is a duty of the US government as well as the Iraqi government to rein in the PMCs.

How Do We Regulate PMCs in Iraq?

While international law may seem to provide a proper avenue for PMC regulation, security companies currently have an ambiguous status under international treaties. Article 47, Additional Protocol I to the Geneva Convention forbids the presence of mercenaries in conflict, but PMC duties do not necessarily fall under the textbook definition of mercenary. For example, one definition of mercenary in the Geneva Convention is a person who "does, in fact, take a direct part in the hostilities." PMCs have engaged Iraqi insurgents, but their official roles do not directly involve fighting. In many instances, these companies were engaged without first initiating hostility, casting uncertainty on the practice of pigeonholing PMCs into the "mercenary" category. A more recent multilateral agreement, the 1989 UN Convention on Mercenaries, defined mercenaries in a similar manner, adding, however, that a mercenary would include those "overthrowing a Government or otherwise undermining the constitutional order of a State." Again, this elaboration does not elucidate the legal status of PMC employees operating abroad. Deborah Avant, a political scientist from George Washington University, writes that this piece of legislation "governs only such egregious soldier-of-fortune activities as overthrowing the government. Human rights law binds only states, reducing the formal legal responsibilities of contractors."

Thus, it is necessary for individual states to ensure that PMCs are held directly accountable for their actions. South Africa is already working to update a 1998 legislation forbidding South African PMCs to operate without the express consent of the government. While PMCs are not inherently war criminals--nor should they be viewed as such--instituting regulations such as the ones being created in South Africa is necessary to ensure that PMCs behave within a framework of law to which they are held personally accountable.

South Africa's tighter control is just one type of regulation. Another type of regulation concerns employees within a PMC itself. Licenses for its members and more thorough background checks for its employees are necessary to ensure that those serving in Iraq will behave responsibly. In a recent interview with PBS, Peter Singer, a fellow at the Brookings Institution, provided an example of the dangers of not looking carefully at whom the US is hiring for services in Iraq: "[a British PMC employee] had been thrown out of the British Army and put in jail for cooperating with Irish terrorists. The British Army was certainly not happy to find out that he was in Iraq working as a contractor, carrying a submachine gun on the ground." Stricter US legislation regarding PMC employee background checks will go far in ensuring that incidents like those at Abu Ghraib will not reoccur.

Finally, it is more important than ever to formalize the military-PMC relationship. The two groups must find a way to make their relationship a productive and responsible one. Firstly, there needs to be a close dialogue between PMCs and the military. Talks concerning cooperation between the national military and private security companies are currently underway. This is especially crucial when very important persons are passing over an area that the military does not deem secure. The US Government Accountability Office (GAO) report cites one example in which PMC personnel escorted a CPA administrator into the middle of a military operation in Najaf. As a result, the military diverted personnel from the operation in order to assist the CPA administrator, who subsequently came under attack. Even though a number of Reconstruction Operations Centers are spread throughout Iraq to coordinate between military troops and PMCs, more official and institutionalized communication between PMCs and the military is crucial. If an adequate flow of information between the two parties is achieved, this may reduce collateral damage and enable PMC personnel to avoid direct combat in carrying out their security duties. Secondly, the United States should ensure that PMCs do not interfere in work done by the US military by limiting PMC duties to a narrow set of responsibilities. Private security services for corporations and very important people are necessary, yet placing PMC interrogators in sensitive areas like Abu Ghraib may actually hamper rather than help in the reconstruction of Iraq.

Machiavelli wrote in The Prince that "mercenaries and auxiliaries are useless and dangerous; and if one holds his state based on these arms, he will stand neither firm nor safe." This dark vision of opportunistic and itinerant thugs does not and should not apply to the international high-tech employee of today's private military companies. At least for the time being, PMCs offer benefits necessary for the US-led reconstruction of Iraq. The US military, especially in its maintenance of supply and logistical support systems, requires the skills and manpower that PMCs provide. However, to ensure that PMCs do not behave like Machiavelli's mercenaries, the burgeoning PMC industry should be regulated. The market for private security contracting is not yet mature, and it will require greater control and a clearer set of responsibilities in order for PMC services to complement the US military's work rather than undermine it.

senior editor

JAMES KWOK

RELATED ARTICLE: HIRED GUNS

The Rise of Private Military Companies

Early 1990s

Post-Cold War downsizing marks increasing prominence of PMCs

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1994

Gurkha Security Guards, contracted by Sierra Leone, break contract and leave the country

1995

MPRI trains Croat militia, turning it into a highly successful army in "Operation Storm"

1998

Blackwater (now a prominent PMC in Iraq) is created

1999

Armor Holdings named one of Fortune magazine's 100 fastest-growing companies

September 11, 2001

US force expansion, augmented by PMC personnel

2003

Start of the Iraq War, rise in prominence of PMCs (1:10 ratio to US soldiers)

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2003-2004

CPA begins to regulate PMCs in Iraq

2004

10-15 cents of every dollar spent in Iraq goes towards PMC security

International Security