I'm just wondering what people think of the "private security" people being employed in Iraq. While some will be genuine VIP close protection and static guard types, I have this nagging feeling that quite a few of them fall into the "unfulfilled" (euphemism for "not having killed enough people"?), gung-ho, "lets shoot everybody" types. This potentially ties with stories of "coalition soldiers" being buried in the desert and of secretive nighttime flights repatriating bodies.
A friend visited Arlington National Cemetery (Washington DC) and during a conducted tour, was informed by the guide that the burial rate from Iraq is a lot higher than official figure for service personnel (this on top of service personnel who fought in previous conflicts and who died in later civilian life). The guide said in one day they buried 35 people (from Iraq). While no doubt this will happen in burst and funerals may be organised together to simplify arrangements, something doesn't seem quite right.
Anyway, while I think there is possibly a **very small** niche for companies like Executive Outcomes (South Africa based) in helping countries defend themselves, I think these companies are mercenaries in all but name.
http://www.thepost.ie/web/DocumentView/did-16609691-pageUrl--2FThe-Newspaper-2FSundays-Paper-2FNews.asp
Private guns for hire hit lucrative Iraqi market
18/04/04 00:00
By Susan Mitchell
Iraq has become a bonanza for the burgeoning $100 billion a year private military sector.
Experts claim it is the fastest-growing area of the global economy over the past decade.
Up to 15,000 private security personnel are reported to be stationed in Iraq, where they comprise the third-largest international division of the war effort after US and British troops.
The escalating violence has hampered reconstruction efforts and scared away some investors, but a shadowy army of private security and military companies is turning the insecurity into a huge money-spinner.
Contracts worth hundreds of millions of dollars have been handed out to private security companies by the US- run provisional government in Baghdad and by the private sector.
Security costs have absorbed up to 15 per cent of the coalition's $57 billion investment in Iraq, according to the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA). A report to the US Congress showed that private security firms had been allocated contracts worth $3.4 billion - more than the combined amounts being spent on health, education and transport.
The US-led troops are too stretched to deal with the poor security that has plagued aid agencies and private companies hired to rebuild the country's shattered infrastructure.
Private security firms have relieved the pressure and military analysts claim the arrangement allows regular troops to concentrate on fighting.
The security companies provide attractive employment for former soldiers as they offer up to $1,000 a day, about ten times the salary paid by the army.
The private companies in Iraq range from large, relatively well-known firms - such as Kroll, Blackwater, ArmorGroup, British Control Risks Group, Haart, Dyn- Corp and Vinnell of the US - to smaller operators such as British firm Olive Security.
Vinnell has been contracted to train the Iraqi army. Blackwater - which lost four employees in a high-profile attack two weeks ago - provides security for the US civil administrator, Paul Bremer. DynCorp has been hired to train Iraq's police force and Global Risk has the contract to provide armed protection for the CPA.
Anne Triedemann, managing director of Kroll, described the early opportunities in Iraq as something of a "gold rush".
"There is quite a bit of business out there. From our point of view, it just gets better all the time," another contractor told the Financial Times.
Iraq is just the tip of the iceberg as private security companies are increasingly employed by oil companies in the African desert, heads of state in Haiti and Afghanistan, and international firms operating in global hotspots.
"The rate of growth in the security industry is phenomenal," said Deborah Avant, professor of political science and international affairs at George Washington University in Washington DC, in a recent interview.
"It has moved very quickly over the past decade, but Iraq has escalated it dramatically."
The trend is controversial as critics point out that security firms are largely unaccountable to governments, the courts or the public. Peter Singer, author of Corporate Warriors: the Rise of the Privatised Military Industry, said that loopholes in international law enabled employees of private security firms to escape prosecution for crimes they committed overseas.
Many US and UN contracts oblige local governments to give legal immunity to such contractors. Critics claim this sets a dangerous precedent for covert foreign policy. Governments can intervene abroad and - by calling on firms with fleets of cargo planes and hundreds of soldiers - can avoid unwelcome publicity when things go wrong.
"Why try to persuade Congress to sanction the use of US troops in Colombia's war on narco-guerrillas when you can send in contractors to spray cocoa fields and train paramilitary groups - as both the Clinton and Bush administrations have done?" asked a recent article in Business Week.
Outsourcing war is also a useful public relations tool. It has been reported that nobody knows how many contractors have been killed in Iraq as the military does not officially track civilian contractor deaths, of which there have been over 30 reported to date.
"It's a bit ugly if our elected politicians have decided that the country's tolerance can be sustained longer by serving up contractors to take bullets," said Steven Schooner, a US government procurement specialist.
Kenneth Kurtz, chief executive of the Steele Foundation, the world's fifth-largest firm, told the San Francisco Chronicle that "most of the security firms in Iraq have had some people killed".
Concern about the role of private security firms increased after four employees of Blackwater Security Consultants were killed in Falluja. The deaths prompted numerous articles about the role of private military companies.
Contractors are hired for just about every imaginable task in conflict zones - they supported US troops in Vietnam and during the Gulf War.
At the end of the Gulf War, the ratio was said to be about one contractor to every 100 soldiers. In Iraq it is one contractor to every ten soldiers, estimated Singer, who de-scribed it as a "coalition of the billing".
Recent reports claimed that many contractors were fleeing Iraq and the ultimate fear is that contractors under extreme duress will flee en masse, exposing US and British soldiers to greater risk.
But the escalation of violence has not yet dampened the enthusiasm of security contractors. "The only people leaving Iraq are the Russians. None of the reconstruction firms is leaving.
"There is simply too much money at stake and too much has already been invested," said one security consultant with a British company in Iraq.
With major security firms reportedly lobbying the US government and the United Nations to privatise peace-keeping operations, their record in Iraq is likely to prove significant.
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